My eyes opened to the stretches of shadows across the dark ceiling of Rowan's bedroom. A familiar sight, one that typically wouldn't alarm me. But what had me brows pulling my brows together and did, was the absence of the memory of how I got here and...
I shifted under the covers that were pulled up to my chin, pushing them down to reveal a clean black shirt. The furrow between my brows deepened as I reached for the soft fabric, touching it where it lay against the warmth in my chest. I couldn't remember putting it on, or taking off the shirt I had been wearing, or... tucking myself into bed. No, my last memory was...
"You told the Queen lies." A slink of glass dragging across wood accompanied the voice that sounded from the armchair in the corner, startling me. "Make sure to keep them straight," Rowan continued as I clutched the sheets to my chest like it was bare. It had been bare at some point to change. A point which I couldn't remember. But I had a feeling he could.
The ones I could remember, though, had me reaching for my chest with a renewed vigor fueled by panic and confusion. Shoving the sheet down and pushing myself up with an arm, I reached for the neck of the shirt I didn't know how I got into and pulled it away to look down at my chest. I expected to find the bloody hole I remembered seeing when I last looked down to find a cold length of ice impaling me, but my rapidly rising and falling chest appeared unblemished in the darkness. Not even the golden lines of the Blood Mark were visible against my skin in the absence of light.
"I healed it," Rowan said, raising the glass in his hand to his lips.
A breath of relief escaped my lips. "Thanks-" My appreciation came out automatically but was cut short as realization dawned.
He healed it. The wound. That was on my chest. My chest which...
Dread had my jaw growing slack while my hands began to tremble. Slowly, my fingers reached for the warmth in my chest, rubbing at the spot where I could remember how the ice that had hurt me numbed the pain... and the warmth that never faded. Its absence was more unnerved than I had anticipated. My fingers curled in the shirt, gathering the material in a white-knuckled grip that I pressed against the warmth that I was all too aware of now.
If he had seen it, he would-
"I saw it. The mark on your chest," Rowan added for clarification, confirming what had me paralyzed with terror, triggering Hilda and Silas's warnings to echo throughout my head.
Rowan seemed like a decent man, at the least, but power... even just a glimpse of it... it ruined decent men and destroyed those that were good.
I would let it destroy what little good my heart had left too, if it gave me some goddamn benefits to balance out the consequences. But, no, all I got was an unwanted tattoo and, well, consequences.
The sound of Rowan putting his glass back down on the table jarred me from my racing thoughts that were struggling to figure out my next move. It was empty, just like the bottle that sat beside it. It was different than the one we had gone outside with. No, I had watched that fall and shatter while he fought men in black. The Winter Guard.
I felt more blood drain from my face.
Rising to his feet, he adjusted the cuffs of his shirt sleeves, unbuttoned them, and rolled them up his arm. Reaching for the table beside the chair again, he retrieved a second glass that sat behind the empty bottle. It was filled nearly to the brim with a clear liquid.
With it in hand, he made his way toward me I'm the bed. "At first, I thought you might not know what it is since you don't seem to know the meaning of the mark you share with the fae... but your reaction says otherwise," he said, coming to a stop at the bed's edge. "You know what it is."
