Page 56 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

ARA

I needed out of there.

The cabin was heated, but it lacked…something. The air was too thin, the scent too old, too musty. A chill sank beneath my skin that no number of blankets could chase away, not even when I sat within a foot of the fireplace.

Sweat rolled down my spine, yet that uncomfortable chill remained.

Mother was here, though, and I shouldn’t want to leave her side, so I simply…

didn’t. I sat, biting the inside of my cheek, glancing at the window every so often, foot bouncing beneath my chair.

My fingers fidgeted with a loose string on one of my many covers until the stitch started to unravel, and I forced myself to stop, which resulted in bleeding cuticles as I turned to another distraction.

I felt Adonis’s lingering touch in her head, the sickening confirmation that he had, indeed, altered her memory. I didn’t have to ask to know what he changed. He was there the night Vaelor was murdered, and for some reason, he didn’t want her to remember his presence.

I couldn’t find a good enough reason to remove the manipulation from her head.

Doing so would only reopen the wound that had never fully healed, and there was no pressing reason to.

Her remembering the tragedy in its full capacity wouldn’t change anything but her, and she didn’t deserve to relive that night.

When Mother finally retired for a nap, I gave Edana a quick goodbye with no explanation and rushed out the door. It clicked shut, and I sucked in a deep, fresh, icy breath.

My heart hammered, the tension in my body ready to snap.

A large part of me wanted to bolt and run as far as my legs could carry me, but I forced my feet to stay planted where they were.

A cacophony resounded in my skull, yet I remained.

If I let myself take even one step right now, I’d run aimlessly and never stop.

None of it would ever end, and I’d be running with a beast on my heels for eternity, a beast I allowed to take a bite of me whenever it pleased. I didn’t fight it—or I hadn’t, not in quite a long while.

Images of Alden and his words floated into my head, a beacon of calm in a sea of chaos, and I desperately wished he were here. At the very least, alive.

I expected more time with him. I needed more time.

I’d hoped for years, decades spent in the library with him, reading different books but near each other, with only the sounds of crackling firewood, turning pages, and distant ocean waves.

I wanted to hear his stories about any and everything: the world, my father, his father, our family, his time with my mother, his mother, his mate.

I wanted to know him. Other than Mother, he had been the only family I had left.

Closing my eyes, I reclined my head on the door.

If I could hear his voice just one more time…

One minute, one measly phrase, or hell, even one word.

Whatever he chose to say, I knew it would be exactly what I needed to hear.

“Open your eyes,” he’d whisper. “There’s no calm to be found in the darkness of your panic.”

I had given up searching for the calm in anything months ago, but it was now that my heart sank and knotted in my gut. Not because Alden would’ve been saddened to witness my withering, but because I’d given up. I’d thrown myself to the wolves and just hoped they didn’t devour me.

I inhaled a deep breath and held it for a moment, then exhaled slowly, relaxing my fists and shoulders before opening my eyes. For the first time in Goddess knew how long, I searched.

A snowflake glided overhead, high above the trees, fluttering in the breeze as it fell.

Despite the twitch in my fingertips, the screaming in my legs to explode into a sprint, despite the icy cold slithering up my boots and beneath my sleeves and down my collar and the fear squeezing my hammering heart—I didn’t let my gaze waver. I held onto it like a lifeline.

Its descent was agonizingly long. Tears slid down my cheeks, my jaw clenched as numbness settled in my extremities, but the snowflake swirled and danced without a care in the world.

A fucking snowflake.

Of everything in existence—the Goddess, fate, creatures, nature, life itself, my mother, Rogue—I turned to a falling flake of ice.

I pressed my lips together and inhaled a deep breath through my nose, held it, then hissed it out slowly.

One.

Another breath.

Two.

Twenty-five breaths later, my lifeline disappeared into the thick blanket of snow on the forest floor, and I could think. I could breathe easily, without thought or force.

Calm.

The breeze was gentle, the evergreens still. Most animals were tucked away, but a hawk soared above the forest, its dark wings stark against the white, and the silence…

The soft silence of winter bled into me and lulled the chaos.

With another easy breath, the smallest spark of hope reignited in my heart, small but significant.

So significant.

If I must run, it had to be in the right direction, and there were only two: away from the inevitable or towards it.

I would face my fate head on, just as Mother had, her and Alden and Vaelor and…and Rogue.

Each step forward was slow and intentional, each one a decision I made.

