Page 8 of Blood & Roses

“Possibly doesn’t sound promising,” Rowan replied, looking dissatisfied at this solution. “And it won’t stop the queen from hunting him down.”

“Perhaps we can help you clear his name,” Mora suggested, glancing at her twin, who nodded in agreement.

“I don’t think you can,” Rowan replied, his jaw tight in frustration. “Only her death will truly free him.”

He met my eyes, and I could almost feel him pleading with me silently. I pursed my lips and looked away.

“What about a compromise?” suggested Lena, always the peacemaker. She smiled at Rowan, her sweet temper clearly melting some of his frostiness. “We help you find and save your brother,thendecide if we need to go after the queen. Perhaps we can simply make you disappear instead.”

“She will find him. Find us,” he said, shaking his head in resignation. “But if you think you can get him to shift…” He sighed, giving me a final piercing look. “It’s worth a try.”

Chapter 4

Rowan grudgingly spent the night.

“I should get back out there,” he argued when I offered him the couch. “The others are still after him.”

“Do you knowwherehe is right now?” I asked, using my most motherly voice to try to convince him of the folly of this plan. “Because if not, you’ll spend all night looking for him without food or rest in the freezing cold and be useless to usandhim tomorrow.”

I won out, my arguments that he should be well rested to help his brother holding slightly less sway than the promise of a home-cooked meal. He was silent and watchful as the rest of us made dinner, ate, and did our usual chores. I felt rather like I was the deer being hunted under his intent gaze.

With Ella and Lis gone, only Sera and Mora were forced to share a bedroom. I had moved into my parents’ old room years before, but the cottage was small enough that we’d all shared at some point. Calli offered to share her room over dinner, and Rowan had nearly choked on his wine at the suggestive leer she’d given him.

“Your sisters,” Rowan began as he watched me gather up the dinner things. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, his shirtsleeves rolled up to display muscular forearms. “They’re…”

I gave him a withering look as he tried to find the right words to describe my siblings. He seemed to be uncomfortable around the rest of them and was intent on bothering me.

“Spirited,” he finished, taking a sip of wine and looking at me over the rim of his glass and replacing it on the counter. “Presumptuous.”

“Yes,” I agreed, rolling my eyes as I stacked plates and silverware into a precarious pile. “And yes. Do you not have any sisters?”

“Just the half-brother,” he replied, closing the distance between us. I stilled, uncertain what he was doing as hetook the teetering pile of dishes from me. “Let me.” His hands brushed mine, calloused but gentle, as he took the pile and carried it to the sink.

“Oh,” I said, willing my heart to beat normally, rather than the staccato rhythm it had chosen at the simple touch. “Thank you.”

Rowan shrugged, placing the dishes in the sink and turning on the water. Perhaps he wasn’t highborn after all. “It’s the least I can do.”

He threw a towel over his shoulder, and my stomach flipped. Something was wrong with me that the sight of a handsome male washing dishes did it for me.

I coughed, fighting the flush that crawled up my neck. “So about payment for this job...”

“Name your price,” Rowan said, scrubbing the mixing bowl with such vigor that my heart leaped in ridiculous excitement. “I’ll pay whatever you want to save my brother.”

“So youarewealthy,” I said, trying to slot together the puzzle of the huntsman. I picked up his wine glass as he worked and sipped, deciding that good wine shouldn’t go to waste sitting on a counter.

He laughed, the sound barked out in a mix of derision and amusement. “I’m not,” he replied, not looking up from where he worked. “But I have my methods, and I love my brother. Although it may mean that I’ll be doing dishes for a good long while to pay you back.”

Again, my stomach did something funny, but I pushed the feeling aside. “Either way, I think we should go see my sister Listomorrow. We could use her help subduing your brother. I can knock him unconscious, but it would be easier to do if he were bound and not actively trying to kill any of us.”

“This is the sister with the terrifying and overbearing mate?” he asked, giving me a sardonic look over his shoulder. “The shadowweaver?”

Rowan narrowed his eyes as I drank his wine, and I smirked. “He’s not overbearing,” I argued, trying to think of how to describe Orson to a stranger. I had only met him a few times, to be fair, but he loved Lis—and she, him—and that was what I liked best about him. “He’s protective.”

Rowan scoffed, starting to dry the dishes. I forced myself not to look at his hands as they worked. “That’s the same thing,” he replied, shoulder muscles bunching as he dried. “Shifter males are obsessively territorial about their mates.”

“Aren’tyoua shifter male?” I replied, raising a brow at his back.

“You insult our gods by suggesting such a thing,” he huffed, shaking his head at the dishes. “Elandoreans borrow the shape. We don’t become it.”