Chapter 8
I groaned into his mouth, my bound arms wrapping around his ribs, lifting him off his feet until he was pressed flush against the wall of the cell. The cold stone was at his back, but between us, the heat was suffocating, a roaring fire fed by years of silent longing and lethal secrets.
He opened to me completely, a small, breathless whimper catching in his throat as my tongue swept into his mouth. He kissed me like a dying man drinking water, his hips pressing instinctively against mine, his entire body trembling against my chest. Every barrier, every royal decree, every ounce of bloodline and rank dissolved into the dark, leaving only the frantic rhythm of our racing hearts beating in unison against our ribs.
When I finally broke the kiss, neither of us could breathe.
Julian’s head fell back against the damp stone wall, his chest heaving, his lips swollen, dark red and slick in the dim light. His eyes were half-lidded, glazed with a fierce, possessive heat that made my blood sing.
"You're a fool, Rowan," he whispered, his voice hoarse, breathless, his fingers still clutching the nape of my neck. "A stubborn, arrogant, beautiful fool."
"I'm your mercenary," I murmured, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss to the hollow of his throat, right over his hammering pulse. "You hired my sword. You get the man with it."
Julian gave a faint, fragile laugh that hitched in his chest. His hands drifted down from my hair, resting against my shoulders, his thumbs tracing the line of my collarbone through the torn wool. The frantic terror that had consumed him when he entered the cell had receded, replaced by a strange, quiet calm. The terrifying peace of a man who had decided to stand his ground, no matter the cost.
"Two days," Julian murmured, his eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that chilled me to the marrow. "The execution is in two days, Rowan. Forty-eight hours."
"What are you going to do?" I asked, watching the shift in his expression.
Julian reached up, his cool fingers gently brushing a stray lock of dark hair from my forehead. A slow, dangerous smile touched the corners of his bruised mouth—a smile I had never seen on the bookish prince before.
"If we are going to burn the palace down," Julian whispered, his grey eyes flashing like polished steel, "then I suppose I had better make sure Alden is inside when it catches fire."
"Julian—"
"No more questions tonight," he said softly, pressing his thumb against my lips to silence me. He stepped down, his boots touching the straw, though he didn't let go of my tunic. "Rest, Rowan. Eat whatever food they bring you. Save your strength. Because when the third dawn comes... I will need every ounce of blood you have to give."
He leaned up one last time, pressing a quick, fierce kiss to the corner of my jaw.
Then, before I could demand an explanation, he slipped out from the circle of my arms, gliding toward the heavy oak door with that silent, ghost-like grace. He pulled the latch, checked the corridor, and looked back at me over his shoulder.
In the amber gloom, with his hair silver against the dark and his jaw set like iron, he didn't look like a doomed prince waiting for the slaughter.
He looked like a king about to declare war.
"Two days, Rowan," he whispered.
The door shut. The deadbolt slid into place with a muffled clunk.
I stood in the center of the dark cell, my chest heaving, my lips still burning with the ghost of his mouth.
I looked down at the heavy iron chains dragging from my wrists, then at the empty straw.
*Forty-eight hours.*
I walked back to the wooden bench, sat down, and leaned my head back against the cold bedrock. The fear was gone. The confusion was gone. Whatever lethal trap Julian was building above my head, I would be ready when the steel was drawn.
I closed my eyes and waited for the dawn.
The forty-eight hours we had bargained for did not even survive the sunset.
Down in the belly of the keep, time was measured not by the transit of the sun, but by the changing of the guard, the slow creep of water weeping through the granite seams, and the mournful tolling of the great iron bell in the Cathedral of the Seven Spires.
I had counted thirty-six chimes after midday when the rhythm of the citadel broke.
It began with a muffled disturbance far above—a sound like dry timber snapping beneath heavy snow. Then came the trumpet calls. Not the measured, bronze fanfares of the royal court, but the sharp, frantic staccato of martial mobilization. The Iron Watch.
Sitting on the damp straw of my cot, I closed my eyes and listened through the stone. I had spent fifteen years commanding men in mountain passes and siege trenches; my ears could parse the cadence of moving armor the way a harpist reads sheet music. Those weren’t the leisurely paces of sentries trading watches. Those were the synchronized, relentless double-time stomps of heavy infantry deploying to secure corridors.
Dozens of them. Hundreds.
An hour later, the herald’s voice penetrated the high ventilation shaft that opened onto the lower courtyard. The words were distorted by the draft, echoing off the wet lime of the chimney, but the decree was unmistakable:
*“...by order of the Regency Council and Grand Duke Alden... the rites of purification are declared forfeit under the Lex Bellica... the outlaw Rowan of the Iron Vanguard shall be taken to the block at the first light of dawn...”*
My eyes snapped open in the gloom.
Dawn.
Not two days. Not forty-eight hours. Less than six hours from now.
Alden had seen the cracks forming. He had seen the way Julian had stood before the High Council, cold as winter marble, challenging his authority over imperial justice. A tyrant does not tolerate a chess piece that begins to slide across the board on its own volition. Alden was cutting the knot before Julian could gather whatever shattered remnants of the royal loyalists remained.
The young, wine-drinking guard outside my cell door was gone. In his place stood two veterans of the Iron Watch, their cuirasses painted the matte black of the Western Marches, their broadswords resting unsheathed across their gauntlets. Through the narrow inspection grate, I could see the flickering torchlight catching the cold steel of their greaves. They didn't speak. They didn't drink. They stood like obsidian pillars, waiting for the butcher's hour.
I looked down at the chains binding my wrists to the floor ring.
The links were three inches thick, forged from hardened border iron. If I threw my full weight against them, I would splinter my radius and ulna long before the mortar gave way. I had broken out of imperial stockades before, but always with a smuggled file, a bribed turnkey, or fifty screaming cutthroats battering down the stockade gate.
Here, fifty feet below the Throne of Crows, I was just meat waiting for the cleaver.
*Damn you, Julian,* I thought, my jaw aching as my teeth ground together. *What did you do? What did you push him into?*
