Текст книги "Queen of Shadows"

Автор книги: Sarah J. Maas

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

She dared to look up at him, her elbow brushing his forearm. “I missed you.”

His mouth tightened. “We weren’t apart that long.”

Right. To an immortal, several weeks were nothing. “So? Am I not allowed to miss you?”

“I once told you that the people you care about are weapons to be used against you. Missing me was a foolish distraction.”

“You’re a real charmer, you know that?” She hadn’t expected tears or emotion, but it would have been nice to know he’d missed her at least a fraction as badly as she had. She swallowed, her spine locking, and pushed Sam’s clothes into his arms. “You can get dressed in here.”

She left him in the closet, and went right to the bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her face and neck.

She returned to her bedroom to find him frowning.

Well, the pants fit—barely. They were too short, and did wonders for showing off his backside, but– “The shirt is too small,” he said. “I didn’t want to rip it.”

He handed it to her, and she looked a bit helplessly at the shirt, then at his bare torso. “I’ll go out first thing.” She sighed sharply through her nose. “Well, if you don’t mind meeting Aedion shirtless, I suppose we should go say hello.”

“We need to talk.”

“Good talk or bad talk?”

“The kind that will make me glad you don’t have access to your power so you don’t spew flames everywhere.”

Her stomach tightened, but she said, “That was one incident, and if you ask me, your absolutely wonderful former lover deserved it.”

More than deserved it. The encounter with the visiting group of highborn Fae at Mistward had been miserable, to say the least. And when Rowan’s former lover had refused to stop touching him, despite his request to do so, when she’d threatened to have Aelin whipped for stepping in … Well, Aelin’s new favorite nickname—fire-breathing bitch-queen—had been fairly accurate during that dinner.

A twitch of his lips, but shadows flickered in Rowan’s eyes.

Aelin sighed again and looked at the ceiling. “Now or later?”

“Later. It can wait a bit.”

She was half tempted to demand he tell her whatever it was, but she turned toward the door.

Aedion rose from his seat at the kitchen table as Aelin and Rowan entered. Her cousin looked Rowan over with an appreciative eye and said, “You never bothered to tell me how handsome your faerie prince is, Aelin.” Aelin scowled. Aedion just jerked his chin at Rowan. “Tomorrow morning, you and I are going to train on the roof. I want to know everything you know.”

Aelin clicked her tongue. “All I’ve heard from your mouth these past few days is Prince Rowan this and Prince Rowan that, and yet this is what you decide to say to him? No bowing and scraping?”

Aedion slid back into his chair. “If Prince Rowan wants formalities, I can grovel, but he doesn’t look like someone who particularly cares.”

With a flicker of amusement in his green eyes, the Fae Prince said, “Whatever my queen wants.”

Oh, please.

Aedion caught the words, too. My queen.

The two princes stared at each other, one gold and one silver, one her twin and one her soul-bonded. There was nothing friendly in the stares, nothing human—two Fae males locked in some unspoken dominance battle.

She leaned against the sink. “If you’re going to have a pissing contest, can you at least do it on the roof?”

Rowan looked at her, brows high. But it was Aedion who said, “She says we’re no better than dogs, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually believes we’d piss on her furniture.”

Rowan didn’t smile, though, as he tilted his head to the side and sniffed.

“Aedion needs a bath, too, I know,” she said. “He insisted on smoking a pipe at the taproom. He said it gave him an air of dignity.”

Rowan’s head was still angled as he asked, “Your mothers were cousins, Prince, but who sired you?”

Aedion lounged in his chair. “Does it matter?”

“Do you know?” Rowan pressed.

Aedion shrugged. “She never told me—or anyone.”

“I’m guessing you have some idea?” Aelin asked.

Rowan said, “He doesn’t look familiar to you?”

“He looks like me.”

“Yes, but—” He sighed. “You met his father. A few weeks ago. Gavriel.”

Aedion stared at the shirtless warrior, wondering if he’d strained his injuries too much tonight and was now hallucinating.

The prince’s words sank in. Aedion just kept staring. A wicked tattoo in the Old Language stretched down the side of Rowan’s face and along his neck, shoulder, and muscled arm. Most people would take one look at that tattoo and run in the other direction.

Aedion had seen plenty of warriors in his day, but this male was a Warrior—law unto himself.

Just like Gavriel. Or so the legends claimed.

Gavriel, Rowan’s friend, one of his cadre, whose other form was a mountain lion.

“He asked me,” Aelin murmured. “He asked me how old I was, and seemed relieved when I said nineteen.”

