Reunions and Rescues

Chapter 2

It had been exactly two weeks and one day-fifteen days, five hours and twenty three minutes-since Aelin had left for Adarlan. Not that he was counting, of course. Oh, Rowan knew exactly why Aelin had to leave him behind: his fae heritage would have been a fluorescent marker setting him apart. And he would die before stooping as low as eating rats to survive. He was an immortal, and he had standards. He wasn't the carranum of Fireheart, the Queen of Terrasen for nothing. He just needed to get back her throne.

So after sitting on his ass for exactly one day, he had gotten fed up with waiting and decided that he did, in fact, want to help repair Mistward. That had taken him two weeks. And now here he was, bored out of his immortal mind, and waiting for Luca to come back with a message from Varese, the hometown of House Ashryver. Rowan wasn't expecting any help from the royal bastards, but Emrys had pleaded with him to ask for aid. He claimed that Aelin needed allies. He claimed that the Wendlyn royal family would help if it meant dethroning Adarlan once and for all. And he claimed that Rowan was being a selfish arrogant bastard for refusing to see the truth.

Rowan had almost punched Emrys there and then, but he had participated in enough battles and campaigns to know that Emrys was right. When your enemy had access to two wyrdkeys, Valg princes and a large ruthless army, you had to lift up your game. Rowan and Aelin needed all the powerful allies that they could find, even if it came in the form of a cowardly family that had refused to help when their Terrasen relatives were being butchered.

His hawk circled around Mistward, helping with the patrolling, and waiting for Luca's ass to arrive. Rowan chided himself for not going instead. They had argued about it for days, but Luca, Emrys and Mikhail had all agreed that Rowan would probably rip out their royal throats if the Ashryver's had angered him. Rowan disagreed, but Luca kept talking, and talking, and talking. It was so annoying that Rowan simply agreed to shut him up. Luca had smiled, and Rowan couldn't shake the feeling that he had been played by a sixteen year old boy.

Rowan wished Aelin was here. She was always better with people than he was. And recently, Rowan had started to feel an emptiness inside his soul, one that he suspected was due to his separation from her. He still found it strange, waking up and not feeling Aelin beside him, not hearing her sleepily murmur to him to let her stay in bed for just a minute longer. Rowan could feel the part of his soul that was tethered to her call out, agonizing from its separation from its other half. He had not felt like this for centuries, not since Lyria had died. The similarity between his bond with Lyria and what he now felt with Aelin confused him. To be honest, it scared the hell out of Rowan too.

His hawk squawked, the keen eyes spotting Luca, at last, from overhead. Shifting into his fae form, Rowan hurried to greet Luca.

                                                                                               ...

He was lost. Lost to the shadows, to the wind, to the ice. Ice...yes, he could remember the ice once. Freezing the world, and the panic...he had destroyed everything, and no-one was there to see it. No-one except...her. She should have been revolted, should have felt fear, the same deep cut-throat fear that froze his mind, his body, his soul. That same fear he could feel ripping him apart now, exploiting and controlling. Yes, she had loved him, and now she was gone. He felt hollow...empty. Nothing could compare to the hurt of that loss, because no loss could ever be that great, that haunting.

And so the thing inside of him took control, seeing through him, using him. He didn't care...he couldn't bring himself to care. Not even when the thing and him moved through innocents like they were grass, and he was a wild fire, igniting them, burning them out. He could feel the warm blood on his hands, on his body, as the thing and him killed and leached on life. Again and again and again. Over and over and over. And he found it disgusting, so, so disgusting, that he felt a pinch of pleasure from the acts. They were the only reprieve that he could find from the bitter melancholy, the deep tear in his soul, and the oblivion that he had fallen so deeply into.