Page 71 of A Reign of Roses
And he was laughing.
The loping man, too tall for his own limbs, hair swooping into his face with each step, came to stand before me, surveying us but not threatening. Just…curious. “TheKane Ravenwood? Could that really be you?”
“Yes,” I said, breathing hard.
“Valery, help this man,” he instructed the woman. Still with that playful smile. As if war were his favorite pastime. As if my grief did nothing to him.
The gaunt woman, Valery, with her many pendants, knelt before me and gently opened her arms to take Arwen. And behind her—
Their dark long skirts, the leather and beads on their clothes, and concerned expressions on their faces…
The Antler coven. As Briar had said.
It was all I could do to nod as Valery lifted Arwen’s body up and away from me. I missed her weight in my arms and lowered my head to my hand to suck in steadying, fortifying breaths, turning that razor-sharp fear inward and swallowing it whole.
“My coven is highly skilled,” Hart said. “I’d say she’s got a chance at least.” When I lifted my face he was tucking his hair aside, coating the bronze strands in red. His eyes met mine, and he flashed me a crooked, confident grin.
19
Arwen
I had come back fromthe dead three times in my life, and was certain it had been three times too many.
It wasn’t that I wished to die. Each time light sputtered from the darkness and breath yawned into my lungs, my first instinct was always to thank the Stones.But that rush of appreciation—the grasping of each of my limbs and swaths of flesh to make sure all was still where it was meant to be—never lasted long.
Each time, I was hit with a distinct sense of foreboding. A knowledge that each brush with that howling, bottomless void was just a mere taste of the looming inevitable. That fate was a mischievous feline, and my death was a ball of twine on the precipice of unraveling.
“Contemplating the nature of the universe?” Kane’s ragged voice still broke shivers across my back as if he had whispered the words against the sensitive shell of my ear.
He walked in quietly, closing the door of knotted wood behind him. The makeshift infirmary was entirely crafted with rounded logs, like a crisp mountain cabin.
“More like my fragile existence.” It was an attempt at lightness, but neither of us laughed.
Wisps of sable hair fell past his dark brows, and, despite his easy words, they were furrowed with pain as he beheld me. He’d changed out of his stolen Fae armor and was in a slightly frayed brick-red tunic and dark pants. His hair wasn’t clean, his face still scuffed here and there with blood and dirt, but…he’d shaved. As if the most offensive grime that covered him was the beard he’d worn while I’d been gone. The souvenir of his grief.
Kane watched me from across the spare, warm room. Hollow bars of crimson sunlight drifted through the mismatched logs of the roof and painted his gracefully carved chin and folded arms. Kane made no move to join me in the stiff bed with its thin, moth-eaten blankets, and I sat up with a poorly concealed wince.
“Don’t rush yourself.” His eyes were a brand on my face, my bare shoulders—at some point whoever resurrected me had sheared my golden gown clean off. Good riddance.
Kane watched intently as my hand rubbed down my sore neck.
“Where are we?”
“A hidden encampment built by rebels.” He sounded hoarse. Like he’d been screaming.
“Hidden?”
“Warded by a magic boundary, just outside that city I spoke of, Aurora.”
“Where you told me to ask for…” My medicated mind couldn’t conjure the name he had given me back in the palace. Back when he’d urged me to run. Guilt swirled in my newly stitched stomach. Had I listened, would he have had to endure whatever cast his face in such pained exhaustion?
“Hart Renwick,” Kane supplied quietly. “He’s a young Fae who’sbuilt up an army of insurgents. The citizens of Lumera call him the rebel king.”
“Oh” was all I could manage.
Kane’s cheek twitched. But yearning—longing and remorse and unfiltered regret—was all that shone in those eyes.
“Kane…”
