Page 38 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

“In the War of Brothers, she abandoned us—abandoned me. She said to wait for her, and I did. I waited for hours.” She spun a gold ring around her finger.

“She was supposed to bring reinforcements of some kind: a human army, ships, a creature, something. She said she had something that would turn the tides. Stryath counted on us, but she never came. Stryath died that night—the Draki line died that night.”

Ara asked incredulously, “All of that, and you still trust her to find this weapon?”

“I trust that she believes this weapon exists,” Iaso said. “Not that she’ll bring it to us when the time comes. We’ll have to find it on our own.”

“First,” I ground out. “We’ll have to find it first .”

“Yes.” Iaso sighed and scanned the room. Finding an urn, she poured a hefty glass of wine.

“What was her excuse?” I demanded. “For not showing. For failing an entire kingdom, an entire bloodline.”

Her hand paused halfway to her mouth. She grimaced and uttered, “She never gave one.”

Red tinted my vision.

Where are you? I asked Guardian.

Close.

Moments later, his dark form flashed by the porthole, coasting over the waves.

Do you see Calypso?

Instead of words, he pulled me through his eyes. I blinked a few times, my hands gripping the table edge. Fuck, Guardian. Warn me next time.

Ara’s voice floated in my ears. I felt her hand on my forearm. She tugged me. Touched my face. Turned it to her.

I couldn’t see her, though. I couldn’t see any of them.

I stared down at Calypso, and she peered up at Guardian, a hand shielding her eyes. Her head cocked before she backed away one cautious step at a time. She glanced at the hatch, then the ocean.

A heartbeat later, she darted.

We dove.

She gasped and sprinted to the edge of the ship at full speed. Throwing herself over the rail, she plunged into the sea and?—

She slipped beneath the waves without so much as a ripple.

What was that? I asked.

Guardian flapped his wings, sending a gust of wind that billowed Ewan’s navy sails. With another thrust, the ship swayed, and he rose higher in the sky. She is the sea wench, no?

I blinked and found silver eyes. Ara’s shoulders sagged on a breath of relief before she jerked her hands from my body, cheeks red.

Iaso moved to swat my shoulder. “My Goddess, you scared?—”

I caught her wrist, my anger faster than my thought. “Don’t.”

Her chest heaved, her golden gaze roaming my form when I shoved her arm away. Ewan gaped, eyes churning like angry seas, and his hand…

I released a throaty laugh.

Ewan palmed the hilt at his hip.

“Go ahead,” I urged him. “Draw your sword.”

Iaso whirled to him. “Ewan!”

With a jaw tight enough to break teeth, he raised his hands in front of him. “Be more careful with her.”

Ara took my hand, and the tension in my spine escaped through where her skin met mine.

“What happened?” she asked.

I looked to Iaso as I answered, “The sea wench can travel by water.”

Her head jerked back in surprise. “How?—”

“That’s how she got here, isn’t it?”

“I knew there hadn’t been any ships nearby,” Ewan said, then paused. He faced Iaso, brows pulling together. “But you didn’t…”

Iaso gave him an apologetic look. “After she refused to even offer an excuse or explanation, I cut all ties with her. I never spoke to her again. Not until I woke in her room a few days ago.”

“We can’t trust her,” Ara breathed, one hand tight in mine, the other fidgeting with the front of her blouse.

As the sun kissed the distant horizon, rays of burning orange beamed through the western porthole and bathed Ara. The flames of sunset illuminated her silver eyes.

Treasure, a beast whispered—my beast. I gazed at my claimed, pupils slitted, suddenly jealous that the sun caressed more of her than I did.

Iaso broke my trance when she spoke again, “Trust in that she wouldn’t have come if she didn’t believe in that weapon.”

I tore my eyes from Ara, though every instinct in my body screamed to return to her. To free her from her clothing, so I could see more of her—all of her. To run my hands over every inch of her bare skin. To feel infinitely more of her than the sun ever could.

“For reasons of her own, she wants him dead, too, so while you should take everything she says with a grain of salt and suspicion, you should listen carefully.” Iaso took a long gulp of wine.

“She has an excess of experience in prying into the heads of others. If there’s a weapon to be found, she’ll find it. ”

My head snapped up.

“Say that again,” I growled, voice low and gravelly as my dragon clawed its way forward. I slammed my free hand on the table, smoke rising where my palm scorched the wood. “Say that she has experience prying in heads again. ”

Ara’s hand trembled in mine. “She traveled through the water. She…disappeared in the water? Just like…”

I didn’t reply as Ara pieced it together.

Her breaths turned shallow as she fell back a step, but I didn’t let her go any farther, tethered to me by her hold on my hand.

“She—he—” Ara’s eyes refocused on Iaso’s face. “I heard you. While I was unconscious, I heard you both. You knew. You knew she had a son. You knew he was her son.”

“Not at first,” she said. “Not until I saw him—the resemblance to Adrastus. Then, I felt her magic running through his veins.”

