I don’t know what to say to him, so I don’t speak. I simply sit as witness to the story he tells.
“Michael thought he had to take care of me.” He huffs out a rough laugh. “He probably did at that. But it was my fault he went on that patrol the night it happened. I was angry at him for trying to mother me, so I volunteered. I was so convinced I was ready to be a man. So bloody convinced of my own bravery. Of course he volunteered as well.”
He glances up at me again then, his eyes filled with the pain of all that happened. “I was the only one who made it off the field alive that night. And I barely made it at all,” he said, gesturing toward his arm.
“That’s what happened to your arm?” I ask, thinking of the scarred skin on his shoulders and back.
He gives me a terse nod, but doesn’t say anything more.
He raises the steel hand then and clenches it, watching it move with the kind of terrible wonder he must have had in his eyes the first time he learned that his own arm was missing. Finally his voice comes again, small and broken in the darkness. “I don’t know what happened after. I woke in a French hospital without my arm and in more pain than I ever dreamed imaginable. I was in such desperate shape, I’m not sure why they even bothered to try saving me. Just as I’ll never be sure of why Fiona brought me here.
“At first I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, save my brother wasn’t here, but it wasn’t long until I forgot about Michael, about everything before this world. . . . Until I took that first boy’s life—that’s when the dreams began.
“Now, every time I close my eyes, Michael is there. Laughing. Dying. Over and over, and no matter what I do, I can’t change it. I can’t stop it.” His breath is ragged. His voice no more than a whisper. “The dreams torture me with what I’ve done, but they’ve saved me as well, for without them, I’d have been lost long ago. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to stand against Pan or protect the boys from dangers they can’t understand.”
I want to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, but I know the words are meaningless. Instead, I take his hands and thread my fingers through his, offering what silent comfort I can, but he doesn’t speak. We sit in the silence for a moment before I turn his gloved hand over in mine. “May I?” When he doesn’t pull away, I carefully peel away its soft leather covering.
The hand beneath is truly a miracle of engineering. Every one of the pieces is decorated with filigreed scrollwork, and it moves with an effortless grace that belies its mechanics.
“It might not be so bad if I didn’t have to remember what it was to be whole,” he says softly.
I want to tell him he’s still whole, but I don’t feel like muddying whatever it is growing between us with lies. “It’s part of you now, though.” I turn a bit so I can face him properly, then I open my hand and lay it palm to palm overtop his.
“It’s not quite the same as the original, but it serves me well enough for most things.” He pulls away and raises the metal fingers to touch my cheek. “For other things, though, I find it sorely lacking.”
He raises his other hand, then, and frames my face with his hands—metal and flesh, one hard and unfeeling, the other callused from unknown trials. Both equally Rowan.
I force myself to stay completely still, my heart beating wildly in my chest as he sifts his true fingers slowly through my hair, rubbing at the short strands. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. Pan saw power. The boys in my own world looked at me next to Olivia and maybe saw a pretty girl, just not pretty enough.
I know he wants to kiss me again, just as I know this hesitation is his way of asking.
Yes, I think. Because if I have to die here—and I’m beginning to think it’s inevitable I will—I want to know him again on my lips. I want him to want me that way, this surly pirate of a boy who would sacrifice anything for those under his protection. Anything, it seems, but me.
But he misreads the hitch in my breath and pulls away abruptly, moving back from me. His blank expression tells me that maybe I’ve made him dig far deeper into the pain of his past than anyone has a right to, but I can’t say I’m exactly sorry for it. I’ve finally met the person behind the mask of the Captain. The boy who chose to play the villain in order to battle a monster who calls himself a hero.
Rowan unfolds himself from the ground, leaving me cold and alone in the light of the fire. “Get some sleep, if you can, lass. We’ve a long and trying day ahead of us, if we’re to do what must be done,” he tells me. And then he steps away from the glow of the fire and into the darkness beyond.
When he woke, finally, terribly, on something rough against his cheek and reeking of death, he thought he had been delivered to hell. It had been a mistake. All of it. A horrible mistake. But the angel was there, gentle. Or if not gentle, at least sure . . .
Chapter 32