“Are you growing bored with it?”
He snarled.
She only glared at him. “I hadn’t realized you were even atoning.”
“I came here, didn’t I?”
“For whom, exactly? Rowan? Aelin?”
“For both of them. And for you.”
There. Let it be laid before them.
Despite the blue glow of the lantern, he could make out the pink that spread across her cheeks. Yet her mouth tightened. “I told you on that beach: I want nothing to do with you.”
“So one mistake and I am your eternal enemy?”
“She is my queen, and you summoned Maeve, then told her where the keys were, and you stood there while they did that to her.”
“You have no idea what the blood oath can do. None.”
“Fenrys broke the oath. He found a way.”
“And had Aelin not been there to offer him another, he would have died.” He let out a low, joyless laugh. “Perhaps that’s what you would have preferred.”
She ignored his last comment. “You didn’t even try.”
“I did,” he snarled. “I fought it with everything I had. And it was not enough. If she’d ordered me to slit your throat, I would have. And if I had found a way to break the oath, I would have died, and she might very well have killed you or taken you afterward. On that beach, my only thought was to get Maeve to forget about you, to let you go—”
“I don’t care about me! I didn’t care about me on that beach!”
“Well, I do.” His growled words echoed across the water and stone, and he lowered his voice. Worse things than wights might come sniffing down here. “I cared about you on that beach. And your queen did, too.”
Elide shook her head and looked away, looked anywhere, it seemed, but at him.
This was what came of opening that door to a place inside him that no one had ever breached. This mess, this hollowness in his chest that made him keep needing to make things right.
“Resent me all you like,” he said, damning the hoarseness of his words. “I’m sure I’ll survive.”
Hurt flashed in her eyes. “Fine,” she said, her voice brittle.
He hated that brittleness more than anything he’d ever encountered. Hated himself for causing it. But he had limits to how low he’d crawl.
He’d said his piece. If she wanted to wash her hands of him forever, then he would find a way to respect that. Live with it.
Somehow.
The cave ascended for a few feet, then leveled out and wended into the stone. A rough-hewn passage carved not by water or age, Rowan realized, but by mortal hands. Perhaps the long-dead kings and lords had taken the subterranean river to deposit their dead before sealing the tombs to sunlight and air above, the knowledge of the pathways dying off with their kingdoms.
A faint glow pulsed from the lantern Aelin held, bathing the cave walls in blue. He’d quickly caught up to her, and now strode at her side, Fenrys trotting at her heels and Gavriel taking up the rear.
Rowan hadn’t bothered to free his weapons. Steel was of little use against the wights. Only magic might destroy them.
Why Aelin had needed to stop, what she’d needed to see, he could only guess as the passage opened into a small cavern, and gold gleamed.
Gold all around—and a shadow clothed in tattered black robes lurking by the sarcophagus in the center.
Rowan snarled in warning but Aelin didn’t strike.
Her hand curled at her side, but she remained still. The wight hissed. Aelin just watched it.
As if she wouldn’t, couldn’t, touch her power.
Rowan’s chest strained. Then he sent a whip of ice and wind through the cave.
The wight shrieked once, and was gone.
Aelin stared at where it had been for a heartbeat, and then glanced at him over a shoulder. Gratitude shone in her eyes.
Rowan only gave her a nod. Don’t worry about it.
Yet Aelin turned away, shutting off that silent conversation as she surveyed the space.
Time. It would take time for her to heal. Even if he knew his Fireheart would pretend otherwise.
So Rowan looked, too. Across the tomb, beyond the sarcophagus and treasure, an archway opened into another chamber. Perhaps another tomb, or an exit passage.
“We don’t have time to find a way out,” Rowan murmured as she strode into the tomb. “And the caves remain safer than the surface.”
“I’m not looking for a way out,” she said in that calm, unmoved voice. She stooped, swiping up a fistful of gold coins stamped with a forgotten king’s face. “We’re going to need to fund our travels. And the gods know what else.”
Rowan arched a brow.
Aelin shrugged and shoved the gold into the pocket of her cloak. “Unless the pitiful clinking I heard from your coin purse didn’t indicate you were low on funds.”
That spark of wry humor, the taunting … She was trying. For his sake, or the others’, maybe her own, she was trying.
He could offer her nothing less, too. Rowan inclined his head. “We are indeed in dire need of replenishing our coffers.”
Gavriel coughed. “This does belong to the dead, you know.”
Aelin added another fistful of coins to her pocket, beginning a circuit around the treasure-laden tomb. “The dead don’t need to buy passage on a ship. Or horses.”
Rowan gave the Lion a slashing grin. “You heard the lady.”
A flash ruptured from where Fenrys had been sniffing at a trunk of jewels, and then a male was standing there. His gray clothes worn, but intact—in better shape than the hollowed-out look in his eyes.
Aelin paused her looting.
Fenrys’s throat bobbed, as if trying to remember speech. Then he said hoarsely, “We needed more pockets.” He patted his own for emphasis.
Aelin’s lips curved in a hint of a smile. She blinked at Fenrys—three times.
Fenrys blinked once in answer.
A code. They’d made up some silent code to communicate when he’d been ordered to remain in his wolf form.
Aelin’s smile remained, just barely, as she walked to the golden-haired male, his bronze skin ashen. She opened her arms in silent offer.
To let him decide if he wished for contact. If he could endure it.
Just as Rowan would let her decide if she wished to touch him.
A small sigh broke from Fenrys before he folded Aelin into his arms, a shudder rippling through him. Rowan couldn’t see her face, perhaps didn’t need to, as her hands gripped Fenrys’s jacket, so tightly they were white-knuckled.
A good sign—a small miracle, that either of them wished, could be touched. Rowan reminded himself of it, even while some intrinsic, male part of him tensed at the contact. A territorial Fae bastard, she’d once called him. He’d do his best not to live up to that title.
“Thank you,” Aelin said, her voice small in a way that made Rowan’s chest crack further. Fenrys didn’t answer, but from the anguish on his face, Rowan knew no thanks were in order.
They pulled away, and Fenrys cupped her cheek. “When you are ready, we can talk.”
About what they’d endured. To unravel all that had happened.
Aelin nodded, blowing out a breath. “Likewise.”
She resumed shoving gold into her pockets, but glanced back to Fenrys, his face drawn. “I gave you the blood oath to save your life,” she said. “But if you do not want it, Fenrys, I … we can find some way to free you—”
“I want it,” Fenrys said, no trace of his usual swaggering humor. He glanced to Rowan, and bowed his head. “It is my honor to serve this court. And serve you,” he added to Aelin.
She waved a hand in dismissal, though Rowan didn’t fail to note the sheen in her eyes as she stooped to gather more gold. Giving her a moment, he strode to Fenrys and clasped his shoulder. “It’s good to have you back.” He added, stumbling a bit on the word, “Brother.”
For that’s what they would be. Had never been before, but what Fenrys had done for Aelin … Yes, brother was what Rowan would call him. Even if Fenrys’s own—
Fenrys’s dark eyes flickered. “She killed Connall. Made him stab himself in the heart.”