Rowan held out his hand. "Together, then."

"Together," she said. And with that word that both a question and an answer and a promise, an ember began to glow.

Rowan's POV:

"Tell me how you learned to tattoo."

"No."

The night after their trip to the cave in the mountains, Rowan and Aelin were sitting at the worktable in his rooms, Aelin leaning over his arm as she worked to repair the damage she'd done to his tattoo when she'd burned him during their brawl. At his refusal to answer her question, she angled the bone-handled needle towards his skin and said, "If you don't answer my questions, I might very well make a mistake and..."

Rowan huffed a laugh, but Aelin wasn't giving up that easily. "Did you learn from someone?" she asked. "Master and apprentice and all that?"

Rowan gave her an exasperated look. "Yes, master and apprentice and all that. In the war camps, we had a commander who used to tattoo the number of enemies he'd killed on his flesh—sometimes he'd write the whole story of a battle. All the young soldiers were enamored of it, and I convinced him to teach me."

"With that legendary charm of yours, I suppose."

Rowan tried, he really did, to stop himself from smiling. When he'd asked Aelin for help he hadn't thought he was agreeing to be subjected to her interrogation methods, but here he was. "Just fill in the spots where I—"

He let out a hiss of pain as she took the needle and mallet and carved another dark, bloody mark into his skin. "Good," he said through gritted teeth. "That's the right depth."

Aelin made another mark, and then said, "Tell me about your family."

Like he'd said. Interrogation.

"Tell me about yours and I'll tell you about mine," he snapped, the grunt of pain he let out as the mallet met his skin causing the remark to sound a lot less harsh than he'd intended.

"Fine. Are your parents alive?" Despite the confidence with which she'd wielded the mallet and her words all evening, she sounded nervous.

Rowan shook his head. "My parents were very old when they conceived me," he told her. "I was their only child in the millennia they'd been mated. They faded into the Afterworld before I reached my second decade."

Aelin cocked her head, no doubt contemplating her next question, but Rowan beat her to it. "You had no siblings," he said, more of a statement than a question.

He had assumed it would be an easy topic of conversation, but Aelin avoided his gaze and turned back to her work. After a moment, she said, "My mother, thanks to her Fae heritage, had a difficult time with the pregnancy. She stopped breathing during labor. They said it was my father's will that kept her tethered to this world. I don't know if she even could have conceived again after that. So, no siblings. But—" she stopped, and it was clear she was wondering whether or not she should continue. Rowan opened his mouth to tell her she didn't have to, but she had already begun speaking again. "But I had a cousin. He was five years older than me, and we fought and loved each other like siblings."

Aedion Ashryver. The Wolf of the North. A son of Terrasen who now served as a general in the King of Adarlan's army, known for his ruthlessness and skill with a sword, as well as his role as commander of the Bane. He wondered if Aelin knew what her beloved cousin had done in the name of Adarlan and it's king, the atrocities he'd committed against its enemies. Rowan hoped, for her sake, that she didn't.

Then he recognized the self-loathing in her gaze, and Rowan realized Aelin might not care about her cousins crimes as much as she did her own. "I think facing my cousin after everything would be the worst of it— worse than facing the king," he said, not entirely sure if the words would comfort her or not.

When Aelin didn't respond, he told her to keep working, gesturing to the tools sitting in her lap. She obeyed, and he hissed as the needle pricked his skin. This process wasn't just an opportunity for the person receiving the tattoo to deal with their pain and grief, and Rowan knew better than anyone that the rhythm of the work Aelin was doing was therapeutic in its own way. He wouldn't force her to talk if she didn't want to, and yet he couldn't stop himself from thinking about what she'd said. "Do you think," he asked, "your cousin would kill you or help you? An army like his could change the tide of any war."

Aelin shuddered at the suggestion, either from the thought of her cousin killing her or the concept of war. "I don't know what he would think of me, or where his loyalties lie. And I'd rather not know. Ever."

A definite answer, and a request to stop pushing. Rowan decided to let the matter of her future plans go. At least for now.

"Do you have cousins?" she asked, clearly eager to move on from the subject of her own family drama.

"Too many," he told her, fighting the urge to groan. "Mora's line was always the most widespread, and my meddlesome, gossiping cousins make my visits to Doranelle... irksome."

