Chapter 8 Eight

"Get off me!" Rowan bucked hard underneath him, trying to twist free, but Kaien had the angle and the weight and didn't move. "Kaien, what is wrong with you—"

"What do you want?." Kaien's voice came out low, controlled, nothing like the panic underneath it. "Why did you lock the door."

"Because I didn't want anyone walking in, you absolute lunatic, let go of my arm—"

"Not until I know what's in the bag."

"It's—" Rowan stopped struggling for a second, breathing hard against the floor. "It's food, Kaien. It's just food."

Kaien didn't loosen his grip. He reached into the bag himself, fingers closing around something wrapped in cloth, still warm, and pulled it out.

Fried rolls, a dozen of them, wrapped tight, the kind sold outside the academy gates by a vendor who'd been running the same cart for as long as Kaien could remember.

He let go of Rowan's arm.

Rowan scrambled up onto his elbows, rubbing his wrist, glaring up at him with a mix of anger and disbelief that took a second to settle into words. "You attacked me. Over fried rolls."

"I didn't know what you were reaching for."

"It's a bag of food! What did you think I was going to do, stab you with a spring roll?" Rowan pushed himself the rest of the way up, still rubbing his arm, and there was real hurt in his face now, not just shock. "I wanted to share them with you. That's it. That's the whole plan."

Kaien stood there holding the wrapped rolls, and didn't have an answer that explained the last thirty seconds without explaining everything else too.

"I'm not hungry," he said instead, and set the rolls down on the desk.

"That's not what I asked." Rowan's voice had an edge to it now, something that had been building for days and finally had somewhere to go. "What is wrong with you, Kaien? First you go cold on me for no reason. Then you won't tell me anything about Tobin. Now you're pinning me to the floor because I brought you food?"

Kaien said nothing.

"Say something." Rowan's jaw was tight. "Anything."

Kaien didn't.

Rowan let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh, more like something giving up halfway through. He sat down heavily on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all.

"I snuck out," Rowan said finally, quieter now. "Past the guards. I know we're not supposed to, but I wanted to get you something, since you've barely eaten with anyone in weeks, and I thought maybe if I brought you your favorite—" He stopped himself, shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Point is, I went to the vendor outside the east gate. And on the way back I saw your mother."

Kaien's whole body went cold.

"She was at the market," Rowan said. "Looked well. She asked about you, said she hadn't seen you in a while, and I told her you'd been busy with the tournament and everything with Tobin." He glanced up. "She said she'd come visit soon. Wanted to see you herself."

Kaien didn't move.

He was standing in the middle of Rowan's room, holding nothing now, and for a second he couldn't feel his own hands. In the life he remembered, his mother had been gone by the time he was twenty-one, a wasting illness that crept up slow and quiet while he was three provinces away training for an ascension that never came for him, and he'd been so certain there'd be time, so certain the next visit would happen once the next milestone passed, that by the time he understood how sick she really was, there was nothing left to say to her except goodbye.

He hadn't even made it back in time for that.

He'd buried that grief so deep under everything else that had gone wrong in his first life that he'd almost forgotten it existed as its own wound, separate from the execution, separate from Rowan's sword. But it was standing in the middle of this room now, as raw as if it had happened yesterday instead of never happening at all.

She was alive.

She was at the market, asking after him, planning to visit.

"Kaien?" Rowan was watching him now, some of the anger draining out of his face, replaced by something more careful. "You okay? You've gone white."

Kaien opened his mouth and found he didn't have anything to say.