Page 3 of A Reign of Roses
I cringed. We weren’t supposed to curse.
I was doing everything wrong tonight.
“Don’t look yet,” I said to him, suddenly very tired. I wrapped his hand in the cloth once more, tying it in a knot to hide the evidence. “I think it’ll be better by morning.”
“Thanks, Arwen.” Halden wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his good hand. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Did he know what my fingers had done? Did he know that whatever it was had made my whole body feel calm and on fire at the same time? I swallowed hard. “Do what?”
“Stay. Help me. You could have run off like Ryder did.”
I wiped down the saw the boys had been playing with, sliding its bloodied edge along the hem of my nightgown. Then I placed it back on its nail, and knelt to pick up each screw and bolt Ryder had knocked to the floor. It would take me an hour at least to put them all back in their right order.
“You were hurt,” I said around a yawn. “I couldn’t leave you.”
“Yeah,” Halden said, though he was already moving past me for the door. “You could’ve.”
PART I
The Ashes
1
Kane
I knew this time itwas my rib that had cracked.
Each inhale sent the mismatched shards straining from one another and pain radiating into the pummeled muscles of my back. Sitting up was marginally less painful, and I sucked in a slow, bracing breath.
The scent of pine and blood filled my nostrils.
When I blinked my eyes open, they raked down the cascading wall of solid, glinting ice that I’d plunged from—its peak still hidden behind thick white clouds, the smooth face marred only by the cracks and dents where I’d jammed my fists and feet, unsuccessfully attempting an ascent.
First you failed them. Then you failed her. Now you’re failing again.
Anguish pierced my heart anew. Fresher, every fucking day.
Wasn’t grief supposed to dull with time?
I stood, chest still constricting with two very different types of pain, and brushed snow and dirt from my backside. The motionaggravated deep scrapes along my palms. Whatever protective ward the White Crow had cast around his home atop that glacial mountain was inhibiting all aspects of my lighte—barring me from shifting into my dragon form, halting my accelerated Fae healing…
I trudged through near-blinding white back in the direction of the town at the base of the mountain. I’d only made it a few feet when the bruises, scrapes, and blisters across my body began to fade. My toe cut across the snow, demarking where the ward appeared to end.
I winced with the movement. The rib was going to take longer to heal.
If I were smart, or patient, I’d retreat down to town, get a room at the unsavory, sleet-coated inn, and lie still in devastating silence until I recovered.
But I wasn’t smart.
I wasn’t patient.
And I didn’t mind the pain.
I was so cold these days it was almost preferable, feeling something ache inside my bones.
Pressing my palm to the radiating volleys of pain in my side, I appraised the ice-cold mountain range for the hundredth time. Beyond bare ponderosa branches thick with hoarfrost, and snow prints from hares and caribou, that towering rise of jagged hunches rose and rose and rose, gobbling up the skyline.
“You planning to become a dragon and fly at it again?” a crotchety old voice called from behind me. “That almost worked.”
