Chapter Five My Wedding Night

For several seconds, I forgot how to breathe.

Rowan stood beside the window exactly as I remembered him.

Same black shirt.

Same sleeves rolled to his elbows.

Same dark hair that never quite stayed where it was supposed to.

He even had the small cut across his knuckles from sparring with Adrian that morning.

Four years had disappeared from his face.

The last time I'd seen him, he'd been kneeling in the rain with my blood on his hands.

Now he was twenty-four again.

Alive.

Untouched by everything that had happened to us.

"Mira?"

He took a step toward me.

I flinched.

Rowan stopped.

His expression changed.

Not much. Rowan had always been good at hiding what he felt.

But I know him better now.

Confusion.

"What's wrong?"

Everything.

I looked down at myself.

My hands were trembling.

I turned them over.

No silver light.

No blood.

No broken skin.

I pressed two fingers against my wrist.

A pulse answered.

Fast and strong.

I was alive.

A laugh escaped me.

Then, without warning, tears followed.

I covered my mouth.

Rowan moved again.

"Mira."

"Don't."

He stopped immediately.

That almost made me cry harder.

The Keeper hadn't lied.

I was back.

Not back on the road.

Back before any of it.

Before four years of separate bedrooms.

Before I stopped waiting up for Rowan.

Before Lena walked onto that road expecting a staged accident.

Before someone decided my unexpected presence was an opportunity to kill me.

I turned toward the bedside table.

There was the little silver clock Rowan's mother had given us.

Beside it sat a calendar.

I grabbed it.

The date stared back at me.

September seventeenth.

Our wedding night.

Exactly four years earlier.

I ran my thumb over the printed numbers.

This morning, I had died at twenty-six.

Tonight, I was twenty-two.

"Are you ill?"

Rowan's voice was cautious.

I looked at him.

It was almost cruel how normal he looked.

He didn't know that I'd watched him cry.

He didn't know about the box beneath his study.

He hadn't written all those letters yet.

Or maybe he'd already written the first.

Three weeks before our wedding.

If you ever learn why I married you, you may never forgive me.

My eyes went to his hands.

Those same hands had held my dead body as though letting go would kill him too.

"Mira?"

"Why did you marry me?"

The question came out before I could stop it.

Rowan became still.

There.

It was tiny, but I saw it.

A hesitation.

My old self wouldn't have noticed.

My old self had been too busy trying to make him happy.

"What kind of question is that?"

"A simple one."

"We discussed this."

No, we hadn't.

He had spoken.

I had accepted.

That was how most difficult conversations in our marriage had worked.

"Our packs benefit from the alliance," Rowan said.

I nearly laughed.

I wasn't even from a pack powerful enough to offer Silverpine a meaningful alliance.

The first time he'd given me that answer, I'd been so relieved he wanted to marry me that I hadn't questioned it.

Now it sounded ridiculous.

"That's not why."

His gaze sharpened.

"Where is this coming from?"

"Answer me."

"I just did."

"No. You gave me the answer you prepared."

Something moved across his face.

I couldn't tell whether it was annoyance or surprise.

Maybe both.

The room suddenly felt too small.

I got out of bed.

My legs nearly buckled.

Rowan reached for me on instinct.

I stumbled away before he touched me.

His hand remained suspended between us.

Something about his expression hurt.

Good.

No.

That thought came quickly.

I didn't want to hurt him simply because I could.

That wasn't why I'd come back.

I wasn't even sure why I had come back yet.

To survive?

To expose whoever had killed me?

To understand my bloodline?

To learn why Rowan had married me?

Maybe all of them.

But revenge against a man who hadn't done any of those things yet felt strangely hollow.

The problem was that I had.

I'd lived them.

My body might be twenty-two again, but I still remembered every closed door.

"Mira, look at me."

"I am looking at you."

That was the problem.

I could see two Rowans at once.

The man standing in front of me.

And the one kneeling over my body in the rain.

One had broken my heart.

The other had broken when mine stopped beating.

I didn't know which one made me angrier.

Rowan slowly lowered his hand.

"We should talk."

A bitter smile almost escaped me.

Of course.

Now he wanted to talk.

I remembered this night perfectly.

After the wedding celebrations, we'd come upstairs. I'd been nervous and embarrassingly excited.

I'd loved him for almost two years.

I'd thought the marriage meant he might finally love me too.

Then he'd stood at that window and destroyed every foolish little dream I'd brought into the room.

He was about to do it again.

I knew exactly what he'd say.

This is a political marriage, Mira.

You will have my name and my protection, but nothing else needs to change.

Don't expect me to become the husband you've imagined.

