Heir of Fire

1

Gods, it was boiling in this useless excuse for a kingdom.

Or maybe it felt that way because Celaena Sardothien had been lounging on the lip of the terra-­cotta roof since midmorning, an arm flung over her eyes, slowly baking in the sun like the loaves of flatbread the city’s poorest citizens left on their windowsills because they ­couldn’t afford brick ovens.

And gods, she was sick of flatbread—teggya, they called it. Sick of the crunchy, oniony taste of it that even mouthfuls of water ­couldn’t wash away. If she never ate another bite of teggya again, it would be too soon.

Mostly because it was all she’d been able to afford when she landed in Wendlyn two weeks ago and made her way to the capital city, Varese, just as she’d been ordered by his Grand Imperial Majesty and Master of the Earth, the King of Adarlan.

She’d resorted to swiping teggya and wine off vendors’ carts since her money ran out, not long after she’d taken one look at the heavily fortified limestone castle, at the elite guards, at the cobalt banners flapping so proudly in the dry, hot wind and decided not to kill her assigned targets.

So it had been stolen teggya . . . and wine. The sour red wine from the vineyards lining the rolling hills around the walled capital—­a taste she’d initially spat out but now very, very much enjoyed. Especially since the day when she decided that she didn’t particularly care about anything at all.

She reached for the terra-­cotta tiles sloping behind her, groping for the clay jug of wine she’d hauled onto the roof that morning. Patting, feeling for it, and then—

She swore. Where in hell was the wine?

The world tilted and went blindingly bright as she hoisted herself onto her elbows. Birds circled above, keeping well away from the white-tailed hawk that had been perched atop a nearby chimney all morning, waiting to snatch up its next meal. Below, the market street was a brilliant loom of color and sound, full of braying donkeys, merchants waving their wares, clothes both foreign and familiar, and the clacking of wheels against pale cobblestones. But where in hell was the—

Ah. There. Tucked beneath one of the heavy red tiles to keep cool. Just where she’d stashed it hours before, when she’d climbed onto the roof of the massive indoor market to survey the perimeter of the castle walls two blocks away. Or what­ever she’d thought sounded official and useful before she’d realized that she’d rather sprawl in the shadows. Shadows that had long since been burned away by that relentless Wendlyn sun.

Celaena swigged from the jug of wine—­or tried to. It was empty, which she supposed was a blessing, because gods her head was spinning. She needed water, and more teggya. And perhaps something for the gloriously painful split lip and scraped cheekbone she’d earned last night in one of the city’s tabernas.

Groaning, Celaena rolled onto her belly and surveyed the street forty feet below. She knew the guards patrolling it by now—­had marked their faces and weapons, just as she had with the guards atop the high castle walls. She’d memorized their rotations, and how they opened the three massive gates that led into the castle. It seemed that the Ashryvers and their ancestors took safety very, very seriously.

It had been ten days since she’d arrived in Varese itself, after hauling ass from the coast. Not because she was particularly eager to kill her targets, but because the city was so damn large that it seemed her best chance of dodging the immigration officials, whom she’d given the slip instead of registering with their oh-­so-­benevolent work program. Hurrying to the capital had also provided welcome activity after weeks at sea, where she hadn’t really felt like doing anything other than lying on the narrow bed in her cramped cabin or sharpening her weapons with a near-­religious zeal.

You’re nothing but a coward, Nehemia had said to her.

Every slice of the whetting stone had echoed it. Coward, coward, coward. The word had trailed her each league across the ocean.

She had made a vow—­a vow to free Eyllwe. So in between moments of despair and rage and grief, in between thoughts of Chaol and the Wyrdkeys and all she’d left behind and lost, Celaena had decided on one plan to follow when she reached these shores. One plan, however insane and unlikely, to free the enslaved kingdom: find and obliterate the Wyrdkeys the King of Adarlan had used to build his terrible empire. She’d gladly destroy herself to carry it out.

Just her, just him. Just as it should be; no loss of life beyond their own, no soul stained but hers. It would take a monster to destroy a monster.

If she had to be ­here thanks to Chaol’s misplaced good intentions, then at least she’d receive the answers she needed. There was one person in Erilea who had been present when the Wyrdkeys ­were wielded by a conquering demon race that had warped them into three tools of such mighty power that they’d been hidden for thousands of years and nearly wiped from memory. Queen Maeve of the Fae. Maeve knew everything—­as was expected when you ­were older than dirt.

So the first step of her stupid, foolish plan had been simple: seek out Maeve, get answers about how to destroy the Wyrdkeys, and then return to Adarlan.

It was the least she could do. For Nehemia—­for . . . a lot of other people. There was nothing left in her, not really. Only ash and an abyss and the unbreakable vow she’d carved into her flesh, to the friend who had seen her for what she truly was.

When they had docked at the largest port city in Wendlyn, she ­couldn’t help but admire the caution the ship took while coming to shore—­waiting until a moonless night, then stuffing Celaena and the other refugee women from Adarlan in the galley while navigating the secret channels through the barrier reef. It was understandable: the reef was the main defense keeping Adarlan’s legions from these shores. It was also part of her mission ­here as the King’s Champion.

That was the other task lingering in the back of her mind: to find a way to keep the king from executing Chaol or Nehemia’s family. He’d promised to do it should she fail in her mission to retrieve Wendlyn’s naval defense plans and assassinate its king and prince at their annual midsummer ball. But she’d shoved all those thoughts aside when they’d docked and the refugee women had been herded ashore for pro­cessing by the port’s officials.

Many of the women ­were scarred inside and out, their eyes gleaming with echoes of what­ever horrors had befallen them in Adarlan. So even after she’d vanished from the ship during the chaos of docking, she’d lingered on a nearby rooftop while the women were escorted into a building—to find homes and employment. Yet Wendlyn’s officials could later bring them to a quiet part of the city and do what­ever they wanted. Sell them. Hurt them. They ­were refugees: unwanted and without any rights. Without any voice.

But she hadn’t lingered merely from paranoia. No—­Nehemia would have remained to ensure they ­were safe. Realizing that, Celaena had wound up on the road to the capital as soon as she was certain the women ­were all right. Learning how to infiltrate the castle was merely something to occupy her time while she decided how to execute the first steps of her plan. While she tried to stop thinking about Nehemia.

It had all been fine—­fine and easy. Hiding in the little woods and barns along the way, she passed like a shadow through the countryside.

Wendlyn. A land of myths and monsters—­of legends and nightmares made flesh.

The kingdom itself was a spread of warm, rocky sand and thick forest, growing ever greener as hills rolled inland and sharpened into towering peaks. The coast and the land around the capital ­were dry, as if the sun had baked all but the hardiest vegetation. Vastly different from the soggy, frozen empire she’d left behind.

A land of plenty, of opportunity, where men didn’t just take what they wanted, where no doors ­were locked and people smiled at you in the streets. But she didn’t particularly care if someone did or didn’t smile at her—­no, as the days wore on, she found it suddenly very difficult to bring herself to care about anything at all. What­ever determination, what­ever rage, what­ever anything she’d felt upon leaving Adarlan had ebbed away, devoured by the nothingness that now gnawed at her.

It was four days before Celaena spotted the massive capital city built across the foothills. Varese, the city where her mother had been born; ­the vibrant heart of the kingdom.

While Varese was cleaner than Rifthold and had plenty of wealth spread between the upper and lower classes, it was a capital city all the same, with slums and back alleys, whores and gamblers—­and it hadn’t taken too long to find its underbelly.

On the street below, three of the market guards paused to chat, and Celaena rested her chin on her hands. Like every guard in this kingdom, each was clad in light armor and bore a good number of weapons. Rumor claimed the Wendlynite soldiers ­were trained by the Fae to be ruthless and cunning and swift. And she didn’t want to know if that was true, for about a dozen different reasons. They certainly seemed a good deal more observant than the average Rifthold sentry—­even if they hadn’t yet noticed the assassin in their midst. But these days, Celaena knew the only threat she posed was to herself.

Even baking in the sun each day, even washing up whenever she could in one of the city’s many fountain-­squares, she could still feel Archer Finn’s blood soaking her skin, into her hair. Even with the constant noise and rhythm of Varese, she could still hear Archer’s groan as she gutted him in that tunnel beneath the castle. And even with the wine and heat, she could still see Chaol, horror contorting his face at what he’d learned about her Fae heritage and the monstrous power that could easily destroy her, about how hollow and dark she was inside.

She often wondered whether he’d figured out the riddle she’d told him on the docks of Rifthold. And if he had discovered the truth . . . Celaena never let herself get that far. Now ­wasn’t the time for thinking about Chaol, or the truth, or any of the things that had left her soul so limp and weary.

Celaena tenderly prodded her split lip and frowned at the market guards, the movement making her mouth hurt even more. She’d deserved that par­tic­u­lar blow in the brawl she’d provoked in last night’s taberna—­she’d kicked a man’s balls into his throat, and when he’d caught his breath, he’d been enraged, to say the least. Lowering her hand from her mouth, she observed the guards for a few moments. They didn’t take bribes from the merchants, or bully or threaten with fines like the guards and officials in Rifthold. Every official and soldier she’d seen so far had been similarly . . . good.

The same way Galan Ashryver, Crown Prince of Wendlyn, was good.

Dredging up some semblance of annoyance, Celaena stuck out her tongue. At the guards, at the market, at the hawk on the nearby chimney, at the castle and the prince who lived inside it. She wished that she had not run out of wine so early in the day.

It had been a week since she’d figured out how to infiltrate the castle, three days after arriving in Varese itself. A week since that horrible day when all her plans crumbled around her.

A cooling breeze pushed past, bringing with it the spices from the vendors lining the nearby street—­nutmeg, thyme, cumin, lemon verbena. She inhaled deeply, letting the scents clear her sun-­and-­wine-­addled head. The pealing of bells floated down from one of the neighboring mountain towns, and in some square of the city, a minstrel band struck up a merry midday tune. Nehemia would have loved this place.

That fast, the world slipped, swallowed up by the abyss that now lived within her. Nehemia would never see Wendlyn. Never wander through the spice market or hear the mountain bells. A dead weight pressed on Celaena’s chest.

It had seemed like such a perfect plan when she’d arrived in Varese. In the hours she’d spent figuring out the royal castle’s defenses, she’d debated how she’d find Maeve to learn about the keys. It had all been going smoothly, flawlessly, until . . .

Until that gods-­damned day when she’d noted how the guards left a hole in their defense in the southern wall every afternoon at two ­o’clock, and grasped how the gate mechanism operated. Until Galan Ashryver had come riding out through those gates, in full view of where she’d been perched on the roof of a nobleman’s ­house.

It hadn’t been the sight of him, with his olive skin and dark hair, that had stopped her dead. It hadn’t been the fact that, even from a distance, she could see his turquoise eyes—her eyes, the reason she usually wore a hood in the streets.

No. It had been the way people cheered.

Cheered for him, their prince. Adored him, with his dashing smile and his light armor gleaming in the endless sun, as he and the soldiers behind him rode toward the north coast to continue blockade running. Blockade running. The prince—­her target—­was a gods-­damned blockade runner against Adarlan, and his people loved him for it.

She’d trailed the prince and his men through the city, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, and all it would have taken was one arrow through those turquoise eyes and he would have been dead. But she followed him all the way to the city walls, the cheers growing louder, people tossing flowers, everyone beaming with pride for their perfect, perfect prince.

She’d reached the city gates just as they opened to let him through. And when Galan Ashryver rode off into the sunset, off to war and glory and to fight for good and freedom, she lingered on that roof until he was a speck in the distance.

Then she had walked into the nearest taberna and gotten into the bloodiest, most brutal brawl she’d ever provoked, until the city guard was called in and she vanished moments before everyone was tossed into the stocks. And then she had decided, as her nose bled down the front of her shirt and she spat blood onto the cobblestones, that she ­wasn’t going to do anything.

There was no point to her plans. Nehemia and Galan would have led the world to freedom, and Nehemia should have been breathing. Together the prince and princess could have defeated the King of Adarlan. But Nehemia was dead, and Celaena’s vow—­her stupid, pitiful vow—­was worth as much as mud when there ­were beloved heirs like Galan who could do so much more. She’d been a fool to make that vow.

Even Galan—­Galan was barely making a dent against Adarlan, and he had an entire armada at his disposal. She was one person, one complete waste of life. If Nehemia hadn’t been able to stop the king . . . then that plan, to find a way to contact Maeve . . . that plan was absolutely useless.

Mercifully, she still hadn’t seen one of the Fae—­not a single damn one—­or the faeries, or even a lick of magic. She’d done her best to avoid it. Even before she’d spotted Galan, she’d kept away from the market stalls that offered everything from healing to trinkets to potions, areas that ­were usually also full of street performers or mercenaries trading their gifts to earn a living. She’d learned which tabernas the magic-­wielders liked to frequent and never went near them. Because sometimes she felt a trickling, writhing thing awaken in her gut if she caught a crackle of its energy.

It had been a week since she’d given up her plan and abandoned any attempt to care at all. And she suspected it’d be many weeks more before she decided she was truly sick of teggya, or brawling every night just to feel something, or guzzling sour wine as she lay on rooftops all day.

