Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3)(93)

His eyes flashed with annoyance, but she ignored him as she studied the massive tattoo that went from his face down his neck and shoulders and covered the entirety of his left arm, straight to his fingertips. She hadn’t really looked that day in the woods, but now she marveled at its beautiful, unbroken lines—­save for the manacle-­like burn around his wrist. Both wrists.

“What do you want?”

She hadn’t inspected his body too closely before, either. His chest—­tan enough to suggest he spent a good amount of time without a shirt—­was sculpted with muscle and covered in thick scars. From fights or battles or the gods knew what. A warrior’s body that he’d had centuries to hone.

She tossed the salve to him. “I thought you might want this.”

He caught it with one hand, but his eyes remained on her. “I deserved it.”

“Doesn’t mean I ­can’t feel bad.”

He turned the tin over and over between his fingers. There was a particularly long and nasty scar down his right pectoral—­where had it come from? “Is this a bribe?”

“Give it back, if you’re going to be a pain in my ass.” She held out her hand.

But he closed his fingers around the tin, then set it on his work­table. He said, “You could heal yourself, you know. Heal me, too. Nothing major, but you have that gift.”

She knew—­sort of. Her magic had sometimes healed her injuries without conscious thought. “It’s—­it’s the drop of water affinity I inherited from Mab’s line.” The fire had been the gift of her father’s bloodline. “My mother”—­the words made her sick, but she said them for some reason—“told me that the drop of water in my magic was my salvation—­and sense of self-­preservation.” A nod from him, and she admitted, “I wanted to learn to use it like the other healers—­long ago, I mean. But never was allowed to. They said . . . well, it ­wouldn’t be all that useful, since I didn’t have much of it, and Queens don’t become healers.” She should stop talking.

For some reason, her stomach dropped as he said, “Go to bed. Since you’re banned from the kitchen tomorrow, ­we’re training at dawn.” Well, she certainly deserved the dismissal after burning him like that. So she turned, and maybe she looked as pathetic as she felt, because he suddenly said, “Wait. Shut the door.”

She obeyed. He didn’t give her leave to sit, so she leaned against the wooden door and waited. He kept his back to her, and she watched the powerful muscles expand and contract as he took a deep breath. Then another. Then—

“When my mate died, it took me a very, very long time to come back.”

It took her a moment to think of what to say. “How long ago?”

“Two hundred three years, twenty-­seven days ago.” He gestured to the tattoo on his face, neck, arms. “This tells the story of how it happened. Of the shame I’ll carry until my last breath.”

The warrior who had come the other day had such hollow eyes . . . “Others come to you to have their own grief and shame tattooed on them.”

“Gavriel lost three of his soldiers in an ambush in the southern mountains. They ­were slaughtered. He survived. For as long as he’s been a warrior, he’s tattooed himself with the names of those under his command who have fallen. But where the blame lies has little to do with the point of the markings.”

“Were you to blame?”

Slowly, he turned—­not quite all the way, but enough to give her a sidelong glance. “Yes. When I was young, I was . . . ferocious in my efforts to win valor for myself and my bloodline. Wherever Maeve sent me on campaigns, I went. Along the way, I mated a female of our race. Lyria,” he said, almost reverently. “She sold flowers in the market in Doranelle. Maeve disapproved, but . . . when you meet your mate, there is nothing you can do to alter it. She was mine, and no one could tell me otherwise. Mating her cost me Maeve’s favor, and I still yearned so badly to prove myself. So when war came calling and Maeve offered me a chance to redeem myself, I took it. Lyria begged me not to go. But I was so arrogant, so misguided, that I left her at our mountain home and went off to war. I left her alone,” he said, and again looked at Celaena.

You left me, she had said to him. That was when he’d snapped—­the wounds of centuries ago rising up to swallow him as viciously as her own past consumed her.

“I was gone for months, winning all that glory I so foolishly sought. And then we got word that our enemies had been secretly trying to gain entrance to Doranelle through the mountain passes.” Her stomach dropped to her feet. Rowan ran a hand through his hair, scratched at his face. “I flew home. As fast as I’d ever flown. When I got there, I found that . . . found she had been with child. And they had slaughtered her anyway, and burnt our ­house to cinders.

“When you lose a mate, you don’t . . .” A shake of the head. “I lost all sense of self, of time and place. I hunted them down, all the males who hurt her. I took a long while killing them. She was pregnant—­had been pregnant since I’d left her. But I’d been so enamored with my own foolish agenda that I hadn’t scented it on her. I left my pregnant mate alone.”

Her voice broke, but she managed to say, “What did you do after you killed them?”