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Something sharp twists through my chest. “You think I would’ve left you down there?”

Rowan doesn’t answer, and somehow that hurts even worse. “You looked at me differently in the pavilion.”

There it is again, the real thing sitting underneath everything else.

“You looked at me like you didn’t know who I was anymore.”

The words land, and I can’t answer right away. Because he’s right. I did.

Not because I stopped knowing him, but because everything I thought I understood shifted beneath my feet, and for a moment I was terrified I was losing him before I even understood what was happening.

I move closer, one hand reaching carefully toward his face, but I stop halfway. I still haven’t recovered from the way he pulled away from me earlier.

“I was terrified,” I admit. “Not disgusted. Not angry at you. Terrified.”

Rowan watches me silently for several long seconds, exhaustion hollowing out his expression beneath the bruises. “You were still pulling away from me before all this happened.”

The words land hard, because he’s right.

“I thought if I gave myself too much to you, I wouldn’t survive losing you.”

His breathing catches. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.” A humorless breath leaves me. “None of this does.”

Rain taps softly against the windows as Rowan studies me with that same careful expression he always gets before he plays something difficult on the Noctis.

“Then why come for me?” His voice is almost too quiet to hear.

Because I lied to him, to myself, to everybody around us, and hearing Rowan ask that question out loud makes something inside me hurt badly enough that I can’t even pretend anymore.

“You were never temporary to me, Rowan.”

I take his swollen hand carefully between both of mine, holding it gently enough that he doesn’t tense this time.

Something breaks across his face so quickly he turns toward the windows before I can fully see it. “Ciaran…”

“I mean it.” My thumb strokes slowly across his bruised knuckles, and a shaky breath escapes him. “I tried putting distance between us because every time you got closer, it stopped feeling like something I could control anymore. You make me feel insane sometimes. You sit beside me at the Noctis or fall asleep against my chest and none of the things I’m supposed to care about matter the same way anymore.”

He finally looks back at me then, bruised and exhausted beneath the dim light, still hurting badly enough that every breath looks painful, but he watches me like some part of him wants to believe every word anyway.

“You really came for me,” he whispers again.

I shift closer carefully until our foreheads rest together. “Oh, baby, don’t you understand? I’ll always come for you.”

32

ROWAN

Iwake slowly this time, not from pain or panic, but because warm light keeps slipping across my face through enormous windows somewhere nearby.

For a moment, I just stare upward, struggling to remember where I am. The ceiling rises far above me beneath soft recessed lighting, dark stone stretching into shadows while pale morning sunlight spills across polished floors and furniture I don’t recognize. Somewhere farther across the room, water moves behind glass.

Everything feels unfamiliar, too quiet and too clean after the tunnels. For one horrible second, I wonder whether any of it was real.

Then my ribs throb, dragging a gasp out of me.

“Easy.”