Page 78 of Heart’s Rescue

“Most of the inner gates are like that,” Rowan replies. “You need two to open them.”

It’s so dark in this hallway I can barely see Rowan's back in front of me. I almost reach for him, for his shoulder or his hand, but I stop myself.

No. He’d said no.

“Stars,” I hiss as the corridor widens and the strange blue-green light of the glowsoft orbs returns. “How long did you creep around the palace to find that out?”

Rowan glances back over his shoulder. The look he gives me isn’t exactly a smile. “Longer than you’ve been alive, lady,” he says.

I swallow hard. He was born when the Kingdom of the Fall was banished. That was so long ago it’s almost a myth. I think about the charts he showed me, about how much time it must have taken to identify those landmarks, to observe the slow and careful ways they interacted. How much time Rowan must have spent out there, in that dead landscape, with only the void beasts for company.

“Here,” Rowan says.

He steps through a small, rounded door and into a little garden. There’s a wooden half-gate set in the wall here that looks so flimsy a child could push it over. But magic rises from the wood and walls like steam from a perfumed bath. Rowan steps up to the wall, puts both his hands flat against the stone, and looks at me. Watching him, I walk to the other side. The stone is warm with magic; it feels soft, like butter in a warm room.

“Ready?” Rowan whispers.

I catch his eye and nod. Together, my hands mimicking his, we do a series of knocks and taps on the warm, soft stone. This time the gate doesn’t open; it vanishes, evaporating like smoke.

“Quick,” Rowan says.

He grabs my wrist and pulls me through the opening. I turn back to see the wooden gate reforming as if it were growing from the walls. The magic around it feels hot and prickly somehow. Rowan makes a noise that’s almost like a laugh.

“Okay,” he says. “One more and we’re in.”

I try to smile, but he turns away. We’re in a garden now, some sort of walled courtyard filled with carefully trimmed evergreens aligned in stately rows. There’s a wide gravel path down the middle and marble statues every few steps.

On the far side of the courtyard stands a gate. It’s a massive thing, easily as tall as Mother and Father’s entire house, and it looks like it’s been carved entirely out of stone. I turn around, checking to see if there’s maybe some other gate, but all I see are stone walls, rows of dark trees, silent marble statues, and urn-shaped planters.

“Isn’t somebody going to notice if we open that?” I whisper.

Rowan shrugs. “We’ll be subtle.”

“Nothing about that,” I reply, waving my hand at the enormous marble gate, “is subtle.”

Rowan crosses his arms over his chest and narrows his eyes. “Oh?” he says. “I didn’t realize you had a different plan, lady.”

He sounds like he’s angry, like something somewhere has gone horribly wrong, but I can’t put my finger on what. Unless he’s mad because I said I wanted him to join me in the Worlds Above? My chest aches; anger and pain twist together into a hard, bitter knot in the back of my throat. It would be so terrible, would it? Staying with me? Joining me in the Worlds Above?

My vision blurs. Apparently, yes, it would be terrible. And why am I surprised? Rowan is from the Lands Below. He values competence and strength and the ability to cook beans and not freeze to death. I have nothing to offer him, save the thing he’s already had. I have nothing else he wants.

I spin away and squeeze my hands into fists. I am not going to do this right here, right now. I can be as sad as I want about Rowan and his stupid blue eyes and the way I foolishly assumed great sex meant he actually enjoyed my company once this thing on my arm is healed and I’m back in the Worlds Above. I can mourn Rowan once I’m Lady Arryn again, dull and obedient. Once I’ve buried the wild creature I pretended to be in the Lands Below.

I sigh and turn back to Rowan.

“Fine,” I huff. “I’m following you.”

I don’t expect Rowan to walk right down the middle of the gravel path, but he does. Maybe no one patrols this garden, or maybe there’s no point in hiding anymore now that we’ve come this far. Still, this wide-open garden gives me the creeps. The trees are almost the size of men, and it’s a little too easy to pretend the statues are following us, tracking our progress. Hunting us. Rowan is quiet as his feet crunch over the gravel, and I get the sense that he’s on edge.

But he’s done this before, I remind myself. He’s done this before and, clearly, he wasn’t caught. They knew about it, somehow, because that man who came to his house told Rowan he was the only one who’d ever breached the king’s inner towers, but Rowan couldn’t have been captured the last time he opened this door.

Because he’s still alive.

My skin prickles with fear. Rowan freezes. Something feels like magic, the hot swell of magic rising in the air like a dust storm. Rowan spins around to face me. His eyes are wide, his face pale. He raises his hands and shoves me, hard, knocking me back into a row of trees.

“Run,” he whispers.

I stagger backward, branches and needles jabbing my arms and pulling at my cloak. There’s a clatter of voices from the far end of the garden, from the little wooden gate that wasn’t at all a little wooden gate. I turn to watch, not daring to breathe.