“We can’t trust her,” I said flatly. “We can’t trust either of you.”

Iaso’s eyes glowed like molten gold. “I’ve taken care of you for nearly twenty-seven years.

Loved you for longer. If there is one person in this world you can trust, it’s me.

” She jabbed a finger at her chest. “What was I supposed to do? Run to tell you? Would you have preferred that while Ara was fighting for her life? Or right after she woke, terrified and confused? Any time between now and the moment I found out three days ago would have been the wrong time, because you suffocated your humanity! I knew exactly how you’d react, because Adrastus smothered his too, and I knew him—I knew how he’d react. ”

Her hand went to her mouth. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

She wasn’t wrong, though. I’d suffocated the empathy that separated me from him.

I could practically hear his cackle from beyond the grave.

“Rogue, I…”

“Don’t apologize.” I turned for the door. “It wouldn’t change anything.”

Ara resisted my tug.

“The dagger,” Iaso urged. “We still need to find the dagger, with or without Calypso’s help.”

Ara dragged her feet. “She wants to kill her son?”

“It’s complicated—please. Rogue, stop.”

I pinched Ara’s chin and forced her to look at me as I warned, “Either walk or you go back over my shoulder.”

Her lips parted, but she nodded and followed down the hall.

From the doorway, Iaso said, “I’ll write to Mors, the bookstore owner in Canyon. He has an extensive archive.”

Ara stole another glance at her. “What are you?”

I almost stopped to hear her answer. She hadn’t confessed what she was in King’s Port, and she didn’t here, either. I didn’t know what or who she was, only that she was a liar.

An immortal liar, as was Calypso, and Adonis?—

No, I refused to believe it.

As we strode toward our room, a blind faith in the lost weapon’s existence settled in my bones. It existed because it had to. We would find it, because we had to, and if it didn’t exist yet, it would. I’d will it into fucking existence, because the alternative—there was no alternative.

My anger simmered as silence stretched on, broken only by the sound of our footsteps and the groaning of a moving ship. Rain tapped against the wood and speckled the porthole glass.

“Is this your rain?” I asked quietly.

“Not this time,” she replied.

Not this time. Other times, though.

She slowed to a stop, her gaze lingering on the view of the sea. It was pitch black beneath the stormy night. All that remained visible were the droplets of water on the glass, illuminated by the faint flickering of a nearby heating lamp.

When the wind picked up, rain hit the window, and she flinched, her hand covering her face.

I stared…and stared and stared. Thunder rumbled in my ears, and I couldn’t be sure if it was the sea storm or my own heart.

Ara was afraid of the storm.

Ara Wrynwood, the damned Storm Bringer, but more importantly, the woman who, even as a human, found comfort in the sky—in rain itself—was afraid of the storm.

I clenched my jaw when she turned away from the glass and continued walking, stiffer than she had been moments ago.

My first instinct was to scoop her up and fly us far from here, even though I hadn’t been able to do that in three long months.

Without my wings, we were trapped aboard a ship chock full of lies and secrets. We couldn’t just walk off into the middle of the ocean, and Guardian couldn’t land aboard the ship without capsizing it before we reached his wing.

We couldn’t leave, but I could keep others out of our room with a blood boundary like the one over Vaelor’s nook. It couldn’t be much different from the blood oath I’d already achieved.

An ache spread from my clenched jaw to my temples. Tension coiled in my chest, ready to snap with talons and teeth and fire—a tension Ara eased with a few, simple words.

“You’re not him, you know.”

My feet slowed this time. Flames flared in the heating lanterns that swayed along the wall.

She offered me a half smile, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “I don’t really know you, but I do know you plan to save this realm from a tyrant. Adrastus wouldn’t have done that.”

A spark flickered in my chest—a match struck but not caught, heat without flame, gone in a breath.

The storm had stilled into eerie silence when I woke a few hours later to a weight settling over me, something cold pressed to my neck.

I opened my eyes to find Ara with a dagger to my throat, her eyes soulless, void.

They glowed but didn’t crackle, two moons drifting in and out of a foggy sky. She didn’t see me. I didn’t know who she thought she looked at, who she thought she straddled , but I could guess, and I didn’t fucking like it.

Her blank stare bore into my eyes, her body motionless but tense.

“Ara,” I warned.

She pressed the dagger harder, and I clenched my jaw, lifting my chin as my hand slid over her hip.

I grabbed her wrist with my other hand, holding it still as I lifted my head and dug into the blade, gritting my teeth against the sting. A rivulet rolled down the side of my throat, thick and warm. Her gaze tracked it until it sank into the pillow.

“Kill me if you must, if that’s what it takes to slay your demons,” I murmured. Her eyes snapped back to mine, her normal silver, and I tightened my grip on her hip. “Death cannot keep me from you.”

When I pushed further into the blade, life returned to her eyes, horrified. She threw the dagger across the room where it sank into the wall, buried to the hilt.