Sorry for not posting for so long, tests and all those other shameful excuses. My posting will be patchy over the next (July 2016) month (in other words, nonexistent). Vacation and all that jazz.
She tensed, baring her teeth as the male in front of her merely grinned cockily.
"Ready to admit defeat, Princess?" He taunted as he lolled his neck from one side to the other.
The arrogant bastard. She would knock his teeth from his mouth and bash the stick into his head. He had thrashed and struck her all morning, and she had the worst feeling that this was child's play for him. She supposed it should be, what with her being the 'naïve girl' and all.
He had been training her for weeks now and seemed to be more… yielding in terms of her emotions, just as she tried to be for him. They had an unspoken bond where they tried not to piss each other off too much; however there was the occasional slip up and the occasional use of the words bastard and prick and asshole. It was a fragile connection, to say the least.
She wasn't used to his way of training, all of his offensive and defensive moves he had collected over a million lifetimes. He was brilliantly brutal in a way that only the fiercest warriors could possibly be. She was bruised and battered and bleeding all over. The gods only knew what else she suffered from. She would never admit defeat, not to save her own life. And especially never to him.
And he had never specified that one could not not play with the sticks.
She lunged for him, taking by surprise as she smacked her stick in half and twirled around him. He went to take her legs out from under her but she jumped and whacked him on his eye with one stick and deftly swung at his leg with the other. It created a long but shallow scratch that cut through his pants. He growled at her and pounced on her so she smacked into the ground. She groaned on impact. He took the opening to pin her down with the weight of his body. But she wasn't done yet. She curled her legs and heaved him away, and then they were up on their feet again, crouching, circling, striking at each other. He was so much stronger and so much more attuned to his surroundings then she. And it was that that made her weak in his eyes.
She was not weak. Or feeble. Or tired.
Their sticks lay somewhere, but they never broke eye contact to get them. He made to hit her on the ribs but she danced away from him and jumped on him. He staggered and they fell onto the ground until she pinned him on the ground. She sat up, still straddling him, and smiled wickedly through her huffs of air.
"You admit defeat," she puffed out and poked his chest accusingly. Rowan snarled. He looked extremely pissed off until his pine green eyes lit up and he rolled until he, once again, had her trapped under his weight.
"Never," Rowan whispered in to her ear. She groaned and lolled her head back. He stood up and offered her a hand. She glared at it.
I'm not going to bite.
No, apparently you've had your fill of me.
He grinned, most likely remember the compromising position he had put her in only weeks ago. She had transformed, yes, but he had bit her.
"I've told you before; you do not bite the woman of another man." She glared at him and absent-mindedly rubbed the empty space where Chaol's ring had been. She had left it in her room this morning, in the small bag underneath the bed where all her other valuables were kept. The ring was the only item in the bag. It was a bit pathetic, though Rowan still possessed her daggers.
Celaena looked the other way for a moment, in another place, at another time. A rooftop garden, then the room… No, no. Chaol had betrayed her, he had broken her. Bad Celaena, she chastised herself.
"Caring makes you weak, Aelin," Rowan said in such a disciplined, domesticated tone. Broken by a faery queen. She turned to face him.
Don't look at me with that disgust.
You should've gotten used to it by now.
She was disgusted. Not by him, but by a bond that forced men to their knees, a bond that forced men to stop feeling. And the faery queen that offered it to him. Total submission.
Rowan growled and stepped up close to her, as if to intimidate her. She didn't back down. Instead, she glared daggers into those pine green eyes and breathed in his pine and snow scent.
"Submission? Am I submissive?" He snarled, his nostrils flaring.
"How did you-"
"Your expression lacks proper defenses."
"I don't-"
"Submissive, really? Shall we talk about your years of service to a man when you had the proper tools to dispose of him? Or should we mention how you cowered at a king's feet and carried out his dirty works? Perhaps you should look at yourself before you judge another soul, Aelin."
It was that name, that jab that tore at her mental barriers. She wasn't submissive. She fought with tooth and nail at every corner, except… except in Endovier. Where she had stopped caring.
Something in her flickered and dimmed. She took a step back from Rowan, mentally reaching out at anything, anything, to show that he was wrong. Trying to keep her footing so she wouldn't tumble head first into that dark, dark abyss. Submissive.
Coward.
Were they the same thing? She took another step back, and then looked up at Rowan with her Ashryver eyes. She tried to pierce with the same glare he had impaled her with, yet her attempt failed. She flung herself at him.
"I am not a coward!" she screamed at him. Something in the back of her mind told her that he hadn't called her that, but it didn't matter. The lines blurred and crisscrossed, one thing became another.
She punched him once and jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. He seemed resigned to accept it but when he got a good look at her face he began to resist. Rowan hurled her off him so she hit a tree. Her back made a cracking sound and she slumped onto the dirt. That cracking sound… it was too much like a whip.
She was crying slightly, not from pain but from the sudden realization that her barriers had far too many holes in them. She tried to get up but her body protested.
