After the Empire (Complete)

16 - Rowan

There's a light spring rain falling over us as we sit, waiting. 

We found the trail yesterday, a line of tracks that hadn't been properly scraped away, the remnants of an improperly doused cook fire. If I get close enough, I can still pick up her scent, clinging to the footprints. 

We followed it, though I did so with a leaden weight in my stomach. From the looks on Gavriel's and Lorcan's faces, they felt the same. I tried as hard as I could to push aside my apprehension, to hope, but hope has been a sparse commodity recently. It's difficult to hope when I know this will end just as the others did; a knife to the stomach for the creature made of nothing but dust and magic, and another piece chipped off my heart. 

7 times. 7 Aelins. 7 sets of wide, terrified blue eyes. 

I don't know how much longer I can do this.

In front of me, Lorcan slows his pace to a halt, forcing me out of my thoughts. Immediately I am on alert, my hands dancing towards the knifes strapped to my legs. "What is it?" I hiss. 

However I needn't have worried. One look at Lorcan's face tells me that there is no imminent threat. Through the rain I can see that his features are pulled together, not into an expression of caution or a warning, but into a puzzled scowl. 

"Why are we still doing this Rowan?" his voice is matter of fact, almost disinterested. If I didn't know better I'd think it feigned nonchalance, masking a deep investment in the question. 

"What do you mean?" my voice is slightly harsher than I intended, possibly because I think I know what he is asking, and I don't want to have to answer. 

"I mean," Lorcan continues, and edge of irritation colouring his voice "Why are we still doing this. How many dead trails do we have to follow, how many obvious traps do we have to walk into, before you admit that this is pointless?"

I clench my teeth, spitting out "Explain yourself."

Lorcan rolls his eyes. "We're never going to find her, Rowan. Not like this, probably not ever. If you were Maeve and you had effectively copied the queen, you'd throw the original into a pit so deep and so dark that nobody would ever see or hear from her again. That is, if you even kept her alive. When does this madness end?"

I'm not conscious of the fact that I'm moving until I've hit him, my fist stinging slightly from impact. Lorcan's face is lowered, a thin line of blood dripping slowly down it. For a long moment there is silence. I'm the one who break it. 

"I will keep doing this until there are no more trails to follow, until the sun and the moon and the earth have been swallowed by darkness and I have been reduced to dust. Because she is still out there, the real her. And I made her a promise."

The words sound vaguely hollow even to my own ears. 

Lorcan turns his eyes up to me, and there is something there that I have never seen in him before. It looks almost like sympathy. Then his eyes flick behind me, and focus on something out of my view. 

"It's good to know that you'll fight for me."

I turn around, bracing myself for the sight of her. 

She's smiling at me, tears brimming in her eyes. "Hello Rowan. It was hell trying to find you"

Her voice still sounds like music.

The song of a tempting siren. 

"Three words," I force myself to say, "You have three words to convince me that you are the real Aelin Ashryver Galathynius."

It's the same thing I have said every other time. 

The things blinks, her head cocking to the side. Then she says, her voice unfaltering on the words "I found you."

As I feel the knife in my hands sinking into her flesh, as I watch her lips forming a desperate plea before she bursts to ashes, I think about what I just said to Lorcan. 

And I feel the last tiny part of my heart shatter as I realize that it was a lie. It ends now, here, because I cannot bear looking for her anymore. 

I cannot bear finding her anymore.

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