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Run, because if they catch you, something terrible will happen.
The same terrible instinct screams at me to run faster as I hear them getting closer somewhere behind me through the trees.
I should have never run from the pavilion. Every part of me wants to turn around and run straight back to Ciaran even as panic forces me deeper into the trees.
I want to go back. I want him. My Zoryan.
Another branch snaps somewhere behind me, much closer this time.
I barely make it past one of the lower stone paths before someone slams into my back hard enough to send both of us to the ground.
Pain explodes through my shoulder as I hit the leaves and gravel, the impact knocking the last of the air from my lungs.
Somebody grabs the back of my coat and forces me flat against the forest floor. I fight blindly, panic and adrenaline ripping through me, and I nearly tear free.
“Get off me—”
A rough hand catches my jaw and forces my head back until I finally manage to focus on the woman crouched above me between the trees. Dark hair spills forward beneath the forest shadows, and her pale eyes study me with unsettling calm before a slow smile spreads across her face.
“Hello again, Rowan Ashford.”
29
CIARAN
The second Rowan disappears through the pavilion doors, every instinct I have tries to follow him.
I make it three steps before Dad’s hand closes around my arm like a fucking shackle.
“Don’t.”
I turn on him. “Let go.”
Every second I stand here is another second Rowan is facing whatever comes next without me.
“Ciaran.”
“I said let go.”
Across the pavilion, the Marrow guards still have weapons half-drawn beneath their jackets, while our own men hold formation around Mom and the Noctis. Nobody fires. Nobody dares to even move.
Half of Sero’s elite are still trapped inside the pavilion watching us, and nobody is reckless enough to start a bloodbath beneath Caervast chandeliers.
That makes it worse somehow, all that violence waiting politely beneath gold light and shattered music.
Rowan is gone, and the absence of him hits so hard it almost feels physical after weeks of barely spending a single hour apart.
My little mouse is somewhere out there terrified while I’m still standing inside this fucking pavilion doing nothing.
Every second he stays out of my sight makes it harder to breathe.
Why didn’t he tell me who his sister was? What proof was he waiting for before trusting me with that? And what the hell did Mom mean about the sequence?
Fuck if I understand a damn thing that’s happening anymore.
“Bring him back,” I snap at the closest guard.
Dad’s grip tightens. “Nobody leaves until I know what the hell just walked into my event.”
