The City of Crows by Bethany Lovejoy (novels in english .txt) 📗

you the space to change your mind. Now you show up again and you’re running around with some guy, causing trouble all over Magictown and asking questions that you’re not supposed to. You go to the Mayor’s house and you practically abduct Landon, get him into deeper shit than he’s already in; and then you come here asking me questions like I’m the one who owes you answers?”

“We’re not trying to get into trouble--” I interrupted.

“Then what are you trying to do, Lyra? Because at this point, I’d really like to know. You may not understand this, but you’ve gotten into a fair bit of danger, and I’m trying hard not to make it worse.” He glared at me, but his body language told a different story. He reached out for me once more, his hand on my shoulder, pulling me away from the ledge.

“What did you do, Rowan?” I couldn’t get distracted by him, couldn’t get caught up in the past when the present was raging ahead of me. “Why did Landon say that you could do magic in the rain, why is Pat Lobdel hosting witches, and is there any way you could help Leo? Please, I’m begging you.”

“Why. Does. He. Need. Help?”

I flinched, hesitant to reveal to him what I knew but knowing that I had to. Normally, it was Leo who said it, other people who realized it. This time it was me, this time I had to be the one. “Leo’s dying.” Why did my throat feel so tight, when I had to say it out loud? I knew this, I’d known for a while. And yet it was harder to come to terms with by the day. “It’s a curse, we need--”

“He needs,” Rowan interrupted. “And no one is going to touch someone else’s curse.”

“Rowan--”

“Lydia, have you lost your mind?” Rowan said, yanking me firmly away from the edge. I tumbled onto the roof, eyes wide and desperate. “I’ve tolerated this long enough, but you need to come home. It’s becoming very evident to me that things have gotten out of control, I shouldn’t have let you go to begin with.” The look on his face, half self-blaming and the other half critical, disgusted me.

“I thought that you would help, I thought that you would care--The old Rowan would have.”

“Then you thought wrong,” Rowan retaliated, his hand only growing more firm around my elbow. “I only care about one thing, and that’s you. I’ve humored you with this transition for long enough, but I can’t keep doing this. You don’t belong in Marlow Heights, working at some bookstore. What would your mother say about your choices right now? You have to begin thinking rationally and let nature take its course with the human.” His voice came out as a growl, not demanding or urging me but rather informing me of what I was expected to do, “come home.”

I jerked back from his grip, wrestling my elbow out of his grasp with a desperate fervor. “I don’t even know what you’ve done to yourself, Rowan! And after all that’s happened, after Landon, you want me to come back? Jesus, Rowan, I--”

His face fell, the realization hitting him. He lowered his hand, stopped reaching. It was as if, finally, he realized that whatever he had done, he couldn’t drag me into as well. “You want to know what I’ve done to myself? How you can save that human, and why Landon thought it would work?” The look on his face was so self-depreciating that it was sad. “You tell me why this guy is so damn important.”

My lips pulled tight and my eyes averted his. It was confirmation enough.

Rowan breathed, a long, strangled sound escaping him. His eyes were downcast, his body language closed off. It was confirmation of something he didn’t want to hear, but already knew. It was the end, the definite end for the two of us. The only question was, would he leave with grace? When he spoke, despite everything, despite his attempt to seem solemn and regretful; there was still an air of pride.

“There were… Rumors, going around a few months ago. It started out slow, just little murmurs of different small miracles. You were gone, I needed something to bide my time.” I bit back a comment at the idea of him biding his time. “I spoke to a woman at the crossroads, Landon knew her too, she told me not to go looking for answers. She told me that there were some mysteries that were better left unsolved, of course that only made me more curious and determined to solve them.”

“Did she help you?”

He shook his head, “no, but it seems like everyone goes to her first. I think she’s like a step, a chance to change your mind and do the right thing. I didn’t make that choice.”

My mouth felt dry. “What did you choose?”

“You don’t want Leo to live, Lyra, not if this is the cost,” Rowan drawled, a sort of amusement in his tone. He could see it, the nerves growing underneath my skin. “You think of your mother and all the mythology she teaches, and you tell me that you don’t have the vaguest idea of what could be going on?” His eyebrow raised, once again as he edged closer to me, his breath playing upon my cheeks, and his lips mere inches from mine. A familiar situation plagued with an unfamiliar danger.

“I--” My mother, her name once again upon that list played through my head. The way I had smeared it, having no clue as to what it meant. Unlucky me, I never paid much attention to my mother’s lectures. Otherwise I would have never met Rowan.

“There’s a man with many faces, Lyra,” Rowan whispered, every word painted across my lips in his breath by our proximity. “He shows up so many times in our history, he’s in nearly every photograph and painting in your mother’s text books. Those who sign become another identity