Page 24 of Queen of the Wicked
Later, when she’s gone and the moon hangs low and silver in the sky, I find Rowan still standing in the courtyard, his wings tucked away, his shirt soaked with sweat.
“I should kill you for touching her,” I say. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even look at me.
“You won’t,” he answers, voice calm. He turns to me then, and we stare at each other across the distance of our two eternities of immortal lives.
“She’s doing well,” I say, looking up at the stars. “Better than I thought.”
He huffs. “She’s doing better thanyouthought. I’ve always had faith in her.”
I sigh and walk toward him, dragging a hand through my hair. “That’s not what I meant. I just thought…it would be more dangerous.”
His expression softens, but only slightly. “I never said she wasn’t dangerous, or that there haven’t been times when she’s scorched my wings. I just don’t want her to be afraid of herself.”
I cross my arms and study him. The way his wings are tucked so neatly against his back. The way his jaw tightens every time he thinks about her. He hasn’t said it aloud, but I see the truth of it.
He’s falling. Not in lust. In love. The way the bond between them has destined it.
It should terrify me, but in a very somber way, it doesn’t.
“She’s better with you,” I admit.
Rowan’s brow lifts. “What?”
“She’s…more open. More alive.” I exhale slowly. “And I’ve spent so long trying to protect her that I didn’t realize I was keeping her caged.” There’s silence between us for a while, and I’m the one who breaks it again. “I’m sorry.”
Rowan blinks, stunned. “For what?”
“For everything.” I drag a hand across the back of my neck. “For turning you away. For letting you go when I didn’t know how to understand what you’d become. For treating your change like betrayal, doing the same to her, and then taking it out on you.”
He doesn’t respond.
Then, slowly, Rowan crosses the courtyard and sits on the only remaining bench beside me. I join him.
His voice softens. “Do you still love me?”
The question lingers in the air, slow and sure, like blood dripping into still water.
“Yes, but not in the ways I did before.”
He looks at me. “Because of her.”
I nod. “Because she changed me. And because you still do. She belongs to us both the way we once belonged to each other. I thought you were here to take her from me, but the more I’ve watched you with her, the more I see myself, and how easily I fell in love with her. How could I ever hate you for taking care of her when I was too scared to?”
“I think,” he says carefully, “we could both love her. In different ways, and still not lose each other again.”
It’s the first time he’s said something that doesn’t feel like war. I think then, to why our bonds never snapped into place like Rowan’s did with mine.
I think it’s because fate was waiting for him to fall in love with Adelasia first.
Twenty-One
Rowan
She’s dancing again. She doesn’t see me watching. Not at first. She’s too lost in the movement; limbs slicing through the air like blades, her breath measured, her feet skimming the ground with the practiced precision of someone trained in grace.
She’s not dancing to feel sane or to escape from her own mind. She’s dancing because shewantsto.
The dark, ancient power curling up her arms like ink in water is finally beginning to feel like part of her. A dangerous part. But hers nonetheless, and she looks even more beautiful than she did before.
