Page 44 of The Last War We Ever Fought

She grabbed a passing soldier. “Where is everyone?”

“Down at the riverbank. They’ve finally managed to get the bridge over it.”

No. No. No.

Horror washed over Rowan as she ran through the camp, directly towards the riverbank. From the far distance on top of the hill they had made their rest on, she could see the mass of soldiers dive into the dangerous water currents, carrying heavy logs. The sound of hammers echoed as they nailed down the feet of the bridge with ease, unlike what she’d told Henry and Adam.

While she’d been entirely too distracted with Elijah, they’d gone behind her back without her even noticing a thing. How far along her lie had they realised she’d been deceiving them? How much did they know? How much time had she left to act before it was too late for the Gobresh?

She couldn’t spot Henry or Adam below with the soldiers setting up the bridge, so she spun and ran back towards their tents. Her feet came to a halt when Daniel came out of their tent, a strange look in his face. One that brightened when he noticed her in the distance. “Just who I was looking for,” he shouted and waved, grinning at her.

His smile faded a little, and he sucked in a sharp breath. Rowan did so too when trails of blood gushed from the corners of his mouth as he looked down at his chest, at where a blade had pierced right through it from behind.

Rowan felt something fade in her chest. She became entirely unaware of her own body. Floating inside her own mind, drowning inside her own blood. Rowan lost something when Daniel raised his fading eyes up to hers again and smiled.

Adam pulled his sword back, wiping the bloodied blade on his sleeve as he shot Rowan a scathing look at the distance. “Traitorous vermin.”

Daniel staggered on his feet, still refusing to surrender.

“Come on,” Rowan bellowed, running towards him with all she had, forcing her own body to move—puppeteering her own limbs that no longer felt her own. “Come on!”

She reached him just as he fell to his knees, bracing his body in her arms before the cold earth could. Blood soaked her vision. Blood soaked her hands. The scent was assaulting her senses in a way it had never done before.

“I was…I was going to tell you,” he choked, sputtering blood.

“I know. I know.”

A sob broke his young face. “They wouldn’t let me. They thought you would try to stop this. They…they think you’ve been delaying them on purpose. A-Adam had kept notes of you,” he breathed, coughing blood. “To send to the queen and ask for your death.”

“I know.”

He laughed, tears pouring from his eyes, washing away the blood on his face. “Of course you do.” A tremble overtook his limbs. “I confessed for you. I took all the blame.”

Her stomach sank. “What?”

“They won’t catch you. So do what you have to do quickly,” he managed to say between heaving breaths.

Her face twisted with a cry. “Daniel.” There were so many things she wanted to tell him. So many things she had to confess. So many simple words she’d wanted him to have. I am proud of you. Well done. You’ve grown up so well. But her throat had closed up.

“In another life,” he said, the boy who’d come to her merely eleven years of age, the boy she’d been raising for the past ten years. “In another life I want you to be my mother.” He smiled at her, not like her captain, not like the soldier she’d trained and honed to kill, but like the boy he had never had the chance to be. “I’d ask of the gods for you to be my sister, but we’ve bickered in this lifetime enough, so be my mother.”

“I can’t,” she managed to say despite the tightening in her throat that was digging into her skin like barbed wire. “Forgive me, I don’t think I can.” Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his brow and whispered, “For I will lose the right to my soul after today.”

He choked, his eyes drawing shut.

“Sleep now,” she said, cradling his head in her lap, her own tears joining his.

Elijah had found her sitting before the grave she’d dug in the middle of the forest, between the flowers she’d buried Daniel in. “There you are,” he murmured, pressing his lips to her temple and sitting beside her.

Rowan was thinking.

When Rowan thought, bad things followed.

She allowed herself to lean against him, to let him hold her to his chest, to comfort her. “I’d planned for him to bury me instead.”

He remained unusually silent as he held her to him tightly, the tightest he’d ever held her.

“Where were you?” she asked, pressing her ear to his heart, letting the slow rhythm calm her. Except, his heart wasn’t calm like it usually had been. His pulse roared beneath her touch.