Page 27 of A Reign of Roses
Arwen was dead.
I’d not traveled to Pearl nor made my way home for her. And perhaps I hadn’t wanted to admit that to myself—that no valiant act of mine might bring her back—but I had found the White Crow, and I would slay my father, not for Arwen, but for these people. These people who deserved a king that would fight for them no matter what he’d lost.
I’d spent decades driven by revenge. But Arwen had only known of Lazarus for mere months, and had still given her life in hopes of protecting the citizens of Evendell. She, too, had loved these people. And even if I did want to join her—to end myself and see if our souls might inhabit the same realm once more—I wouldn’t. Not yet.
Not until I could take Lazarus to his grave alongside me. I would not leave these innocent people in his clutches.
Shame should have been what coursed through me as I beheld their steadfast faces—I’d spent so long fighting for the wrong reasons, I’d not accomplished what I’d set out to do when I’d left them all, I’d not returned full-blooded…But it was unwavering duty that filled my veins instead as I walked past the hundreds of kneeling men and women. That was what propelled my stiff legs forward.
Past each unyielding gaze. The uncompromising resolve in their eyes.
My people, who I’d gone to the ends of the continent for. I was like them now. I knew what it meant to be vulnerable. I knew how desperately they needed me. And though I hadn’t known it, I’d needed them, too.
“You’re alive.”
A slight pinch tugged the side of my mouth up as I turned to find my commander standing just outside the, pitch-black war tent. Standing, among a sea of kneeling men. Rigid jaw, cropped hair, hulking black armor glinting in the sun, his sea-green eyes as resolute as his soldiers around him.
I didn’t trust my voice not to crack around the tightness in my throat as I said, “Give me a little credit.”
Griffin nodded, as if I hadn’t been joking, and then he, too, knelt before me. “Welcome home.”
My muscles barked with everystep across the castle grounds, past thick picnic blankets and baskets piled high with the harvest. I was sore from the journey.Mortallysore, which was even less pleasant than usual and made me feel all too breakable.
Griffin swung the thick door of his cottage open and I steppedinside. A couple of years ago he’d built the place himself, nestled at the edge of the keep. He’d never liked sleeping in quarters made up each day by servants, nor having guards man his hall at night.
I sat down at his kitchen table with a wince. The marble tabletop was clean save for a heavy-looking sword and whetstone. Griffin loved nothing if not a solitary, tactile activity.
“Where have you been, Kane?”
Though he was my oldest friend, I’d likely spent less than two hours of my life in Griffin’s austere cottage. The walls were crafted of bare, whitewashed wood. The bed, on a loft above us, folded with care. Simple white cotton sheets. No books, no leafy greenery, no art. No clutter at all. “What are you, a monk?”
Griffin ignored me, closing the door and sitting backward on the other pale wooden chair to face me—two chairs. Griffin had two chairs. “You stopped sending ravens a week ago. I had a convoy ready to leave at first light.”
“We need to get you more chairs,” I said, twisting to scan the space.
“Kane,” he bit out, voice low. “What happened?”
I wiped a finger down Griffin’s cold table, alongside the dull sword. Not a lick of dust. “I found the White Crow. He wasn’t so much a sorcerer as a Fae God.”
Griffin’s jaw tensed. “What the fuck.”
“I had similar sentiments.”
“And what? He helped you?”
“He stripped me of my lighte.”
My commander did not show emotion. Not even when his own parents had been hanged before him. But at my words, Griffin’s sea-green eyes practically churned. “Kane—”
“Not permanently.” I heard air flee him in relief. “If I touch the Blade of the Sun, I’ll be reborn as full-blooded Fae. I can take her place in the prophecy and kill my father.”
“Another hunt for the blade.” Griffin sighed. “Why do I feel like we’ve done that one before?”
“Wearen’t doing anything.” My eyes fell over his bland glass-fronted hutch and unlit hearth despite the autumn chill. “I’m leaving tonight for Willowridge. I’ll have Briar open the portal for me. Unless our magically challenged witch is fixed?”
Griffin made a face. “She’s still with Briar. The progress hasn’t been excellent…But I don’t really know. She doesn’t speak to me much these days.”
Any part of me that wanted to jest about his Mari problems withered with the look of true regret in his eyes. “How come?”
