Page 104 of Synodic

Rowen told me to use my speed to my advantage, to dart and splice quickly, never letting them get their hands on me, so I darted again. Off the downward momentum of my last strike, I arced my blade up, slicing the new guard from navel to chest.

He fell, adding one more to the growing pool of bodies at our feet.

I was able to get a glimpse of Rowen, his body deadly as he cut down the field of soldiers like stalks of wheat. He was vicious, ruthless, and fluid as he delivered the most incapacitating damage in the quickest amount of time.

I turned around just in time to see Caeryn charging toward me, the usual wrath burning in his cleaved gaze.

Rowen was currently swarmed, fending off three other guards blow for blow.

I would have to deal with Caeryn myself.

As was in his nature, he lunged at me. I’d seen it enough to know it was coming, and now that I was healed, I was able to duck from his grabbing reach just in time. Caeryn’s marred features snarled, puckering and pulling at the gash I carved across his face. “Someone’s got their fight back, I see. Though it won’t do you any good.”

“Tell that to someone who doesn’t wear my mark upon their face,” I said, wanting to finish the line I’d carved in him, trace over it again, except this time longer, deeper. Deadlier.

Propelled by my rage, I did what Dyani inadvertently taught me on the training field. I dropped to the ground and swept my leg out behind me, landing a decisive blow to Caeryn’s Achilles tendon. His legs popped out from underneath him, and he crashed to the ground in a fury.

I crawled over him savagely, sitting atop him as I reopened his wound with my blade, but he grabbed my wrist and wrested the knife from my hand.

Wrenching me to my feet, he whirled me around with his strong arms and slammed my back against him. He palmed a fistful of my hair, and I cried out as he pulled my head back to rest unnaturally on his shoulder. Then he pressed the edge of his blade into the pulsing vein at my throat.

“Keira!” Rowen screamed desperately, and I could do nothing but watch as he was overpowered by the guards. There were too many of them. It was taking four of them just to hold him as they tried to bind his hands behind his back.

“Well hello, handsome, I heard you were on your way,” Aliphoura said, her voice dripping with golden honey. She walked toward Rowen, her personal garrison of three following in her wake. Her hips swayed seductively past her delicate wrists, and the gold gown that clung to her body looked coincidently similar to my Celenova dress. Her crown of bones jutted from her straight dark hair like fingers curling up and cursing the sky. “I wondered how long it would take you to work past my little memory block. I’ll admit I was beginning to lose hope. I nearly disposed of the little star, but just like my father, I hate to be wasteful, and I almost put her to good use in the pleasure rooms.”

Fury boiled over Rowen as he charged toward Aliphoura. A cage of arms and ropes quickly detained him, leaving him immobile and panting like an animal in a trap.

Just out of his reach, she asked, “Tell me, have you thought of me much, my beloved?”

My beloved?

Her golden eyes traced his body with a look of remembering, and his honed muscles flexed uncomfortably beneath her piercing gaze. The close proximity of her body was enough to pull a growl from his lips.

Ignoring his apparent discomfort, Aliphoura ran her fingers through Rowen’s hair, rearranging the dark waves to her liking, and his nostrils flared at her touch.

My heart hammered through my chest. I thought it was me she wanted. Why the sudden interest in Rowen? Could his presence derail her mission with me so thoroughly?

I struggled and failed to keep up with the perverse and serpentine reasonings of a madwoman.

Silently, I pleaded for Rowen to make eye contact with me, but his defiant stare never left Aliphoura’s beautiful face. He was refusing to even look at me.

“He is quite the exceptional lover, don’t you think?” she asked, turning to me as she ran her hands down his neck and shoulders. Her words and actions failed to match Rowen’s complete rigidity beneath her caressing strokes.

Disgust clenched my stomach. Her touching him so familiarly and possessively made me sick. I wanted to tear and break her hands from him, making a crown of my own with her broken digits.

“Leave her out of this, Fou,” Rowen said as he struggled against the arms and restraints that held him.

Fou?

My mind raced to keep up, to piece it all together. But Caeryn’s blade sank deeper into the soft flesh of my neck, making it hard to think beyond the sting of his weapon.

Fou.

Shock lodged in my throat like burnt coal as it finally clicked into place.

Fou was Rowen’s moniker for Aliphoura. At some point it must have been an endearing nickname, said out of love and devotion, but now the word dripped maliciously from his mouth. I remembered back in the cave when the poison had overtaken his mind. He’d thought I was Fou, and he had wanted to kill me.

All along Rowen’s love had been this deranged queen?

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