Rowan Blackboard Novels & Stories

JJ shows Daniel into my mother’s sitting room. “Hi Mr Fields, please call me Lily.” I narrow my eyes at JJ who blushes. I should really take what I can get, at least Lillian is not, Miss Blackwood. I shake Daniel’s outreached hand. “I wouldn’t be comfortable with Lily; may I call you Miss Blackwood?” he asks politely “No, you may not” his eyebrows shoot up in surprise, “Okay. Lily.” I smile. “This is Lucas Craven.” “Mr Craven is fine.” I narrow my eyes and roll my eyes at Luke. Men! JJ starts to leave.

"That’s a prison!" "It’s a 'Product,' Kaima. And it’s been pre-ordered by everyone on the Moon." He began to turn the key. --- ### The Glitch in the Editor I looked at Rowan on the screen. He was almost entirely covered in black shadows. But he wasn't writing anymore. He had stopped. He looked directly into the "Camera"—directly at **Me**. He didn't look scared. He looked... focused. He picked up the silver pen and he didn't write on the page.

As if on an impulse, he jolted to his full length– making a scraping sound with his desk as he pushed it back. Everybody, including their teacher, swiftly glanced at him with fixed gazes as if waiting for him to say something. Rowan, on the other hand, stood staring into space like a possessed soul. Without a word, he dashed off. “Rowan! Ro….” The teacher called but he was already gone. Roxy and Bella exchanged glances– still confused as ever. “What’s with him?” Bella questioned and Roxy shrugged, turning her gaze back to the board as she had no answers herself.

"Professor Smith." The two men looked directly at each other for several long seconds, neither offering a nod or a change in stance. No greeting broke the quiet, no warmth entered the hall, and no surprise registered on their features. I looked between their rigid shoulders, my brow furrowing into a tight V. "You two know each other." Rowan reached into the inside pocket of his black jacket, his fingers withdrawing a folded piece of heavy cream-colored paper. "Black Hollow is smaller than it pretends to be."

I looked down the hallway and through the other side, and there was actually no one in sight. My heart hammered as I approached the large double office doors with D. BLACKWOOD engraved on the metal plate. I forced my trembling hand to knock. No answer. Great. I knocked again. Still nothing. Screw it. I pushed the door open— —and froze in place. Damian Blackwood sat behind his massive black desk. Sharp suit. Cuffed sleeves. Jaw tight enough to crack a diamond. He didn’t look up at me. Not even a glance. I opened my mouth to speak but was cut off by his deep voice.

I rubbed my thumb across the edge of my legal pad and forced my attention back to the page. Motion to Quash Subpoena… My handwriting had gotten smaller lately. Tighter. Like even my pen strokes were bracing. I heard footsteps before I saw anyone—soft, controlled, too quiet for a normal human in boots. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted. Rowan Blackwood stepped into the doorway like he owned it. Which, in his mind, he probably did. He didn’t announce himself. He just looked at me the way a guard looks at a camera feed—assessing for threat, for weakness, for something off.

"Am I in trouble?" "That depends entirely on your definition of trouble." Lucian stepped aside, gesturing down the corridor. "Shall we?" Rowan hesitated for only a moment. Then he smiled—sharp, bright, entirely unrepentant—and followed. This was going to be interesting. The walk towards Damian's study was not silent. Not even close. "Lord Blackwood," Rowan began, falling into step beside Lucian with the kind of restless energy that suggested he'd been holding these questions in for hours, "what's in the old wing?"

"You’ll learn exactly what the consequences are." A knock echoed on the door. "Sir? We’re due in the boardroom." Rowan didn’t take his eyes off me. "Coming," he called, voice clipped. Then he stepped back, smoothed his shirt like nothing had happened, and gave me one final look—dark, unreadable, laced with hunger and fury. As I stood alone in the quiet office, I didn’t know what kind of punishment he had in mind. But knowing him, it wouldn’t be something petty.

That was when I found Rowan. He was at the back, against the far wall, in his Commander's blacks, where he should have been. But he wasn't watching the crowning. He was watching the side door — the one that led to the family wing. To the nursery. To my son, asleep six floors of celebration away. His face was wrong. Gray. Wet at the eyes, which I had never once seen on him. Across the whole length of that candlelit chapel, over three hundred bowed heads, Rowan Blackthorn looked straight at me. He didn't text. He didn't run. He mouthed one word — slow, and clear, so I could not mistake it.

Then I smoothed my expression into something that looked normal or as normal as I could manage when I felt like I was falling apart inside. I knocked twice. "Come in." His voice sent a shiver through me. It was Rowan's voice, the same one that had moaned my name a hundred times in the dark, that had laughed with me until we couldn't breathe, that had promised me forever. But the tone was different now, it was colder and measured. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Rowan sat at a small desk by the window, a pair of headphones around his neck and a notebook open in front of him. The flashdrive Gabriella had given him was plugged into a laptop, the screen showing what looked like hours