Nineteen was too young, apparently, to be Gavriel’s daughter, though she looked so similar to the woman he’d once bedded. Aedion didn’t remember his mother well; his last memories were of a gaunt, gray face as she sighed her final breath. As she refused the Fae healers who could have cured the wasting sickness in her. But he had heard she’d once looked almost identical to Aelin and her mother, Evalin.

Aedion’s voice was hoarse as he asked, “The Lion is my father?”

A nod from Rowan.

“Does he know?”

“I bet seeing Aelin was the first time he wondered if he’d sired a child with your mother. He probably still doesn’t have any idea, unless that prompted him to start looking.”

His mother had never told anyone—anyone but Evalin—who his father was. Even when she was dying, she’d kept it to herself. She’d refused those Fae healers because of it.

Because they might identify him—and if Gavriel knew he had a son … If Maeve knew …

An old ache ripped through him. She’d kept him safe—had died to keep him out of Maeve’s hands.

Warm fingers slid around his hand and squeezed. He hadn’t realized how cold he was.

Aelin’s eyes—their eyes, the eyes of their mothers—were soft. Open. “This changes nothing,” she said. “About who you are, what you mean to me. Nothing.”

But it did. It changed everything. Explained everything: the strength, the speed, the senses; the lethal, predatory instincts he’d always struggled to keep in check. Why Rhoe had been so hard on him during his training.

Because if Evalin knew who his father was, then Rhoe certainly did, too. And Fae males, even half-Fae males, were deadly. Without the control Rhoe and his lords had drilled into him from an early age, without the focus … They’d known. And kept it from him.

Along with the fact that after he swore the blood oath to Aelin one day … he might very well remain young while she grew old and died.

Aelin brushed her thumb against the back of his hand, and then pivoted toward Rowan. “What does this mean where Maeve is concerned? Gavriel is bound through the blood oath, so would she have a claim on his offspring?”

“Like hell she does,” Aedion said. If Maeve tried to claim him, he’d rip out her throat. His mother had died for fear of the Fae Queen. He knew it in his bones.

Rowan said, “I don’t know. Even if she thought so, it would be an act of war to steal Aedion from you.”

“This information doesn’t leave this room,” Aelin said. Calm. Calculating—already sorting through every plan. The other side of their fair coin. “It’s ultimately your choice, Aedion, whether to approach Gavriel. But we have enough enemies gathering around us as it is. I don’t need to start a war with Maeve.”

But she would. She would go to war for him. He saw it in her eyes.

It nearly knocked the breath from him. Along with the thought of what the carnage would be like on both sides, if the Dark Queen and the heir of Mala Fire-Bringer collided.

“It stays with us,” Aedion managed to say. He could feel Rowan assessing and weighing him and bit back a snarl. Slowly, Aedion lifted his gaze to meet the prince’s.

The sheer dominance in that stare was like being hit in the face with a stone.

Aedion held it. Like hell he’d back down; like hell he’d yield. And there would be a yielding—somewhere, at some point. Probably when Aedion took that blood oath.

Aelin clicked her tongue at Rowan. “Stop doing that alpha-male nonsense. Once was enough.”

Rowan didn’t so much as blink. “I’m not doing anything.” But the prince’s mouth quirked into a smile, as if saying to Aedion, You think you can take me, cub?

Aedion grinned. Any place, any time, Prince.

Aelin muttered, “Insufferable,” and gave Rowan a playful shove in the arm. He didn’t move an inch. “Are you actually going to get into a pissing contest with every person we meet? Because if that’s the case, then it’ll take us an hour just to make it down one block of this city, and I doubt the residents will be particularly happy.”

Aedion fought the urge to take a deep breath as Rowan broke his stare to give their queen an incredulous look.

She crossed her arms, waiting.

“It’ll take time to adjust to a new dynamic,” Rowan admitted. Not an apology, but from what Aelin had told him, Rowan didn’t often bother with such things. She looked downright shocked by the small concession, actually.

Aedion tried to lounge in his chair, but his muscles were taut, his blood thrumming in his veins. He found himself saying to the prince, “Aelin never said anything about sending for you.”

“Does she answer to you, General?” A dangerous, quiet question. Aedion knew that when males like Rowan spoke softly, it usually meant violence and death were on their way.

Aelin rolled her eyes. “You know he didn’t mean it that way, so don’t pick a fight, you prick.”

