Page 87 of Hearts Lost

“Ah, come on, former Acting Captain,” Rowan says, making my official title sound like a lewd sexual act. “Aren’t you excited about your chance to be rid of me forever?”

I sigh and bring my hand up to pinch the bridge of my nose.

“As delightful as that sounds,” I reply, “I’m not turning anyone over to that monster. Not even you. If you don’t like Elanerill’s plan, you can help us come up with another one, but there is no way I’m allowing anyone into my family’s estate. Not ever again.”

The sound of falling ice hisses into the silence between us. Arryn rubs her hand across her face, then clears her throat.

“I’ll find him,” she says.

And that does it. I revise my earlier assessment; this woman from the Worlds Above may be tough, but she is undoubtedly also a lunatic. I open my mouth to say that Arryn’s misplaced confidence changes nothing, but Elanerill rushes in instead.

“The heart magic,” Elanerill says.

Arryn nods. Orryen makes a small, surprised sound, and I turn around slowly. Everyone is staring at Rowan and Arryn in a way that makes me think I’ve somehow lost my perfectly reasonable argument.

“You’re right,” Orryen says, and I feel like I’m sinking into wet sand. “You can sense him anywhere. You can find him.”

“And you two have the heart magic that can open a portal,” Rowan says, tilting his head toward Orryen and Elanerill. “Lythienne must be able to aim that heart magic somehow because she opened that damn thing Arryn and I made right on Elanerill’s doorstep.”

Arryn looks miserable, but she’s nodding. Rowan’s still smiling like the cat who caught the rat, of course, but there’s a tightness around his eyes that makes me think there might be some small, reasonable part of him that suspects charging into a dragon’s den is perhaps not a good plan. That small, reasonable part worries me. It’s easy to dismiss Rowan if he’s reckless or crazy. It’s harder to dismiss someone with a plan.

Still. Rensivar’s reptilian voice hisses in the back of my mind. Welcome to the family business, he’d said. I shiver beneath my ice-encrusted cloak.

“The answer is still no,” I say. “I don’t care if you’re King Galan himself. I’m not turning anyone over to that monster.”

Rowan’s smile shifts, then hardens into something that looks downright predatory. For a moment, I’m reminded of the shadow creature I saw when I first woke in the void, twisting darkness like smoke rising from a fire, reaching up to brush the violet skies above Ithronel.

“Rensivar tried to destroy us,” Rowan says in a voice as sharp as a blade. “The Kingdom of the Summer started the war, but Rensivar the Wicked buried us. He put us down here to die.”

Anger flares inside my chest, as sharp and as sudden as sparks flying from flint.

“So you want to die too?” I snap. “You want to finish the job for him?”

Rowan’s pale eyes are glowing now, almost burning. It’s damned disconcerting. His grin is stretched tight, and once again I’m thinking of a cat, of a mouth filled with sharp little daggers.

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” Rowan says. His words are almost a whisper, a low little hiss that sounds like falling ice. “No one does. Especially not Rensivar.”

“There has to be another way,” I insist.

I don’t much care for the way my voice pinches at the end like I’m grasping for something. Like I’m out of options.

Rowan’s smile vanishes, and he leans forward. When he speaks, his voice is soft and low, almost a whisper of wind through the trees.

“My mother died down here,” Rowan growls. “Phaedron had to raise me. Alone. In the woods. Because of that fucking dragon.”

Rowan rocks back on his heels, and voids below, his eyes really are glowing. I can almost see wisps of blue leaking out from beneath his eyelids to rise like smoke in the air between us.

“I have a score to settle,” Rowan says. “For me, for Phaedron, for all of us. Don’t take this chance away from me, Aloserin.”

He crosses his arms over his chest and narrows his eyes. He’s not smiling now; not even close. His disturbing eyes leak blue flames into the hissing ice falling from the ceiling of the world, and it occurs to me for the first time that perhaps I’ve underestimated Rowan Sans Evenworth of the World’s End. Perhaps I fell into the same trap as my parents and assumed the low-born farmers who lived in the freezing wilderness of the Outer Ring were somehow less than the civilized citizens of the Crystal City. Those civilized, high-born ladies and gentlemen who made bargains with the dragon who’d tried to destroy us.

But Rowan really does have magic that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. And he really did find a way to map the void. My memories of our trip out of the void are a hazy jumble of shock and pain, but I know who led our expedition. I know who managed to track the shifting forests of that strange and unforgiving wilderness.

I also know when I’m beat. I stare at all of them, Phaedron with his illusion arm and the look on his face that says he still somehow, after everything, trusts his wild little brother, Orryen and Elanerill with their magical connection that should have killed them both but someone brought our worlds together instead, and Arryn and Rowan, standing arm in arm on the threshold of something, making a promise that they’ll find one another once again. In any world.

I shake my head.

“Shit,” I mutter.