Page 45 of The Last War We Ever Fought

“I was called.”

“By who?”

“Death.”

Something like fear chilled her blood. “Why? Why would he call for you?”

“My time might be running short.”

She let out a stuttering laugh despite her tears. Standing to her knees, she cupped his face and kissed him. “I don’t think so, Elijah. I think you’re going to have a long, long life. And I think you’re going to find her again in the next lifetime—alive, waiting for you. And you will tell her how you love her and she will—” Her voice faded a little, drowned behind tears. “She will tell you that she loves you back.”

His own eyes filled with tears, too, as he lifted a hand to her face. “What a pretty tale.”

“It isn’t,” she cried. “It isn’t.”

Rowan was thinking.

As she sat along her soldiers for the last dinner before the battle they would lead tomorrow towards Gobresh capitol, thinking was all Rowan could do.

She didn’t touch her food just yet, her eyes taking in every soldier around her enjoying their last meal. Their boisterous voices and laughter filled her pockets with sin.

For every face she could see, she wondered what future they would have, she could see their youths slipping to adulthood. She could imagine them with their own families, falling in love, ageing slowly with those they loved. For the hour she’d stood there, she’d given everyone a life they would never have so she could feel guilt kill her slowly. For she deserved the cruellest way to die.

The twenty letters she had written to her queen and her court had been sent early that morning and by the next morning, Mugril capital would have all learnt of the new world that would rise from the ashes of the old—from the ashes of the fire Rowan would soon burn.

Elijah came to take a seat beside her, and that moment had been the only time she’d felt a pang of regret at what she was about to do. Her eyes drew shut when he took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together. Every little touch marking her sinful soul.

“Not that,” she said, putting a hand over his water cup and switching it with another. Her voice shook as she said, “Drink from this.”

His eyes bore into hers. Somewhere between the look they exchanged he’d found her soul and bid it goodbye—there was goodbye in his voice too when he said, “As you wish, my Rowan.”

A sob raked through her chest as she also raised her cup to her lips. She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth, forcing herself to swallow.

“You did it,” he said, watching her like he was doing it for the last time, with a look so sombre, so tender, so fragile that it almost hurt her to die. Such a look that she might have already died once.

It almost made her wish she’d made an antidote for the poison she’d just drank. Almost. Only almost. Because she remembered that he’d now get to live again, that his bargain with the Gods of Life and Death had been made void since she’d die before she’d get to kill him.

“I can finally tell you this,” he said, wiping away her tears.

“Tell me what?” she asked, suddenly panicked that there was no time for her to hear what he had to say, afraid the poison would take in too quickly.

“That I’ve found you in every lifetime. In every lifetime I’ve watched you die. In some you’ve died in my arms, too. Those are the ones I remember the most. You never remembered me. You don’t remember me still. You won’t remember me. I hope you won’t.”

Rowan couldn’t move.

No.

It didn’t make sense.

“No,” she whispered. “No, I am not her.”

Blood suddenly streamed down the corner of his mouth. “My heart was yours from the start and until the very end.”

Rowan jumped back, eyes wide, limbs shaking. Fear, not poison, they were shaking from fear as she picked up the cup he’d drank from, the only cup she had not laced with the haleberry poison. The bottom of it had turned a burnt red, the metal oxidising from the poison. “No, no, no,” she frantically chanted as she reached for hers, noticing the clear bottom that had not stained—the cup she had meant for him. “No. Please, no. Don’t do this to me!”

Elijah coughed, his chest heaving, blood sputtering from his mouth.

She grabbed his body before it crashed to the ground. “I’m not her,” she muttered, swaying the two back and forth. “I’m not her!”