Aedion stiffened. He could fight his own battles. If Aelin thought he needed protecting, if she thought Rowan was the superior warrior—

Rowan said, “I’m blood-sworn to you—which means several things, one of which being that I don’t particularly care for the questioning of others, even your cousin.”

The words echoed in his head, his heart.

Blood-sworn.

Aelin went pale.

Aedion asked, “What did he just say?”

Rowan had taken the blood oath to Aelin. His blood oath.

Aelin squared her shoulders, and said clearly, steadily, “Rowan took the blood oath to me before I left Wendlyn.”

A roaring sound went through him. “You let him do what?”

Aelin exposed her scarred palms. “As far as I knew, Aedion, you were loyally serving the king. As far as I knew, I was never going to see you again.”

“You let him take the blood oath to you?” Aedion bellowed.

She had lied to his face that day on the roof.

He had to get out, out of his skin, out of this apartment, out of this gods-damned city. Aedion lunged for one of the porcelain figurines atop the hearth mantel, needing to shatter something to just get that roaring out of his system.

She flung out a vicious finger, advancing on him. “You break one thing, you shatter just one of my possessions, and I will shove the shards down your rutting throat.”

A command—from a queen to her general.

Aedion spat on the floor, but obeyed. If only because ignoring that command might very well shatter something far more precious.

He instead said, “How dare you? How dare you let him take it?”

“I dare because it is my blood to give away; I dare because you did not exist for me then. Even if neither of you had taken it yet, I would still give it to him because he is my carranam, and he has earned my unquestioning loyalty!”

Aedion went rigid. “And what about our unquestioning loyalty? What have you done to earn that? What have you done to save our people since you’ve returned? Were you ever going to tell me about the blood oath, or was that just another of your many lies?”

Aelin snarled with an animalistic intensity that reminded him she, too, had Fae blood in her veins. “Go have your temper tantrum somewhere else. Don’t come back until you can act like a human being. Or half of one, at least.”

Aedion swore at her, a filthy, foul curse that he immediately regretted. Rowan lunged for him, knocking back his chair hard enough to flip it over, but Aelin threw out a hand. The prince stood down.

That easily, she leashed the mighty, immortal warrior.

Aedion laughed, the sound brittle and cold, and smiled at Rowan in a way that usually made men throw the first punch.

But Rowan just set his chair upright, sat down, and leaned back, as if he already knew where he’d strike Aedion’s death blow.

Aelin pointed at the door. “Get the hell out. I don’t want to see you again for a good while.”

The feeling was mutual.

All his plans, everything he’d worked for … Without the blood oath he was just a general; just a landless prince of the Ashryver line.

Aedion stalked to the front door and flung it open so hard he almost ripped it off its hinges.

Aelin didn’t call after him.

29

Rowan Whitethorn debated for a good minute if it was worthwhile to hunt down the demi-Fae prince and tear him into bloody ribbons for what he’d called Aelin, or if he was better off here, with his queen, while she paced in front of her bedroom fireplace. He understood—he really did—why the general was enraged. He’d have felt the same. But it wasn’t a good-enough excuse. Not even close.

Perched on the edge of the plush mattress, he watched her move.

Even without her magic, Aelin was a living wildfire, more so now with the red hair—a creature of such roaring emotions that he could sometimes only watch her and marvel.

And her face.

That gods-damned face.

While they’d been in Wendlyn, it had taken him a while to realize she was beautiful. Months, actually, to really notice it. And for these past few weeks, against his better judgment, he’d thought often about that face—especially that smart-ass mouth.

But he hadn’t remembered just how stunning she was until she’d taken off her hood earlier, and it had struck him stupid.

These weeks apart had been a brutal reminder of what life had been like until he had found her drunk and broken on that rooftop in Varese. The nightmares had started the very night she’d left—such relentless dreams that he’d nearly vomited when he flung himself out of them, Lyria’s screaming ringing in his ears. The memory of it sent cold licking down his spine. But even that was burned away by the queen before him.

Aelin was well on her way to wearing a track in the rug before the fireplace.

“If that’s any indication of what to expect from our court,” Rowan said at last, flexing his fingers in an attempt to dislodge the hollow shakiness he hadn’t been able to master since his magic had been smothered, “then we’ll never have a dull moment.”

She flung out a hand in a dismissive wave of irritation. “Don’t tease me right now.” She scrubbed at her face and huffed a breath.

Rowan waited, knowing she was gathering the words, hating the pain and sorrow and guilt on every line of her body. He’d sell his soul to the dark god to never have her look like that again.

