Chapter 23
Kyrian
anic flushes through me as I take Rowan’s weight, her head lolling
against my chest.
“Rowan.” I shake her gently, then more firmly when she doesn’t
respond. Her face is pale, her lips tinged blue. I check her pulse, relief
flooding me when I feel the steady beat beneath her chilled skin. She’s
pushed herself too far. I’d pushed her too far. I adjust her body against
mine, and brush her soaked hair from her face. “Rowan, wake up. Come on,
chaos, open your eyes for me.”
Rowan’s eyelids flutter and she lets out a soft moan, her brow furrowing
as she slowly returns to consciousness.
“That’s it,” I murmur encouragingly.
Her eyes blink open, unfocused at first before her gaze sharpens on my
face.
“Shit,” she curses, throwing a hand over her face for a moment before
scrambling furiously to try to get to her feet. Not that I’m about to let her,
but she doesn’t know that. “I’m sorry. I -”
“- You are staying right here,” I tighten my hold. There is no way I’m
letting her go until we’ve figured this out. “What happened?”
Rowan ducks her head, chestnut locks falling forward to curtain her
face. “Nothing. I just got a little dizzy for a moment there.”
I frown, reaching out to tuck her hair back behind her ear so I can see
her expression. “A little dizzy? Rowan, you collapsed in my arms. That’s
more than a little dizzy.”
She chews on her bottom lip, still not meeting my gaze. “Well, I’m a bit
of a mess in case you didn’t know that already. So this is my normal. Ask
Logan.” Her jaw tightens. “Right, not an option. He’s scouting. You really
can let me go now.” The last is a deliberate order and I do as Rowan asks,
setting her carefully to sit on the stone slab.
“Here is what’s going to happen now,” I say, scrounging through our
packs in search of anything that survived the downpour and came out dry.
“We are going to get you warm and fed and talking.” And, preferably,
staying conscious. I pull out my woolen tunic, which has fared the best of
all our gear, plus the oiled bedroll. “So tell me something.”
“Like… what?”
“Anything. Your favorite bedtime story, or whether the commandant has
always had an iron rod up her arse, or if you prefer salty snacks to sweet
ones. I need to do a few things and I want to hear your voice while I do
them.” Not my smoothest set of directions, but I’m so worried about Rowan
that I can’t seem to put a sentence together.
Fortunately, she is the forgiving type.
“Um… alright,” she rubs her shoulders with her hands, trying to get
warm. “I’m an alchemist. Obviously. But when my magic first manifested, I
thought I’d be a healer. Things didn’t go that way though. Oh, and I like to
read.”
“What’s your favorite book?” I find the oil cloth our rations are wrapped
in and cut a generous slice of cheese off. One look at Rowan’s stiff hands,
and I don’t even bother handing it to her. Instead I break off a morsel and
put it to her lips. “Please. You need the fuel.”
She hesitates a moment but takes the food, and I thank the stars she isn’t
fighting me on this. A few more bites and her color improves enough that I
feel safe turning away for a bit—but only so long as I can hear her voice. At
least with injured draken I have my empathic magic to lean into. But with
Rowan, I’m blind. And I hate that.
As Rowan tells me about a romance she read last, I quickly gather dry
wood for a fire and coax a few sparks from my flint to start a flame. A small
pot of water goes atop that and larger, more damp logs, are laid close to the
flames to dry. I hang our cloaks next, then finally return to her just as the
story finishes. “I swear I’m not just saying this because I like seeing you
naked, but we really do need to strip. The wet clothes and the cold and -”
“It’s alright, I know you don’t want to see me naked.”
“That’s actually the opposite of what I said, but given that you are
undressing, I am tempted against arguing.” I curse under my breath. “I
hadn’t meant to say that aloud actually.”
She narrows her brows at me like I’m an idiot, which seems rather
accurate at the moment.
I do the mature thing of pretending that peeling off my boots and
clothes takes up too much of my attention to notice. When I’m down to my
smallclothes, I hesitate only a heartbeat before stripping them off along with
the rest. They’re wet and Rowan’s must be too. So, off they go.
Rowan’s story trips over itself, the words turning jumbled.
For the first time all day I’m grateful for the cold that keeps my cock
from springing up like a catapult.
“What—”
“Which part is confusing?” I ask innocently. I’ve already decided that
helping Rowan get her wet clothes off is my solemn responsibility. Or
reward. Both. Still, as I kneel before her and nudge away her chilled fingers
from their losing battle against bootlaces, I pause to study her face. There
have been so many choices taken from her already. And there will be more.
I’m going to be responsible for that too. This one is small in comparison but
it still feels important. “May I help?”
She nods and I release a held breath.
Making short work of her bootlaces, I gently tug them off her feet and
set them aside to dry by the growing fire.
“Can I ask you something?” Rowan says as I reach for the hem of her
tunic, my fingers brushing against her icy skin. “Why are you being so kind
to me?”
I pause then pull the soaked fabric up and over her head, letting it fall to
the stone with a wet plop. “Not letting you freeze to death is your definition
of kindness?”
