Page 30 of Heart’s Rescue

Rowan

Still a Monster

Iclose the front door behind Aloserin and then lean against it, waiting until my heart stops trying to beat the inside of my ribcage into a bloody pulp and my screaming desire to strangle someone fades to dull background noise. Then I turn back to Phaedron. He looks exhausted, for all that it’s probably only mid-morning, and the dull painkiller gleam in his eyes doesn’t look like it’s doing anything to relax the tight way he’s holding his shoulders.

“What in the voids,” I hiss at him, “are you talking about?”

Phaedron narrows his eyes. Oh, he’s in one of his moods now, huh?

“Go,” Phaedron growls.

“Go?” I laugh, but it comes out as a sort of helpless cry. “Go where? Go to good old Acting Captain Aloserin and tell him, hey, sure, I’ll do anything you ask and, voids, let’s all just give up on my brother’s life-long dream of joining the Royal Guard?”

Phaedron makes a sort of hissing noise in the back of his throat.

“Or, what, go to the castle? Just show up and do what King Galan wants in exchange for nothing? After how voids-damned great the king’s been to us out here in the Outer Ring?”

“Rowan!” Phaedron’s voice snaps like a whip. “Go! Take the woman!”

Oh. Right. I glance guiltily at the pantry where I’d just shoved our little visitor from the Worlds Above and then promptly forgot all about her once Phaedron told me to drop the Royal Guard conversation.

Drop? The Royal Guard? The one thing my brother’s wanted in his entire life, the only thing he’s ever asked for. I feel like I’m going to be sick.

“I’ll tell Charay you went with Aloserin. You’ve got a two-day head start to get that woman to the thin place.” Phaedron says, his eyes still hard and narrow. “And you’re welcome, you asshole.”

I hesitate. “We are not dropping the Royal Guard thing,” I finally say, as I drag myself toward the pantry.

Phaedron sighs and brings his hand to rub at his left temple.

“You’re an idiot,” he says.

“Don’t you forget it,” I reply.

I pull the pantry door open and, holy screaming voids, the woman inside looks like she’s just seen a ghost. Her eyes are wide, her dark skin’s gone several shades lighter, and her hand is clasped over her mouth like she’s afraid she’s going to scream.

“It’s okay,” I say.

My gaze flickers across the inside of the pantry, but I just see Phaedron’s mysterious rows of jars and bags and a broom I’ve never actually touched. I don’t see anything at all on those shelves that might have spooked her.

“You can come out now,” I add, just in case the whole opening the door thing wasn’t clear enough for her.

She nods, takes a few quick breaths, and looks like she’s trying to pull herself together. But she’s still shivering when she steps out of the pantry. Phaedron notices immediately, of course. He even leans into the side of the bed like he’s going to stand up and, I don’t know, maybe give her a big, stupid hug or something. But then he hisses in pain and shoots me a dirty look like I should be doing something I’m not. I turn back to the lady.

“You okay?” I ask.

Voids, I sound like an idiot. Phaedron’s always been the one to deal with women. The lady - Arryn, my mind stubbornly insists on reminding me - looks up at me with those big, soft eyes.

“W-Was that man looking for me?” she asks.

Her breath hitches, and I hate that I notice how her chest rises when she inhales.

“Lady Arryn,” Phaedron says. His voice is a raspy shadow of its former self, but I can tell he’s trying.

Arryn turns toward him, and something in her expression snags in my mind like a fly in honey. I don’t have one-tenth of the experience with women that Phaedron has, but still, she seems off. Sure, she’d begged for mercy yesterday, but there was none of this wide-eyed, open-mouthed nonsense. She’d looked like she’d wanted to tear my head off at first, and then like she’d calmly calculated her odds and come up with a new plan. Now she’s walking hesitantly across the floor, all soft eyes and shivers, and looking at Phaedron like she wants to curl up in his arms. Or, arm, I guess.

Well, hell. Maybe she just likes him. Every other woman in the Lands Below likes him, and hey, who could blame them? My brother is pretty cool. I catch Phaedron’s gaze, ready to dismiss what he’d said about dropping the Royal Guard thing as pain-induced nonsense.

“Some tea?” Phaedron asks, narrowing his eyes at me as though all of this is somehow my fault. Which, yeah, I guess it is.

“For the lady?” Phaedron specifies, and fine, I shuffle over to the kitchen to get the kettle going.

Arryn doesn’t look up at either of us. She wipes her eyes delicately with the sleeve of her dress and shifts on her bare feet, creeping slightly closer to Phaedron’s bed.

“Where is Rowan taking me?” she asks, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

Something uneasy flutters in my chest. I watch her as I fill the kettle and Phaedron repeats everything he’d already said this morning about my knowing a place where the barrier is thin and being able to send her home. He sounds a great deal more confident than the situation actually warrants. Arryn listens, her teeth on her bottom lip, her eyes on the floor. There’s a whisper in the back of my mind, some deep instinct telling me over and over that something’s off.

My eyes drift back to the pantry’s closed door. There’s nothing in there but Phaedron’s alphabetically-organized ingredients because he’s the kind of psychopath who does something like that. And a few mostly-empty bottles of cheap, terrible booze. And the broom.

A flash of silver ripples through my memory. Bending down to yank back the unconscious monster’s hood. Ripping off the crown he’d worn as he’d slaughtered three of my neighbors and damn near killed my brother. The crown I’d brought home for Phaedron like an offering.

The one he’d told me to shove in the pantry.

The tea kettle sings. I pull it off the fire and let it rest as I rinse out two mugs. Arryn is sitting delicately on the edge of Phaedron’s bed. She’s tucked her bare feet under the ragged hem of her dress. She still isn’t looking at either one of us, but she does seem to have pulled herself together. Actually, she looks almost the same as she did this morning, all jokes and smiles as she’d asked where her pack was.

Yeah. I turn to crumble dried tea leaves into the mugs, making sure my body doesn’t block Arryn’s view of what I’m doing because I’m pretty sure she’s watching every single move I’m making from under those thick lashes. I’m going to have to keep a close eye on this one.

Pretty or not, she’s still a monster.