“SARAN, IF YOU don’t sit down, I’m going to strap you to this chair,” Rowe muttered, looking up from his book. He sat in the overstuffed chair by a dead fireplace, reading with the help of a tall candle on the tiny table next to him.
Saran kept pacing. “I’m exercising the muscles. I’m tired of being stiff.”
“You should rest.”
“I don’t want to rest!”
Rowe clamped his mouth shut, turning a page. Several long minutes passed, with the silence of Saran’s room accented by irritated huffs as she strained to exercise her healing leg.
“He’s coming back,” Rowe muttered.
The princess scowled at him. “What if it works? What if he can stay there and be free of the Oruke?”
Rowe pursed his lips together and glared at the book. “Then I assume you will abandon this place and go to him. That is what you do when you love someone, right? He’s been gone two weeks, not a lifetime.”
“Mavahan is a Deadland. What I did to save him shouldn’t hold there. If by some miracle it does, why would he return?”
“Well, it is easier to follow him to Mavahan than the Third, isn’t it?”
“I should have gone with him or in his stead. I’m the princess.”
“You couldn’t travel in the state you were in. Infection still affects you, just like all the other mortals in the world. Mavahan is desolate, hot, and horrible. Sure, getting to the outskirts is easy, but you can’t Port across the desert. You’d have to ride in the hot sun and frigid nights for three days, and that’s if you don’t get caught up in a storm. Sand in that wound wouldn’t be pleasant, I imagine.”
“You should have gone to Mavahan with him.”
“Keleir asked me to stay behind and keep an eye on you. Odan’s out of the medical ward, finally recovered from his blood loss, and you were in no shape to deal with him should he be foolish enough to seek retribution a second time.”
“Is it wrong of me to wish he were dead?”
Rowe glanced up from his book. “Odan clearly deserved whatever he got, but I don’t think a good person wishes death or pain on anyone. It seems Keleir is rubbing off on you.”
“And you are innocent?”
“I am reformed.”
Saran scoffed.
Rowe chuckled, but he did not turn his attention away from the book.
The princess fell into the chair across from him and began to drum her fingertips over the wooden arm, watching the Lightning Mage stare at his book. “You aren’t reading, are you?”
“I’m trying,” he said, turning the page.
“Is everything all right? You’ve been irritable for days.”
The lord looked up from his book, closed it slowly, and rested his hands across the top. “A lot has happened in the last few weeks. A lot of things I need to digest. My brother got married, and he’s losing his mind. He attempted suicide. My best friend, who is married to my brother, has been battered and is being held captive in her own home. Meanwhile, I have a rebellion to finish, and the two people I need help from the most are incapable of delivering. When the rebels come to kill the king, they will also kill my friend. My brother will lose his soul to the Oruke, and I will have to kill him. The two people I love most in this world are slipping through my fingers, and I’m unable to do anything about it. I’m torn between saving them and saving my own soul.”
Saran blinked at him, swallowing his words as quickly as he let them loose. “Saving your soul?”
Rowe’s jaw tightened. “Nothing. Go back to your pacing.”
She didn’t. Instead she sat quietly and watched as he opened the book and began to read again. His eyes scanned the page quickly, flipping pages far faster than someone indulging in reading for pleasure.
“Reformed,” she whispered after several seconds of observation. “That’s why you’re angry … You’re upset that the plan isn’t coming together, that we might not be able to fully pull off this upheaval? You are still convinced that the only way to redeem yourself from the things you did is to liberate the people you tormented? If you don’t, will you consider every act since you reformed a failure?”
The Lightning Mage had spent the last seven years, since she nursed him back from the brink of starvation, attempting to do everything in his power to atone for what he’d done by Yarin’s command. No amount of sacrifice seemed to ease his guilt, and he had always been willing to sacrifice anything, even the safety of those he loved, if it meant salvation for his soul. Rowe could be incredibly selfless, but in this one instance, in this one desire, he would burn the world and everyone in it to fix what he had done in his other life. Rowe’s brow twitched. His cheeks flushed with either embarrassment or anger; it was hard to tell with him. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“What is more important? Redeeming your soul or your brother’s? You had control over your actions. Keleir had no control over what the Oruke did with his hands.”
Rowe slammed the book shut with a loud thump. “Which is exactly why my sins are greater! I had control! I had free will! I used it to torture and kill.” Rowe’s eyes sparked with electric current as he glared across the room at her. “I know very well I’m more of a monster than my brother ever will be. He has no control over what is inside him, but I created my own demon. I must atone for it. Setting this world right is the only way I know how.”
“At what expense?”
Rowe looked away.
“The Prophetess speaks to you. Isn’t that enough redemption? She chose you to carry her words across time, Rowe. She chose to speak to you alone. Doesn’t that mean you’ve been forgiven?”
“She hasn’t spoken to me in months, Saran. No dreams, no visions, no voices. Nothing. I’m forgotten. The most crucial part of our plan is about to unfold and not a single whisper from the woman who set me on this path.” Rowe tossed the book across the room. It slapped against the stone wall, shaking Saran in her seat. “I feel like all of this is unraveling and I’m trying desperately to hold the threads together.”
The princess stood up and went to him, placing a hand at the top of his head. “We will figure this out. We have months before you travel to Salara. I’ll handle this side of our plan. When this is all over, you will find your redemption, and I will save Keleir’s soul.”
Rowe looked up to Saran and nodded slowly. She pulled him in, hugging his head to her belly before she bent and placed a kiss to the top of his head. “It will be fine,” she assured, though the tone of her voice said otherwise.
Rowe shook his head and set his jaw tight.
“The rebels will kill Yarin. They will show him no mercy, and because of that damned Bind they will kill you too. I cannot … that is not negotiable for me.”
“Have a little faith in me, Rowe Blackwell. I may not have magic, and I may be tied to a bag of bones, but I’m not helpless. I’ll handle my part. You handle yours.” Rowe’s disapproving sigh bristled her nerves. She folded her arms, careful of her healing hand. “So if you don’t trust Keleir and you don’t trust me, who do you trust, Rowe?”
Rowe stole another book off her shelf. “I trust you,” he said. “I do not trust those around you, and yes, that includes my own brother.”
“Keleir would never hurt me.”
Rowe turned and placed the book back on the shelf. “I think I’ve read everything in here. I’m going to the library.”
“Just like Keleir, running away when the conversation gets difficult. You two really are brothers.”
Rowe turned to her from the door. “Do you enjoy prodding me? Are you so bored with your confinement that you are taking pleasure in tormenting a friend?”
“I didn—”
“You didn’t mean to. You might hate being a princess, but you sure do have the same high and mighty attitude that all royals carry. You have no claim over me, Saran. I do not have to bend to answer your questions like a servant.”
Saran blinked at him, an ache splintering through her heart. “I’ve never ordered you to do anything. Never.” She took a step forward. “First you try to throw your life away by pretending to love me, and then—”
Rowe laughed, low and deep and with so much malice that her insides squirmed. “I’m going to the library,” he said as he threw open the door.
Saran nodded faintly, sinking down into the chair he’d occupied earlier.