Book 4 - Page 107 (2/2)

That had been three days ago. Rowan hadn’t seen or scented Lorcan since. Lysandra, mercifully, had stopped hurling her guts up—or someone else’s guts, he supposed. The shape-s.h.i.+fter had claimed a room across the hall, between the two chambers in which the Crown Prince and Chaol still slept.

After what Aelin and the Crown Prince had done, the magic they’d wielded together and alone, three days of sleep was hardly surprising.

Yet it drove Rowan out of his mind.

There were so many things he needed to say to her—though perhaps he would just ask how the h.e.l.l she’d gotten stabbed in the side. She’d healed herself, and he wouldn’t have even known were it not for the rips in the ribs, back, and arms of that black a.s.sa.s.sin’s suit.

When the healer had inspected the sleeping queen, she’d found that Aelin had healed herself too quickly, too desperately—and had sealed her flesh around some shards of gla.s.s in her back. Watching as the healer stripped her naked, then began carefully opening the dozens of little wounds to dig out the gla.s.s almost made him tear down the walls.

Aelin slept through it, which he supposed was a mercy, given how deep the healer had to dig to get the gla.s.s out.

She’s lucky it didn’t hit anything permanent, the healer had said.

Once every shard was gone, Rowan had used his strained magic to slowly—so slowly, d.a.m.n him—heal the wounds again. It left the tattoo on her back in ribbons.

He’d have to fill it in when she recovered. And teach her more about battlefield healing.

If she ever woke up.

Sitting in a chair beside her bed, Rowan toed off his boots and rubbed at the faint, lingering soreness in his leg. Aedion had just finished giving a report about the current status of the castle. Three days later, the general still hadn’t spoken about what had happened—that he’d been willing to lay down his life to protect Rowan from the Valg foot soldiers, or that the King of Adarlan was dead. As far as the former, Rowan had thanked him for that in the only way he knew how: offering Aedion one of his own daggers, forged by the greatest of Doranelle’s blacksmiths. Aedion had initially refused, insisting he needed no thanks, but had worn the blade at his side ever since.

But in regard to the latter … Rowan had asked, just once, what the general felt about the king being dead. Aedion had merely said he wished the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had suffered longer, but dead was dead, so it was fine by him. Rowan wondered if he truly meant it, but Aedion would tell him when he was good and ready. Not all wounds could be healed with magic. Rowan knew that too well. But they did heal. Eventually.

And the wounds on this castle, on the city—those would heal, too. He’d stood on battlefields after the killing had stopped, the earth still wet with blood, and lived to see the scars slowly heal, decade after decade, on the land, the people. So, too, would Rifthold heal.

Even if Aedion’s latest report on the castle was grim. Most of the staff had survived, along with a few courtiers, but it seemed that a good number of those who had remained at court—courtiers Aedion had known to be worthless, scheming devils—hadn’t made it. As if the prince had wiped clean the stain from his castle.

Rowan shuddered at the thought, gazing at the doors Aedion had vacated. The Crown Prince had such tremendous power. Rowan had never seen its like. He’d need to find a way to train it—hone it—or risk it destroying him.

And Aelin—that brilliant, insane fool—had taken a tremendous risk in weaving her power with his. The prince had raw magic that could be shaped into anything. Aelin could have burnt herself out in a second.

Rowan turned his head and glared at her.

And found Aelin glaring back.

“I save the world,” Aelin said, her voice like gravel, “and yet I wake up to you being p.i.s.sy.”

“It was a group effort,” Rowan said from a chair nearby. “And I’m p.i.s.sy for about twenty different reasons, most of them having to do with you making some of the most reckless decisions I’ve ever—”

“Dorian,” she blurted. “Is Dorian—”

“Fine. Asleep. He’s been out as long as you.”

“Chaol—”

“Asleep. Recovering. But alive.”

A weight eased from her shoulders. And then … she looked at the Fae Prince and understood that he was unharmed, that she was in her old room, that they weren’t in chains or collars, and that the king … What the king had said before he died …

“Fireheart,” Rowan murmured, starting from his chair, but she shook her head. The movement made her skull throb.

She took a steadying breath, wiping at her eyes. G.o.ds, her arm ached, her back ached, her side ached … “No more tears,” she said. “No more weeping.” She lowered her hands to the blankets. “Tell me—everything.”

So he did. About the h.e.l.lfire, and the Wyrdhounds, and Lorcan. And then the past three days, of organizing and healing and Lysandra scaring the living s.h.i.+t out of everyone by s.h.i.+fting into a ghost leopard anytime one of Dorian’s courtiers stepped out of line.

When he’d finished, Rowan said, “If you can’t talk about it, you don’t—”

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