Page 143 of Elven Crown

“Rebecca, if I found you, do you really think others won’t? It’s only a matter of time. We have to do this now, before anyone else has a chance.” The desperation in his eyes as he just kept pushing made all his other attempts look like an act, like practicing in front of a mirror. Now it was real.

“Youknowthis is the only option,” he added, “because it’s the only one we have.”

The way he looked at her now—pleading, desperately hopeful, understanding everything she’d risked and lost and fought forwhile still relinquishing it beneath the greater truthhestill believed in… It was all too familiar.

That look from him now made her skin crawl when, once, it had made her feel so seen.

But Rowan didn’t see her at all anymore, did he?

No, when he looked at her now, after all this time, the only thing he saw wastheir duty…

With a sigh, he dipped his head toward her and lowered his voice, reaching for her with one hand.

Like he thought that was all he had to do to get her to come to him. To meet him halfway. To surrender herself to what they might once have accomplished together after having spent so much time alone.

But that was how she wanted it, and that was what Rowan didn’t seem to understand.

Rebecca didn’t step toward him, but he didn’t lower his hand.

“Listen,” he said, “I know it’s not my place to tell you how to feel, and I won’t even try—”

“Don’t.” Rebecca closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. “I don’t want to hear it.”

She couldn’t hear it.

A part of her still knew he was right, that everything he said carried so much weight and so much truth already. The proof of that had been popping up out of the shadows all over Chicago in the last week alone than in all her centuries of running.

“But Iwilltell you how I feel,” he said.

The conviction in his voice was more painful to hear than she ever could have imagined, because Rebecca had truly thought she would never hear it again.

“I know you,” Rowan continued. “Not just who you are to them, or to the rest of the world, or what you are, or what you can do. I knowyou,Kilda’ari. That’s what I believe in.

“That’s why I’m doing this and why I’m not going anywhere unless you’re standing right there beside me the whole way. If you can’t hear anything else, hear that.”

Rebecca opened her eyes despite telling herself to keep them shut.

Rowan’s hazel eyes bored into her with the same intensity as she remembered—the same confidence and trust and truth with which he’d made his very first vow to her in her old life and in her dream last night. Only now, any hint of jest or mischief had disappeared.

“That’s a promise I’m making to you right now,” he said. “Without ceremony. Without a binding. Without the bullshit mysticism or the pressure or expectation. Justme.”

Now she had to blink away the first shimmering blur of tears she would never let fall.

Her gaze settled on his face.

Those luminous hazel eyes capable of such deception and such unbelievable depth in equal parts. The straight, sharp line of his nose. The shadow along his jaw. The way his russet-colored hair swept back away from his face to spill behind his shoulders while the same few locks that had never been tamed in their youth still refused to obey, curling beside his neck and in front of one sharply pointed ear.

This was Rowan.HerRowan. The one thing in all of Hells-cursed Xahar’áhsh that had made her stay as long as she had, because he’d beenallshe had.

By the Blood, if anyone was going to find her here, now, it was a damn good thing Rowan was the one to have done it first. Because then, maybe, Rebecca might still have a chance.

Not the chance she wanted, but it was better than nothing.

The urge to give in to him, to break down the wall and tell him everything, overpowered her. The idea of opening up to anyonefor the first time in so very long became a nearly irresistible temptation in the next few seconds.

Why should she deny herself that relief and that comfort when she’d gone without it for so long? When it was literally standing right here in front of her?

She wanted to tell him about the Azyyt Ra’al and their branded thralls she’d found in Chicago. About Hector’s involvement with them and possibly even Aldous’s.

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