Page 96 of Song of the Dark Wood

Conor looked startled by her abrupt entrance and the question. He slid his chair back and closed the book he was reading, but said nothing.

“You don’t want me, but you also want no one else to have me,” Rowan began. “You keep me here but treat me like I’m equally desirable and aggravating. It’s disorienting not to know if you’re going to pounce on me, hate me, or ignore me altogether. You give me pleasure, and then you won’t even come within a few feet of me. You didn’t want me to stay here, and now you don’t want me to leave, but I’m alone all day except for the few moments you deign to pay attention to me. I’m justlonely.”

The word hollowed her out. It was a feeling she’d lived with so long that it was shocking it still had the power to steal her breath. Speaking it into existence gave it more power, and she felt a black hole open inside her, the vacuum of it threatening to suck her down into an abyss. It was absolutely not the time for self-pity, and yet her rage had burned itself away, and she was only left with a strange, empty grief.

No—get it together, Rowan.

Conor was her enemy. The dagger in the sheath on her thigh was the reminder. She could not forget that loneliness was reliable. She could only count on herself. The Mother was counting on her. Ballybrine was counting on her. Aeoife was counting on her.

She wrung her hands nervously. The vulnerability on Conor’s face stripped away her resolve.

Conor ran a hand through his hair and started to pace. “That’s not what I want for you, Rowan. I want you to have more than just people who look at you and see an object. It’s safest for you here. Until I understand better how you fit into this.”

“You think you know what’s best for me. How are you any different from them?”

For the first time, she saw the hurt in his eyes.

“You’re right,” he said.

Rowan was so startled by the admission that she took a step back. She had expected him to argue with her. She’d becomeso accustomed to the world treating her irrationally simply for having her own thoughts that validation was a foreign concept.

Conor sighed and leaned back against the bookcase, squeezing his eyes closed as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. He laughed suddenly, startling both of them. “I’ve been trying so hard to hold on to my own control that I’ve resorted to simply controlling you—or at least trying to. It’s proven to be a futile effort.”

Rowan smiled.

“I’m sorry that I made you feel that you don’t know your own mind or that you don’t know what’s best for you. It’s not an excuse—I’ve lived for a long time, and I’ve become accustomed to working alone. I should have simply been honest with you from the beginning. I should have just given you all the information and let you decide for yourself how you want to handle things. I didn’t trust that you could handle that, and selfishly, I didn’t want?—”

He fell into silence, meeting her eyes across the room. She felt like he was looking right into her soul. A flash of heat pulsed through her.

“You didn’t want?” she asked breathlessly.

“I didn’t want you to stop looking at me with curiosity and start looking at me with fear. I wanted you to be on my side so badly that I made you feel like I wasn’t on yours.”

Conor was afraid of the same things she was. The words emboldened her.

She crossed the room to him. He stood frozen, his stormy eyes locked on her face as she ran her hands down his velvet tunic. Her gaze followed the touch, as if to validate that he was truly letting her do it. Conor’s breath was shallow under her hands. Her heart raced as she met his eyes.

Her mouth was dry, her voice small and frail as she spoke. “What would I see right now if I could seeyourfear?”

Conor said nothing. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced as if picturing it himself. “I don’t know if you’d see anything, but I know what you’d hear.”

He grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the room, leading her into the east wing and down to his music room. He sat down at the piano and snapped his fingers. Hundreds of candles in the room fired to life.

In the brighter light, Rowan’s gaze fell on a bed under the large windows. “Have you been sleeping down here?”

Conor laughed. “I don’t sleep.”

“Ever?”

“Ever. I don’t need to.”

Rowan had no way to confirm that. It wasn’t as if she’d shared a bed with him. She looked around the room, which she’d only lurked outside of before.

Most of the keep was neat and tidy, but this space was much homier. Sheet music was stacked on the bookshelves, while pages and pages of scattered notes in surprisingly neat penmanship littered the piano’s surface.

She tucked her legs under her and snuggled into the plush chair facing the piano.

Conor sat down on the bench. He fidgeted with the sheet music, his gaze drifting to her several times before he flexed his fingers over the keys. For the first time, the stillness around him broke apart, and tiny fissures of buzzing anxiety broke through like frenzied bells.

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