But her throat was parched and her stomach was grumbling, so Celaena slowly peeled herself off the edge of the roof. Slowly, not because of those vigilant guards, but rather because her head was well and truly spinning. She didn’t trust herself to care enough to prevent a tumble.

She glared at the thin scar stretching across her palm as she shimmied down the drainpipe and into the alley off the market street. It was now nothing more than a reminder of the pathetic promise she’d made at Nehemia’s half-­frozen grave over a month ago, and of everything and everyone ­else she’d failed. Just like her amethyst ring, which she gambled away every night and won back before sunrise.

Despite all that had happened, and Chaol’s role in Nehemia’s death, even after she’d destroyed what was between them, she hadn’t been able to forfeit his ring. She’d lost it thrice now in card games, only to get it back—­by what­ever means necessary. A dagger poised to slip between the ribs usually did a good deal more convincing than actual words.

Celaena supposed it was a miracle she made it down to the alley, where the shadows momentarily blinded her. She braced a hand on the cool stone wall, letting her eyes adjust, willing her head to stop spinning. A mess—­she was a gods-­damned mess. She wondered when she’d bother to stop being one.

The tang and reek of the woman hit Celaena before she saw her. Then wide, yellowed eyes ­were in her face, and a pair of withered, cracked lips parted to hiss, “Slattern! Don’t let me catch you in front of my door again!”

Celaena pulled back, blinking at the vagrant woman—­and at her door, which . . . was just an alcove in the wall, crammed with rubbish and what had to be sacks of the woman’s belongings. The woman herself was hunched, her hair unwashed and teeth a ruin of stumps. Celaena blinked again, the woman’s face coming into focus. Furious, half-­mad, and filthy.

Celaena held up her hands, backing away a step, then another. “Sorry.”

The woman spat a wad of phlegm onto the cobblestones an inch from Celaena’s dusty boots. Failing to muster the energy to be disgusted or furious, Celaena would have walked away had she not glimpsed herself as she raised her dull gaze from the glob.

Dirty clothes—­stained and dusty and torn. Not to mention, she smelled atrocious, and this vagrant woman had mistaken her for . . . for a fellow vagrant, competing for space on the streets.

Well. ­Wasn’t that just wonderful. An all-­time low, even for her. Perhaps it’d be funny one day, if she bothered to remember it. She ­couldn’t recall the last time she’d laughed.

At least she could take some comfort in knowing that it ­couldn’t get worse.

But then a deep male voice chuckled from the shadows behind her.

2

The man—­male—down the alley was Fae.

After ten years, after all the executions and burnings, a Fae male was prowling toward her. Pure, solid Fae. There was no escaping him as he emerged from the shadows yards away. The vagrant in the alcove and the others along the alley fell so quiet Celaena could again hear those bells ringing in the distant mountains.

Tall, broad-­shouldered, every inch of him seemingly corded with muscle, he was a male blooded with power. He paused in a dusty shaft of sunlight, his silver hair gleaming.

As if his delicately pointed ears and slightly elongated canines ­weren’t enough to scare the living shit out of everyone in that alley, including the now-­whimpering madwoman behind Celaena, a wicked-­looking tattoo was ­etched down the left side of his harsh face, the whorls of black ink stark against his sun-­kissed skin.

The markings could easily have been decorative, but she still remembered enough of the Fae language to recognize them as words, even in such an artistic rendering. Starting at his temple, the tattoo flowed over his jaw and down his neck, where it disappeared beneath the pale surcoat and cloak he wore. She had a feeling the markings continued down the rest of him, too, concealed along with at least half a dozen weapons. As she reached into her cloak for her own hidden dagger, she realized he might have been handsome ­were it not for the promise of violence in his pine-­green eyes.

It would have been a mistake to call him young—­just as it would have been a mistake to call him anything but a warrior, even without the sword strapped across his back and the vicious knives at his sides. He moved with lethal grace and surety, scanning the alley as if he ­were walking onto a killing field.

The hilt of the dagger was warm in her hand, and Celaena adjusted her stance, surprised to be feeling—­fear. And enough of it that it cleared the heavy fog that had been clouding her senses these past few weeks.

The Fae warrior stalked down the alley, his knee-­high leather boots silent on the cobblestones. Some of the loiterers shrank back; some bolted for the sunny street, to random doorways, anywhere to escape his challenging stare.

Celaena knew before his sharp eyes met hers that he was ­here for her, and who had sent him.

She reached for her Eye amulet, startled to find it was no longer around her neck. She’d given it to Chaol—­the only bit of protection she could grant him upon leaving. He’d probably thrown it away as soon as he figured out the truth. Then he could go back to the haven of being her enemy. Maybe he’d tell Dorian, too, and the pair of them would both be safe.

Before she could give in to the instinct to scuttle back up the drainpipe and onto the roof, she considered the plan she’d abandoned. Had some god remembered she existed and decided to throw her a bone? She’d needed to see Maeve.

Well, ­here was one of Maeve’s elite warriors. Ready. Waiting.

And from the vicious temper emanating from him, not entirely happy about it.

The alley remained as still as a graveyard while the Fae warrior surveyed her. His nostrils flared delicately, as if he ­were—

He was getting a whiff of her scent.

She took some small satisfaction in knowing she smelled horrific, but it ­wasn’t that smell he was reading. No, it was the scent that marked her as her—­the smell of her lineage and blood and what and who she was. And if he said her name in front of these people . . . then she knew that Galan Ashryver would come running home. The guards would be on high alert, and that was not part of her plan at all.

The bastard looked likely to do such a thing, just to prove who was in charge. So she summoned her energy as best she could and sauntered over to him, trying to remember what she might have done months ago, before the world had gone to hell. “Well met, my friend,” she purred. “Well met, indeed.”

She ignored the shocked faces around them, focusing solely on sizing him up. He stood with a stillness that only an immortal could achieve. She willed her heartbeat and breathing to calm. He could probably hear them, could probably smell every emotion raging through her. There’d be no fooling him with bravado, not in a thousand years. He’d probably lived that long already. Perhaps there’d be no beating him, either. She was Celaena Sardothien, but he was a Fae warrior and had likely been one for a great while.

She stopped a few feet away. Gods, he was huge. “What a lovely surprise,” she said loudly enough for everyone to hear. When was the last time she’d sounded that pleasant? She ­couldn’t even remember the last time she’d spoken in full sentences. “I thought we ­were to meet at the city walls.”

He didn’t bow, thank the gods. His harsh face didn’t even shift. Let him think what he wanted. She was sure she looked nothing like what he’d been told to expect—­and he’d certainly laughed when that woman mistook her for a fellow vagrant.

“Let’s go,” was all he said, his deep, somewhat bored voice seeming to echo off the stones as he turned to leave the alley. She’d bet good money that the leather vambraces on his forearms concealed blades.

She might have given him a rather obnoxious reply, just to feel him out a bit more, but people ­were still watching. He prowled along, not deigning to look at any of the gawkers. She ­couldn’t tell if she was impressed or revolted.

She followed the Fae warrior into the bright street and through the bustling city. He was heedless of the humans who paused their working and walking and milling about to stare. He certainly didn’t wait for her to catch up as he strode up to a pair of ordinary mares tied by a trough in a nondescript square. If memory served her correctly, the Fae usually possessed far finer ­horses. He had probably arrived in another form and purchased these ­here.

All Fae possessed a secondary animal form. Celaena was currently in hers, her mortal human body as animal as the birds wheeling above. But what was his? He could have been a wolf, she thought, with that layered surcoat that flowed to midthigh like a pelt, his footfalls so silent. Or a mountain cat, with that predatory grace.

He mounted the larger of the mares, leaving her to the piebald beast that looked more interested in seeking out a quick meal than trekking across the land. That made two of them. But they’d gone far enough without any explanation.

She stuffed her satchel into a saddlebag, angling her hands so that her sleeves hid the narrow bands of scars on her wrists, reminders of where the manacles had been. Where she had been. It was none of his business. None of Maeve’s business, either. The less they knew about her, the less they could use against her. “I’ve known a few brooding warrior-­types in my day, but I think you might be the broodiest of them all.” He whipped his head to her, and she drawled, “Oh, hello. I think you know who I am, so I won’t bother introducing myself. But before I’m carted off to gods-­know-­where, I’d like to know who you are.”

His lips thinned. He surveyed the square—­where people ­were now watching. And everyone instantly found somewhere ­else to be.

When they’d scattered, he said, “You’ve gathered enough about me at this point to have learned what you need to know.” He spoke the common tongue, and his accent was subtle—­lovely, if she was feeling generous enough to admit it. A soft, rolling purr.

“Fair enough. But what am I to call you?” She gripped the saddle but didn’t mount it.

“Rowan.” His tattoo seemed to soak up the sun, so dark it looked freshly inked.

“Well, Rowan—” Oh, he did not like her tone one bit. His eyes narrowed slightly in warning, but she went on, “Dare I ask where ­we’re going?” She had to be drunk—­still drunk or descending to a new level of apathy—if she was talking to him like this. But she ­couldn’t stop, even as the gods or the Wyrd or the threads of fate readied to shove her back toward her original plan of action.

“I’m taking you where you’ve been summoned.”

As long as she got to see Maeve and ask her questions, she didn’t particularly care how she got to Doranelle—­or whom she traveled with.

Do what has to be done, Elena had told her. In her usual fashion, Elena had omitted to specify what had to be done once she arrived in Wendlyn. At least this was better than eating flatbread and drinking wine and being mistaken for a vagrant. Perhaps she could be on a boat back to Adarlan within three weeks, possessing the answers that would solve everything.

It should have energized her. But instead she found herself silently mounting her mare, out of words and the will to use them. Just the past few minutes of interaction had drained her completely.

It was better that Rowan didn’t seem inclined to speak as she followed him out of the city. The guards merely waved them through the walls, some even backing away.

As they rode on, Rowan didn’t ask why she was ­here and what she’d been doing for the past ten years while the world had gone to hell. He pulled his pale hood over his silver hair and moved ahead, though it was still easy enough to mark him as different, as a warrior and law unto himself.

If he was truly as old as she suspected, she was likely little more than a speck of dust to him, a fizzle of life in the long-­burning fire of his immortality. He could probably kill her without a second thought—­and then move on to his next task, utterly untroubled by ending her existence.

It didn’t unnerve her as much as it should have.

3

For a month now, it had been the same dream. Every night, over and over, until Chaol could see it in his waking hours.

Archer Finn groaning as Celaena shoved her dagger up through his ribs and into his heart. She embraced the handsome courtesan like a lover, but when she gazed over Archer’s shoulder, her eyes ­were dead. Hollow.

The dream shifted, and Chaol could say nothing, do nothing as the golden-­brown hair darkened to black and the agonized face ­wasn’t Archer’s but Dorian’s.

The Crown Prince jerked, and Celaena held him tighter, twisting the dagger one final time before she let Dorian slump to the gray stones of the tunnel. Dorian’s blood was already pooling—­too fast. But Chaol still ­couldn’t move, ­couldn’t go to his friend or the woman he loved.

The wounds on Dorian multiplied, and there was blood—­so much blood. He knew these wounds. Though he’d never seen the body, he’d combed through the reports detailing what Celaena had done to the rogue assassin Grave in that alley, the way she’d butchered him for killing Nehemia.

Celaena lowered her dagger, ­each drop of blood from its gleaming blade sending ripples through the pool already around her. She tipped back her head, breathing in deep. Breathing in the death before her, taking it into her soul, vengeance and ecstasy mingling at the slaughter of her enemy. Her true enemy. The Havilliard Empire.

The dream shifted again, and Chaol was pinned beneath her as she writhed above him, her head still thrown back, that same expression of ecstasy written across her blood-­splattered face.

Enemy. Lover.

Queen.

•

The memory of the dream splintered as Chaol blinked at Dorian, who was sitting beside him at their old table in the Great Hall—­and waiting for an answer to what­ever he had said. Chaol gave an apologetic wince.

The Crown Prince didn’t return Chaol’s half smile. Instead, Dorian quietly said, “You ­were thinking about her.”

Chaol took a bite from his lamb stew but tasted nothing. Dorian was too observant for his own good. And Chaol had no interest in talking about Celaena. Not with Dorian, not with anyone. The truth he knew about her could jeopardize more lives than hers.

“I was thinking about my father,” Chaol lied. “When he returns to Anielle in a few weeks, I’m to go with him.” It was the price for getting Celaena to the safety of Wendlyn: his father’s support in exchange for his return to the Silver Lake to take up his title as the heir of Anielle. And he’d been willing to make that sacrifice; he’d make any sacrifice to keep Celaena and her secrets safe. Even now that he knew who—what she was. Even after she’d told him about the king and the Wyrdkeys. If this was the price he had to pay, so be it.

Dorian glanced toward the high table, where the king and Chaol’s father dined. The Crown Prince should have been eating with them, but he’d chosen to sit with Chaol instead. It was the first time Dorian had done so in ages—­the first time they had spoken since their tense conversation after the decision was made to send Celaena to Wendlyn.

Dorian would understand if he knew the truth. But Dorian ­couldn’t know who and what Celaena was, or what the king was truly planning. The potential for disaster was too high. And Dorian’s own secrets ­were deadly enough.

