I can feel the soft tug of his lips turning into a smirk.
“If you needed an excuse to get back into my arms, you could have just asked, Hawthorne,” he breathes.
“I wasn’t—” my face betrays me once again, flushing a bright red. Thank God it’s dark. “It was a root. I tripped.”
“Well, then, case in point. Stay on the path.” His arm remains locked around my waist, and whilst I can barely make out his face under the night sky. I can still feel his eyes on me.
“While I’m glad to see you two have clearly made amends. You are leaking tension like a cracked hearth. It’s a miracle the woods haven’t started humming with the static of it. Seriously,” Bryn’s voice cuts in from behind.
“What? No — we’re not. I tripped on a branch,” I stumble over my words, keeping my voice low. Rowan lets out a small chuckle at my side. I expect him to back me up or share the embarrassment, but he doesn’t. He says absolutely nothing, only giving me a wide smirk.
“Right. Keep telling yourself that,” she laughs. I turn back to Rowan, but he’s already moving past me. His shoulder clips mine, a lingering contact that sends a fresh jolt of static through me.
“We’re here,” he says in a hushed voice. I thought it would be hard to make out this deep abyss set into the earth, but the pure void of darkness makes the forest appear almost lighter. It’s like a fracture in the land, as if something tore upward and the ground never forgave it. It’s not a slope, just a straight drop. The edges are uneven, serrated like broken bone, the stone darkened and black in places. Thin plumes of mist rise from the split. Rowan steps slightly in front of me.
“Do not lean,” he says.
“I won’t,”
“You will.” His hand wraps around my forearm as I step closer to the edge, peering down into the void below. “This is where you send your dead?”
“Yes.”
“God, how awful. Can you not bury them?” I whisper in disgust.
“Bury them?”
“Yes, in the earth. You know? Flowers, a gravestone… somewhere peaceful?” He doesn’t respond, only giving me a confused look. What an awful way to go into the afterlife. I couldn’t imagine not having a gravestone for my parents. My grandmother. It’s the only way I feel I can still talk to them.
“Why guard it?”
“It’s unstable ground. We guard it to protect people. It also contains rare earth minerals and gems. Many people attempt to abseil to collect them.”
“So… what we’re doing now?”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
Bryn mumbles behind us, waving us to follow. “I can form an anchor from this tree. I just need someone to help lower me down,” she says.
“Yeah, well, that’s not happening,” he says, grabbing the gear from Bryn’s hand. “Bryn, you watch for guards. Elodie, you stand back. I can lower myself down.” He wraps the rope around the tree when Bryn cuts him off.
“You want me… defenceless and completely useless… to stand guard?” she says. “Rowan, it makes more sense for you to stand guard and for me to go down. I can do this, trust me,” she says, taking the rope in his hand. He looks between me and Bryn before landing his eyes finally on mine.
“Fine. But you’re in and out. If you can’t find the Black Heel, I'm pulling you out. The guards will move around this area soon.” She nods in response, wrapping the gear around herself and tying her hair into a high ponytail. I almost offer to be the one to go down, but then I think better of it. There’s no way Rowan is letting me go down, and I would likely create more of a problem than actually be of any help. Bryn steps to the edge of the stone, pressing her tiptoes onto the rim and leaning back. She tests the rope a little before nodding at us as Rowan helps lower her down.
“I can do that if you need to keep watch,” I say, moving beside him. Handing me the rope, he talks me through what to do before pacing around me.
“You know, if this works and we actually get the Black Heel, it means your knights are pretty bad at their job.”
“They are excellent at their jobs, but unfortunately, I trained them, so I know their every move, and they don’t know mine.”
“Did you train Kael?” I don’t know what makes me ask it.
I suppose I wonder what he would say if he could see us now.
Rowan pauses before answering. The mention of his friend clearly causing something in him to falter.
