did. Besides, I had a feeling Rowe might have a few choice words for me that I didn’t want anyone else to hear.
My legs were wobbly when I hit the ground, but they held me up. I slowly pulled in my sore wings, not wanting to look at the burned and broken feathers. I was lucky I’d been able to take flight at all. Rowe’s wings disintegrated almost as soon as his feet touched the earth, while I was slower to remove mine. He stood before me and roughly turned me to the left and then to the right, pulling out small crossbow darts still embedded in my body.
“Does Cynnia know?” I asked, finally breaking the silence that had grown so thick I could hardly breathe.
“No.”
“How did you—”
“Because I’m not the fucking novice you take me for,” Rowe snapped at me. “I taught you that spell. Did you honestly think I would ever teach you something you could use against me?”
“How long were you following me?”
“Almost from the moment you took to the skies.” He paced away from me before spinning back around. “Do you have any idea what it was like watching you march into that camp and know that I couldn’t follow you? Do you know what it’s like waiting to see if you could actually make it back to a place where I might be of some help to you?” He grabbed both of my shoulders in his strong hands and gave me a hard shake. “I couldn’t follow you into the camp because they would have sensed me. I had to hope that you had enough smarts to get yourself out again.”
I jerked out of his grasp and took a step back. “I was managing fine on my own.”
“At first maybe, but when I last saw you, you were laying facedown on the ground waiting for those bastards to shove a knife in your back!”
And he was right. I had been managing on my own until I fell. Then Rowe bought me the crucial seconds I needed to escape the naturi chasing us. By some slim chance I might have been able to make it to the clearing on my own, where I could easily strike down my opponents, but Rowe ensured that I made it out of the woods alive, and I owed him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, bowing my head to him. “You’re right. I would never have made it out of there without your assistance.”
Rowe cupped my face with both of his rough hands and kissed me deeply. His tongue thrust into my mouth, claiming possession, reassuring him that I was safe and alive. I kissed him back, sighing deeply as I put both of my hands on his chest. Beneath the palm of one hand, I could feel his heart beating like a frightened hare. Anger gilded his words for now, but behind those words was a looming fear that I had nearly been killed.
Slowly, he broke off the kiss and leaned his forehead against mine. His breathing was heavy, sounding more labored now than when we were on the run. “If you ever do something stupid like that again, I’m going to kill you myself. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I needed to know something,” I murmured, closing my eyes as I took a deep breath. He smelled of summer rain and freshly dug earth. Heat radiated off him, chasing away the chill left by the spring rainstorm.
“What?” he demanded, finally releasing me so he could step away and clearly look me in the face. “What did you have to know so badly that you had to risk your life and mine?”
I was about to argue that I had never intended to risk his life, but I swallowed the sentence before it could leave my throat. If he caught me sneaking out of the house, then there was no question that he was going to follow me wherever I went.
“I wanted to talk to Aurora one last time. I wanted to try to reason with her,” I said. “I thought that maybe now that she had been on the earth for a while, the sickness in her brain could have passed. I thought she might have healed and was thinking more clearly.”
“She’s insane, Nyx! There’s no changing that,” Rowe snapped. “Nerian spent his entire existence on earth and it didn’t stop him from losing his grasp of reality, particularly when it came to Mira. Our only choice is to stop Aurora.”
“I had to know.”
“Why? Why was this more important than your own life?”
“I had to know before we went into battle. She’s my sister, Rowe.”
“Aurora never cared about you,” he snarled, beginning to pace again. “You said it yourself—that she used you. In the few years we were together, I saw how she despised and abused you. Everyone saw it.”
“She’s still my sister,” I repeated, my voice starting to waver. “And there was something else that I had to know.”
“What?”
I hesitated, staring down at the ground as I struggled to organize my fragmented thoughts. As I stood before Rowe, I realized what kind of a liability I was becoming.
“I had a shot at her and I didn’t take it,” I admitted in a soft voice.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. It probably would have resulted in both our deaths, but I didn’t do it and I should have. Killing Aurora today in her own camp would have stopped the war. It would have spared you, Cynnia, and countless other naturi. If I had just killed Aurora today, I could have given our people a second chance. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Nyx, it doesn’t mean—”
“But it does. I don’t think I can kill her,” I admitted, hating to even utter the words aloud.
“She’s hated you since the moment you were born,” Rowe argued, shoving one hand through his hair in frustration. “I have no doubt that she can sense you are more powerful than her. She’s paranoid and jealous when it comes to you. And as you saw tonight, Aurora will not hesitate to kill you.”
I shook my head at him, knowing I would never be able to get him to understand my feelings. “You’re not telling me anything that I don’t already know. But in the end, she is my sister and she is my queen, despite all the promises I have made to Cynnia. I will defend and protect Cynnia with every breath in my body, but I also can’t kill Aurora.”
Rowe heaved a heavy sigh as he reached up and placed one hand against the back of my head. He pulled me forward and pressed a gentle kiss against my forehead. “Then I guess you will have to leave me to the task of killing her.”
“Do you honestly think you can?” I asked when he pulled back and I could look him directly in the eye.
“She’s tried to kill both me and you. I think that’s enough to sign her death warrant. I can’t leave someone that wants me dead walking around.”
“What about the Fire Starter?”
Rowe gave a sharp bark of laughter before pressing another quick kiss to my lips, leaving me feeling more than a little confused. “Mira’s the only real challenge left in this world, and it seems that we’re allies instead of enemies for now. I guess the Great Mother had a plan for the Fire Starter after all. Otherwise, I’m quite sure I would have succeeded in killing her already.”
With a shake of my head, we started walking across the field, back toward Savannah. We wouldn’t enter the city again until the sun was preparing to set. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Cynnia’s hidden location until I knew there was another layer of protection in place. Exhaustion weighed on my shoulders. I was both physically tired and emotionally sick. When the final battle came and went, at least one of my sisters was going to be dead. In the end, I could only hope that the Great Mother had a plan for us all.
Thirty-two
The first sound to greet me the next evening was the soft warble of Danaus’s cell phone. A smile lifted the corners of my mouth as I rolled over, shifting my legs in the smooth cotton sheets. The fabric felt good against my naked body, and a deep feeling of security swept through me as I thought of Danaus guarding me throughout the day. Opening my eyes, I found the hunter sitting in a comfortable chair at the foot of the bed, facing me. He had just closed his cell phone and was shoving it into his pocket again. There was no smile to greet me