“I heard the rumors you ­were to go,” Dorian said warily. “I didn’t realize they ­were true.”

Chaol nodded, trying to find something—­anything—to say to his friend.

They still hadn’t spoken of the other thing between them, the other bit of truth that had come out that night in the tunnels: Dorian had magic. Chaol didn’t want to know anything about it. If the king decided to interrogate him . . . he hoped he’d hold out, if it ever came to that. The king, he knew, had far darker methods of extracting information than torture. So he hadn’t asked, hadn’t said one word. And neither had Dorian.

He met Dorian’s gaze. There was nothing kind in it. But Dorian said, “I’m trying, Chaol.”

Trying, because Chaol’s not consulting him on the plan to get Celaena out of Adarlan had been a breach of trust, and one that shamed him, though Dorian could never know that, either. “I know.”

“And despite what happened, I’m fairly certain ­we’re not enemies.” Dorian’s mouth quirked to the side.

You will always be my enemy. Celaena had screamed those words at Chaol the night Nehemia had died. Screamed it with ten years’ worth of conviction and hatred, a de­cade spent holding the world’s greatest secret so deep within her that she’d become another person entirely.

Because Celaena was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and rightful Queen of Terrasen.

It made her his mortal enemy. It made her Dorian’s enemy. Chaol still didn’t know what to do about it, or what it meant for them, for the life he’d imagined for them. The future he’d once dreamed of was irrevocably gone.

He’d seen the deadness in her eyes that night in the tunnels, along with the wrath and exhaustion and sorrow. He’d seen her go over the edge when Nehemia died, and knew what she’d done to Grave in retribution. He didn’t doubt for one heartbeat that she could snap again. There was such glittering darkness in her, an endless rift straight through her core.

Nehemia’s death had shattered her. What he had done, his role in that death, had shattered her, too. He knew that. He just prayed that she could piece herself back together again. Because a broken, unpredictable assassin was one thing. But a queen . . .

“You look like you’re going to be sick,” Dorian said, bracing his forearms on the table. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Chaol had been staring at nothing again. For a heartbeat, the weight of everything pressed so heavily upon him that he opened up his mouth.

But the boom of swords striking shields in salute echoed from the hallway, and Aedion Ashryver—­the King of Adarlan’s infamous General of the North and cousin to Aelin Galathynius—­stalked into the Great Hall.

The hall fell silent, including his father and the king at the high table. Before Aedion was halfway across the room, Chaol was positioned at the bottom of the dais.

It ­wasn’t that the young general was a threat. Rather, it was the way Aedion prowled toward the king’s table, his shoulder-­length golden hair gleaming in the torchlight as he smirked at them all.

Handsome was a light way of describing what Aedion was. Overwhelming was more like it. Towering and heavily muscled, Aedion was every inch the warrior rumor claimed him to be. Even though his clothes ­were mostly for function, Chaol could tell that the leather of his light armor was of fine make and exquisitely detailed. A white wolf pelt was slung across his broad shoulders, and a round shield had been strapped to his back—­along with an ancient-­looking sword.

But his face. And his eyes . . . Holy gods.

Chaol put a hand on his sword, schooling his features to remain neutral, disinterested, even as the Wolf of the North came close enough to slaughter him.

They ­were Celaena’s eyes. Ashryver eyes. A stunning turquoise with a core of gold as bright as their hair. Their hair—­even the shade of it was the same. They could have been twins, if Aedion ­weren’t twenty-­four and tanned from years in the snow-­bright mountains of Terrasen.

Why had the king bothered to keep Aedion alive all those years ago? Why bother to forge him into one of his fiercest generals? Aedion was a prince of the Ashryver royal line and had been raised in the Galathynius household—­and yet he served the king.

Aedion’s grin remained as he stopped before the high table and sketched a bow shallow enough that Chaol was momentarily stunned. “Majesty,” the general said, those damning eyes alight.

Chaol looked at the high table to see if the king, if anyone, noticed the similarities that could doom not only Aedion but also Chaol and Dorian and everyone he cared about. His father just gave him a small, satisfied smile.

But the king was frowning. “I expected you a month ago.”

Aedion actually had the nerve to shrug. “Apologies. The Staghorns ­were slammed with a final winter storm. I left when I could.”

Every person in the hall held their breath. Aedion’s temper and insolence ­were near-­legendary—part of the reason he was stationed in the far reaches of the North. Chaol had always thought it wise to keep him far from Rifthold, especially as Aedion seemed to be a bit of a two-­faced bastard, and the Bane—­Aedion’s legion—­was notorious for its skill and brutality, but now . . . why had the king summoned him to the capital?

The king picked up his goblet, swirling the wine inside. “I didn’t receive word that your legion was ­here.”

“They’re not.”

Chaol braced for the execution order, praying he ­wouldn’t be the one to do it. The king said, “I told you to bring them, General.”

“Here I was, thinking you wanted the plea­sure of my company.” When the king growled, Aedion said, “They’ll be ­here within a week or so. I didn’t want to miss any of the fun.” Aedion again shrugged those massive shoulders. “At least I didn’t come empty-­handed.” He snapped his fingers behind him and a page rushed in, bearing a large satchel. “Gifts from the North, courtesy of the last rebel camp we sacked. You’ll enjoy them.”

The king rolled his eyes and waved a hand at the page. “Send them to my chambers. Your gifts, Aedion, tend to offend polite company.” A low chuckle—­from Aedion, from some men at the king’s table. Oh, Aedion was dancing a dangerous line. At least Celaena had the good sense to keep her mouth shut around the king.

Considering the trophies the king had collected from Celaena as Champion, the items in that satchel ­wouldn’t be mere gold and jewels. But to collect heads and limbs from Aedion’s own people, Celaena’s people . . .

“I have a council meeting tomorrow; ­I want you there, General,” the king said.

Aedion put a hand on his chest. “Your will is mine, Majesty.”

Chaol had to clamp down on his terror as he beheld what glinted on Aedion’s finger. A black ring—­the same that the king, Perrington, and most of those under their control wore. That explained why the king allowed the insolence: when it came down to it, the king’s will truly was Aedion’s.

Chaol kept his face blank as the king gave him a curt nod—­dismissal. Chaol silently bowed, now all too eager to get back to his table. Away from the king—­from the man who held the fate of their world in his bloodied hands. Away from his father, who saw too much. Away from the general, who was now making his rounds through the hall, clapping men on the shoulder, winking at women.

Chaol had mastered the horror roiling in his gut by the time he sank back into his seat and found Dorian frowning. “Gifts indeed,” the prince muttered. “Gods, he’s insufferable.”

Chaol didn’t disagree. Despite the king’s black ring, Aedion still seemed to have a mind of his own—­and was as wild off the battlefield as he was on it. He usually made Dorian look like a celibate when it came to finding debauched ways to amuse himself. Chaol had never spent much time with Aedion, nor wanted to, but Dorian had known him for some time now. Since—

They’d met as children. When Dorian and his father had visited Terrasen in the days before the royal family was slaughtered. When Dorian had met Aelin—­met Celaena.

It was good that Celaena ­wasn’t ­here to see what Aedion had become. Not just because of the ring. To turn on your own people—

Aedion slid onto the bench across from them, grinning. A predator assessing prey. “You two ­were sitting at this same table the last time I saw you. Good to know some things don’t change.”

Gods, that face. It was Celaena’s face—­the other side of the coin. The same arrogance, the same unchecked anger. But where Celaena crackled with it, Aedion seemed to . . . pulse. And there was something nastier, far more bitter in Aedion’s face.

Dorian rested his forearms on the table and gave a lazy smile. “Hello, Aedion.”

Aedion ignored him and reached for a roast leg of lamb, his black ring glinting. “I like the new scar, Captain,” he said, jerking his chin toward the slender white line across Chaol’s cheek. The scar Celaena had given to him the night Nehemia died and she’d tried to kill him—­now a permanent reminder of everything he’d lost. Aedion went on, “Looks like they didn’t chew you up just yet. And they finally gave you a big-­boy sword, too.”

Dorian said, “I’m glad to see that storm didn’t dim your spirits.”

“Weeks inside with nothing to do but train and bed women? It was a miracle I bothered to come down from the mountains.”

“I didn’t realize you bothered to do anything unless it served your best interests.”

A low laugh. “There’s that charming Havilliard spirit.” Aedion dug into his meal, and Chaol was about to demand why he was bothering to sit with them—­other than to torment them, as he’d always liked to do when the king ­wasn’t looking—­when he noticed that Dorian was staring.

Not at Aedion’s sheer size or armor, but at his face, at his eyes . . .

“Shouldn’t you be at some party or other?” Chaol said to Aedion. “I’m surprised you’re lingering when your usual enticements await in the city.”

“Is that your courtly way of asking for an invitation to my gathering tomorrow, Captain? Surprising. You’ve always implied that you ­were above my sort of party.” Those turquoise eyes narrowed and he gave Dorian a sly grin. “You, however—­the last party I threw worked out very well for you. Redheaded twins, if I recall correctly.”

“You’ll be disappointed to learn I’ve moved on from that sort of existence,” Dorian said.

Aedion dug back into his meal. “More for me, then.”

Chaol clenched his fists under the table. Celaena had not exactly been virtuous in the past ten years, but she’d never killed a natural-­born citizen of Terrasen. Had refused to, actually. And Aedion had always been a gods-­damned bastard, but now . . . Did he know what he wore on his finger? Did he know that despite his arrogance, his defiance and insolence, the king could make him bend to his will whenever he pleased? He ­couldn’t warn Aedion, not without potentially getting himself and everyone he cared about killed should Aedion truly have allegiance to the king.

“How are things in Terrasen?” Chaol asked, because Dorian was studying Aedion again.

“What would you like me to tell you? That we are well-­fed after a brutal winter? That we did not lose many to sickness?” Aedion snorted. “I suppose hunting rebels is always fun, if you’ve a taste for it. Hopefully His Majesty has summoned the Bane to the South to finally give them some real action.” As Aedion reached for the water, Chaol glimpsed the hilt of his sword. Dull metal flecked with dings and scratches, its pommel nothing more than a bit of cracked, rounded horn. Such a simple, plain sword for one of the greatest warriors in Erilea.

“The Sword of Orynth,” Aedion drawled. “A gift from His Majesty upon my first victory.”

Everyone knew that sword. It had been an heirloom of Terrasen’s royal family, passed from ruler to ruler. By right, it was Celaena’s. It had belonged to her father. For Aedion to possess it, considering what that sword now did, the lives it took, was a slap in the face to Celaena and to her family.

“I’m surprised you bother with such sentimentality,” Dorian said.

“Symbols have power, Prince,” Aedion said, pinning him with a stare. Celaena’s stare—­unyielding and alive with challenge. “You’d be surprised by the power this still wields in the North—­what it does to convince people not to pursue foolhardy plans.”

Perhaps Celaena’s skills and cunning ­weren’t unusual in her bloodline. But Aedion was an Ashryver, not a Galathynius—­which meant that his great-­grandmother had been Mab, one of the three Fae-­Queens, in recent generations crowned a goddess and renamed Deanna, Lady of the Hunt. Chaol swallowed hard.

Silence fell, taut as a bowstring. “Trouble between you two?” Aedion asked, biting into his meat. “Let me guess: a woman. The King’s Champion, perhaps? Rumor has it she’s . . . interesting. Is that why you’ve moved on from my sort of fun, princeling?” He scanned the hall. “I’d like to meet her, I think.”

Chaol fought the urge to grip his sword. “She’s away.”

Aedion instead gave Dorian a cruel smile. “Pity. Perhaps she might have convinced me to move on as well.”

“Mind your mouth,” Chaol snarled. He might have laughed had he not wanted to strangle the general so badly. Dorian merely drummed his fingers on the table. “And show some respect.”

Aedion chuckled, finishing off the lamb. “I am His Majesty’s faithful servant, as I have always been.” Those Ashryver eyes once more settled on Dorian. “Perhaps I’ll be your whore someday, too.”

“If you’re still alive by then,” Dorian purred.

Aedion went on eating, but Chaol could still feel his relentless focus pinned on them. “Rumor has it a Matron of a witch clan was killed on the premises not too long ago,” Aedion said casually. “She vanished, though her quarters indicated she’d put up a hell of a fight.”

Dorian said sharply, “What’s your interest in that?”

“I make it my business to know when the power brokers of the realm meet their end.”

A shiver spider-­walked down Chaol’s spine. He knew little about the witches. Celaena had told him a few stories—­and he’d always prayed they ­were exaggerated. But something like dread flickered across Dorian’s face.

Chaol leaned forward. “It’s none of your concern.”

Aedion again ignored him and winked at the prince. Dorian’s nostrils flared, the only sign of the rage that was rising to the surface. That, and the air in the room shifted—­brisker. Magic.

Chaol put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’re going to be late,” he lied, but Dorian caught it. He had to get Dorian out—­away from Aedion—­and try to leash the disastrous storm that was brewing between the two men. “Rest well, Aedion.” Dorian didn’t bother saying anything, his sapphire eyes frozen.

Aedion smirked. “The party’s tomorrow in Rifthold if you feel like reliving the good old days, Prince.” Oh, the general knew exactly what buttons to push, and he didn’t give a damn what a mess it made. It made him dangerous—­deadly.

