Page 189

“Badly, apparently.” Lucan steps over a puddle of black water with visible disgust. “And Rowan grew up here.”

He did. Twenty years in a place like this and somehow he still learned how to be gentle.

“Focus,” Dad snaps without looking back.

Nobody argues. Not after Adrian recognized the shuttle markings or after Aster admitted somebody else had been shadowing Rowan for years. Especially not after I checked his medical feed for the twentieth time before remembering there was nothing left to check.

The empty screen keeps flashing through my head anyway.

Cassian walks beside Sola with one hand resting near the weapon beneath his coat, dark eyes scanning every corridor we pass while his guards spread farther ahead through the tunnels.

Under normal circumstances, families like ours would’ve handled this through calls, meetings, and lawyers. Right now, we’re carrying weapons through underground tunnels because Rowan is somewhere ahead of us.

And every minute we spend walking is another minute he spends down here alone.

Dad asked whether I trusted Cassian Marrow enough for him to walk armed beside us through the underground districts of Düren. I told him I trust him exactly as much as he trusts us, but Rowan is the thing we’re both trying to protect.

And I especially hate that while I was standing in Caervast thinking I understood Rowan better than anyone else, Aster apparently knew exactly where he was the entire time.

She brought him to Sero. Then she stepped back and trusted people like Halvern and Cassian to keep him alive. She left him wondering whether he was losing his mind. Left him surrounded by people who kept telling him he was safe.

Thank fuck I was the one who kept finding him first.

I should’ve been the one protecting him.

“He’s underground,” Aster says, her voice tightening as we move deeper through the tunnels. “If the Orlov remnants took him, they’ll keep him somewhere hidden near the old Ward districts.”

Lucan frowns. “The Orlovs were wiped out years ago.”

“So everyone believed,” Aster says. “I spent months tracing the woman after Rowan’s scholarship was approved. Old Düren records. Black-market movement. Dead aliases reappearing underground.” Her mouth hardens. “She’s one of the last surviving Orlov leaders. The rest died when the family fell apart.”

Dad’s expression darkens.

Aster’s jaw sets. “She’s had men following Rowan since childhood. At first, he was just the boy who ended up with something he was never supposed to have. Then he left Düren, started playing Noctis, and somehow ended up attached to Angela Virel’s son. That’s when he became a problem.”

The words hit me like another punch to the ribs, because now every memory keeps replaying differently in my head. Rowan calling me half panicked in the middle of the night, telling me somebody had been standing outside his dorm again while I tried convincing him it was stress, paranoia, fear.

I should’ve fucking listened instead of climbing into his bed afterward and letting myself believe keeping him close was the same thing as keeping him safe.

The panic never fully leaves me. It just changes shape the deeper we move underground, stripping everything else away until all I can focus on is movement, exits, shadows, footsteps, and threats.

Find Rowan first. Fall apart later.

I keep seeing him running through the trees, shaking so badly he could barely stay upright while I stood frozen inside that fucking pavilion instead of following him. Every second since then has felt like another mistake stacked on top of the last one.

He looked terrified, and I let him run anyway.

I should’ve known something was wrong the moment he started shaking while playing.

Fuck the sequence. Fuck whatever Mom heard in those notes.

None of it matters now. I keep seeing Rowan looking at me from that stage, hurt and confused and waiting for something I never gave him before turning and running.

Dad told me three times on the way down here that beating myself up wouldn’t help Rowan. I know, and I also know that if he’s hurt because I let him leave that pavilion alone, I’m never going to forgive myself for it.

A noise echoes somewhere farther down the corridor.

Everybody stills.