shucked off. Dust and metal and smoke and sweat tickled his nose, and there were streaks of dirt and ash on the black cloth. Only a few daggers lay scattered nearby—no sign of Goldryn or Damaris having been moved from where he’d dumped them on the closet floor last night. No whiff of Lorcan, or the Valg. No scent of blood.
Either she hadn’t wanted to risk losing the ancient blades in a fight, or she hadn’t wanted the extra weight.
She was sprawled across the bed when he emerged, his jaw clenched. She hadn’t even bothered to wear one of those ridiculous nightgowns. She must have been exhausted enough not to bother with anything other than that oversized shirt. His shirt, he noticed with no small amount of male satisfaction.
It was enormous on her. It was so easy to forget how much smaller she was than him. How mortal. And how utterly unaware of the control he had to exercise every day, every hour, to keep her at arm’s length, to keep from touching her.
He glowered at her before striding out of the bedroom. In the mountains, he would have made her go on a run, or chop wood for hours, or pull extra kitchen duty.
This apartment was too small, too full of males used to getting their own way and a queen used to getting hers. Worse, a queen hell-bent on keeping secrets. He’d dealt with young rulers before: Maeve had dispatched him to enough foreign courts that he knew how to get them to heel. But Aelin …
She’d taken him out to hunt demons. And yet this task, whatever she had done, required even him to be kept in ignorance.
Rowan filled the kettle, focusing on each movement—if only to keep from throwing it through the window.
“Making breakfast? How domestic of you.” Aelin leaned against the doorway, irreverent as always.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping like the dead, considering your busy night?”
“Can we not get into a fight about it before my first cup of tea?”
With lethal calm, he set the kettle on the stove. “After tea, then?”
She crossed her arms, sunlight kissing the shoulder of her pale-blue robe. Such a creature of luxury, his queen. And yet—yet she hadn’t bought a single new thing for herself lately. She loosed a breath, and her shoulders slumped a bit.
The rage roaring through his veins stumbled. And stumbled again when she chewed on her lip. “I need you to come with me today.”
“Anywhere you need to go,” he said. She looked toward the table, at the stove. “To Arobynn?” He hadn’t forgotten for one second where they would be going tonight—what she would be facing.
She shook her head, then shrugged. “No—I mean, yes, I want you to come tonight, but … There’s something else I need to do. And I want to do today, before everything happens.”
He waited, restraining himself from going to her, from asking her to tell him more. That had been their promise to each other: space to sort out their own miserable lives—to sort out how to share them. He didn’t mind. Most of the time.
She rubbed at her brows with her thumb and forefinger, and when she squared her shoulders—those silk-clad shoulders that bore a weight he’d do anything to relieve—she lifted her chin. “There’s a grave I need to visit.”
She didn’t have a black gown fit for mourning, but Aelin figured Sam would have preferred to see her in something bright and lovely anyway. So she wore a tunic the color of spring grass, its sleeves capped with dusty golden velvet cuffs. Life, she thought as she strode through the small, pretty graveyard overlooking the Avery. The clothes Sam would have wanted her to wear reminded her of life.
The graveyard was empty, but the headstones and grass were well kept, and the towering oaks were budding with new leaves. A breeze coming in off the glimmering river set them sighing and ruffled her unbound hair, which was back now to its normal honey-gold.
Rowan had stayed near the little iron gate, leaning against one of those oaks to keep passersby on the quiet city street behind them from noticing him. If they did, his black clothes and weapons painted him as a mere bodyguard.
She had planned to come alone. But this morning she’d awoken and just … needed him with her.
The new grass cushioned each step between the pale headstones bathed in the sunlight streaming down.
She picked up pebbles along the way, discarding the misshapen and rough ones, keeping