Snow crunched under my boots, flakes landed in my hair, and cold snaked into every possible opening in my coat, nipping at my skin.

My cheeks were numb, my nose running, but I slowed even further with the faintest smile on my lips.

I couldn’t outrun the cold, so I would linger in it. I chose to linger in it.

Winter was not an entity. It couldn’t hurt me, and it didn’t hold those who could. It was nothing more than a season, a temperature, and I wouldn’t be afraid of a temperature.

That was what I told myself over and over, a mantra that carried me to the spell’s border as I followed the strange pull to Rogue.

I wouldn’t be afraid of a temperature, and I wouldn’t listen to the paranoid rambling in the back of my mind, whispering of chains and dungeons and water.

Deep breath.

I glanced down at my sleeve, at the delicate stars of ice speckling the black leather.

That wasn’t here, and I wasn’t there.

You’re safe, here, and alive.

The snow crunched beneath my boots and two layers of wool socks, because I chose to walk this path.

Safe, here, and alive.

My hands were tucked in my pockets, clad in leather gloves. My trousers were thick, and my coat fur-lined.

Deep breath.

Those chains had been destroyed. I’d heard the collapse of the tunnels; it had to be them. Nothing else could’ve shaken the world, and yet, I hadn’t brought it up to Rogue. Something had caused an explosion, and for some unfathomable reason—or maybe not so unfathomable—I knew he’d had a role in it.

Perhaps I’d been too distracted to ask, or simply too afraid to find out it wasn’t the tunnels after all and they still stood, ready for my return.

Deep breath.

I would not be returning.

No one would be, not as long as I could help it. If they weren’t already destroyed?—

My next step connected with the ground, and I froze.

Hundreds of tents stretched for miles.

Lifting a hand to my head, I checked for any sign of injury, then turned around, spying my footprints in the snow.

I wasn’t injured, and I had walked here.

One moment, there was nothing. The next, there was…everything.

Rogue told me he’d created a blood oath like Canyon, but I hadn’t expected it to be a Canyon-sized oath attached to one man.

“Oh,” someone breathed behind me, and I whirled, ripping my dagger from the sheath to hold it at my follower’s throat. The silver tip pressed into Doran’s skin, his expression mildly amused.

I held it there, arm trembling, heart pounding, and he didn’t move, not even when a drop of red rolled down his neck.

“You need to work on your situational awareness,” he said slowly, almost cautiously, as he nudged my arm away with the back of his hand, noticeably avoiding my wrist.

“I know.” I slid the dagger back into the sheath and silently cursed him—and myself. “How are you even here? Is everyone with you? The entire ship?”

He nodded. “Edana sent word to Iaso, although they don’t know about…this. At least, I don’t think they do.”

My lips parted, my head swiveling back to the sprawling camp. Rogue said he’d kept this a secret, and now they were all here, with no idea why they were here other than the fact that Rogue and I were.

But dear Goddess, it was hard to imagine hiding anything of this magnitude, yet I’d blindly stumbled into it. While I wasn’t in my most vigilant state—clearly—this wasn’t something one could simply miss.

Eyes followed us as we walked down the main path. Men and women were everywhere, strolling, eating, working, sparring. Chickens roamed, plucking at various seeds on the ground. A dozen horses were saddled and tied to a hitch, seemingly disgruntled by the?—

“Wvyern,” I whispered, swatting Doran’s shoulder.

It didn’t pay any mind to the horses’ unease; they huffed and pawed, shifting side to side while the wyvern slept, curled in on itself. When it lifted its head, its gaze slid past the horses, and warm amber eyes met mine.

Guardian sat beyond the tents on the edge of the forest.

Smiling faintly, I lifted my hand and waved. He blinked, then stood and spread his wings as if to show they were fully healed—his neck too, as he stretched it out.

My smile grew wider, but the horses grew frantic, and their owners rushed over. I stretched my arms out to the side, too, dipping into a faint bow as he had.

“Are you… communicating with it?” Doran asked.

“No.” Giving Guardian one last wave, I turned and tucked my hands behind my back, feeling slightly smug at the shock in Doran’s expression. “We’re just friends.”

“Friends,” he repeated with a nod.

“Yes, friends.” I scoffed a laugh. “Is it so hard to believe? Iaso is practically Aurum’s mother.”

He glanced at me sidelong before pressing his lips together and turning forward again.

“What?” I asked, humor gone.

“We were friends once, yes?”