Page 73 of Heart’s Rescue

“What in the stars are you talking about?” I snap.

“It won’t work,” Rowan says, and there’s a hot thread of rage in the ice of his voice now. “You can’t fuck your way through me to get to my brother.”

“What?”

I stand, stumble over my laces, and smack back into the bed. Heat rises in my cheeks. Rowan turns toward the door. I push back from the bed, careful of my laces this time. Anger simmers inside me like a tea kettle over a raging inferno, ready to explode.

“What is wrong with you?” I demand. “I don’t even know your brother!”

Rowan looks at me with eyes as sharp as daggers. “You like him.”

“Oh, come on!” I yell. “I only said that because I want you to come with me through the thin place and into the Worlds Above. And I know the only way under the stars you’ll come with me is if we bring Phaedron too!”

Rowan's eyes go wide. He steps away and, for the second time this morning, he looks like he’s just been punched. Then he spins away, faces the wall. His boots rasp against the floorboards as he moves toward the door, and I realize I’m panting. My blood is hammering in my skull like a war drum.

What have I just said?

I want Rowan so desperately I can taste it, I can feel the sun on our faces and smell the dust of the road leading through the Dragon Pass. I’ve imagined him by my side in the Worlds Above so many times that it’s started to feel like a kind of truth.

But I don’t know anything about what Rowan wants. Stars above, maybe he’s already gotten everything he wants. I think of Folwynn thrusting into me, grunting and panting until finally his cock pulses and falls still, then stepping back, wiping his hands on my dress, and pulling his pants back up over his hips. Folwynn frowning when I asked him to stay the night, because why would I want that? Why would I want anything more than I’d just received?

Rowan turns back to me, his face knotted up in something that looks like rage and pain all tied together. He looks like a stranger, and suddenly I feel like the man I kissed last night must have died while I was sleeping. He died, and he was replaced by… this.

Rowan gives me an expression that’s not even close to a smile.

“No,” he says.

He unlatches the door and steps out. I manage to wait until he’s closed the door behind him before crumbling to the floor.