Page 87 of Synodic

“Some nights you were nowhere to be seen. On the nights I did find you, I noticed you were the one attracting the demons, and I briefly wondered if I was one of them too. I knew I couldn’t leave you or help you out of your darkness, but I could keep at bay the shadows and teeth that lay in wait for you, even if I might be one of them myself. And I did. I killed anything that came even close to you in a malicious manner.”

I was sure I had completely stopped breathing. The fighting shadows I’d seen had been Rowen saving me from the creatures of the night. All that talk I had spewed about not needing any help from him had been completely wrong. He’d told me I was being hunted, but not that I came close to being slaughtered multiple times.

“One night a summoning scaib found you—a wisp-wraith of a creature with a stinging telson. The scaib was crawling all around your orb of darkness, testing it, probing it, trying to find a way in, until it started to somehow get through. I could tell by the look on your face, you could feel it too.

“Its curved tail wriggled in excitement, and I knew I had only one chance to kill it before it struck you. The scaib was too preoccupied with you to even sense me standing there, targeting its exposed belly. My aim rang true, and it attacked me, nearly severing my arm, but at least it was away from you.”

It felt like my feet washed out from underneath me. I remembered that night. The sticky hot breath on my neck and the misty fingers stroking my skin. The screech that seemed to rip through my eardrums before the creature slithered off me.

Now I knew. It had been Rowen who saved me.

“Weeks passed, and the darkness slowly started to lift around you. The first time I saw you clearly, I couldn’t look away. Your eyes were so beautiful, yet terrified, caged, and drowning, but also determined. I could see in your face that no matter what was thrown at you, you would keep getting back up. You wouldn’t let anything defeat you.

“I kept thinking to myself, how much more of this can she take? Why are the demons of the night drawn to her? I didn’t know what you were, but despite the monsters I had kept at bay, I knew things much more sinister would hunt you down.” Rowen looked haunted, like he was going to be sick. “And when they came for you, I would be by your side, even though you had no idea I existed.

“Until the night you broke from the dark cloud and looked up, directly at me. I swear I almost ran right to you, but you looked so afraid of me that I didn’t dare move to scare you further. We were entirely alone, yet somehow I heard someone shout your name. You looked back as if contemplating leaving, and I immediately hated whoever called out to you so freely, hated that they had liberty to talk and touch you in a way I couldn’t.”

I remembered that night, when I’d almost succumbed to the drug planted within my bloodstream. But I had beaten the substance fighting to suppress me, and the first thing I saw when I lifted my eyes was Rowen. I had no idea he had been there the entire time, watching me, protecting me. It explained why I had been so inextricably drawn to him from the moment I first laid eyes on him. Some part of me must have always known he was there—the hand I always imagined reaching out to me.

“Even as you broke from the confines of your blight, I knew no matter what came at you, you would stand and keep going, keep fighting. And that is why, Copeland. That is why it is you. Never question why the Light chose you again.” He swallowed hard, accentuating the severe line of his mouth. I wanted to trace my tongue along the seam of his lips, to ease the tension and thank him for everything he had done for me.

When my astral traveling began again, it was utterly haunting. I had never felt so empty and alone. But I hadn’t been alone, had I? Rowen had always been there.

Even though he couldn’t speak or reach out to me, he’d never left my side. He was my eyes when I couldn’t see and my arms when I couldn’t fight. I had no idea the battles he raged just beyond my periphery.

It was a selfless act.

He watched me intently, the suspense for what I was about to say written across his face. “You were always there,” I said, thinking at first it was a question but then realizing it was the answer. For the past few months, Rowen had been my rock, my lighthouse, my silver thread guiding me back to myself. Who knew how many times I would have been lost in the darkness had it not been for his mooring presence. “I’m sorry for all I’ve put you through. I didn’t mean to bring you more pain.”

A flash of violet swept across Rowen’s face, and an exhale escaped the crescent shape of his lower lip. “You have to know I would die, and fight, and burn, over and over again if it meant keeping you safe.” His eyes were like emerald whirlpools, sucking me in and drenching me completely. There was no more denying it. All the things Rowen had done for me just out of sight, in the wings of the stage, made me love him even more.

The realization took my breath away and rocked me to my core.

I love Rowen.

I always had, and I always would.

I felt pure elation, a golden light growing and expanding within my chest. It was a physical sensation unlike anything I’d ever felt, but suddenly it twisted and convulsed, bruising me from the inside out.

He didn’t love me back. Or if he did, he was fighting it.

The feeling was a double-edged sword lodged in my heart, but I could live with the tender, hurting flesh. I’d lived through worse—I knew what it was to feel nothing at all.

I questioned whether it would be better to be numb to this heartbreak but to feel Rowen in any capacity was better than to not feel him at all.

The loud bang of a drum jolted me back to our conversation, so intimate on the hem of such a public celebration. For a moment, it felt like we were the only two people on the beach, the sounds and cheers merely existing in the next dimension over.

Rowen seemed to remember the celebration as well. “I’ve kept you too long.” He smiled, a broken yet beautiful smile and the dagger in my heart thrust even deeper.

We made our way back to the jubilant festivities with the weight of his confession. Though the demons and summonings hadn’t been able to reach me within the village, Erovos was still out there patiently waiting for me.

Despite the flashing joyous faces and the flow of limbs, I knew the danger wasn’t gone. We all knew that, but Celenova had given us room to let go, to breathe, if only for a night.

“Keira. There is something else I need to tell you.”

I tilted my head, waiting for him to continue, still in disbelief at how drawn to him I was.

For a split second, I could see him second-guess himself, which was odd. He was always so self-assured and decisive. “You should dance,” he said, changing the subject as we approached the ring of dancers.

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