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fifteen

Dove

B lazing heat curls across my face and down my dangling bare arms. Raw, guttural screams reach my ears, some close, others too far out—they whoosh past me like troubled phantoms on their way into the afterlife. My eyes crack open, taking in the flames that are spreading quickly through the town.

The people… they’re on fire , a small petrified voice whispers in my head.

It takes everything in me to lift my head against the pressing weight of gravity, but when I do, I get a glimpse of Rowan’s malachite-colored eyes through the hollows in his skull mask. Above him, a flock of doves flies on a race to nowhere.

Rowan looks ahead, cold and determined, as he carries me back to safety in his tight grasp. Gratitude… and… and an overbearing need to crawl under his skin and never leave that place wash over me. My heart flutters, and my fingertips charge with electricity. I want to touch him, but I can’t. I’m so weak that my head falls back.

“Y-You came,” I whisper through the chaos going on around us. He can’t hear me, I know he can’t. But the way his arms tighten around me right at this moment feels as though he answers back, “I’m sorry I took so long.”

Fading in and out, I catch glimpses of movement. The sway of Rowan’s walk. The pounding of boots on stone and dirt. And the next time I stir awake… I’m back in our bedroom, with the sun shining brightly on my face through the large open windows.

And then… through fluttering eyelashes, I see him. All of him.

A huge man once calm, collected, and imposing—now broken with a feeling I recognize too well on his face as he sleeps on the chair next to our bed. In the way his lips tighten. In the way his brows pull together, as if he’s still there, stuck in that town, between those blazing people, still looking for me. In the way his shoulders bear all the weight of everything that went on, from the moment I slipped between his fingers and disappeared into thin air. He’s a sight to behold, and perhaps one of the few that shows me he too is human. It’s then when I realize Rowan’s pain pulses in silence, never revealing itself to me or to the others that count on him. But this time, I see him—I see him for all that he is, and I love him harder.

And when his eyes crack open, circled with signs of little sleep, he sees me too. And he groans. Like an injured animal with wounds only he can see—and feel .

“Angel,” he rasps, his voice almost broken. My chest tightens at the sound of it. “My good little angel. I’m here. Tell me what hurts.”

Such tenderness in his eyes… such emphasis on those few simple words that I know are working like a strong dam against the flood of everything he wants to say to me.

He gets up in a swift movement, the bed squeaking softly as his weight presses down on it. His scent—the leather and pine and amber I know too well—envelops me, drawing a trembling breath out of my lungs. My heart pauses as his scarred hand cups my cheek, then for the first time in God knows how long… my entire body goes slack— sags —as if to say, ‘We’re home now.’

“Rowan.” My voice breaks, but travels to him. “T-Thank you. Thank you for finding me,” is all I can muster.

His other hand takes mine, and a gentle kiss brushes the cushions of my palm before he whispers, “Tell me what hurts.”

But I scan my body from top to bottom, and nothing does. Not the cut on my arm, now bandaged and held in place. Not my lungs, nor my throat, nor my head from the dizziness I got used to while being in my cell. I wonder what he did to fix all of that as I shake my head, the sheets rustling when I move closer to him and lean against his chest. Then his arms are around me, and all is right in the world again. A lie, of course—a blatant lie, knowing so much more has happened that carries repercussions into the present. But it’s a lie I’m willing to embrace, only if just enough to take away my pain.

Closer, closer, closer he pulls me to him until our bodies meet as one, and there’s no more room in between.

“You were so brave, angel. So brave.”

No, I wasn’t, that same voice speaks in my head. If only you knew.

“I was s-so scared.” My throat closes in on itself, causing a ball of pain to appear in that exact spot. There’s so much I want to say to him, but my voice is stuck somewhere deep inside, refusing to come out. “I t-tried…”

“I know you did, angel,” he coos, his voice almost breaking with sorrow and regret as he presses his callused palms against the side of my face and my back. “I know you did. But I’m here now. I’ve got you.”

I nod as best I can, clutching his clothes tightly, as if I’m still not sure he’s real—that he could be another one of my dreams or hallucinations. But the feel of his warm skin pulsing with life against mine and the wall of muscle and comfort he envelops me with kill any shred of doubt.

He’s here. And he’s got me.

Minutes pass and I allow myself to weep in his arms, to be held and loved like I haven’t been in so long. To replace all the hard hands that touched me and replenish my memories with the feeling of him. I cry and he whispers in my ear, telling me things, like how he hunted down the man who took me, how he found out where I was, and how he spent every minute of every day looking for me for the past two weeks.

Weeks.

I’ve been gone for two weeks.

