Page 79 of Song of the Dark Wood

21

ROWAN

The greenhouse went utterly silent, and the light from the luminaries faded to a soft glow.

“I don’t understand,” Rowan faltered.

“Devouring isn’t literal,” Conor started. “I’m not going to actually eat you, Rowan. I’m going to consume your soul.”

Rowan choked on a gasp. Everything had led her to believe that devouring was about sex and murder, not having her soul rendered from her body. Was that what she’d felt when she’d been with Valen in the Dark Wood?

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I was careless when I made my bargain with the Mother. I didn’t care what it cost to be strong. I just knew I needed the power.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Devouring a Red Maiden makes me more powerful.”

“Then why not just devour us all right away?”

He looked resigned. “Because I am duty-bound to the dead. I need someone to ferry them, and the reapers can only handle rogue souls, not a weekly flock.”

Rowan chewed at her lip. “What does all of this have to do with sex?”

Conor scrubbed a hand over his face. “One type of desire stimulates the other. Sex can take the edge off, and it has with other Maidens in the past, but I’m so drawn to you. I worry it would be impossible for me not to take it too far and steal your soul in the act. You would hardly feel it, as if I was just breathing you in. Red Maidens are always tempting, but it’s as if you were designed to be the most desirable woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. What happened here can’t happen again.”

Rowan’s head spun. She was comforted that his disinterest was an act and equally as disturbed that he spent so much time thinking about stealing her soul.

“What happens when you devour my soul?” she asked.

“I’ll grow stronger.”

“And to me?”

“You’ll die,” Conor said.

“And my soul?”

He swallowed hard. “It will cease to exist.”

Rowan could not seem to wrap her mind around it. She’d expected claws and teeth—some sort of animal instinct that needed sating. Losing her life was one thing, but losing her soul was unimaginable.

In the blink of an eye she’d gone from the safest she’d ever felt to the most terrified. She wouldn’t just die; her soul would be consumed. She’d never find peace or meet with her loved ones in the afterlife. It was a level of disappearing that she could not have prepared herself for. Fearful fury tore through her. It didn’t matter what she felt for him because Conor wanted her soul.

Rowan needed her dagger. She had to kill him. If he devoured her soul, the blight would continue to spread. It could destroy the whole village in a matter of months. The crops and orchards would wither, and the wildlife would move on to the north, where there were plants to sustain them. Aeoife would become acting Red Maiden. Ballybrine would crumble.

Conor’s admission strengthened her resolve in the Mother’s plan. She needed distance from him.

Though every instinct in her body screamed for her to run, she stayed frozen where she was.

“Say something,” Conor whispered.

Rowan shook her head. She needed to find the Red Maiden journals. While she could think of no reason for Conor to lie, she needed to be certain. She really would need to kill him. She tried to ignore the way her heart clenched.

It was too cruel that the moment she experienced the first true bit of affection, it had to instantly be ripped away. Her life seemed perfectly orchestrated to keep her from enjoying anything too much or forming any significant attachment. She’d been foolish to allow herself to want something—to allow herself to be crushed by the truth she’d always known—that she was meant to be alone.

She blinked away tears. She needed anger and her mind spun, trying to access it.

Conor had let this happen. He had been operating with all the information and was just telling her now. If he’d told her before, she could have been more prepared. Fury swelled in her chest.

“Rowan, I’m not going to let that happen. I won’t hurt you, but we should probably take some space. You should go back to Ballybrine in the morning,” Conor said. Everything that had been warm and heated in him had cooled to a steely, patronizing tone.

---