Especially where Dorian and his magic ­were concerned. Chaol forced himself to say good night to some of his men, to look casual and unconcerned as they walked from the dining hall. Aedion Ashryver had come to Rifthold, narrowly missing running into his long-­lost cousin.

If Aedion knew Aelin was still alive, if he knew who and what she had become or what she had learned regarding the king’s secret power, would he stand with her, or destroy her? Given his actions, given the ring he bore . . . Chaol didn’t want the general anywhere near her. Anywhere near Terrasen, either.

He wondered how much blood would spill when Celaena learned what her cousin had done.

Chaol and Dorian walked in silence for most of the trek to the prince’s tower. When they turned down an empty hallway and ­were certain no one could overhear them, Dorian said, “I didn’t need you to step in.”

“Aedion’s a bastard,” Chaol growled. The conversation could end there, and part of him was tempted to let it, but he made himself say, “I was worried you’d snap. Like you did in the passages.” He loosed a tight breath. “Are you . . . stable?”

“Some days are better than others. Getting angry or frightened seems to set it off.”

They entered the hallway that ended in the arched wooden door to Dorian’s tower, but Chaol stopped him with an arm on his shoulder. “I don’t want details,” he murmured so the guards posted outside Dorian’s door ­couldn’t hear, “because I don’t want my knowledge used against you. I know I’ve made mistakes, Dorian. Believe me, I know. But my priority has always been—­and still is—­keeping you protected.”

Dorian stared at him for a long moment, cocking his head to the side. Chaol must have looked as miserable as he felt, because the prince’s voice was almost gentle as he said, “Why did you really send her to Wendlyn?”

Agony punched through him, raw and razor-­edged. But as much as he yearned to tell the prince about Celaena, as much as he wanted to unload all his secrets so it would fill the hole in his core, he ­couldn’t. So he just said, “I sent her to do what needs to be done,” and strode back down the hall. Dorian didn’t call after him.

4

Manon pulled her bloodred cloak tightly around herself and pressed into the shadows of the closet, listening to the three men who had broken into her cottage.

She’d tasted the rising fear and rage on the wind all day and had spent the afternoon preparing. She’d been sitting on the thatched roof of the whitewashed cottage when she spotted their torches bobbing over the high grasses of the field. None of the villagers had tried to stop the three men—­though none had joined them, either.

A Crochan witch had come to their little green valley in the north of Fenharrow, they’d said. In the weeks that she’d been living amongst them, carving out a miserable existence, she’d been waiting for this night. It was the same at every village she’d lived in or visited.

She held her breath, keeping still as a deer as one of the men—­a tall, bearded farmer with hands the size of dinner plates—­stepped into her bedroom. Even from the closet, she could smell the ale on his breath—­and the bloodlust. Oh, the villagers knew exactly what they planned to do with the witch who sold potions and charms from her back door, and who could predict the sex of a babe before it was due. She was surprised it had taken these men so long to work up the nerve to come ­here, to torment and then destroy what petrified them.

The farmer stopped in the middle of the room. “We know you’re ­here,” he coaxed, even as he stepped toward the bed, scanning every inch of the room. “We just want to talk. Some of the townsfolk are spooked, you see—­more scared of you than you are of them, I bet.”

She knew better than to listen, especially as a dagger glinted behind his back while he peered under the bed. Always the same, at every backwater town and uptight mortal village.

As the man straightened, Manon slipped from the closet and into the darkness behind the bedroom door.

Muffled clinking and thudding told her enough about what the other two men ­were doing: not just looking for her, but stealing what­ever they wanted. There ­wasn’t much to take; the cottage had already been furnished when she’d arrived, and all her belongings, by training and instinct, ­were in a sack in the corner of the closet she’d just vacated. Take nothing with you, leave nothing behind.

“We just want to talk, witch.” The man turned from the bed, finally noticing the closet. He smiled—­in triumph, in anticipation.

With gentle fingers, Manon eased the bedroom door shut, so quietly the man didn’t notice as he headed for the closet. She’d oiled the hinges on every door in this ­house.

His massive hand gripped the closet doorknob, dagger now angled at his side. “Come out, little Crochan,” he crooned.

Silent as death, Manon slid up behind him. The fool didn’t even know she was there until she brought her mouth close to his ear and whispered, “Wrong kind of witch.”

The man whirled, slamming into the closet door. He raised the dagger between them, his chest heaving. Manon merely smiled, her silver-­white hair glinting in the moonlight.

He noticed the shut door then, drawing in breath to shout. But Manon smiled broader, and a row of dagger-­sharp iron teeth pushed from the slits high in her gums, snapping down like armor. The man started, hitting the door behind him again, eyes so wide that white shone all around them. His dagger clattered on the floorboards.

And then, just to really make him soil his pants, she flicked her wrists in the air between them. The iron claws shot over her nails in a stinging, gleaming flash.

The man began whispering a plea to his soft-­hearted gods as Manon let him back toward the lone window. Let him think he stood a chance while she stalked toward him, still smiling. The man didn’t even scream before she ripped out his throat.

When she was done with him, she slipped through the bedroom door. The two men ­were still looting, still believing that all of this belonged to her. It had merely been an abandoned ­house—­its previous own­ers dead or smart enough to leave this festering place.

The second man also didn’t get the chance to scream before she gutted him with two swipes of her iron nails. But the third farmer came looking for his companions. And when he beheld her standing there, one hand twisted in his friend’s insides, the other holding him to her as she used her iron teeth to tear out his throat, he ran.

The common, watery taste of the man, laced with violence and fear, coated her tongue, and she spat onto the wooden floorboards. But Manon didn’t bother wiping away the blood slipping down her chin as she gave the remaining farmer a head start into the field of towering winter grass, so high that it was well over their heads.

She counted to ten, because she wanted to hunt, and had been that way since she tore through her mother’s womb and came roaring and bloody into this world.

Because she was Manon Blackbeak, heir to the Blackbeak Witch-­Clan, and she had been ­here for weeks, pretending to be a Crochan witch in the hope that it would flush out the real ones.

They ­were still out there, the self-­righteous, insufferable Crochans, hiding as healers and wise-­women. Her first, glorious kill had been a Crochan, no more than sixteen—­the same age as Manon at the time. The dark-­haired girl had been wearing the bloodred cloak that all Crochans ­were gifted upon their first bleeding—­and the only good it had done was mark her as prey.

After Manon left the Crochan’s corpse in that snow-­blasted mountain pass, she’d taken the cloak as a trophy—­and still wore it, over a hundred years later. No other Ironteeth witch could have done it—­because no other Ironteeth witch would have dared incur the wrath of the three Matrons by wearing their eternal enemy’s color. But from the day Manon stalked into Blackbeak Keep wearing the cloak and holding that Crochan heart in a box—­a gift for her grandmother—­it had been her sacred duty to hunt them down, one by one, until there ­were none left.

This was her latest rotation—­six months in Fenharrow while the rest of her coven was spread through Melisande and northern Eyllwe under similar orders. But in the months that she’d prowled from village to village, she hadn’t discovered a single Crochan. These farmers ­were the first bit of fun she’d had in weeks. And she would be damned if she didn’t enjoy it.

Manon walked into the field, sucking the blood off her nails as she went. She slipped through the grasses, no more than shadow and mist.

She found the farmer lost in the middle of the field, softly bleating with fear. And when he turned, his bladder loosening at the sight of the blood and the iron teeth and the wicked, wicked smile, Manon let him scream all he wanted.

5

Celaena and Rowan rode down the dusty road that meandered between the boulder-­spotted grasslands and into the southern foothills. She’d memorized enough maps of Wendlyn to know that they’d pass through them and then over the towering Cambrian Mountains that marked the border between mortal-­ruled Wendlyn and the immortal lands of Queen Maeve.

The sun was setting as they ascended the foothills, the road growing rockier, bordered on one side by rather harrowing ravines. For a mile, she debated asking Rowan where he planned to stop for the night. But she was tired. Not just from the day, or the wine, or the riding.

In her bones, in her blood and breath and soul, she was so, so tired. Talking to anyone was too taxing. Which made Rowan the perfect companion: he didn’t say a single word to her.

Twilight fell as the road brought them through a dense forest that spread into and over the mountains, the trees turning from cypress to oak, from narrow to tall and proud, full of thickets and scattered mossy boulders. Even in the growing dark, the forest seemed to be breathing. The warm air hummed, leaving a metallic taste coating her tongue. Far behind them, thunder grumbled.

­Wouldn’t that be wonderful. Especially since Rowan was finally dismounting to make camp. From the look of his saddlebags, he didn’t have a tent. Or bedrolls. Or blankets.

Perhaps it was now fair to assume that her visit with Maeve ­wasn’t to be pleasant.

Neither of them spoke as they led their ­horses into the trees, just far enough off the road to be hidden from any passing travelers. Dumping their gear at the camp he’d selected, Rowan brought his mare to a nearby stream he must have heard with those pointed ears. He didn’t falter one step in the growing dark, though Celaena certainly stubbed her toes against a few rocks and roots. Excellent eyesight, even in the dark—­another Fae trait. One she could have if she—

No, she ­wasn’t going to think about that. Not after what had happened on the other side of that portal. She’d shifted then—­and it had been awful enough to remind her that she had no interest in ever doing it again.

After the ­horses drank, Rowan didn’t wait for her as he took both mares back to the camp. She used the privacy to see to her own needs, then dropped to her knees on the grassy bank and drank her fill of the stream. Gods, the water tasted . . . new and ancient and powerful and delicious.

She drank until she understood the hole in her belly might very well be from hunger, then staggered back to camp, finding it by the gleam of Rowan’s silver hair. He wordlessly handed her some bread and cheese, then returned to rubbing down the ­horses. She muttered a thank-­you, but didn’t bother offering to help as she plunked down against a towering oak.

When her belly had stopped hurting so much and she realized just how loudly she’d been munching on the apple he’d also tossed her while feeding the ­horses, she mustered enough energy to say, “Are there so many threats in Wendlyn that we ­can’t risk a fire?”

He sat against a tree and stretched his legs, crossing his ankles. “Not from mortals.”

His first words to her since they’d left the city. It could have been an attempt to spook her, but she still did a mental inventory of all the weapons she carried. She ­wouldn’t ask. Didn’t want to know what manner of thing might crawl toward a fire.

The tangle of wood and moss and stone loomed, full of the rustling of heavy leaves, the gurgling of the swollen brook, the flapping of feathered wings. And there, lurking over the rim of a nearby boulder, ­were three sets of small, glowing eyes.

The hilt of her dagger was in her palm a heartbeat later. But they just stared at her. Rowan didn’t seem to notice. He only leaned his head against the oak trunk.

They had always known her, the Little Folk. Even when Adarlan’s shadow had covered the continent, they still recognized what she was. Small gifts left at campsites—­a fresh fish, a leaf full of blackberries, a crown of flowers. She’d ignored them, and stayed out of Oakwald Forest as much as she could.

The faeries kept their unblinking vigil. Wishing she hadn’t downed the food so quickly, Celaena watched them back, ready to spring to a defensive position. Rowan hadn’t moved.

What ancient oaths the faeries honored in Terrasen might be disregarded ­here. Even as she thought it, more eyes glowed between the trees. More silent witnesses to her arrival. Because Celaena was Fae, or something like a mongrel. Her great-­grandmother had been Maeve’s sister, proclaimed a goddess when she died. Ridiculous, really. Mab had been very much mortal when she tied her life to the human prince who loved her so fiercely.

She wondered how much these creatures knew about the wars that had destroyed her land, about the Fae and faeries that had been hunted down, about the burning of the ancient forests and the butchering of the sacred stags of Terrasen. She wondered if they had ever learned what became of their brethren in the West.

She didn’t know how she found it in herself to care. But they seemed so . . . curious. Surprising even herself, Celaena whispered into the humming night, “They still live.”

All those eyes vanished. When she glanced at Rowan, he hadn’t opened his eyes. But she had the sense that the warrior had been aware the entire time.

6

Dorian Havilliard stood before his father’s breakfast table, his hands held behind his back. The king had arrived moments ago but hadn’t told him to sit. Once Dorian might have already said something about it. But having magic, getting drawn into what­ever mess Celaena was in, seeing that other world in the secret tunnels . . . all of that had changed everything. The best he could do these days was maintain a low profile—to keep his father or anyone ­else from looking too long in his direction. So Dorian stood before the table and waited.

The King of Adarlan finished off the roast chicken and sipped from what­ever was in his bloodred glass. “You’re quiet this morning, Prince.” The conqueror of Erilea reached for a platter of smoked fish.

“I was waiting for you to speak, Father.”

Night-­black eyes shifted toward him. “Unusual, indeed.”

Dorian tensed. Only Celaena and Chaol knew the truth about his magic—­and Chaol had shut him out so completely that Dorian didn’t feel like attempting to explain himself to his friend. But this castle was full of spies and sycophants who wanted nothing more than to use what­ever knowledge they could to advance their position. Including selling out their Crown Prince. Who knew who’d seen him in the hallways or the library, or who had discovered that stack of books he’d hidden in Celaena’s rooms? He’d since moved them down to the tomb, where he went every other night—­not for answers to the questions that plagued him but just for an hour of pure silence.

