The Siege of Shadows: Book one

Shadows Between Us(27)

KAEL'S POINT OF VIEW

I stood there, staring at the spot where the Baobhan Sith had fallen, the echoes of her magic still clinging to the air like a faint, unsettling hum. The fear that had gripped me moments ago was slipping away, but the chill from her enchantment lingered in my bones. I had felt the pull of her power, the temptation to let go, to surrender to her magic, but something inside me had resisted. And then Rowan had appeared, knife in hand, cutting through the enchantment, saving me.

But why had she done it? Why had she saved me?

The question gnawed at me, biting into my thoughts, even though I tried to push it away. I was supposed to be focused. My mother's curse, my mission to find a cure, that was all that mattered. But now... now I couldn't stop thinking about her. Rowan. The way she had looked at me after she saved me, her eyes sharp and cold, yet there was something else there too. Something I couldn't quite understand.

I had been trained to suppress every emotion, every impulse. The Seelie king had drilled that into me, molding me into a weapon—a thing with no name, no identity, just a tool to do his bidding. My mother had been enslaved by him, her life twisted by his magic. And I had been no different. A pawn. A tool.

I hadn't been allowed to care. I wasn't supposed to feel anything. The king had made sure of that.

But now, here, in the aftermath of the attack, with Rowan standing before me, it was harder than ever to ignore the feelings that were creeping up on me. She wasn't like the king. She wasn't like the others who had used me. I knew that much. But even knowing that, I didn't know what to do with this strange pull, this urge to understand her, to protect her.

I couldn't let myself feel. Not now. I had spent my whole life shutting that part of me down—pretending it didn't exist. If I let it slip, let the walls crack, I'd be just like the weak, helpless boy the king had raised me to be. I couldn't afford that.

But damn it, Rowan was different. She was fierce, unyielding, and yet there was something in her that reminded me of... me. I had to push that away too. She had her reasons for saving me—maybe she wanted something, some kind of leverage. But I couldn't let myself think it was anything more than that. I couldn't let myself want it to be more.

I turned away, forcing my gaze ahead, trying to ignore the pull that was building inside me. The cold, empty training the king had put me through was still there, buried deep. I had to cling to it. I had to remember that I was still the Knight of the Seelie Court, that my mission was more important than anything else.

But as I glanced back at Rowan, watching her move quietly beside me, a part of me—the part that I had fought so hard to bury—wanted to reach out to her. To thank her for saving me. To say something. But I couldn't.

I couldn't let myself.

Not while the king still had my mother in his grasp. Not while I still had a single chance of freeing her. That had to come first. Everything else was a distraction.

But Rowan made it hard. She made it impossible to keep my walls as high as I wanted them.

I wanted to keep her at arm's length, to treat her with the same coldness I had learned to apply to everyone else. But when I looked at her, when I saw the way her shoulders tensed every time I spoke, I felt a flicker of guilt. I knew how that felt—how it felt to be a pawn, to be used and discarded. I had spent my entire life as that. It was all I knew. But Rowan... she deserved better than that. She deserved kindness, even if I couldn't give it to her fully.

And damn it, I couldn't stop thinking about her. I couldn't stop wondering what it would be like to talk to her without all this tension between us, to have a conversation without the walls, without the hatred.