Chapter 4: Rowan

Elara

The stairs had never felt so long.

Elara climbed them with one hand on the rail and the other pressed flat against her ribs, as if she could hold two wolves in place by force. Behind her, the sitting room had gone silent. Nobody had tried to stop her when she stood up. Mother had only turned the tea tray another quarter inch while watching her go.

On the landing, outside the last door in the hall, Elara stopped.

She pressed the heels of both hands hard against her eyes until the heat behind them settled into something she could manage. Then she wiped her cheeks and rolled her shoulders. She wore a practiced smile at first, but decided to just let it go.

Then she knocked twice, the way she always did, and pushed the door open.

The room smelled of mint and old fever. A single lamp burned on the side table, throwing more shadow than light, and the curtains were drawn. Rowan sat propped against a mountain of pillows that seemed determined to swallow him whole. His hair, dark like hers, had grown shaggy past his ears. And his wrists, lying on top of the blanket, were thinner than she remembered from last week.

He looked up from the book in his lap and arched one eyebrow.

"Finally," he said. His voice was rough, but the edge in it was pure Rowan. "I was starting to think they'd lock you in the wine cellar until you agreed to something."

Elara closed the door and leaned back against it. "You heard?"

"Well, the acoustics in this house are excellent. It's like having a private theater for people who can't leave their beds." He coughed once into his fist, a dry sound that went on a fraction too long. When it passed, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and studied her. "Two wolves?... I always said you were an overachiever."

"It's not funny."

"It's a little funny really." He tipped his head. "Do they get along? Or is one of them sulking in the corner and the other one rearranging the furniture?"

A surprised laugh escaped her. It was crooked and wet, and it hurt in her throat, but it felt like the first real breath she had taken since two in the morning.

"One's actually sulking," she admitted. "While the other one cries."

"Hmm, that sounds like family."

She crossed the room and dropped into the chair by the bed. The wood was worn smooth from years of her sitting in it. A Blackthorn healer had been here three days ago. The sharp scent of the last treatment still clung to the sheets, bitter herbs and something metallic underneath, and the sight of the empty tincture bottles lined up on the table made her chest ache.

"So," Rowan said. "You're now the new bride of Blackthorn."

"Nobody's said I'll do it."

"Elara." He said it gently, with a patience she hated. "You have the look. The one where you're already halfway out the door and telling yourself it's a just scenic route."

She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. "They have a letter. Blackthorn's healers. They'll stop your treatment if the alliance fails."

"I heard that too."

"Then you know why I must do it."

"I know why you think you're doing it." He closed the book and set it on his knees. For a moment he looked like a very young boy who had grown old in the wrong direction. "Don't you dare do this for me."

The words landed flat and hard in the quiet room.

Elara kept her eyes on the blanket. "It isn't for you."

"Yes, it is." He said it without heat. "You're a terrible liar when it matters. You always were. Serena used to cover for you at supper and you'd still go red from your neck up. I'm just the only one who ever says so."

"No really, It's because of the alliance."

"Stop lying Elara. It's me."

"Fine, then it's both."

"Elara."

She looked up. His eyes were too bright in his thin face, dark and clear and unblinking. They were Mother's eyes, but without any of the control, and they saw straight through her.

"I'm not worth it," he said quietly. "Not like this. If I get better because you married a stranger and carried your sister's wolf around for the rest of your life, then I don't want to get better."

"Stop saying that. You don't get to decide that."

"Well, somebody should."

She wanted to argue. She wanted to shout that he was sixteen, that he was funny and clever and impossible and that the world would be smaller without him in it. But her throat had closed, and what came out instead was barely a whisper.

"She used to sit with you on the bad nights. I'd hear you two talking through the wall until the coughing stopped."

Rowan's mouth twisted. "Yeah, she brought that awful mint tea and pretended it tasted good, ugh."

"I miss her." It came out smaller than she intended. "The version of her who did that. And I can't tell if I'm angry at her for leaving us in this mess, or angry at myself for not being enough to fill the hole."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he reached out and took her hand.

His fingers were cold and papery, but his grip was surprisingly firm.

Something warm moved in Elara's chest.

Wren. The small, shy wolf who had spent the night curled into the farthest corner of her ribs came forward, tentative and trembling, pressing toward her brother's touch like a flower turning toward a window. Elara felt the little wolf's joy ripple through her, brief and bright.

She reached for Rowan through the thin, old thread that joins siblings. It was how she had always known when he was in pain. She expected to find the steady glow of his wolf, the small flame she had felt as a child.

He was there, but barely.

His wolf was a candle seen through frosted glass. It flickered, faint and slow, and when she tried to touch it, it retreated even further. It had been like this for three years, ever since the illness began. She had learned not to look.

But today it flinched.

A second presence stirred inside her, soft and low. Brother, Vesper said.

The word was so quiet that Elara almost missed it. There was something in it that she could not name, an ache that went deeper than grief, a kind of guilt. Then Vesper went still, as if she had said something she was not meant to say.

Rowan's wolf flickered once, like a candle in a draft, and went dim.

"What?" Rowan said. He was watching her face.

"Nothing." She squeezed his hand. "One of them says hello."

He snorted, and the snort turned into a cough, and the cough went on long enough that Elara half rose from the chair, reaching for the cup on the table. He waved her off, bent over the blanket, and rode it out with his jaw tight and his eyes squeezed shut. When it was over he lay back against the pillows, gray and sweating and smiling anyway.

"Go downstairs," he said. "Tell them whatever you're going to tell them."

"Rowan..."

"But if you come back wearing a Martyr's face, I'm throwing a pillow at you. A really heavy one."

She laughed, though her eyes stung. "You can barely lift your arm."

"I'll find the strength. Spite is a powerful medicine, you know."

Her legs felt unsteady as she stood, as if the floor had shifted. At the door she turned back and looked at him one more time, small and defiant in his sea of pillows, and she made up her mind.

"You should get some sleep," she said.

"And you, go get some spine," he answered, already closing his eyes.

She went down the stairs slowly. The sitting room had not changed. The tea was still cold, the letter still lay on the table with its black thorn seal, and Lucian was still seated with his hands folded as if he had all the time in the world. Every face turned toward her as she entered. Mother's held something between hope and caution. Father's stayed on the floor.

Elara did not sit.

She went back downstairs and told the council she would marry Darius, but only if she heard his terms from his own mouth.