Chapter 25

Rowan

WHEN I GET BACK TO the cottage in the late afternoon, I find Alden outside working on the chicken coop. His back is to me, and sweat gleams on his bare skin as he saws away at a long plank of wood.

“Alden!” I call out, lifting a hand in greeting. But his only response is a glance and a nod, and then he goes back to what he’s doing. We’ve never been particularly warm with each other, but his cold shoulder feels wrong.

Immediately, my gaze flicks to the cottage.

Has something happened with Aurora? Did they fight about something? About me ?

I leap the porch stairs and open the door. Inside, the air is warm and smells of peppermint and ginger, a potent mix that tickles my nose.

“Aurora?” I call out, already yanking my boots off and propping them beside the door.

“Up here!” she replies, her voice echoing down from upstairs.

I head up, my feet light on the creaking stairs. The door to the washroom is cracked open, and floral scents drift out.

“Aurora?” I ask again, gently pushing the door open wider. She’s sitting in the old copper bathtub, her head tipped back, cheeks rosy from the warmth. There’s a tiny window above her, and it lets a few golden sunbeams shine through. When she looks up at me, her soft smile calms my rapidly beating heart. If she’s smiling and relaxing like this, surely nothing bad has happened.

I ease into the steamy room, then close the door behind me. There’s a small footstool in the corner, and I grab it and set it beside the tub, then take a seat. Aurora’s hair is wet, and it sticks to her face and shoulders as she sits up and turns to face me.

“Hello, my knight,” she says, voice lilting softly.

“My queen.” I let my eyes drift down to the water, where Aurora’s body is draped along the bottom of the basin. Then I catch her lips with mine. She returns the gesture, but something feels... off. I break our kiss and tip my head. “Is everything all right?”

Aurora looks away from me and doesn’t answer, opting instead to trail her fingers through the water. What doesn’t she want to tell me?

My gaze shifts toward the little stand beside the tub, laden with bottles and vials. “Which one for your hair?” I ask quietly.

She smiles. “The pink one, please.”

I roll up my shirtsleeves and then fetch the bottle with the pink concoction inside, and when I pour a bit into my hand, the smell of roses washes over me. Aurora turns to face away from me, scooting back so I can more easily reach her.

As soon as I start sudsing up her hair, turning her head into a halo of glistening soap bubbles, a memory comes back to me. It’s from many years ago, when I was a child. I recall my mother doing this same thing for me and my sister when we were but wee little things that spent our days playing in fields of dandelions and traipsing through mud. She’d bathe us each evening, soaping up our matching red hair and washing the mud from our cheeks, then would tuck us into bed with a kiss and a song.

Aurora sighs, settling into my touch, and I swallow the lump blocking my throat as I massage her scalp with my fingertips.

It feels like now’s a good time to tell her what I didn’t get the chance to say in the pumpkin patch last night.

“About the game of secrets... I didn’t get to tell you mine.”

A tiny laugh bubbles up from her. “I have one for you as well,” she says softly. “But you go first.”

I swallow. She’s facing away from me, and it’s easier this way, not having to look her in the eye.

“When I told you I have no siblings, I wasn’t being entirely truthful.” There’s a long pause. Aurora doesn’t push. “I had a sister. She was two years younger than me, but you’d have thought us twins.” Remembering her bright green eyes and freckled cheeks makes me feel warm inside. It’s been so long since last I spoke of her. “She was my best friend. It was rare to find one of us without the other.” I massage Aurora’s temples, careful not to let any soap suds drift into her eyes. Her cheeks are flushed pink, her skin warm from the bathwater.

A few moments pass, the only sounds the sloshing of the water and the whisper of my fingers through Aurora’s long hair.

“What happened?” she asks, voice soft, gently coaxing.

It takes me forcing down the lump in my throat before I can speak. “Lucy died when we were very young... and it was my fault.”

At this, Aurora sits up slowly, her hair slipping through my hands. She turns to face me, reaching up at the same time to twine her wet fingers between my soapy ones.

“How’d she die?” she whispers.

My sigh is a pained, fluttering thing. “There’s a pond on the grounds of our family estate. Mother told us to be careful, that the ice was thin. But we were young, and I didn’t listen well then.”

A clawed hand grips my heart and squeezes like a vise. It makes me catch my breath and wince. I’ve not spoken this aloudsince the day it happened, since I went screaming and crying to my father in his study, tugging his sleeve and begging him to come quickly, to save her.

At that time, so young as I was, I didn’t know it was already too late.

“I took Lucy out on the ice, thought it would be fun. It was sunny, a warmer day than we’d yet had that winter. The ice broke. She fell through.”

I can still remember her scream as the ice splintered and gave way, then the deafening silence after she slipped beneath the frigid surface.

Tears spring to my eyes, and I wipe them quickly on my forearm. Aurora’s brows pull together, her lips twisting into a frown.

“Rowan,” she whispers, bathwater sloshing as she leans forward. Her lips press against my cheek, then my forehead. She smells of roses and warmth and sunshine.

“My mother could scarcely stand to look at me after that,” I continue as Aurora presses more kisses to my face and along my jaw, “so my father sent me off to serve as a page for the royal court. I’ve not been home since.”

“You’ve not been home . . . at all ?”

I shake my head.

“How long ago was this?” she asks.

“They sent me away when I was seven, so...” I do a quick count of the years in my head. It feels like a lifetime. “Eighteen years.”

She lets out a sound of surprise, then sits back in the tub. “Do you wish to return home?”

My shoulders rise in a shrug. Many evenings I’ve dreamt of home, of the rolling fields sprinkled with yellow-headed dandelions. I recall sitting in my mother’s lap while she read to me, then lying before the hearth in my father’s study, napping upon the plush rug bathed in the warmth of the flames.