"Aelin," Rowan hissed through his teeth and knelt down beside her. Fear ran wild in his eyes, and for a moment, it seemed as if he actually cared. "Don't move." He had tossed her like a stuffed animal.
"I need to see your back," he said through gritted teeth.
"No," she just managed to whisper. "Don't-" Blackness swelled in her eyes and the world faded as the abyss crawled up to grab her.
She woke up to a roaring fire and an aching back as Rowan stared at her from a chair beside the bed. His bed, she realized when she groggily took in the surroundings. She was dressed in a simple giant white shirt and her clothing was stacked neatly in another corner. She turned her head, ignoring the slice of pain that cut down her form.
Rowan watched her with wary eyes. And then she knew. She knew why those eyes were filled with caution. How else had he healed her back? She cleared her throat.
"Well?" She demanded. He simply stared at her.
"Was… was that why he left you?" he asked attentively, as if a single wrong word would break her. She almost snorted. The mere idea that she was so base as to break from a question… but she had. She had nearly cracked under the pressure of Rowan's questions. And he had thrown her against a tree. A sudden weight of panic made her breath speed up. That cracking noise…
Shit.
Rowan reached forth and gripped her arm.
"Breathe, Aelin. You're okay, you're fine," Rowan's tone softened immensely, so different from the commandeering ass he was usually. She focused on pushing that air in and out, Rowan's wind helping her. She focused on him again, on those pine green eyes. They were nearly drowning in guilt.
What?
You.
"Me?" She asked. He swallowed nervously and looked at her head on.
"I've never lied to you, and you've never lied to me. We tell truths."
You scared me, when you jumped. Your eyes were… not of this world. I've seen many things in my years, but you… when you screamed, it was full of utter pain and guilt and it took me by surprise. I reacted with instinct; I knew you were out for blood. You hit the tree and your spine cracked in two. I… that was the first time after… after Lyria that panic ensued. I thought if you were hurt, it was my fault. And then, well," he gestured at her, a sign that he had seen the wreck on her back. "Then I saw that slab of flesh you call skin." He grimaced and she looked away, but he turned her chin.
"I apologize, for before. I… I threatened you that day with a whip of all things. And then you spoke of your lover and the emotions rushed forth." Rowan bowed his head. She considered his silvery white hair and spoke quietly.
"He didn't leave me because of this," she sat up and made a face at the pain that ran down her back. He lifted his head again.
"May I?" his hands shook, and she took a hold of them.
"You did what you had to do. And… you didn't know. I don't want that pathetic pity. I spent months in a castle full of pitiful servants and lords. I don't need you being all sentimental." She twisted and lifted the back of the shirt. Some wonderful soul had at least graced her with basic undergarments. She heard Rowan's intake of breath as he surveyed the damage. He paused a moment before put a calloused hand on her back and tracing the scars.
"I've seen worse, but this is deliberate. This was made to look this way." She gave him a bitter laugh.
"They used to rub salt in the wounds, said it would teach me a lesson. To this day, I don't know what lesson this was supposed to clarify." She turned around again so she sat directly in front of him, her legs brushing his.
"You've seen worse?" She raised an eyebrow, a challenge within a question.
"I've been alive far longer than you have. I've seen men die and battlefields flood with blood. Do you really not think that I would've seen worse? I once met a man who called himself the Demon King's Dealer. He inscribed the name of every man he made a deal with on his skin."
"How old are you?"
"Old enough to know better, young enough to do it all again," His shoulders shook with a hearty laugh, and she found herself chuckling along with him. The mere notion that he would want to go through it all again was… laughable. When they quieted down, they settled into a comfortable silence with the fire crackling. The tiny smile in Rowan's face meant too much, too soon. He seemed… happy. Content, even. Far more than he had weeks ago.
Celaena took his hand and flipped it over, tracing the scars that decorated it. She traced a line that started between his middle finger and his ring finger and moved farther down towards his elbow. She had finally found a person outside of Endovier with more scars then she, both mentally and physically. It made her feel young; made her feel inadequate. Her life had been one big hellhole, and she prided herself on the fact that she believed that she knew what true pain was. Yet here was a man, a fae, that had lived long enough, had been through enough, to want to hand over his very soul to another.
"Aelin," Rowan said, shaking her from her thoughts. He brushed a loose strand behind her ear. Their eyes met and she felt that strange sense of oneness once again. It was bizarre to comprehend. Rowan seemed to notice it too. His eyes widened just the tiniest bit, the only stray emotion let out from beneath his mask. Nevertheless, she could see it in his eyes; she could see what he saw.
"Carannam," He breathed. His hands shook as he leaned forward and pushed her on to the bed so he was hovering above her.
"Carannam," he repeated. She blinked once, but never broke contact with his eyes. On that rare, impulsive streak he seemed to have, that instinct of his took over and he crashed his lips down on hers.
Their breathing was even as they curled up, naked, on the bed. Rowan was running a hand through her hair and she was purring ever so slightly. He smiled with the male satisfaction.
Carannam. He thought once again.
Fuck the abyss, he was flying in this very moment.