Page 36 of The Last War We Ever Fought

“What, Rowan?” he asked, a smile stretching on his pain ridden face. “What am I doing to you?”

Shaking her head, she tried to leave, but his grasp on her tightened. One look back at his pleading gaze and she immediately sat back down beside him. “You’re not dying, are you?” It was more of a plea than a question.

“I’ve told you. I can only die by your hand. You’re the only one I’ve given permission to kill me.”

She touched her fingertips to his still gushing wound. “Why isn’t it healing?”

“It will. Just stay here with me,” he said, reaching for her hand and lacing their bloodied fingers together. “I made a deal with Death and his damn evil twin.”

“Evil twin?”

“Life, Gabriel. He loves his cruel deals, the bastard.”

“What sort of deal?”

“That I would give up my immortality to them, my only condition was that I would get to choose who’d take my life.”

Her blood chilled. Every other thing he’d told her came surging in at once, paralysing her limbs. “W-why? Why would you do that?”

His eyes drew shut, and he sighed. “Because I am tired. I am so tired, Rowan.” He brought their laced hands to his heart. “Pity me, I beg. Pity me and take it one day. Or hate me. Do it because you hate me. Do it to get rid of me if you can’t find it in your heart to pity me.”

“Don’t do this to me,” she repeated, her heart beating madly. “You can’t do this to me.”

He only looked at her and then drew her to lay beside him, her head resting on his stretched arm. Their faces were close, immensely close. “Am I going to find out one day what I’m doing to you that is so unfair?” he asked, pushing her hair back from her face.

Rowan wanted to allow his touch, but she feared it would let him into her truth—that she was finding herself leaning on him. A dependency that Rowan had never allowed herself to have. One that no one had ever offered her before.

If there was one thing Rowan knew, it was that she was unwantable, unlovable.

She didn’t want to make herself ever believe otherwise. She couldn’t afford to think so. Especially when he thought and wished for her to be someone else.

There was an odd air that evening when they’d gathered for dinner. Rowan was still raw from what had happened that morning and the truth he’d revealed to her. She had barely noticed the soldiers from Adam’s battalion that had returned from their failed mission. Their heads lowered, almost ashamed, while the rest murmured and gossiped with one another after they’d been made aware by an anonymous source of the secret mission their queen had ordered his soldiers to go on.

Elijah had still not told her how he had managed not to only delay them, but to also bring them back. He said he couldn’t speak of what he had done for he wasn’t meant to have done it in the first place. Then she had wondered of the consequences he would have suffered for helping her. She wondered if he hurt the same as anyone did. If he’d hurt for her again. If he had borne pain that was meant to be hers.

When she turned to grab a glimpse of Elijah who had sat beside her against all her pleas not to, someone else caught her attention. Her lone friend. If she could even call him that.

Daniel looked ashamed, too, but he’d not lowered his head or stopped trying to get her attention all day and all evening. Rowan had a faint doubt that he’d been the anonymous source who’d told on their queen’s orders. The queen who’d lost the respect of at least half the soldiers in their camp with the decision to steal the Gobresh children. For a very brief moment, Rowan wondered if there was hope in humanity. If they could change. If they would rise against the queen who’d so much harm on innocents. But she’d wasted her hope, too. Though they’d disagreed to what was decided, none had even breathed a syllable against it.

Two tall shadows fell before her table.

“Rowan,” Henry began, throwing a look over at Adam by his side as if to seek his permission to tell her about it. “We should have come to you before planning this mission.”

“You didn’t,” she said, shoving a spoonful of stew in her mouth. “Should've, would’ve, could’ve aren’t a mage’s call or spell. They won’t make right what you did wrong.” She pushed the rest of her plate away, already full from the bullshit.

The two generals lost half the colour on their face, but Rowan was sure it was because she’d embarrassed them in front of Elijah. “A miscalculation,” Adam simply said, throwing another knowing look over at Henry.

“No, Adam. A miscalculation can happen when I put too little poison in someone’s stew or what type of stone I throw at my enemy. You simply fucked up. Have fun telling your queen.”

Elijah snorted and every pair of eyes in the open dining hall turned to him. The famously terrifying God of War was peeling off the crust from her bread and plucking tiny pieces of the crumb to pile them atop Rowan’s soup.

She stepped on his foot and his violet eyes rose to her, looking almost hurt. “I’ve seen you do this before,” he said, pointing to the soup bowl piled with neat pieces of breadcrumbs. “Don’t you like it?”

Rowan’s eye twitched and she tried to very subtly signal her head in Adam’s and Henry’s direction.

Elijah’s brows pulled together, and he pinched her chin. “What’s wrong?”

“If you wanted company from our women, I could have found you a much nicer one,” Adam said, throwing a sharp smile in Elijah’s direction.