But then I see Lucy’s face and remember the hollow ache of knowing she’d never again explore the woods with me or tiptoe down the moonlit corridors at night when we were supposed to be asleep in bed.

“I don’t know,” I say finally. “I’m not so sure it would even feel like home anymore.”

I let my head droop slightly, watch the pink-tinted soap bubbles swirling across the surface of the water.

“Lucy,” Aurora whispers softly. I glance at her just as her lips turn up a bit in the corners. “I wondered where you came up with that name. It’s lovely.”

I’d worried Aurora would find it odd that I named the hen after my late sister, but she just smiles some more and tilts her sudsy head. She looks a bit like a child, all covered in soap bubbles, and it makes me laugh, loosening some of the grief from my heart.

“Come here.” I wave her over. “Let me rinse that for you.”

She scoots back again, and I use a cup to pour water over her head, shielding her eyes from the soap suds with one hand.

Having shared this with her, I feel a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I’ve always felt such shame, such guilt for what I did. And though this doesn’t alleviate it, having spoken the truth out loud seems to be a balm of its own.

“What’s your secret?” I ask as I rinse. Her shoulders bunch up, and her fingers curl into fists. Again, I find it odd. She’s usually a twirling, giggling ball of energy, her eyes like windows into her soul. Why is she acting so... nervous?

“Aurora?” I finish rinsing the soap and set the cup aside. “What is it?

Not meeting my eyes, she brings her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “I... went to see the oracle today.”

The oracle, who’s also Faunwood’s healer.

My eyes narrow. Why didn’t she tell me earlier? “What happened?”

One of her shoulders lifts in a shrug. “I was out in the woods with Alden, collecting ingredients for the vine whisper elixir.”

“The what?”

She waves a hand like it’s not the point. “For the thornbugs. While we were out there, I got sick. So Alden took me into the village.”

Heat rises in my chest. Why didn’t Alden come find me? Aurora was sick, and she was right there in town, but he didn’t bother to seek me out. My jaw tenses. Sure, this whole “sharing Aurora” thing certainly isn’t a walk in the park, but I thought we were—

“Rowan.”

Aurora has turned to look at me over her shoulder, her green eyes serious as they hold my stare. Her use of my name refocuses me.

“And?” I ask softly. “Did the oracle tell you what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong ,” Aurora whispers, but the way she says it sounds off, like it’s not quite the truth.

I cross my arms on the edge of the tub and raise my eyebrows at her, waiting for the full explanation. It takes her a moment, but she finally lets out a sigh.

“I’m pregnant. And the child is yours.”

She’s . . . pregnant.

Suddenly, there’s not enough air in the room, and what little air does remain is heavy and humid and wraps around my lungs like it’s trying to smother me.

“You’re . . . But . . . How?”

Well, I know how . That much is clear. But she told me it was safe.

“The goddess,” she whispers, averting her eyes from mine. “Niamh told me Brigid sometimes plays tricks on Beltane, and it appears she played one on us. I wasn’t in my fertility window, so I thought we were safe, but... here we are.” As her eyes meet mine, they look sad, maybe even a bit scared, and that expression snaps me out of my spiraling.

This beautiful, loving, gentle-hearted woman is pregnant with my child, and I’m sitting here acting like I just got knocked off my horse in a joust. What’s the matter with me?

Standing from the footstool beside the tub, I pull my tunic over my head, then strip out of my trousers. Aurora blinks up at me, lips parting in surprise as I ease into the tub. Before she can say anything, I pull her body close to mine and wrap my arms around her small frame.

“And what a wonderful trick it is,” I whisper.

She wriggles back to look into my eyes. “Really? You’re not... upset?”

“Upset?” I push a hand through her wet hair and cup the back of her head. “Of course not. Surprised, yes, but not upset.”

Her eyes sparkle with tears, and I press my mouth to hers, tasting roses on her lips. As I pull away, a single tear escapes from Aurora’s eye, and I brush it away with a thumb.

“Are you okay with this?” I ask.

It’s a bit surreal talking to her about this, considering we’ve known each other such a short while. But it feels comfortable, as if she’s been in my life for years rather than months. I’ve never been with a woman who’s made me feel so seen and accepted and wanted. Aurora has a special magic all her own.

“I am,” she whispers, averting her eyes. A small smile plays on her lips. “I can’t say I expected it to happen this way, but...” She sniffles once, then meets my gaze. “It’s wonderful. I was worried you’d be unhappy...”

Once again, I lean forward to press my lips to hers. When I pull away, I rest my forehead against hers and whisper softly, “Sometimes unexpected gifts are the most precious.”

Aurora sniffles again, but her mouth is still curved into a smile.

Then something occurs to me, and I sit up straighter.

“Alden...” I say. “He seemed bothered when I got here.”

Aurora gives a small nod, the joy going from her face again. “He’s...” The sigh that slips from her lips is a delicate thing. “I think he’s surprised, probably doesn’t know what to make of this.” She trails her fingers through the water and leans against my bare chest. “I don’t want to hurt him, Rowan. That’s the last thing I want.”

My hand drifts over her clean wet hair, and my chest rises and falls with a deep breath.

If I were Alden, how would I feel? Unimportant, perhaps. Worried I’d be cast aside. No wonder he was in no mood to speak with me.

The anger I felt at him for not finding me in town dissipates like the soap bubbles popping in the warm sun-streaked air.

“I think you should speak with him,” I say quietly. “Tell him how you feel. You’ll work it out together—I’m certain of it.”

She nods, more tears shining on her cheeks, and I tuck her head against my bare chest, holding her close as I whisper, “Everything is going to be okay.”