DISCONTINUED A Court Of Blood And Night (Tog & ACOTAR crossover)

3 - Rowan

How am I doing so far? Do the characters fit, or do you think I've changed them too much? Remember, I'm a fan of constructive criticism!

He flew through the skies all day, letting the wind take him where it wanted. Drifting, holding on to the memory of her scent, tugging at that bond in a desperate attempt to get her to tug back-- to tell him she was alive. No necessarily okay, but alive. Of course, if she'd died, he would have felt it. And Manon had told him that Maeve wanted her alive, to wield the Wyrdkeys.

She never tugged back, and it hurt almost as bad as losing her in the first place.

As he mindlessly traveled through the skies, Rowan wondered how Dorian was holding up as a temporary keeper of the Wyrdkeys-- how he handled the feeling of that wrongness around him all the time. Rowan had a feeling that with Manon and the rest if the thirteen, plus Gavriel and... And Lorcan, that he'd be fine. And that Elide girl... There was something more to her, something bubbling underneath the surface. Manon knew it, too; one of us, she'd called the crippled young woman.

Rowan finally had to find a place to sleep for the night, exhaustion making it hard to function. He finally rested in the large, twisting roots of an old tree, open to the wind around him. Maybe the wind would hear something about Aelin, and carry that knowledge back to him.

He slept fitfully in those hours where he could sleep at all, his dreams filled with images of scars and blood, fire and darkness. When he awoke again, a watery gray light had filled the dawning sky, and he was a sweating, shaking mess. Gods, why did he have to be a mess? Why was it so hard to find Aelin? Why couldn't he have just--

He curled his hands into fists as he stood up, stretching out his tired, aching muscles. The night before had been colder than usual, and sleeping in the shade of a tree hadn't helped his cause. At least he'd slept so fitfully that he would have heard someone try to sneak up on him.

He felt something cold on his face and went to wipe it away with a hand. When he examined it, he realized it was a tear. Great-- crying in his sleep, too. This was nothing like him. He didn't cry. He got angry enough to destroy cities, sure, but never cried. And yet...

And yet, whatever hope he'd harbored was fading quickly-- fading as fast as Aelin's scent had from the breeze when she'd first been taken. Little, less, less even... Gone, except for that tiny ember of flame that would continue to push him forward.

That was why being apart from Aelin had been different than being apart from Lyria. With Lyria, he'd fallen into a pit of despair-- a place where he hid inside himself and couldn't find a way out in that darkness. But Aelin, even when he'd loathed her... She'd been a flame in that darkness, and he felt something again. Yes, it was undeniable hatred, but it was something.

Aelin was different from Lyria because he wouldn't fall when she fell. He just... He'd light the darkness. Show her a way out. Show her light again-- show her a flame that burned hotter and brighter and longer than anything she could make. And it would burn forever, as they fought through that darkness of this war, and then their own souls. And they'd walk out with more scars, but they'd come out stronger. That's who they were.

But there was only so much one male could do for his mate. He'd have to get help. Help from an unlikely source. If Aelin could hear his thoughts, she'd likely tear him apart for it. But Rowan had run out of options.

With that in mind, he began to think very, very carefully about his few choices. And when it narrowed down to the only choice he had left, a last resort, the one Aelin would gut him for, he wasn't nearly as afraid as he should have been. Rowan looked once toward the dawning sky, covered in a canopy of gray clouds, and nodded to himself.

He was not going to let her suffer any more.

So, instead of taking off into the skies again, he leaned against the tree and waited.

Okay, so I feel like this chapter was really shitty in comparison to the others.