His father resumed eating. He’d been in his father’s private chambers only a few times in his life. They could be a manor ­house of their own, with their library and dining room and council chamber. They occupied an entire wing of the glass castle—­a wing opposite from Dorian’s mother. His parents had never shared a bed, and he didn’t particularly want to know more than that.

He found his father watching him, the morning sun through the curved wall of glass making every scar and nick on the king’s face even more gruesome. “You’re to entertain Aedion Ashryver today.”

Dorian kept his composure as best he could. “Dare I ask why?”

“Since General Ashryver failed to bring his men ­here, it appears he has some spare time while awaiting the Bane’s arrival. It would be beneficial to you both to become better acquainted—­especially when your choice of friends of late has been so . . . common.”

The cold fury of his magic clawed its way up his spine. “With all due respect, Father, I have two meetings to prepare for, and—”

“It’s not open for debate.” His father kept eating. “General Ashryver has been notified, and you will meet him outside your chambers at noon.”

Dorian knew he should keep quiet, but he found himself asking, “Why do you tolerate Aedion? Why keep him alive—­why make him a general?” He’d been unable to stop wondering about it since the man’s arrival.

His father gave a small, knowing smile. “Because Aedion’s rage is a useful blade, and he is capable of keeping his people in line. He will not risk their slaughter, not when he has lost so much. He has quelled many a would-­be rebellion in the North from that fear, for he is well aware that it would be his own people—­the civilians—who suffered first.”

He shared blood with a man this cruel. But Dorian said, “It’s still surprising that you’d keep a general almost as a captive—­as little more than a slave. Controlling him through fear alone seems potentially dangerous.”

Indeed, he wondered if his father had told Aedion about Celaena’s mission to Wendlyn—­homeland of Aedion’s royal bloodline, where Aedion’s cousins the Ashryvers still ruled. Though Aedion trumpeted about his various victories over rebels and acted like he practically owned half the empire himself . . . How much did Aedion remember of his kin across the sea?

His father said, “I have my ways of leashing Aedion should I need to. For now, his brazen irreverence amuses me.” His father jerked his chin toward the door. “I will not be amused, however, if you miss your appointment with him today.”

And just like that, his father fed him to the Wolf.

•

Despite Dorian’s offers to show Aedion the menagerie, the kennels, the stables—­even the damned library—­the general only wanted to do one thing: walk through the gardens. Aedion claimed he was feeling restless and sluggish from too much food the night before, but the smile he gave Dorian suggested otherwise.

Aedion didn’t bother talking to him, too preoccupied with humming bawdy tunes and inspecting the various women they passed. He’d dropped the half-­civilized veneer only once, when they’d been striding down a narrow path flanked by towering rosebushes—­stunning in the summer, but deadly in the winter—­and the guards had been a turn behind, blind for the moment. Just enough time for Aedion to subtly trip Dorian into one of the thorny walls, still humming his lewd songs.

A quick maneuver had kept Dorian from falling face-­first into the thorns, but his cloak had ripped, and his hand stung. Rather than give the general the satisfaction of seeing him hiss and inspect his cuts, Dorian had tucked his barking, freezing fingers into his pockets as the guards rounded the corner.

They spoke only when Aedion paused by a fountain and braced his scarred hands on his hips, assessing the garden beyond as though it were a battlefield. Aedion smirked at the six guards lurking behind, his eyes bright—­so bright, Dorian thought, and so strangely familiar as the general said, “A prince needs an escort in his own palace? I’m insulted they didn’t send more guards to protect you from me.”

“You think you could take six men?”

The Wolf had let out a low chuckle and shrugged, the scarred hilt of the Sword of Orynth catching the near-­blinding sunlight. “I don’t think I should tell you, in case your father ever decides my usefulness is not worth my temperament.”

Some of the guards behind them murmured, but Dorian said, “Probably not.”

And that was it—­that was all Aedion said to him for the rest of the cold, miserable walk. Until the general gave him an edged smile and said, “Better get that looked at.” That was when Dorian realized his right hand was still bleeding. Aedion just turned away. “Thanks for the walk, Prince,” the general said over his shoulder, and it felt more like a threat than anything.

Aedion didn’t act without a reason. Perhaps the general had convinced his father to force this excursion. But for what purpose, Dorian ­couldn’t grasp. Unless Aedion merely wanted to get a feel for what sort of man Dorian had become and how well Dorian could play the game. He ­wouldn’t put it past the warrior to have done it just to assess a potential ally or threat—­Aedion, for all his arrogance, had a cunning mind. He probably viewed court life as another sort of battlefield.

Dorian let Chaol’s hand-­selected guards lead him back into the wonderfully warm castle, then dismissed them with a nod. Chaol hadn’t come today, and he was grateful—­after that conversation about his magic, after Chaol refused to speak about Celaena, Dorian ­wasn’t sure what ­else was left for them to talk about. He didn’t believe for one moment that Chaol would willingly sanction the deaths of innocent men, no matter whether they ­were friends or enemies. Chaol had to know, then, that Celaena ­wouldn’t assassinate the Ashryver royals, for what­ever reasons of her own. But there was no point in bothering to talk to Chaol, not when his friend was keeping secrets, too.

Dorian mulled over his friend’s puzzle-­box of words again as he walked into the healers’ catacombs, the smell of rosemary and mint wafting past. It was a warren of supply and examination rooms, kept far from the prying eyes of the glass castle high above. There was another ward high in the glass castle, for those who ­wouldn’t deign to make the trek down ­here, but this was where the best healers in Rifthold—­and Adarlan—­had honed and practiced their craft for a thousand years. The pale stones seemed to breathe the essence of centuries of drying herbs, giving the subterranean halls a pleasant, open feeling.

Dorian found a small workroom where a young woman was hunched over a large oak table, a variety of glass jars, scales, mortars, and pestles before her, along with vials of liquid, hanging herbs, and bubbling pots over small, solitary flames. The healing arts ­were one of the few that his father hadn’t completely outlawed ten years ago—­though once, he’d heard, they’d been even more powerful. Once, healers had used magic to mend and save. Now they ­were left with what­ever nature provided them.

Dorian stepped into the room and the young woman looked up from the book she was scanning, a finger pausing on the page. Not beautiful, but—­pretty. Clean, elegant lines, chestnut hair woven in a braid, and golden-­tan skin that suggested at least one family member came from Eyllwe. “Can I—” She got a good look at him, then, and dropped into a bow. “Your Highness,” she said, a flush creeping up the smooth column of her neck.

Dorian held up his bloodied hand. “Thornbush.” Rosebush made his cuts seem that much more pathetic.

She kept her eyes averted, biting her full bottom lip. “Of course.” She gestured a slender hand toward the wooden chair before the table. “Please. Unless—­unless you’d rather go to a proper examination room?”

Dorian normally hated dealing with the stammering and scrambling, but this young woman was still so red, so soft-­spoken that he said, “This is fine,” and slid into the chair.

The silence lay heavy on him as she hurried through the workroom, first changing her dirty white apron, then washing her hands for a good long minute, then gathering all manner of ban­dages and tins of salve, then a bowl of hot water and clean rags, and then finally, finally pulling a chair around the table to face his.

They didn’t speak, either, when she carefully washed and then examined his hand. But he found himself watching her hazel eyes, the sureness of her fingers, and the blush that remained on her neck and face. “The hand is—­very complex,” she murmured at last, studying the cuts. “I just wanted to make sure that nothing was damaged and that there ­weren’t any thorns lodged in there.” She swiftly added, “Your Highness.”

“I think it looks worse than it actually is.”

With a feather-­light touch, she smeared a cloudy salve on his hand, and, like a damn fool, he winced. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s to disinfect the cuts. Just in case.” She seemed to curl in on herself, as if he’d give the order to hang her merely for that.

He fumbled for the words, then said, “I’ve dealt with worse.”

It sounded stupid coming out, and she paused for a moment before reaching for the ban­dages. “I know,” she said, and glanced up at him.

Well, damn. ­Weren’t those eyes just stunning. She quickly looked back down, gently wrapping his hand. “I’m assigned to the southern wing of the castle—­and I’m often on night duty.”

That explained why she looked so familiar. She’d healed not only him that night a month ago but also Celaena, Chaol, Fleetfoot . . . had been there for all of their injuries these past seven months. “I’m sorry, I ­can’t remember your name—”

“It’s Sorscha,” she said, though there was no anger in it, as there should have been. The spoiled prince and his entitled friends, too absorbed in their own lives to bother learning the name of the healer who had patched them up again and again.

She finished wrapping his hand and he said, “In case we didn’t say it often enough, thank you.”

Those green-­flecked brown eyes lifted again. A tentative smile. “It’s an honor, Prince.” She began gathering up her supplies.

Taking that as his cue to leave, he stood and flexed his fingers. “Feels good.”

“They’re minor wounds, but keep an eye on them.” Sorscha dumped the bloodied water down the sink in the back of the room. “And you needn’t come all the way down ­here the next time. Just—­just send word, Your Highness. ­We’re happy to attend to you.” She curtsied low, with the long-­limbed grace of a dancer.

“You’ve been responsible for the southern stone wing all this time?” The question within the question was clear enough: You’ve seen everything? Every inexplicable injury?

“We keep rec­ords of our patients,” Sorscha said softly—­so no one ­else passing by the open doorway could hear. “But sometimes we forget to write down everything.”

She hadn’t told anyone what she’d seen, the things that didn’t add up. Dorian gave her a swift bow of thanks and strode from the room. How many others, he wondered, had seen more than they let on? He didn’t want to know.

•

Sorscha’s fingers, thankfully, had stopped shaking by the time the Crown Prince left the catacombs. By some lingering grace of Silba, goddess of healers and bringer of peace—­and gentle deaths—­she’d managed to keep them from trembling while she patched up his hand, too. Sorscha leaned against the counter and loosed a long breath.

The cuts hadn’t merited a ban­dage, but she’d been selfish and foolish and had wanted to keep the beautiful prince in that chair for as long as she could manage.

He didn’t even know who she was.

She’d been appointed full healer a year ago, and had been called to attend to the prince, the captain, and their friend countless times. And the Crown Prince still had no idea who she was.

She hadn’t lied to him—­about failing to keep rec­ords of everything. But she remembered it all. Especially that night a month ago, when the three of them had been bloodied up and filthy, the girl’s hound injured, too, with no explanation and no one raising a fuss. And the girl, their friend . . .

The King’s Champion. That’s who she was.

Lover, it seemed, of both the prince and his captain at one time or another. Sorscha had helped Amithy tend to the young woman after the brutal duel to win her title. Occasionally, she’d checked on the girl and found the prince holding her in bed.

She’d pretended it didn’t matter, because the Crown Prince was notorious where women ­were involved, but . . . it hadn’t stopped the sinking ache in her chest. Then things had changed, and when the girl was poisoned with gloriella, it was the captain who stayed with her. The captain who had acted like a beast in a cage, prowling the room until Sorscha’s own nerves had been frayed. Not surprisingly, several weeks later, the girl’s handmaid, Philippa, came to Sorscha for a contraceptive tonic. Philippa hadn’t said whom it was for, but Sorscha ­wasn’t an idiot.

When she’d attended the captain a week after that, four brutal scratches down his face and a dead look in his eyes, Sorscha had understood. And understood again the last time, when the prince, the captain, and the girl ­were all bloodied along with the hound, that what­ever had existed between the three of them was broken.

The girl especially. Celaena, she’d heard them say accidentally when they thought she was already out of the room. Celaena Sardothien. World’s greatest assassin and now the King’s Champion. Another secret Sorscha would keep without them ever knowing.

She was invisible. And glad of it, most days.

Sorscha frowned at her table of supplies. She had half a dozen tonics and poultices to make before dinner, all of them complex, all of them dumped on her by Amithy, who pulled rank whenever she could. On top of it, she still had her weekly letter to write to her friend, who wanted every little detail about the palace. Just thinking of all the tasks gave her a headache.

Had it been anyone other than the prince, she would have told them to go find another healer.

Sorscha returned to her work. She was certain he’d forgotten her name the moment he left. Dorian was heir to the mightiest empire in the world, and Sorscha was the daughter of two dead immigrants from a village in Fenharrow that had been burned to ash—­a village that no one would ever remember.

But that didn’t stop her from loving him, as she still did, invisible and secret, ever since she’d first laid eyes on him six years ago.

7

Nothing ­else approached Celaena and Rowan after that first night. He certainly didn’t say anything to her about it, or offer his cloak or any sort of protection against the chill. She slept curled on her side, turning every other minute from some root or pebble digging into her back or jolting awake at the screech of an owl—­or something worse.

By the time the light had turned gray and mist drifted through the trees, Celaena felt more exhausted than she’d been the night before. After a silent breakfast of bread, cheese, and apples, she was nearly dozing atop her mare as they resumed their ­ride up the forested foothill road.

They passed few people—­mostly humans leading wagons down to some market, all of whom glanced at Rowan and gave them the right of way. Some even muttered prayers for mercy.

She’d long heard the Fae existed peacefully with the humans in Wendlyn, so perhaps the terror they encountered was due to Rowan himself. The tattoo didn’t help. She had debated asking him what the words meant, but that would involve talking. And talking meant building some sort of . . . relationship. She’d had enough of friends. Enough of them dying, too.