Aelin grinned at that, and Rowan said, "You'd probably get along with my cousins. Especially with the snooping."

Aelin stopped her work and gave his hand a hard squeeze that would have been painful to anyone but an immortal. "You're one to talk, Prince," she said, though there was warmth in her gaze. "I've never been asked so many questions in my life."

He bared his teeth, though there was no real malice behind the gesture. "Hurry up, Princess," he said, throwing the title back at her. "I want to go to bed at some point before dawn."

Aelin's response was to make a particularly vulgar gesture with her free hand, but Rowan caught it with his own, teeth still bared. "That is not very queenly."

Aelin's mouth curved into a smirk. "Then it's a good thing I'm not a queen, isn't it?"

Rowan didn't let go of her hand. He'd changed his mind, he wasn't done pushing. "You have sworn to free your friend's kingdom and save the world— but will not even consider your own lands. What scares you about seizing your birthright? The king? Facing what remains of your court?" Rowan hadn't realized it, but he'd been moving towards her with every word, and now their faces were close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her eyes. "Give me one good reason why you won't take back your throne. One good reason, and I'll keep my mouth shut about it."

Aelin studied him, the earnestness in his gaze, the truth to his words, and said, "Because if I free Eyllwe and destroy the king as Celaena, I can go anywhere after that. The crown… my crown is just another set of shackles."

A retort was immediately on Rowan's lips, but then her words registered.

Another set of shackles.

The pieces began to fall into place. The manacle like scars around her wrists, her unwillingness to change in front of him...

"What do you mean another set of shackles?" he asked, his voice quiet as he released his grip on her hand to reveal the two bands of scars that wrapped around her wrist.

Aelin yanked her arm free from his grasp, although there was no hiding the fear in her gaze. "Nothing," she said, her voice shaking enough to tell Rowan it certainly wasn't that. "Arobynn, my master, liked to use them for training every now and then."

A reasonable enough explanation. So why didn't he believe her?

Aelin returned to her work, and Rowan debated whether or not to push her on it. This was different than discussing Aelin's claim to Terrasen's throne or her estranged relationship with her cousin. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did.

So, Rowan decided to let her think he'd bought her lie. Instead, he asked another question he wanted to know the answer to. "Why did you stay with Arobynn?"

"I knew I wanted two things," she said. "First, to disappear from the world and from my enemies, but … ah." Aelin hesitated, suddenly unable to meet his gaze. "I wanted to hide from myself, mostly. I convinced myself I should disappear, because the second thing I wanted, even then, was to be able to someday … hurt people the way I had been hurt. And it turned out that I was very, very good at it. If he had tossed me away, I would either have died or wound up with the rebels. If I had grown up with them, I probably would have been found by the king and slaughtered. Or I would have grown up so hateful that I would have been killing Adarlanian soldiers from a young age."

When she stopped, Rowan's brows rose, but Aelin clicked her tongue at him and shook her head. "You thought I was just going to spread my whole history at your feet the moment I met you? I'm sure you have even more stories than I do, so stop looking so surprised."

Rowan didn't let the intensity leave his gaze, and Aelin faltered, suddenly looking uncomfortable. "Maybe we should just go back to beating each other into a pulp."

Oh, no. That wouldn't do. Rowan was having far too much fun to go back to how they'd been before. "Oh, not a chance, Princess. You can tell me what you want, when you want, but there's no going back now."

Aelin lifted the needle and mallet as she said, "I'm sure your other friends just adore having you around."

Rowan grinned, feral enough to remind her of who she was speaking to as he grabbed her by the chin— not to hurt, but to force her to look at him. "First thing," he breathed, suddenly aware of how close they were. "We're not friends. I'm still training you, and that means you're still under my command."

Hurt flickered in Aelin's gaze, but Rowan leaned in and tightened his grip on her jaw before she could move away. "Second—whatever we are, whatever this is? I'm still figuring it out, too. So if I'm going to give you the space you deserve to sort yourself out, then you can damn well give it to me."

He waited as Aelin studied him, considering his proposal, their breath mingling in the air and the fire from the hearth reflected in her gaze. Then, she said, "Deal."

•••

The morning of Beltane found Aelin and Rowan standing on a hill overlooking the field where the evening festivities would be held, watching as the demi-Fae carried wood and kindling in for the bonfires or set up tables for the food Emrys had spent the past two weeks laboring over.

