Rowans pov:
The dream came again like smoke through the cracks in my mind.
A girl of silver light, standing barefoot in a field of dying roses. Her eyes—gods, her eyes—like the shimmer of moonlight on frozen glass. Her hands were stained with blood and memory, and her crown was made of thorns. She did not cry. She burned.
I knew her.
Not in the way a man knows a woman, but in the way a flame knows kindling—intimately, irresistibly. I had never touched her skin, never spoken her name aloud. But the Void whispered it now with maddening clarity.
Rosiline.
I woke gasping, heart pounding like war drums in my chest.
The air in my chamber was thick, charged. Magic coiled around me like a living thing—desperate, wild, hungry. Blackbriar Keep pulsed with it. The walls hummed. Shadows rippled along the stone as though the castle itself was trying to wake me.
The dream was not a dream.
She was real. And she was close.
I didn't hesitate. I stripped off the ceremonial robe I'd fallen asleep in and reached for my cloak—heavy black wool lined with bloodthreaded runes. It shimmered faintly in the candlelight, alive with old power. My boots thudded against the floor as I strode to the stables.
Nyx was already waiting.
The warhorse pawed the ground, snorting steam into the air like a dragon impatient for release. His eyes glowed faintly, as all war-forged familiars did when they sensed their master's magic in motion.
We rode into the night.
The forest didn't resist me. It bent around my path like the branches feared to touch me. Even the winds stilled. My magic bled into the soil, the trees, the air. It was no longer searching blindly—it pulled me forward, a cord tight in my chest.
And then I smelled it.
Not blood, not smoke—but grief. Thick and cloying, like crushed violets and ruined silk. It soaked the ground. Coated the bark. Filled the air with the scent of endings.
I found her beneath the gnarled limbs of an ancient yew.
She looked as though she had been carved by mourning itself—curled into the roots, gown shredded, hair tangled and matted with blood. Her skin shimmered like starlight, and even broken, even bruised, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
My heartbeat faltered. Then returned with a vengeance.
My mate.
The word wasn't spoken aloud, but my body, my magic, knew. Knew her in the marrow of my bones. It wasn't a romantic realization—it was an ancient one. Sacred. Elemental.
She stirred slightly, a broken sound escaping her lips.
I dismounted, slow and reverent, as if the forest itself might shatter at any wrong step.
Closer now, I saw the bruises on her wrists. The cuts. The torn hem of her once-elegant wedding gown. And the blood.
His blood.
It painted her like a final offering. My jaw clenched so tightly I thought it might break. Rage rose inside me like wildfire.
Who had let this happen to her?
She was meant to be cherished. Worshipped. Guarded like the rarest treasure. Not thrown to the wolves. Not left to die in the mud of a war that should never have touched her.
A crack split the earth near my boot, thin and glowing.
I exhaled—slow, deliberate—pushing the fury back down, down into the roots of the world where it could not harm her.
Not now.
I knelt beside her, hesitant.
She didn't stir.
"Rosiline," I whispered, letting her name wrap around my tongue like silk. "I'm sorry. I don't know how else to save you."
My fingers brushed her temple, and I felt it—the jagged edge of her pain, deeper than any spell I'd cast. She was lost in it. Drowning.
A sleep spell formed on my lips, ancient and laced with protection, not compulsion.
"Rest," I murmured. "You're safe now."
The magic slid into her like a balm. Her breath steadied. Her face softened, just slightly, as if part of her knew me even now.
I gathered her into my arms.
She was light—but not weightless. She carried kingdoms in her silence. She was grief and gold and blood and moonlight.
And gods help me, I would burn this world to keep her alive.
---
Back in Blackbriar
The room I chose for her hadn't been touched in years.
It once belonged to my mother—one of the few women who had ever seen me as more than a curse. She had filled it with light, stubborn even in a fortress of shadow. The ivy still crawled in from the windows, the petals still bloomed in the corner pots, fed by residual enchantment.
I laid Rosiline down on the bed as gently as if placing her atop a pyre.
Her breathing was soft now. Safe.
There were no chains. No shackles. No barriers between her and the world beyond these walls.
I did not lock the door.
Let them call me a captor. Let them say I stole her.
They didn't know the truth: I found her, at the moment when the world had broken her and tried to let her die.
But I would ask her to play a part.
To be my bride, if only in name.
Because soon, my enemies would circle. The kingdom would begin to rot again. And a queen at my side—even one who hated me—might be the only thing strong enough to stop it.
I poured wine into a goblet but did not drink it. I watched her instead, chest rising and falling in the cradle of velvet and shadow.
She would wake soon.
And when she did, she would find every door open.
But the question that gnawed at me in the dark was this:
Would she ever truly leave?