“Every time I turn around,” she said, approaching the bed and leaning against the carved post, “I feel like I’m one wrong move or word away from leading them to ruin. People’s lives—your life—depend on me. There’s no room for error.”

There it was, the weight that had been slowly crushing her. It killed him that he’d have to add to it when he told her the news he carried—the reason he’d disobeyed her first order to him.

He could offer her nothing but the truth. “You will make mistakes. You will make decisions, and sometimes you will regret those choices. Sometimes there won’t be a right choice, just the best of several bad options. I don’t need to tell you that you can do this—you know you can. I wouldn’t have sworn the oath to you if I didn’t think you could.”

She slid onto the bed beside him, her scent caressing him. Jasmine, and lemon verbena, and crackling embers. Elegant, feminine, and utterly wild. Warm, and steadfast—unbreakable, his queen.

Save for the weakness they both shared: that bond between them.

For in his nightmares, he sometimes heard Maeve’s voice over the crack of a whip, cunning and cold. Not for all the world, Aelin? But what about for Prince Rowan?

He tried not to think about it: the fact that Aelin would hand over one of the Wyrdkeys for him. He locked that knowledge up so tightly that it could escape only in his dreams, or when he woke reaching across a cold bed for a princess who was thousands of miles away.

Aelin shook her head. “It was so much easier being alone.”

“I know,” he said, clamping down on the instinct to sling his arm around her shoulders and tuck her in close. He focused on listening to the city around them instead.

He could hear more than mortal ears, but the wind no longer sang its secrets to him. He no longer felt it tugging at him. And stuck in his Fae body, unable to shift … Caged. Restless. Made worse by the fact that he couldn’t shield this apartment from any enemy attacks while they were here.

Not powerless, he reminded himself. He had been bound head to toe in iron before and had still killed. He could keep this apartment secure—the old-fashioned way. He was just … off-balance. At a time when being off-balance could be fatal to her.

For a while, they sat there in silence.

“I said some appalling things to him,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, unable to help the growl. “He said some equally appalling things to you. Your tempers are evenly matched.”

She let out a breathy chuckle. “Tell me about the fortress—what it was like when you went back to help rebuild.”

So he did, until he got to the knowledge he’d been holding in all night.

“Just say it,” she said, with a direct, unyielding sort of look. He wondered if she realized that for all she complained about his alpha nonsense, she was pure-blooded alpha herself.

Rowan took a long breath. “Lorcan’s here.”

She straightened. “That’s why you came.”

Rowan nodded. And why keeping his distance was the smarter move; Lorcan was wicked and cunning enough to use their bond against them. “I caught his scent sneaking around near Mistward and tracked it to the coast, then onto a ship. I picked up his trail when I docked this evening.” Her face was pale, and he added, “I made sure to cover my tracks before hunting you down.”

Over five centuries old, Lorcan was the strongest male in the Fae realm, equal only to Rowan himself. They’d never been true friends, and after the events of a few weeks ago, Rowan would have liked nothing more than to slit the male’s throat for leaving Aelin to die at the hands of the Valg princes. He might very well get the chance to do that—soon.

“He doesn’t know you well enough to immediately pick up your scent,” Rowan went on. “I’d bet good money that he got on that boat just to drag me here so I’d lead him to you.” But it was better than letting Lorcan find her while he remained in Wendlyn.

Aelin swore with creative colorfulness. “Maeve probably thinks we’ll also lead him right to the third Wyrdkey. Do you think she gave him the order to put us down—either to get the key, or afterward?”

“Maybe.” The thought was enough to shoot icy rage through him. “I won’t let that happen.”

Her mouth quirked to the side. “You think I could take him?”

“If you had your magic, possibly.” Irritation rippled in her eyes—enough so that he knew something else nagged at her. “But without magic, in your human form … You’d be dead before you could draw your sword.”

“He’s that good.”

He gave her a slow nod.

She looked him over with an assassin’s eye. “Could you take him?”

“It’d be so destructive, I wouldn’t risk it. You remember what I told you about Sollemere.” Her face tightened at the mention of the city he and Lorcan had obliterated at Maeve’s request nearly two centuries ago. It was a stain that would forever linger, no matter what he told himself about how corrupt and evil its residents had been. “Without our magic, it’s hard to call who’d win. It would depend on who wanted it more.”

Lorcan, with his unending cold rage and a talent for killing gifted to him by Hellas himself, never allowed himself to lose. Battles, riches, females—Lorcan always won, at any cost. Once, Rowan might have let him win, let Lorcan end him just to put a stop to his own miserable life, but now … “Lorcan makes a move against you, and he dies.”

