“I’ve got her, sir. I found Dove, and she’s here with me right now.”
fifteen
Dove
Blazing heat curls across my face and down my dangling bare arms. Raw, guttural screams reach my ears, some close, others too far out—they whoosh past me like troubled phantoms on their way into the afterlife. My eyes crack open, taking in the flames that are spreading quickly through the town.
The people… they’re on fire, a small petrified voice whispers in my head.
It takes everything in me to lift my head against the pressing weight of gravity, but when I do, I get a glimpse of Rowan’s malachite-colored eyes through the hollows in his skull mask. Above him, a flock of doves flies on a race to nowhere.
Rowan looks ahead, cold and determined, as he carries me back to safety in his tight grasp. Gratitude… and… and an overbearing need to crawl under his skin and never leave that place wash over me. My heart flutters, and my fingertips charge with electricity. I want to touch him, but I can’t. I’m so weak that my head falls back.
“Y-You came,” I whisper through the chaos going on around us. He can’t hear me, I know he can’t. But the way his armstighten around me right at this moment feels as though he answers back,“I’m sorry I took so long.”
Fading in and out, I catch glimpses of movement. The sway of Rowan’s walk. The pounding of boots on stone and dirt. And the next time I stir awake… I’m back in our bedroom, with the sun shining brightly on my face through the large open windows.
And then… through fluttering eyelashes, I see him. All of him.
A huge man once calm, collected, and imposing—now broken with a feeling I recognize too well on his face as he sleeps on the chair next to our bed. In the way his lips tighten. In the way his brows pull together, as if he’s still there, stuck in that town, between those blazing people, still looking for me. In the way his shoulders bear all the weight of everything that went on, from the moment I slipped between his fingers and disappeared into thin air. He’s a sight to behold, and perhaps one of the few that shows me he too is human. It’s then when I realize Rowan’s pain pulses in silence, never revealing itself to me or to the others that count on him. But this time, I see him—I see him for all that he is, and I love him harder.
And when his eyes crack open, circled with signs of little sleep, he sees me too. And he groans. Like an injured animal with wounds only he can see—andfeel.
“Angel,” he rasps, his voice almost broken. My chest tightens at the sound of it. “My good little angel. I’m here. Tell me what hurts.”
Such tenderness in his eyes… such emphasis on those few simple words that I know are working like a strong dam against the flood of everything he wants to say to me.
He gets up in a swift movement, the bed squeaking softly as his weight presses down on it. His scent—the leather and pine and amber I know too well—envelops me, drawing a trembling breath out of my lungs. My heart pauses as his scarred hand cupsmy cheek, then for the first time in God knows how long… my entire body goes slack—sags—as if to say,‘We’re home now.’
“Rowan.” My voice breaks, but travels to him. “T-Thank you. Thank you for finding me,” is all I can muster.
His other hand takes mine, and a gentle kiss brushes the cushions of my palm before he whispers, “Tell me what hurts.”
But I scan my body from top to bottom, and nothing does. Not the cut on my arm, now bandaged and held in place. Not my lungs, nor my throat, nor my head from the dizziness I got used to while being in my cell. I wonder what he did to fix all of that as I shake my head, the sheets rustling when I move closer to him and lean against his chest. Then his arms are around me, and all is right in the world again. A lie, of course—a blatant lie, knowing so much more has happened that carries repercussions into the present. But it’s a lie I’m willing to embrace, only if just enough to take away my pain.
Closer, closer, closer he pulls me to him until our bodies meet as one, and there’s no more room in between.
“You were so brave, angel. So brave.”
No, I wasn’t,that same voice speaks in my head.If only you knew.
“I was s-so scared.” My throat closes in on itself, causing a ball of pain to appear in that exact spot. There’s so much I want to say to him, but my voice is stuck somewhere deep inside, refusing to come out. “I t-tried…”
“I know you did, angel,” he coos, his voice almost breaking with sorrow and regret as he presses his callused palms against the side of my face and my back. “I know you did. But I’m here now. I’ve got you.”
I nod as best I can, clutching his clothes tightly, as if I’m still not sure he’s real—that he could be another one of my dreams or hallucinations. But the feel of his warm skin pulsing with lifeagainst mine and the wall of muscle and comfort he envelops me with kill any shred of doubt.
He’s here. And he’s got me.
Minutes pass and I allow myself to weep in his arms, to be held and loved like I haven’t been in so long. To replace all the hard hands that touched me and replenish my memories with the feeling of him. I cry and he whispers in my ear, telling me things, like how he hunted down the man who took me, how he found out where I was, and how he spent every minute of every day looking for me for the past two weeks.
Weeks.
I’ve been gone for two weeks.
The events take shape in my mind, taking me there with him, to the hills where he buried people and to the old bar where he poisoned some. I live through his memories, replacing mine, feeling the itch of revenge flow through my veins as if I were him and looking for what they stole from me.
He could’ve given up. He could’ve tried and then given up, thinking I was lost or too difficult to get to. But his goal never wavered, never let up. The monster that Rowan King describes himself to be is the kind of man any woman would be lucky to have in her life. I can’t even begin to imagine the horrors he went through all this time. The horrorsIwould’ve gone through had the situation been reversed.