So she’d kept her mouth shut the entire day they rode through the woods up into the Cambrian Mountains. The forest turned lusher and denser, and the higher they rode, the mistier it became, great veils of fog drifting past to caress her face, her neck, her spine.

Another cold, miserable night camped off the road later and they ­were riding again before dawn. By then, the mist had seeped into her clothes and skin, and settled right along her bones.

On the third eve­ning, she’d given up hoping for a fire. She’d even embraced the chill and the insufferable roots and the hunger whose edge she ­couldn’t dull no matter how much bread and cheese she ate. The aches and pains ­were soothing somehow.

Not comforting, but . . . distracting. Welcome. Deserved.

She didn’t want to know what that meant about her. She ­couldn’t let herself look that far inward. She’d come close, that day she’d seen Prince Galan. And it had been enough.

They veered from the path in the dwindling afternoon hours, cutting across mossy earth that cushioned each step. She hadn’t seen a town in days, and the granite boulders ­were now carved with whorls and patterns. She supposed they ­were markers—­a warning to humans to stay the hell away.

They had to be another week from Doranelle, but Rowan was heading along the mountains, not over them, climbing higher still, the ascent broken by occasional plateaus and fields of wildflowers. She hadn’t seen a lookout, so she had no sense of where they ­were, or how high. Just the endless forest, and the endless climb, and the endless mist.

She smelled smoke before she saw the lights. Not campfires, but lights from a building rising up out of the trees, hugging the spine of the mountain slope. The stones ­were dark and ancient—­hewn from something other than the abundant granite. Her eyes strained, but she didn’t fail to note the ring of towering rocks woven between the trees, surrounding the entirety of the fortress. It was hard not to notice them when they rode between two megaliths that curved toward each other like the horns of a great beast, and a zinging current snapped against her skin.

Wards—magic wards. Her stomach turned. If they didn’t keep out enemies, they certainly served as an alarm. Which meant the three figures patrolling each of the three towers, the six on the outer retaining wall, and the three at the wooden gates would now know they ­were approaching. Men and women in light leather armor and bearing swords, daggers, and bows monitored their approach.

“I think I’d rather stay in the woods,” she said, her first words in days. Rowan ignored her.

He didn’t even lift an arm in greeting to the sentries. He must be familiar with this place if he didn’t stoop to hellos. As they drew closer to the ancient fortress—­which was little more than a few watchtowers woven together by a large connecting building, splattered with lichen and moss—­she did the calculations. It had to be some border outpost, a halfway point between the mortal realm and Doranelle. Perhaps she’d finally have a warm place to sleep, even if just for the night.

The guards saluted Rowan, who didn’t spare them a passing glance. They all wore hoods, masking any signs of their heritage. ­Were they Fae? Rowan might not have spoken to her for most of their journey—­he’d shown as much interest in her as he would in a pile of shit on the road—­but if she ­were staying with the Fae . . . others might have questions.

She took in every detail, every exit, every weakness as they entered the large courtyard beyond the wall, two rather mortal-­looking stable hands rushing to help them dismount. It was so still. As if everything, even the stones, was holding its breath. As if it had been waiting. The sensation only worsened when Rowan wordlessly led her into the dim interior of the main building, up a narrow set of stone stairs, and into what looked to be a small office.

It ­wasn’t the carved oak furniture, or the faded green drapes, or the warmth of the fire that made her stop dead. It was the dark-­haired woman seated behind the desk. Maeve, Queen of the Fae.

Her aunt.

And then came the words she had been dreading for ten years.

“Hello, Aelin Galathynius.”

8

Celaena backed away, knowing exactly how many steps it would take to get into the hall, but slammed into a hard, unyielding body just as the door shut behind them. Her hands ­were shaking so badly she didn’t bother going for her weapons—­or Rowan’s. He’d cut her down the instant Maeve gave the order.

The blood rushed from Celaena’s head. She forced herself to take a breath. And another. Then she said in a too-­quiet voice, “Aelin Galathynius is dead.” Just speaking her name aloud—­the damned name she had dreaded and hated and tried to forget . . .

Maeve smiled, revealing sharp little canines. “Let us not bother with lies.”

It ­wasn’t a lie. That girl, that princess had died in a river a de­cade ago. Celaena was no more Aelin Galathynius than she was any other person.

The room was too hot—­too small, Rowan a brooding force of nature behind her.

She was not to have time to gather herself, to make up excuses and half truths, as she should have been doing these past few days instead of free-­falling into silence and the misty cold. She was to face the Queen of the Fae as Maeve wanted to be faced. And in some fortress that seemed far, far beneath the raven-­haired beauty watching her with black, depthless eyes.

Gods. Gods.

Maeve was fearsome in her perfection, utterly still, eternal and calm and radiating ancient grace. The dark sister to the fair-­haired Mab.

Celaena had been fooling herself into thinking this would be easy. She was still pressed against Rowan as though he were a wall. An impenetrable wall, as old as the ward-­stones surrounding the fortress. Rowan stepped away from her with his powerful, predatory ease and leaned against the door. She ­wasn’t getting out until Maeve allowed her.

The Queen of the Fae remained silent, her long fingers moon-­white and folded in the lap of her violet gown, a white barn owl perched on the back of her chair. She didn’t bother with a crown, and Celaena supposed she didn’t need one. Every creature on earth would know who she was—­what she was—­even if they ­were blind and deaf. Maeve, the face of a thousand legends . . . and nightmares. Epics and poems and songs had been written about her, so many that some even believed she was just a myth. But ­here was the dream—­the nightmare—­made flesh.

This could work to your advantage. You can get the answers you need right ­here, right now. Go back to Adarlan in a matter of days. Just—­breathe.

Breathing, as it turned out, was rather hard when the queen who had been known to drive men to madness for amusement was observing every flicker of her throat. That owl perched on Maeve’s chair—Fae or true beast?—­was watching her, too. Its talons ­were curled around the back of the chair, digging into the wood.

It was somewhat absurd, though—­Maeve holding court in this half-­rotted office, at a desk stained with the Wyrd knew what. Gods, the fact that Maeve was seated at a desk. She should be in some ethereal glen, surrounded by bobbing will-­o’-­the-­wisps and maidens dancing to lutes and harps, reading the wheeling stars like they ­were poetry. Not ­here.

Celaena bowed low. She supposed she should have gotten on her knees, but—­she already smelled awful, and her face was likely still torn and bruised from her brawling in Varese. As Celaena ­rose, Maeve remained smiling faintly. A spider with a fly in its web.

“I suppose that with a proper bath, you’ll look a good deal like your mother.”

No exchanging pleasantries, then. Maeve was going right for the throat. She could handle it. She could ignore the pain and terror to get what she wanted. So Celaena smiled just as faintly and said, “Had I known who I would be meeting, I might have begged my escort for time to freshen up.”

She didn’t feel bad for one heartbeat about throwing Rowan to the lions.

Maeve’s obsidian eyes flicked to Rowan, who still leaned against the door. She could have sworn there was approval in the Fae Queen’s smile. As if the grueling travel were a part of this plan, too. But why? Why get her off-­kilter?

“I’m afraid I must bear the blame for the pressing pace,” Maeve said. “Though I suppose he could have bothered to at least find you a pool to bathe in along the way.” The Queen of Faedom lifted an elegant hand, gesturing to the warrior. “Prince Rowan—”

Prince. She swallowed the urge to turn to him.

“—is from my sister Mora’s bloodline. He is my nephew of sorts, and a member of my ­house­hold. An extremely distant relation of yours; there is some ancient ancestry linking you.”

Another move to get her on uneven footing. “You don’t say.”

Perhaps that ­wasn’t the best reply. She should probably be on the floor, groveling for answers. And she had a feeling she’d likely get to that point very, very soon. But . . .

“You must be wondering why it is I asked Prince Rowan to bring you ­here,” Maeve mused.

For Nehemia, she’d play this game. Celaena bit her tongue hard enough to keep her gods-­damned smart-­ass mouth shut.

Maeve placed her white hands on the desk. “I have been waiting a long, long while to meet you. And as I do not leave these lands, I could not see you. Not with my eyes, at least.” The queen’s long nails gleamed in the light.

There ­were legends whispered over fires about the other skin Maeve wore. No one had lived to tell anything beyond shadows and claws and a darkness to devour your soul.

“They broke my laws, you know. Your parents disobeyed my commands when they eloped. The bloodlines ­were too volatile to be mixed, but your mother promised to let me see you after you ­were born.” Maeve cocked her head, eerily similar to the owl behind her. “It would seem that in the eight years after your birth, she was always too busy to uphold her vow.”

If her mother had broken a promise . . . if her mother had kept her from Maeve, it had been for a damn good reason. A reason that tickled at the edges of Celaena’s mind, a blur of memory.

“But now you are ­here,” Maeve said, seeming to come closer without moving. “And a grown woman. My eyes across the sea have brought me such strange, horrible stories of you. From your scars and steel, I wonder whether they are indeed true. Like the tale I heard over a year ago, that an assassin with Ashryver eyes was spotted by the horned Lord of the North in a wagon bound for—”

“Enough.” Celaena glanced at Rowan, who was listening intently, as if this was the first he was hearing of it. She didn’t want him knowing about Endovier—­didn’t want that pity. “I know my own history.” She flashed Rowan a glare that told him to mind his own business. He merely looked away, bored again. Typical immortal arrogance. Celaena faced Maeve, tucking her hands into her pockets. “I’m an assassin, yes.”

A snort from behind, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off Maeve.

“And your other talents?” Maeve’s nostrils flared—­scenting. “What has become of them?”

“Like everyone ­else on my continent, I ­haven’t been able to access them.”

Maeve’s eyes twinkled, and Celaena knew—­knew that Maeve could smell the half truth. “You are not on your continent anymore,” Maeve purred.

Run. Every instinct roared with the word. She had a feeling that the Eye of Elena would have been no use, but she wished she had it anyway. Wished the dead queen ­were ­here, for that matter. Rowan was still at the door—­but if she was fast, if she outsmarted him . . .

A flash of memory blinded her, bright and uncontrollable, unleashed by the instinct begging her to flee. Her mother had rarely let Fae into their home, even with her heritage. A few trusted ones ­were allowed to live with them, but any Fae visitors had been closely monitored, and for the duration of their stay, Celaena had been sequestered in the family’s private chambers. She’d always thought it was overprotective, but now . . . “Show me,” Maeve whispered with a spider’s smile. Run. Run.

She could still feel the burn of blue wildfire exploding out of her in that demon realm, still see Chaol’s face as she lost control of it. One wrong move, one wrong breath, and she could have killed him and Fleetfoot.

The owl rustled its wings, the wood groaning beneath its talons, and the darkness in Maeve’s eyes spread, reaching. There was a faint pulse in the air, a throbbing against her blood. A tapping, then a razor-­sharp slicing against her mind—­as if Maeve were trying to cleave open her skull and peer inside. Pushing, testing, tasting—

Fighting to keep her breathing steady, Celaena positioned her hands within easy reach of her blades as she pushed back against the claws in her mind. Maeve let out a low laugh, and the pressure in her head ceased.

“Your mother hid you from me for years,” Maeve said. “She and your father always had a remarkable talent for knowing when my eyes ­were searching for you. Such a rare gift—­the ability to summon and manipulate flame. So few exist who possess more than an ember of it; fewer still who can master its wildness. And yet your mother wanted you to stifle your power—­though she knew that I only wanted you to submit to it.”

Celaena’s breath burned her throat. Another flicker of memory—­of lessons not about starting fires but putting them out.

Maeve went on, “Look at how well that turned out for them.”

Celaena’s blood froze. Every self-­preserving instinct went right out of her head. “And where ­were you ten years ago?” She spoke so low, from so deep in her shredded soul, that the words ­were barely more than a growl.

Maeve angled her head slightly. “I do not take kindly to being lied to.”

The snarl on Celaena’s face faltered. Dropped right into her gut. Aid had never come for Terrasen from the Fae. From Wendlyn. And it was all because . . . because . . .

“I do not have more time to spare you,” Maeve said. “So let me be brief: my eyes have told me that you have questions. Questions that no mortal has the right to ask—­about the keys.”

Legend said Maeve could commune with the spirit world—­had Elena, or Nehemia, told her? Celaena opened her mouth, but Maeve held up a hand. “I will give you those answers. You may come to me in Doranelle to receive them.”

“Why not—”

A growl from Rowan at the interruption.

“Because they are answers that require time,” Maeve said, then slowly added, as if she savored every word, “and answers you have not yet earned.”

“Tell me what I can do to earn them and I will do it.” Fool. A damned fool’s response.

“A dangerous thing to offer without hearing the price.”

“You want me to show you my magic? I’ll show it to you. But not ­here—­not—”

“I have no interest in seeing you drop your magic at my feet like a sack of grain. I want to see what you can do with it, Aelin Galathynius—which currently seems like not very much at all.” Celaena’s stomach tightened at that cursed name. “I want to see what you will become under the right circumstances.”