“Not letting me freeze to death is my definition of good military
strategy,” she says matter of factly, busying herself with the laces atop her
breeches. Between the stiffness of the laces and her own cramped fingers, I
know she’ll lose that battle as readily as the one with her boots, but I wait
for her to figure that out before shoving in to help. “I’m an alchemist. If I
died under your watch, there would be consequences to your career. We all
know that. Just as we all know that bringing me back alive and safe will be
a boon. So, no, that’s not really what I’m asking.”
“I promise none of this is about my career in the Eryndor army. Or
politics, for that matter, given how closely the two are aligned.”
She laughs without humor. “None of it? Come on, Kyrian, no one joins
the combat track at one of the Spires unless they want to advance.”
I give up watching her struggle with the laces and undo them myself. “I
didn’t say I don’t want to advance, I said that I’m not after pleasing the
Spire’s command cadre.”
Rowan braces her palms on my shoulders as I ease the clinging fabric
down her legs, my knuckles grazing her thighs, knees, calves. I swallow,
not knowing where to look. She’s beautiful, the kind of beautiful that makes
you wonder if it’s all real or a trick some cosmic force is playing with you
for its own amusement.
“My father is a high ranking noble in my village,” I say. “I’m the
consequence of his indiscretion with a visiting dancer. She died when I was
five and—to the great displeasure of my father’s wife—he took me in to
raise alongside his full blooded children. So, you can say that I grew up
with a shadow over me, this sin of taking from the family without any
prospect of giving back. When I realized that my physical gifts put me in a
position to possibly change my standing in court, to make me someone of
value in my own right, I took it. If I succeed, well… Maybe it’s a stretch to
imagine that my family will consider it an honor to have me among them,
but I think they’ll at least see me as less of a leech, aye?”
I clear my throat and turn my head away. I’d not meant to say all of that
when I opened my mouth, but the disconnect between my brain and my lips
seems to be a recurring issue around Rowan. I don’t know what’s making
me want to trust her, to let her see as much of the real me as possible, but I
know that whatever it is, it’s special. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. And
it’s scarier than the hurricane raging through the woods.
To her credit, Rowan doesn’t try to tell me that I’m wrong, or that if my
family ties their love to my station, then they are the problem. She doesn’t
even say that she is sorry for this mess. No. Not Rowan. She just squeezes
my shoulder in genuine understanding. “Tell me how I can help,” she says
softly.
Stars. She deserves so much better than what we are going to do to her
soon.
“Please don’t die,” I say with a lightness I don’t feel.
She makes a sound with the back of her throat and steps free of the
puddle of clothes, leaving her before me in nothing but her smallclothes—
scraps of soaked white linens that leave little to the imagination.
“You’ll need to take that off too,” I rasp, trying to figure out what to do
with my eyes. Because the effort it’s taking me to not look where I
shouldn’t is probably making me resemble a bug-eyed insect. “Nothing wet.
Skin to skin. It’s how we get warm and stay warm.”
Rowan hooks her thumbs into the sides of the cloth, pushing the final
barrier down until she is as bare as I am.
I give up pretending I don’t notice her creamy skin and delicious curves,
or the rose nipples that peak in the cold. Or the tight curls that disappear
between her thighs toward a very responsive opening. Stars take me. A few
strokes of my hand in the right place and I can make her forget everything
I’ve spilled about my past. I can change this moment and us back to last
night, when the only thing between us was lust and pleasure. It’s what I
should do.
Stars know my body is rooting for that option. Hard. Painfully hard.
But for some reason I don’t want to. I want this, whatever is building
between Rowan and I right now, to be real. Maybe it still won’t survive the
final turn of the mission, but maybe it will at least give me a fighting
chance of not being hated forever.
So, instead of grabbing Rowan’s hips and locking my mouth right over
that sensitive nub I love so much, I draw her chastely against me and settle
us before the fire, arranging the least damp blanket around our shoulders to
trap in the warmth.
Seeing that the water has heated, I pluck the small pot off the flame and
mix in the chocolate I brought for emergency use.
Rowan’s eyes go so wide it makes the whole logistical nightmare of
stealing the powder from the kitchens and then keeping it dry worth it.
“What about you?” I ask as Rowan relaxes back against me, hot
chocolate in her hands and her soft curves molding perfectly to the hard
planes of my body. As if she was made to fit there. “You don’t seem to
enjoy anything about the Spire. Why go that route? Surely an alchemist
would be welcome in a workshop without all the extra dangers that earning
a Spire commission entails.”
I listen as she talks, telling me about her mother’s unapologetic
expectations, how disappointment after disappointment changed their
relationship over time. How her father left when she was born. How Ellie
has been her only friend. Ellie and Collin.
She thinks she is telling me a story of a girl who’s failed on every front,
but I hear a tale of a woman braver than anyone I’ve met. One who ran a
clinic for the city’s poor under the commandant’s nose, who never lost her
ability to love when the blows she’d taken would have led anyone else to
bitter hate. I hear a tale of a survivor. And I want to tell her that. But I know
I can’t right now. I’ve not earned the right yet. Not earned the trust. But I
will.
Because I think I’m falling in love with Rowan Ainsley.