Besides the arrival of the other demi-Fae who had traveled to Mistward for the celebration, the past weeks had been uneventful. No more bodies had been found, and there had been no sign of the beast that had killed them. Rowan had spent hours studying maps and reports until his eyes bled, but even he was beginning to wonder if it was a lost cause.

At least Aelin's training was producing better results. When she finished her work in the kitchens, they would hike into the hills surrounding Mistward and go from ruin to ruin as she continued to try and master her magic. Their little tryst in that cave in the mountains, while disastrous, had paid off. Aelin still struggled to control certain aspects of her magic, but compared to two weeks ago she had vastly improved. The hours they spent together had become a welcome reprieve from the time spent leaning over his work table, obsessing over that wretched creature and its victims.

Conversations like the one they'd had in Rowan's room had become a regular occurrence. Aelin talked sometimes, but mostly she seemed to like listening to Rowan speak as they walked the ruins, describing the campaigns and journeys he'd been on over the centuries, the battles he'd fought and won. Aelin, to his surprise, was a good listener. She rarely interrupted, and her quiet understanding of his own grief and rage made it easier to discuss his past.

It was helpful, Rowan had realized, to talk about it. For so long he'd kept everything inside, both the good and the bad memories, and it was as if with every word he spoke the weight on his shoulders was lighter.

They spent their evenings in the dining hall, listening to Emrys's stories, and Aelin had taken to requesting ones about Maeve every night. Rowan didn't know what she meant by it, but it wasn't like he could ask her to stop. The stories the cook told were all public knowledge, and it was only fair for Aelin to learn about her aunt— especially since she'd made a deal with her.

Still, there had been a certain undercurrent to Aelin's rage as of late, one that seemed to grow, not lessen, with every story Rowan told her. He'd begun to wonder if her anger was on his behalf, if hearing about the atrocities he'd committed in Maeve's name only made her resent her aunt more.

Then again, she wasn't the only one who'd been... on edge. The lack of information regarding the whereabouts of that wretched creature had caused his instincts to be a little off, and the arrival of more and more demi-Fae to Mistward hadn't helped matters. The bitter scent of rage and grief that had clung to Aelin when she had first arrived at the fortress had made most males steer clear, but the newcomers didn't seem to share their apprehension. Yesterday, a demi-Fae male had passed them in the hallway, and while he'd kept his distance at the sight of Rowan, he hadn't missed the appreciative glance he'd given Aelin. It had taken every ounce of his self-control for Rowan not to growl at him.

Aelin was standing at his side now, eating an apple and watching the preparations for the festival with an expression that was almost longing. Her blonde hair tumbled down her back in waves, glowing in the sunlight. This close, he could smell her scent, that tantalizing combination of jasmine and embers. He'd known Aelin was far from unattractive, but it was the first time he'd considered what she might look like to other males. He found it wasn't a topic he enjoyed thinking about.

As if sensing the treacherous route his thoughts had taken, Aelin turned to look at him with her eyebrows raised. When Rowan didn't say anything, she shook her head and threw her apple core into the grass.

"I assume you brought me here so I could practice?"

Yes, and because he wanted to test the limits of her newfound control. He gestured to the three unlit piles of wood below that would serve as the bonfires for the evening festivities. "Ignite them, and keep the fires controlled and even all night."

"All three." It wasn't a question, but there was enough apprehension in her voice that Rowan grinned.

"Keep the end ones low for the jumpers. The middle one should be scorching the clouds."

"This could easily turn lethal," Aelin said, the trepidation in her tone clear.

"I'll be here," Rowan said, the comment arrogant enough to make Aelin bristle. He lifted a hand and the wind around her shifted. Even with her in control, her flames tugged at his magic, as if they wanted to play.

Aelin was still glowering at him. "And if I somehow still manage to turn someone into a living torch?"

"Then it's a good thing the healers are also here to celebrate," Rowan said, a dash of malice in his voice.

Aelin scowled at him, but her irritation faded as she looked at the bonfires below. She rolled her shoulders, as if trying to soothe the tension she felt, and said, "When do you want to start?"

Rowan grinned, and Aelin went pale as he said, "Now."