“I don’t—”

“I do not permit mortals or half-­breeds into Doranelle. For a half-­breed to enter my realm, she must prove herself both gifted and worthy. Mistward, this fortress”—­she waved a hand to encompass the room—“is one of several proving grounds. And a place where those who do not pass the test can spend their days.”

Beneath the growing fear, a flicker of disgust went through her. Half-­breed—Maeve said it with such disdain. “And what manner of test might I expect before I am deemed worthy?”

Maeve gestured to Rowan, who had not moved from the door. “You shall come to me once Prince Rowan decides that you have mastered your gifts. He shall train you here. And you shall not set foot in Doranelle until he deems your training complete.”

After facing the ­horse­shit she’d seen in the glass castle—­demons, witches, the king—­training with Rowan, even in magic, seemed rather anticlimactic.

But—but it could take weeks. Months. Years. The familiar fog of nothing crept in, threatening to smother her once again. She pushed it back long enough to say, “What I need to know isn’t something that can wait—”

“You want answers regarding the keys, heir of Terrasen? Then they shall be waiting for you in Doranelle. The rest is up to you.”

“Truthfully,” Celaena blurted. “You will truthfully answer my questions about the keys.”

Maeve smiled, and it was not a thing of beauty. “You ­haven’t forgotten all of our ways, then.” When Celaena didn’t react, Maeve added, “I will truthfully answer all your questions about the keys.”

It might be easier to walk away. Go find some other ancient being to pester for the truth. Celaena breathed in and out, in and out. But Maeve had been there—­had been there at the dawn of this world during the Valg wars. She had held the Wyrdkeys. She knew what they looked like, how they felt. Maybe she even knew where Brannon had hidden them—­especially the last, unnamed key. And if Celaena could find a way to steal the keys from the king, to destroy him, to stop his armies and free Eyllwe, even if she could find just one Wyrdkey . . . “What manner of training—”

“Prince Rowan shall explain the specifics. For now, he will escort you to your chamber to rest.”

Celaena looked Maeve straight in her death-­dealing eyes. “You swear you’ll tell me what I need to know?”

“I do not break my promises. And I have the feeling that you are unlike your mother in that regard, too.”

Bitch. Bitch, she wanted to hiss. But then Maeve’s eyes flicked to Celaena’s right palm. She knew everything. Through what­ever spies or power or guesswork, Maeve knew everything about her and the vow to Nehemia.

“To what end?” Celaena asked softly, the anger and the fear dragging her down into an inescapable exhaustion. “You want me to train only so I can make a spectacle of my talents?”

Maeve ran a moon-­white finger down the owl’s head. “I wish you to become who you ­were born to be. To become queen.”

•

Become queen.

The words haunted Celaena that night—­kept her from sleeping, even though she was so exhausted she could have wept for the dark-­eyed Silba to put her out of her misery. Queen. The word throbbed right along with the fresh split lip that also made sleeping very uncomfortable.

She could thank Rowan for that.

After Maeve’s command, Celaena hadn’t bothered with good-­byes before walking out. Rowan had only cleared the way because Maeve gave him a nod, and he followed Celaena into a narrow hallway that smelled of roasting meat and garlic. Her stomach grumbled, but she’d probably hurl her guts up the second she swallowed anything. So she trailed Rowan down the corridor, down the stairs, each footstep alternating between iron-­willed control and growing rage.

Left. Nehemia.

Right. You made a vow, and you will keep it, by what­ever means necessary.

Left. Training. Queen.

Right. Bitch. Manipulative, cold-­blooded, sadistic bitch.

Ahead of her, Rowan’s own steps ­were silent on the dark stones of the hallway. The torches hadn’t been lit yet, and in the murky interior, she could hardly tell he was there. But she knew—­if only because she could almost feel the ire radiating off him. Good. At least one other person ­wasn’t particularly thrilled about this bargain.

Training. Training.

Her ­whole life had been training, from the moment she was born. Rowan could train her until he was blue in the face, and as long as it got her the answers about the Wyrdkeys, she’d play along. But it didn’t mean that, when the time came, she had to do anything. Certainly not take up her throne.

She didn’t even have a throne, or a crown, or a court. Didn’t want them. And she could bring down the king as Celaena Sardothien, thank you very much.

She tightened her fingers into fists.

They encountered no one as they descended a winding staircase and started down another corridor. Did the residents of this fortress—Mistward, Maeve had called it—know who was in that study upstairs? Maeve probably got off on terrifying them. Maybe she had all of them—half-­breeds, she’d called them—­enslaved through some bargain or another. Disgusting. It was disgusting, to keep them ­here just for having a mixed heritage that was no fault of theirs.

Celaena finally opened up her mouth.

“You must be very important to Her Immortal Majesty if she put you on nurse duty.”

“Given your history, she didn’t trust anyone but her best to keep you in line.”

Oh, the prince wanted to tangle. What­ever self-­control he’d had on their trek to the fortress was hanging by a thread. Good.

“Playing warrior in the woods ­doesn’t seem like the greatest indicator of talent.”

“I fought on killing fields long before you, your parents, or your grand-­uncle ­were even born.”

She bristled—­exactly like he wanted. “Who’s to fight ­here except birds and beasts?”

Silence. Then—“The world is a far bigger and more dangerous place than you can imagine, girl. Consider yourself blessed to receive any training—­to have the chance to prove yourself.”

“I’ve seen plenty of this big and dangerous world, princeling.”

A soft, harsh laugh. “Just wait, Aelin.”

Another jab. And she let herself fall for it. “Don’t call me that.”

“It’s your name. I’m not going to call you anything different.”

She stepped in his path, getting right near those too-­sharp canines. “No one ­here can know who I am. Do you understand?”

His green eyes gleamed, animal-­bright in the dark. “My aunt has given me a harder task than she realizes, I think.” My aunt. Not our aunt.

And then she said one of the foulest things she’d ever uttered in her life, bathing in the pure hate of it. “Fae like you make me understand the King of Adarlan’s actions a bit more, I think.”

Faster than she could sense, faster than anything had a right to be, he punched her.

She shifted enough to keep her nose from shattering but took the blow on her mouth. She hit the wall, whacked her head, and tasted blood. Good.

He struck again with that immortal speed—­or would have. But with equally unnerving swiftness, he halted his second blow before it fractured her jaw and snarled in her face, low and vicious.

Her breathing turned ragged as she purred, “Do it.”

He looked more interested in ripping out her throat than in talking, but he held the line he’d drawn. “Why should I give you what you want?”

“You’re just as useless as the rest of your brethren.”

He let out a soft, lethal laugh that raked claws down her temper. “If you’re that desperate to eat stone, go ahead: I’ll let you try to land the next punch.”

She knew better than to listen. But there was such a roar in her blood that she could no longer see right, think right, breathe right. So she damned the consequences to hell as she swung.

Celaena hit nothing but air—­air, and then his foot hooked behind hers in an efficient maneuver that sent her careening into the wall once more. Impossible—­he’d tripped her as if she was nothing more than a trembling novice.

He was now a few feet away, arms crossed. She spat blood and swore. He smirked. It was enough to send her hurtling for him again, to tackle or pummel or strangle him, she didn’t know.

She caught his feint left, but when she dove right, he moved so swiftly that despite her lifetime of training, she crashed into a darkened brazier behind him. The clatter echoed through the too-­quiet hall as she landed face-­first on the stone floor, her teeth singing.

“Like I said,” Rowan sneered down at her, “you have a lot to learn. About everything.”

Her lip already aching and swollen, she told him exactly what he could go do to himself.

He sauntered down the hall. “Next time you say anything like that,” he said without looking over his shoulder, “I’ll have you chopping wood for a month.”

Fuming, hatred and shame already burning her face, Celaena got to her feet. He dumped her in a very small, very cold room that looked like little more than a prison cell, letting her take all of two steps inside before he said, “Give me your weapons.”

“Why? And no.” Like hell she’d give him her daggers.

In a swift movement, he grabbed a bucket of water from beside her door and tossed the contents onto the hall floor before holding it out. “Give me your weapons.”

Training with him would be absolutely wonderful. “Tell me why.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Then ­we’re going to have another brawl.”

His tattoo seeming impossibly darker in the dim hall, he stared at her beneath lowered brows as if to say, You call that a brawl? But ­in­­stead he growled, “Starting at dawn, you’ll earn your keep by hel­ping in the kitchen. Unless you plan to murder everyone in the fortress, there is no need for you to be armed. Or to be armed while we train. So I’ll keep your daggers until you’ve earned them back.”

Well, that felt familiar. “The kitchen?”

He bared his teeth in a wicked grin. “Everyone pulls their weight ­here. Princesses included. No one’s above some hard labor, least of all you.”

And didn’t she have the scars to prove it. Not that she’d tell him that. She didn’t know what she’d do if he learned about Endovier and mocked her for it—­or pitied her. “So my training includes being a scullery maid?”

“Part of it.” Again, she could have sworn she could read the unspoken words in his eyes: And I’m going to savor every damn second of your misery.

“For an old bastard, you certainly ­haven’t bothered to learn manners at any point in your long existence.” Never mind that he looked to be in his late twenties.

“Why should I waste flattery on a child who’s already in love with herself ?”

“We’re related, you know.”

“We’ve as much blood in common as I do with the fortress pig-­boy.”

She felt her nostrils flare, and he shoved the bucket in her face. She almost knocked it right back into his, but decided that she didn’t want a broken nose and began disarming herself.

Rowan counted every weapon she put in the bucket as though he’d already learned how many she’d been carry­ing, even the hidden ones. Then he tucked the bucket against his side and slammed the door without so much of a good-­bye beyond “Be ready at dawn.”

“Bastard. Old stinking bastard,” she muttered, surveying the room.

A bed, a chamber pot, and a washbasin with icy water. She’d debated a bath, but opted to use the water to clean out her mouth and tend to her lip. She was starving, but going to find food involved meeting people. So once she’d mended her lip as best she could with the supplies in her satchel, she tumbled into bed, reeking vagrant clothes and all, and lay there for several hours.

There was one small window with no coverings in her room. Celaena turned over in bed to look through it to the patch of stars above the trees surrounding the fortress.

Lashing out at Rowan like that, saying the things she did, trying to fight with him . . . She’d deserved that punch. More than deserved it. If she was being honest with herself, she was barely passable as a human being these days. She fingered her split lip and winced.

She scanned the night sky until she located the Stag, the Lord of the North. The unmoving star atop the stag’s head—­the eternal crown—­pointed the way to Terrasen. She’d been told that the great rulers of Terrasen turned into those bright stars so their people would never be alone—­and would always know the way home. She hadn’t set foot there in ten years. While he’d been her master, Arobynn hadn’t let her, and afterward she hadn’t dared.

She had whispered the truth that day at Nehemia’s grave. She’d been running for so long that she didn’t know what it was to stand and fight. Celaena loosed a breath and rubbed her eyes.

What Maeve didn’t understand, what she could never understand, was just how much that little princess in Terrasen had damned them a de­cade ago, even worse than Maeve herself had. She had damned them all, and then left the world to burn into ash and dust.

So Celaena turned away from the stars, nestling under the threadbare blanket against the frigid cold, and closed her eyes, trying to dream of a different world.

A world where she was no one at all.

9

Manon Blackbeak stood on a cliff beside the snow-­swollen river, eyes closed as the damp wind bit her face. There ­were few sounds she enjoyed more than the groans of dying men, but the wind was one of them.

Leaning into the breeze was the closest she came to flying these days—­save in rare dreams, when she was again in the clouds, her ironwood broom still functioning, not the scrap of useless wood it was now, chucked into the closet of her room at Blackbeak Keep.

It had been ten years since she’d tasted mist and cloud and ridden on the back of the wind. Today would have been a flawless flying day, the wind wicked and fast. Today, she would have soared.

Behind her, Mother Blackbeak was still talking with the enormous man from the caravan who called himself a duke. It had been more than coincidence, she supposed, that soon after she’d left that blood-­soaked field in Fenharrow she’d received a summons from her grandmother. And more than coincidence that she’d been not forty miles from the rendezvous point just over the border in Adarlan.

Manon was on guard duty while her grandmother, the High Witch of the Blackbeak clan, spoke to the duke beside the raging Acanthus River. The rest of her coven had taken their positions around the small encampment—­twelve other witches, all around Manon’s age, all of them raised and trained together. Like Manon, they had no weapons, but it seemed that the duke knew enough to realize Blackbeaks didn’t need weapons to be deadly.

You didn’t need a weapon at all when you ­were born one.

And when you ­were one of Manon’s Thirteen, with whom she had fought and flown for the past hundred years . . . Often just the name of the coven was enough to send enemies fleeing. The Thirteen did not have a reputation for mercy—­or making mistakes.

Manon eyed the armored guards around the camp. Half ­were watching the Blackbeak witches, the others monitoring the duke and her grandmother. It was an honor that the High Witch had chosen the Thirteen to guard her—­no other coven had been summoned. No other coven was needed if the Thirteen ­were present.

Manon slid her attention to the nearest guard. His sweat, the faint tang of fear, and the heavy musk of exhaustion drifted toward her. From the look and smell of it, they’d been traveling for weeks. There ­were two prison wagons with them. One emitted a very distinct male odor—­and perhaps a remnant of cologne. One was female. Both smelled wrong.

