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He smoothed a hand over her hair, pressing her cheek to his chest. “It’s okay. Let it out. I’m here. Everything is going to be okay.”

They stood like that until her sobs became hiccups. Wren pulled back and ran her fingers over the buttons of his tunic while she tried to pull herself together. A memory niggled in the back of her mind, and she frowned at his chest, staring at his blue tunic. There was something familiar about it.

Midnight blue…

Her gaze flew to his face. These were the same clothes that she’d seen his ghost wear the night before.

Abruptly, she pushed against Rowen’s chest, forcing him to let her go. Wren missed the security of his arms immediately, but that sensation was quickly overwritten by cold, heartbroken fury.

She placed a hand over her heart as if it would stop the pain.

“I saw you,” she murmured, trying to make sense of the situation. “Isawyou. You’ve been alive all this time.” Shaking now from rage rather than disbelief, she glared at Rowen. “Tell me the truth right now. Have you been following me this whole time?”

“Yes.”

Wren ran a shaking hand through her hair and stabbed a finger at him. “You let me believe you were dead. I mourned you!”

Rowen held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Wren, let me explain. I didn’t mean to hurt—”

She stepped into his space and slapped him. Hard.

“I deserve that,” Rowen muttered, rubbing at the stinging mark Wren had left on his cheek. He glanced at Vienne over Wren’s shoulder, then turned his attention back to her. “But we have a lot to talk about. You can leave your anger for later.”

She shook her head. “I’m not talking to you about anything.”

He squared his shoulders. “I see your temper hasn’t lessened.”

“Don’t you dare—Rowen, put me down!”

She yelled as he tossed her over his shoulder and carried her out of the tower room. Wren fired a betrayed glare at her aunt, though the older woman merely sighed and mouthed,See you later.

Like she’d ever trust Vienne again. The rebellion leader had kept this from Wren. She’d known about Rowen the entire time. She’d kept the fact that the man Wren had loved deeply and grieved immensely had survived the attack.

Angry tears ran down her cheeks; she pounded her fists against Rowen’s back as he carried her down the tower stairs to a new landing and into a smaller, more intimate room. All at once she wanted to run away and to cling to Rowen. Why did he pretend to be dead? How had he survived? Why hadn’t he come to her?

“I saw you,” Wren said, moments away from losing her mind entirely once more. Gently, Rowen put her down on a long, comfortable couch that reminded her of the one in her room in Lord Idril’s castle. A couch made for lounging in peace and quiet. Wren sat on it, stock-straight, and shifted away from Rowen when he sat down beside her. “I saw you dying. So how are youhere?”

At this Rowen smiled grimly. He rolled his shoulders forward, hunching slightly to make himself smaller and less threatening. It was such an achingly familiar gesture that Wren found herself crying once more.

“It’s funny what an excess of adrenaline can do,” he explained, voice calm and soothing. “Immediately after I made you and Britta leave me, your cousin appeared at my side.”

Wren blinked. “Clara helped you?”

“Yes. You knew she was training to be a surgeon, didn’t you? To work out at sea with the navy. If it weren’t for her…well, I wouldn’t be here.”

For a long moment, Wren let that sink in. “How is that possible? She was a slave in Idril’s castle.”

“She got me patched up and we were on our way to my grandparents’ when a patrol found us. She gagged and hid me. The soldiers took her.”

His grandparents.

Wren paled.

Britta.

“My sister,” Wren urged, forgetting her fury at Rowen not revealing himself sooner in the face of panic. She leaned toward him and gripped the front of his tunic in desperation. “Britta, is she—?”

“She’s safe, don’t worry,” Rowen was quick to reassure her. He smiled broadly then, all white teeth, affection, and no trace of a lie. “My grandparents still have her.”