She didn’t blink at the violence that laced every word. Another part of him—a part that had been knotted from the moment she left—uncoiled like some wild animal stretching out before a fire. Aelin cocked her head. “Any idea where he’d hide?”

“None. I’ll start hunting him tomorrow.”

“No,” she said. “Lorcan will easily find us without you hunting him. But if he expects me to lead him to the third key so he can bring it back to Maeve, then maybe …” He could almost see the wheels turning in her head. She let out a hum. “I’ll think about that tomorrow. Do you think Maeve wants the key merely to keep me from using it, or to use it herself?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Both, then.” Aelin sighed. “The question is, will she try to use us to hunt down the other two keys, or does she have another one of your cadre out searching for them now?”

“Let’s hope she hasn’t sent anyone else.”

“If Gavriel knew that Aedion is his son …” She glanced toward the bedroom door, guilt and pain flickering on her lovely features. “Would he follow Maeve, even if it meant hurting or killing Aedion in the process? Is her control over him that strong?”

It had been a shock earlier to realize whose son lounged at the kitchen table. “Gavriel …” He’d seen the warrior with lovers over the centuries, and seen him leave them at Maeve’s order. He’d also seen him ink the names of his fallen men onto his flesh. And of all his cadre, only Gavriel had stopped that night to help Aelin against the Valg.

“Don’t answer now,” Aelin cut in with a yawn. “We should go to bed.”

Rowan had surveyed every inch of the apartment within moments of arriving, but he asked as casually as he could, “Where should I sleep?”

She patted the bed behind them. “Just like old times.”

He clenched his jaw. He’d been bracing himself for this all night—for weeks now. “It’s not like the fortress, where no one thinks twice about it.”

“And what if I want you to stay in here with me?”

He didn’t allow those words to sink in fully, the idea of being in that bed. He’d worked too damn hard at shutting out those thoughts. “Then I’ll stay. On the couch. But you need to be clear to the others about what my staying in here means.”

There were so many lines that needed to be held. She was off-limits—completely off-limits, for about a dozen different reasons. He’d thought he would be able to deal with it, but—

No, he would deal with it. He’d find a way to deal with it, because he wasn’t a fool, and he had some gods-damned self-control. Now that Lorcan was in Rifthold, tracking them, hunting for the Wyrdkey, he had bigger things to worry about.

She shrugged, irreverent as always. “Then I’ll issue a royal decree about my honorable intentions toward you over breakfast.”

Rowan snorted. Though he didn’t want to, he said, “And—the captain.”

“What about him?” she said too sharply.

“Just consider how he might interpret things.”

“Why?” She’d done an excellent job of not mentioning him at all.

But there was enough anger, enough pain in that one word, that Rowan couldn’t back down. “Tell me what happened.”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “He said what occurred here—to my friends, to him and Dorian, while I was away in Wendlyn—that it was my fault. And that I was a monster.”

For a moment, a blinding, blistering wrath shot through him. It was instinct to lunge for her hand, to touch the face that remained downturned. But he held himself in check. She still didn’t look at him as she said, “Do you think—”

“Never,” he said. “Never, Aelin.”

At last she met his stare, with eyes that were too old, too sad and tired to be nineteen. It had been a mistake to ever call her a girl—and there were indeed moments when Rowan forgot how young she truly was. The woman before him shouldered burdens that would break the spine of someone three times her age. “If you’re a monster, I’m a monster,” he said with a grin broad enough to show off his elongated canines.

She let out a rough laugh, close enough that it warmed his face. “Just sleep in the bed,” she said. “I don’t feel like digging up bedding for the couch.”

Maybe it was the laugh, or the silver lining her eyes, but he said, “Fine.” Fool—he was such a stupid fool when it came to her. He made himself add, “But it sends a message, Aelin.”

She lifted her brows in a way that usually meant fire was going to start flickering—but none came. Both of them were trapped in their bodies, stranded without magic. He’d adapt; he’d endure.

“Oh?” she purred, and he braced himself for the tempest. “And what message does it send? That I’m a whore? As if what I do in the privacy of my own room, with my body, is anyone’s concern.”

“You think I don’t agree?” His temper slipped its leash. No one else had ever been able to get under his skin so fast, so deep, in the span of a few words. “But things are different now, Aelin. You’re a queen of the realm. We have to consider how it looks, what impact it might have on our relationships with people who find it to be improper. Explaining that it’s for your safety—”

“Oh, please. My safety? You think Lorcan or the king or whoever the hell else has it in for me is going to slither through the window in the middle of the night? I can protect myself, you know.”

