Page 35 of The King's Queen

Spinning to face him, I look up with a smile. “You’re wel…You’re…” His eyebrows furrow as I trail off. “You’re spin… spinning.”

Someone screams my name as I go down, and I wait for the cold floor to greet me, but solid arms wrap around my midsection and hold me to a warm chest. Everything feels so far away. It’s such a lovely heartbeat…

“-osa! VERA!”

Rowan’s face is softer than I’ve ever seen it, silver tears of worry pricking the corners of his eyes. Black fuzzes out my peripheral vision as he leans closer, the fear written across his features. A hand, it might be my hand, reaches up to touch his face, to smooth out the worry lines. As the world spins to a halt, the hand drops down to my side, and darkness envelopes me.

Chapter11

Verosa

Asoft breeze caresses my cheek in greeting while a soft whisper of light slips into the room. The first break of dawn from an open window.Mywindow. The scent of jasmine and morning dew hits the moment my eyes shoot open.

I make to leap from where I lay in my bed when firm hands grip my shoulders, effectively pinning my weakened body against the down pillows.

“Stay down,” Rowan growls. “You lost too much blood too quickly.”

Like hell I’ll stay down. Feebly shoving his hands off, I rise to my feet, panic seeping in when I notice the blood on his hands, silver and gold. No signs of Kya or Amír. Rowan watches as a stumble to my bedroom door, something like cool amusement flickering across his features when I close the entrance. He raises an eyebrow, a silent challenge as if to saydo you really think anyone would catch us if I didn’t want them to?

Bastard. His lips quirk up slightly at my response.

“Is she… are they going to be okay?” I whisper softly into the room, though not at all as timidly as I might’ve been a few weeks ago. Rowan sighs heavily, those powerful forearms braced against his thighs. He looks so small sitting atop the stool next to my vanity. Like a man in a dollhouse.

“They’re both fine. Amír was already leaping up to catch you as you fell, but I’ve told her and Kya to lay low for a while. So should you. Your injuries were nearly as bad as Amír’s.”

Fine. Rowan said they were fine, and I hadn’t missed the soft arc of his mouth as he whispered, "Fine, because of you.”

Slowly, my shoulders curled in on themselves, and I wrapped my arms around my midsection. Fine. Not bleeding out or screaming or dead. Fine. I never stopped to think about what would’ve happened if they weren’t, nor realized how much the two women meant to me. How much all of them mean to me. The first tear falls before I realize it.

Rowan takes one large step, and then he’s here, holding my head to his chest. Letting me hear his heartbeat.

“We’re alive. We’re okay.”

Those four words are all I need to hear. He mentioned no limp, no maiming scars lacing my friends. Even Amír. Amír had come back for me.

A sniffling nod later, I disentangle myself from him, though I immediately miss his warmth and the scent of citrus and leather that enveloped me just as much as he had.

“It’s getting light out.” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “You should go.”

His mouth hardens to a thin line, but he doesn’t argue as he notices dawn’s willowy fingers stretch closer to my window, slowly eliminating those shadows that cling to him. Soon the guards would rotate, the one chance Rowan would have to slip out unnoticed.

He slings a leg out the window, ever so casually, might I add, before tossing a grim look my way. “I mean it, Vera. Lay low for a bit, say you’re feeling unwell today, and let no one in. Your blood should help heal your noticeable wounds by tomorrow. Kya will stop by then to check on you.”

I don’t have time to ask how he knew which room had been mine, though I assume Kya did some snooping of her own, before Rowan throws himself out the window. He’s gone with nothing but a whisper by the time the sun warms the stones of the palace.

“What the fuck, Verosa.”

No.

No this can’t be happening.

The door to my bathroom creaks open as Blaine swears, his dark face paling to a sickly shade of grey. His gaze trails down to my shaking frame, still clad in my whorish silks, still bleeding, shoddily bandaged wounds on full display. My heart slows. No, I can’t afford to panic. Panic will have my head on the butcher’s block, regardless of whether it still wears a tiara.

So I swallow thickly and muster as much confidence I can to say, “I can’t remember the last time I heard you swear.”

He should turn cold with restrained rage, roll his eyes with indifference, and leave. But he bites his lip and stares hard into my eyes.

“Whatdid he do to you.”

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