In my first life, I'd asked whether there was another woman.

He hadn't answered.

I cried after he left.

Then I woke up the next morning and started trying to earn something he had already decided not to give me.

Not this time.

Rowan walked toward the armchair.

"This marriage—"

"Is political."

He stopped.

I continued.

"I'll have your name. Your protection. And nothing else needs to change."

His eyes narrowed.

"How did you know I was going to say that?"

My stomach dropped.

Careful.

The Keeper had returned my memories, not common sense apparently.

I looked away.

"It isn't difficult to guess. You've been avoiding me since the ceremony ended."

That was true enough.

Rowan studied me.

I could almost see him deciding whether to believe it.

Finally, he said, "Then you understand."

"I understand more than I did this morning."

Much more.

He frowned.

"But there's one thing I don't understand."

"What?"

"If this is nothing except politics, why can't we divorce?"

His expression changed immediately.

There it was again.

Too fast to hide.

Alarm.

Interesting.

"I didn't say I wanted one," I added.

Not yet.

"But I'm asking."

"Divorce isn't an option."

"Why?"

"Because we got married today."

"That explains why it would be embarrassing. Not why it's impossible."

"Mira."

"There's my name again. Still not an answer."

He stared at me.

I had never spoken to him this way.

Apparently neither had twenty-two-year-old me.

"You've had too much wine."

I blinked.

Then I laughed.

I genuinely couldn't help it.

Rowan looked offended.

"I had half a glass."

"Then you're exhausted."

"Possibly."

"You should sleep."

"And you should answer questions."

His mouth flattened.

There was the Rowan I remembered.

When a conversation moved somewhere he didn't want it to go, he shut the door.

Sometimes literally.

"Not tonight."

Four years of resentment stirred inside me.

I could have pushed.

I could have told him I knew about the danger. The Council. The black pin. The letters he'd hidden beneath his study.

But showing my hand now would be stupid.

I had one advantage.

Nobody knew what I knew.

I wasn't wasting it on our first conversation.

"Fine."

Rowan looked suspicious.

"What?"

"I said fine."

"You're dropping it?"

"For tonight."

That didn't seem to reassure him.

Good.

I walked to the other side of the bed and pulled back the covers.

"You can go now."

His eyebrows drew together.

"Go where?"

I stared at him.

This was almost funny.

"The other bedroom."

He said nothing.

"That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

A pause.

"Yes."

In my first life, that one word had shattered me.

This time, it merely hurt.

Apparently rebirth didn't make me immune to old wounds.

I climbed into bed.

"Goodnight, Rowan."

He didn't move.

I looked at him.

"Was there something else?"

"No."

He turned toward the door.

His hand reached the handle.

Then he stopped.

"Mira."

I waited.

"If anyone approaches you about your family—especially your mother's family—you come to me."

Every muscle in my body tightened.

My mother.

Neither of us had mentioned her tonight in my first life.

At least, not that I remembered.

"Why?"

Rowan looked at me for a long moment.

"Just do it."

There it was.

Protection without explanation.

The beginning of everything.

This time, I wasn't mistaking it for enough.

"You really need to learn how to answer a question."

His expression did something unexpected.

For half a second, Rowan almost smiled.

Then it vanished.

"Lock the door after me."

He left.

I waited until his footsteps disappeared.

Then I locked it.

I leaned against the wood and closed my eyes.

I'd done it.

The first night was already different.

Only slightly.

But different.

That should have made me feel powerful.

Instead, I slid down the door and sat on the floor.

My hands began shaking again.

I was alive.

I was actually alive.

A sob caught in my throat.

This time, I let it come.

I cried for the woman who'd died on that road.

For the four years she'd lost.

For the husband she'd never understood.

For the friend who betrayed her without knowing how much her betrayal would cost.

And maybe a little because I had no idea what I was supposed to do tomorrow.

Eventually, the tears stopped.

I wiped my face with both hands.

"All right."

My voice sounded ridiculous in the empty bedroom.

"First, stay alive."

Then I would figure out the rest.

I started to stand.

Pain stabbed beneath my ribs.

I gasped.

My hand flew to my chest.

Not again.

Silver light flashed beneath my skin.

Once.

Twice.

Then came a sound.

Thump.

I froze.

Thump.

It wasn't my heartbeat.

Mine was already racing beneath my palm.

This came from somewhere deeper.

Somewhere impossible.

I backed against the door.

"What is that?"

Silence.

Then a woman's voice answered from inside my own head.

Sleepy.

Faint.

But unmistakably there.

Finally,

I stopped breathing.

The voice spoke again.

I've been waiting for you.