Page 34 of Heart’s Rescue

Arryn

I Can Read a Map

“What’s this?” I ask.

The words rise from my lips in little puffs of steam. Stars, the air is so cold down here that it bites at the inside of my throat when I breathe. I glance at Rowan, his bright blue eyes burning deep inside his hood, and then at the carefully folded stack of parchment he’s just dumped into my mittens.

We haven’t spoken all morning. Rowan seems disturbingly cheerful for a man who was woken up with a knife pressed to his throat. At least, I’d thought I was waking him up. Now, though, I’m not so sure. We’d shared a few mugs of tea in awkward, stony silence until the strange bluish-green light that filters down from whatever’s above us clicked back on, and Rowan crawled out of the shelter to pack up.

I’d made a few offers to help as he’d taken down the complicated-looking canvas and rope contraption where we’d spent a night staring at each other in an uneasy truce, but he’d waved me off, leaving me with the impression that I’d be more of a hindrance than a help. The fact that he was probably right only made his attitude more irritating. Then he’d pulled his pack on his shoulders and set off, leaving me to struggle into my own much smaller pack and trudge after him. At least the fresh snow made it easy to follow his tracks.

He’d stopped here, on a little bluff overlooking more of the same lifeless snow, dead trees, and long shadows, and then Rowan had pressed a stack of parchment into my mittened hands, sat down on the snow, and stared at me. Waiting.

I shiver inside the cloak. Standing here, watching the dead forest under the strange blue-green light, it’s easy to feel like we’re the only two living things in this entire world. And honestly, some part of me wants to pretend it’s just the two of us. It’s the part of me that wants to ignore the fact that I’d seen other tracks winding through the dead trees. Large tracks.

“Why are all the trees dead?” I ask, not expecting an answer.

“The void,” Rowan answers.

I look up, and he’s watching me with an expression that suggests he finds all this terribly amusing. It makes me want to slap him. I’m not going to take the bait; I nod as though his non-answer was perfectly satisfactory.

“It’s been pushing back against our magic since we got here,” Rowan continues, glancing into the gloom beyond the trees. “Those pines were the only thing that could resist it, but not forever.”

Another shiver makes a slow crawl up my spine. I want to ask Rowan what in the stars he’s still doing out here, or if their entire world is like this. Is that Crystal City he mentioned surrounded by dead trees too? And if so, then what in the stars do they eat? Or does everyone here survive on the stale hardtack and dried berry things Rowan had given me this morning?

“And that’s a map,” Rowan says, shattering my thoughts just like he’d shattered the thin sheet of ice that had built up on our shelter during the night.

I glance down at the parchment in my hands. There are four separate pieces here, all carefully folded together. When I look back at Rowan, his eyes are practically dancing.

“Since you said you could read one,” he continues.

With that, he slips his pack off and settles down in the snow. Great. It looks like we’ll be here a while. I follow his lead, sliding my pack off my back and trying not to sigh in relief. The sudden absence of weight on my shoulders makes me feel like I could fly. I stack my mittens on top of my pack and carefully unfold the first piece of parchment.

It’s not a map. Of course, it’s not a map. It’s a list of numbers and symbols and what look almost like equations. I turn the parchment around in my hands, trying to find any sense of pattern or rhythm. Trying not to let my mind skate back to what Rowan had said in the night when I’d pressed the blade to his neck.

Tell that to the three people he murdered.

Rowan was lying. Of course. I frown and blink at the nonsensical sheet of numbers, trying to pretend my mind hasn’t just slipped my lead. Obedience, I think, as I drum my fingers against the back of the parchment. My beloved is not a murderer.

But. Something cold tightens low in my gut, and I whip my head around to stare at the forest of dead trees behind us. The strange blue light casts disturbing shadows on the snow. Something feels off, something low and strange. Not a noise, nothing so obvious as that, but something else that makes my muscles tense and my chest tighten.

“Something wrong?” Rowan asks in a tone that suggests my discomfort is the most entertaining thing he’s seen in an age.

I huff. Well, I did wake him up with a knife to his throat. I’ll reluctantly grant that he’s entitled to a bit of snark. I refold the sheet of numbers as gently as possible, set them on my mittens, and reach for the second sheet.

My beloved is not a murderer. But—

I shake the parchment open, willing my mind to shut up. This one also, unsurprisingly, does not contain a map. Instead, it’s a series of concentric circles with yet more numbers written inside them. There are also a few rough sketches along the edges; the profile of a face, a point with three distinct bumps, a little cloud with squiggly lines around it. Great. My teeth tug at the edge of my lower lip, unladylike and irritable. It’s possible Rowan is teasing me, toying with me like a cat with a mouse. It’s possible he knows where we’re going and he doesn’t need a map, or that there’s no map at all, or that he really is taking me out here to kill me.

I glance over at Rowan. He’s watching me from beneath the hood of his cloak, his bright eyes gleaming.

“This,” I say, trying to put all of Mother’s haughty superiority into my voice, “is not a map.”

Rowan shrugs. “Course it’s not a map. Everyone knows you can’t map the void.”

Just like he told Aloserin, the man who came to ask for his help. I open my mouth, but Rowan cuts me off.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear that entire conversation, lady,” he says. “Stupid doesn’t look good on you.”