The events take shape in my mind, taking me there with him, to the hills where he buried people and to the old bar where he poisoned some. I live through his memories, replacing mine, feeling the itch of revenge flow through my veins as if I were him and looking for what they stole from me.

He could’ve given up. He could’ve tried and then given up, thinking I was lost or too difficult to get to. But his goal never wavered, never let up. The monster that Rowan King describes himself to be is the kind of man any woman would be lucky to have in her life. I can’t even begin to imagine the horrors he went through all this time. The horrors I would’ve gone through had the situation been reversed.

My cries die down, and I sniff, pushing the words out. “What happened in that town? There was…” I swallow. “There was fire. And people were screaming…”

He lets out a long, heavy sigh. “I brought you home. Had a doctor come in and see you, and he hooked you up to an IV.”

Remembering the state Hawke found me in, I shiver, then clutch Rowan’s black T-shirt in my hands.

“I’m sorry I took so long. I…” His fingers dig into my hair. “I was desperate, desperate to get to you. But I will always find you, Dove. In this life and the next, and no matter where you try to hide from me. I will always find you.”

He breathes into my skin, holding me close as what I hope it is the last of my tears slide down my cheeks.

“I was so afraid,” I say again, my voice almost as quiet as a whisper. “Those people… they’re monsters. And even after everything that happened, I still don’t think they did everything they wanted to do to me.” I think back to the moment that man touched me, shuddering. “At night, I could hear the others screaming from the cells next to mine. They sounded so afraid. So unbelievably alone. What did those men do to deserve that? I just… I don’t understand.”

Rowan hushes me softly, pulling my head back so I can look into his eyes. They look tortured, and the sight breaks my heart. “We don’t have to talk about it right now. But whenever you feel ready…”

I close my eyes, reliving the whole thing in my head. “They didn’t… I wasn’t raped.” I can practically feel his body sag next to me with relief. “Someone tried to touch me one day but there was this man,” my face scrunches up, “who tried to help me.”

“What man? Do you know his name?”

I don’t want to say it, the guilt overpowering me. But I have to. I know I have to tell the world what I did if I want any chance at forgiving myself.

“Magnus,” I say, opening my eyes but looking to the side, avoiding Rowan’s stare. “He was working with Cole, but I didn’t know it right away. I thought he came into my cell to…” I stop, finding the courage to look back into his eyes. But the courage never comes. “Rowan, I did something really terrible.”

A tear spills out of the flood in my eyes, touching my cheek. I inhale sharply, the air shaking in my lungs.

“Hey,” he murmurs, gently wrapping his fingers around my chin and bringing my gaze back to him. “Anything you had to do to survive is completely justifiable. Do you understand me?”

I look up at him from under my wet eyelashes. “Magnus came in and gave me a knife to protect myself,” I whisper. “But Salister found out about it. And he said… that if I didn’t k-kill him, he’d let all his men use me until… until I wouldn’t recognize myself.”

Rowan closes his eyes, drawing in a slow, steady breath that barely softens the sharp edge of his wrath and pain. His lips press together as he exhales, as if he’s trying really hard to control himself.

“But I didn’t choose—I couldn’t. And then when they came in to do exactly what he’d said, I begged them not to touch me. I didn’t realize then that not choosing any option was only giving them the power to choose for me. So they made me do it—forced my hand onto the knife that killed Magnus. I could’ve tried to kill the guard instead, but I was so mortified by everything, I just froze and let everything happen before my eyes. And now… now Magnus is gone, and it’s all my fault.”

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath, terror swimming into the green of his eyes.

Terror, but not for living through my experience in his head, I know that. But for what it did to me, for knowing a monster now lives inside my mind, one that he can’t fight for me, can’t protect me from. For knowing I’ve seen things I still can’t comprehend. Before being taken, I’d never even seen a dead body in a casket at a funeral. I was always too afraid to look. And now… to think that I saw body parts, actual body parts scattered throughout that tunnel… to think that I sank a knife into someone’s flesh…

“Listen to me, Dove. That man… he wasn’t your friend. Okay? He wasn’t your fucking friend. And don’t make it sound like you had a choice. You know damn well that you didn’t. They forced you into it, and I am so sorry you had to do it, angel, but you did nothing wrong. Fuck… you’re too pure. Too fucking pure for this world.”

I sob uncontrollably, ashamed of myself for being so weak. The thought of ending things comes back to the front of my mind. I look up at Rowan and I know there’s not much that would faze this powerful man, but losing me might be the one thing that could destroy him. He holds and comforts me as best he can, but it does little to ease my pain this time.

I don’t know how to deal with this feeling of utter hopelessness.

I really don’t.