“Gods above, I know you can.” He’d never been in doubt of that.

Her nostrils flared. “This is one of the stupidest fights we’ve ever had. All thanks to your idiocy, I might add.” She stalked toward her closet, her hips swishing as if to accentuate every word as she snapped, “Just get in bed.”

He loosed a tight breath as she and those hips vanished into the closet.

Boundaries. Lines. Off-limits.

Those were his new favorite words, he reminded himself as he grimaced at the silken sheets, even as the huff of her breath still touched his cheek.

Aelin heard the bathroom door close, then running water as Rowan washed up with the toiletries she’d left out for him.

Not a monster—not for what she’d done, not for her power, not when Rowan was there. She’d thank the gods every damn day for the small mercy of giving her a friend who was her match, her equal, and who would never look at her with horror in his eyes. No matter what happened, she’d always be grateful for that.

But … Improper.

Improper indeed.

He didn’t know how improper she could be.

She opened the top drawer of the oak dresser. And slowly smiled.

Rowan was in bed by the time she strutted toward the bathroom. She heard, rather than saw, him jolt upright, the mattress groaning as he barked, “What in hell is that?”

She kept going toward the bathroom, refusing to apologize or look down at the pink, delicate, very short lace nightgown. When she emerged, face washed and clean, Rowan was sitting up, arms crossed over his bare chest. “You forgot the bottom part.”

She merely blew out the candles in the room one by one. His eyes tracked her the entire time. “There is no bottom part,” she said, flinging back the covers on her side. “It’s starting to get so hot, and I hate sweating when I sleep. Plus, you’re practically a furnace. So it’s either this or I sleep naked. You can sleep in the bathtub if you have a problem with it.”

His growl rattled the room. “You’ve made your point.”

“Hmm.” She slid into bed beside him, a healthy, proper distance away.

For a few heartbeats, there was only the sound of rustling blankets as she nestled down.

“I need to fill in the ink a bit more in a few places,” he said flatly.

She could barely see his face in the dark. “What?”

“Your tattoo,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “There are a few spots I need to fill in at some point.”

Of course. He wasn’t like other men—not even close. There was so little she could do to jar him, taunt him. A naked body was a naked body. Especially hers.

“Fine,” she said, turning so that her back was to him.

They were silent again. Then Rowan said, “I’ve never seen—clothing like that.”

She rolled over. “You mean to tell me the females in Doranelle don’t have scandalous nightclothes? Or anywhere else in the world?”

His eyes gleamed like an animal’s in the dark. She’d forgotten what it was like to be Fae, to have one foot always in the forest. “My encounters with other females usually didn’t involve parading around in nightclothes.”

“And what clothes did they involve?”

“Usually, none at all.”

She clicked her tongue, shoving away the image. “Having had the utter delight of meeting Remelle this spring, I have a hard time believing she didn’t subject you to clothing parades.”

He turned his face toward the ceiling again. “We’re not talking about this.”

She chuckled. Aelin: one, Rowan: zero.

She was still smiling when he asked, “Are all your nightclothes like that?”

“So curious about my negligees, Prince. Whatever would the others say? Maybe you should issue a decree to clarify.” He growled, and she grinned into her pillow. “Yes, I have more, don’t worry. If Lorcan is going to murder me in my sleep, I might as well look good.”

“Vain until the bitter end.”

She pushed back against the thought of Lorcan, of what Maeve might want, and said, “Is there a specific color you’d like me to wear? If I’m going to scandalize you, I should at least do it in something you like.”

“You’re a menace.”

She laughed again, feeling lighter than she had in weeks, despite the news Rowan had given her. She was fairly certain they were done talking for the night when his voice rumbled across the bed. “Gold. Not yellow—real, metallic gold.”

“You’re out of luck,” she said into her pillow. “I would never own anything so ostentatious.”

She could almost feel him smiling at her as she fell asleep.

Thirty minutes later, Rowan was still staring up at the ceiling, teeth gritted as he calmed the roaring in his veins that was steadily shredding through his self-control.

That gods-damned nightgown.

Shit.

He was in such deep, unending shit.

Rowan was asleep, his massive body half covered with blankets, as dawn streamed in through the lace curtains. Silently rising, Aelin stuck out her tongue at him as she shrugged on her pale-blue silk robe, tied her already-fading red hair into a knot atop her head, and padded into the kitchen.