Manon had been born soulless, her grandmother said. Soulless and heartless, as a Blackbeak ought to be. She was wicked right down to the marrow of her bones. But the people in those wagons, and the duke, they smelled wrong. Different. Alien.

The nearby guard shifted on his feet. She gave him a smile. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword.

Because she could, because she was growing bored, Manon cocked her jaw, sending her iron teeth snapping down. The guard took a step back, his breath coming faster, the acrid tang of fear sharpening.

With her moon-­white hair, alabaster skin, and burnt-­gold eyes, she’d been told by ill-­fated men that she was beautiful as a Fae queen. But what those men realized too late was that her beauty was merely a weapon in her natural-­born arsenal. And it made things so, so fun.

Feet crunched in the snow and bits of dead grass, and Manon turned from the trembling guard and the roaring brown Acanthus to find her grandmother approaching.

In the ten years since magic had vanished, their aging pro­cess had warped. Manon herself was well over a century old, but until ten years ago, she had looked no older than sixteen. Now, she looked to be in her midtwenties. They ­were aging like mortals, they had soon realized with no small amount of panic. And her grandmother . . .

The rich, voluminous midnight robes of Mother Blackbeak flowed like water in the crisp breeze. Her grandmother’s face was now marred with the beginnings of wrinkles, her ebony hair sprinkled with silver. The High Witch of the Blackbeak Clan ­wasn’t just beautiful—­she was alluring. Even now, with mortal years pressing down upon her bone-­white skin, there was something entrancing about the Matron.

“We leave now,” Mother Blackbeak said, walking north along the river. Behind them, the duke’s men closed ranks around the encampment. Smart for mortals to be so cautious when the Thirteen ­were present—­and bored.

One jerk of the chin from Manon was all it took for the Thirteen to fall in line. The twelve other sentinels kept the required distance behind Manon and her grandmother, footsteps near silent in the winter grass. None of them had been able to find a single Crochan in the months they’d been infiltrating town after town. And Manon fully expected some form of punishment for it later. Flogging, perhaps a few broken fingers—­nothing too permanent, but it would be public. That was her grandmother’s preferred method of punishment: not the how, but the humiliation.

Yet her grandmother’s gold-­flecked black eyes, the heirloom of the Blackbeak Clan’s purest bloodline, ­were bent on the northern horizon, toward Oakwald Forest and the towering White Fangs far beyond. The gold-­speckled eyes ­were the most cherished trait in their Clan for a reason Manon had never bothered to learn—­and when her grandmother had seen that Manon’s ­were wholly of pure, dark gold, the Matron had carried her away from her daughter’s still-­cooling corpse and proclaimed Manon her undisputed heir.

Her grandmother kept walking, and Manon didn’t press her to speak. Not unless she wanted her tongue ripped clean from her mouth.

“We’re to travel north,” her grandmother said when the encampment was swallowed up by the foothills. “I want you to send three of your Thirteen south, west, and east. They are to seek out our kith and kin and inform them that we will all assemble in the Ferian Gap. Every last Blackbeak—­no witch or sentinel left behind.”

Nowadays there was no difference—­every witch belonged to a coven and was therefore a sentinel. Since the downfall of their western kingdom, since they had started clawing for their survival, every Blackbeak, Yellowlegs, and Blueblood had to be ready to fight—­ready at any time to reclaim their lands or die for their people. Manon herself had never set foot in the former Witch Kingdom, had never seen the ruins or the flat, green expanse that stretched to the western sea. None of her Thirteen had seen it, either, all of them wanderers and exiles thanks to a curse from the last Crochan Queen as she bled out on that legendary battlefield.

The Matron went on, still staring at the mountains. “And if your sentinels see members of the other clans, they are to inform them to gather in the Gap, too. No fighting, no provoking—­just spread the word.” Her grandmother’s iron teeth flashed in the afternoon sun. Like most of the ancient witches—­the ones who had been born in the Witch Kingdom and fought in the Ironteeth Alliance to shatter the chains of the Crochan Queens—­Mother Blackbeak wore her iron teeth permanently on display. Manon had never seen them retracted.

Manon bit back her questions. The Ferian Gap—­the deadly, blasted bit of land between the White Fang and Ruhnn Mountains, and one of the few passes between the fertile lands of the east and the Western Wastes.

Manon had made the passage through the snow-­crusted labyrinth of caves and ravines on foot—­just once, with the Thirteen and two other covens, right after magic had vanished, when they ­were all nearly blind, deaf, and dumb with the agony of suddenly being grounded. Half of the other witches hadn’t made it through the Gap. The Thirteen had barely survived, and Manon had almost lost an arm to an ice cavern cave-­in. Almost lost it, but kept it thanks to the quick thinking of Asterin, her second in command, and the brute strength of Sorrel, her Third. The Ferian Gap; ­Manon hadn’t been back since. For months now there had been rumors of far darker things than witches dwelling there.

“Baba Yellowlegs is dead.” Manon whipped her head to her grandmother, who was smiling faintly. “Killed in Rifthold. The duke received word. No one knows who, or why.”

“Crochans?”

“Perhaps.” Mother Blackbeak’s smile spread, revealing iron teeth spotted with rust. “The King of Adarlan has invited us to assemble in the Ferian Gap. He says he has a gift for us there.”

Manon considered what she knew about the vicious, deadly king hell-­bent on conquering the world. Her responsibility as both Coven leader and heir was to keep her grandmother alive; ­it was instinct to anticipate every pitfall, every potential threat. “It could be a trap. To gather us in one place, and then destroy us. He could be working with the Crochans. Or perhaps the Bluebloods. They’ve always wanted to make themselves High Witches of every Ironteeth Clan.”

“Oh, I think not,” Mother Blackbeak purred, her depthless ebony eyes crinkling. “For the king has made us an offer. Made all the Ironteeth Clans an offer.”

Manon waited, even though she could have gutted someone just to ease the miserable impatience.

“The king needs riders,” Mother Blackbeak said, still staring at the horizon. “Riders for his wyverns—­to be his aerial cavalry. He’s been breeding them in the Gap all these years.”

It had been a while—­too damn long—­but Manon could feel the threads of fate twisting around them, tightening.

“And when we are done, when we have served him, he will let us keep the wyverns. To take our host to reclaim the Wastes from the mortal pigs who now dwell there.” A fierce, wild thrill pierced Manon’s chest, sharp as a knife. Following the Matron’s gaze, Manon looked to the horizon, where the mountains ­were still blanketed with winter. To fly again, to soar through the mountain passes, to hunt down prey the way they’d been born to . . .

They ­weren’t enchanted ironwood brooms.

But wyverns would do just fine.

10

After a grueling day of training new recruits, avoiding Dorian, and keeping well away from the king’s watchful eye, Chaol was almost at his rooms, more than ready to sleep, when he noticed that two of his men ­were missing from their posts outside the Great Hall. The two remaining men winced as he stopped dead.

It ­wasn’t unusual for guards to occasionally miss a shift. If someone was sick, if they had some family tragedy, Chaol always found a replacement. But two missing guards, with no replacement in sight . . . “Someone had better start talking,” he ground out.

One of them cleared their throats—­a newer guard, who had just finished his training three months before. The other one was relatively new, too, which was why he’d assigned them to night duty outside the empty Great Hall. But he’d put them under the supposedly responsible and watchful eyes of the two other guards, both of whom had been ­there for years.

The guard who’d cleared his throat went red. “It—­they said . . . Ah, Captain, they said that no one would really notice if they ­were gone, since it’s the Great Hall, and it’s empty and, ah—”

“Use your words,” Chaol snapped. He was going to murder the two deserters.

“The general’s party, sir,” said the other. “General Ashryver walked past on his way into Rifthold and invited them to join him. He said it would be all right with you, so they went with him.”

A muscle feathered in his jaw. Of course Aedion did.

“And you two,” Chaol growled, “didn’t think it would be useful to report this to anyone?”

“With all due respect, sir,” said the second one, “we ­were . . . we didn’t want them to think we ­were ratters. And it’s just the Great Hall—”

“Wrong thing to say,” Chaol snarled. “You’re both on double duty for a month—­in the gardens.” Where it was still freezing. “Your leisure time is now non­ex­is­tent. And if you ever again fail to report another guard abandoning his post, you’re both gone. Understood?”

When he got a mumbled confirmation, he stalked toward the front gate of the castle. Like hell he’d go to sleep now. He had two guards to hunt down in Rifthold . . . and a general to exchange some words with.

•

Aedion had rented out an entire tavern. Men ­were at the door to keep out the riffraff, but one glare from Chaol, one glimpse of the eagle-­shaped pommel of his sword, had them stepping aside. The tavern was crammed with various nobles, some women who could have been courtesans or courtiers, and men—­lots of drunk, boisterous men. Card games, dice, bawdy singing to the music made by the small quintet by the roaring fire, free-­flowing taps of ale, bottles of sparkling wine . . . Was Aedion going to pay for this with his blood money, or was it on the king?

Chaol spotted his two guards, plus half a dozen others, playing cards, women in their laps, grinning like fiends. Until they saw him.

They ­were still groveling as Chaol sent them packing—­back to the castle, where he would deal with them tomorrow. He ­couldn’t decide whether they deserved to lose their positions, since Aedion had lied, and he didn’t like making choices like that unless he’d slept on them first. So out they went, into the freezing night. And then Chaol began the pro­cess of hunting down the general.

But no one knew where he was. First, someone sent Chaol upstairs, to one of the tavern’s bedrooms. Where he indeed found the two women someone said Aedion had slipped away with—­but another man was between them. Chaol only demanded where the general had gone. The women said they’d seen him playing dice in the cellar with some masked, high-­ranking nobles. So Chaol stormed down there. And indeed, there ­were the masked, high-­ranking nobles. They ­were pretending to be mere revelers, but Chaol recognized them anyway, even if he didn’t call them out by name. They insisted Aedion was last seen playing the fiddle in the main room.

So Chaol went back upstairs. Aedion was certainly not playing the fiddle. Or the drum, or the lute or the pipes. In fact, it seemed that Aedion Ashryver ­wasn’t even at his own party.

A courtesan prowled up to him to sell her wares, and would have walked away at his snarl had Chaol not offered her a silver coin for information about the general. She’d seen him leave an hour ago—­on the arm of one of her rivals. Headed off to a more private location, but she didn’t know where. If Aedion was no longer ­here, then . . . Chaol went back to the castle.

But he did hear one more bit of information. The Bane would arrive soon, people said, and when the legion descended on the city, they planned to show Rifthold a ­whole new level of debauchery. All of Chaol’s guards ­were invited, apparently.

It was the last thing he wanted or needed—­an entire legion of lethal warriors wreaking havoc on Rifthold and distracting his men. If that happened, the king might look too closely at Chaol—­or ask where he sometimes disappeared to.

So he needed to have more than just words with Aedion. He needed to find something to use against him so Aedion would agree not to throw these parties and swear to keep his Bane under control. Tomorrow night, he’d go to what­ever party Aedion threw.

And see what leverage he could find.

11

Freezing and aching from shivering all night, Celaena awoke before dawn in her miserable little room and found an ivory tin sitting outside the door. It was filled with a salve that smelled of mint and rosemary, and beneath it was a note written in tight, concise letters.

You deserved it. Maeve sends her wishes for a speedy recovery.

Snorting at the lecture Rowan must have received, and how it must have ruffled his feathers to bring her the gift, Celaena smeared the salve onto her still-­swollen lip. A glance in the speckled shard of mirror above the dresser revealed that she had seen better days. And was never drinking wine or eating teggya again. Or going more than a day without a bath.

Apparently Rowan agreed, because he’d also left a few pitchers of water, some soap, and a new set of clothes: white underthings, a loose shirt, and a pale-gray surcoat and cloak similar to what he had worn the day before. Though simple, the fabric was thick and of good quality.

Celaena washed as best she could, shaking with the cold leaking in from the misty forest beyond. Suddenly homesick for the giant bathing pool at the palace, she quickly dried and slid into the clothes, thankful for the layers.

Her teeth ­wouldn’t stop chattering. Hadn’t stopped chattering all night, actually. Having wet hair now didn’t help, even after she braided it back. She stuffed her feet into the knee-­high leather boots and tied the thick red sash around her waist as tightly as she could manage without losing the ability to move, hoping to give herself some shape, but . . .

Celaena scowled at the mirror. She’d lost weight—­enough so that her face looked about as hollow as she felt. Even her hair had become rather dull and limp. The salve had already taken down the swelling in her lip, but not the color. At least she was clean again. If frozen to her core. And—­completely overdressed for kitchen duty. Sighing, she unwrapped her sash and shrugged off the overcoat, tossing them onto the bed. Gods, her hands ­were so cold that the ring on her finger was slipping and sliding about. She knew it was a mistake, but she looked at it anyway, the amethyst dark in the early morning light.

What would Chaol make of all this? She was ­here, after all, because of him. Not just ­here in this physical place, but ­here inside this endless exhaustion, the near-­constant ache in her chest. It was not his fault that Nehemia died, not when the princess had orchestrated everything. Yet he had kept information from her. He had chosen the king. Even though he’d claimed he loved her, he still loyally served that monster. Maybe she had been a fool for letting him in, for dreaming of a world where she could ignore the fact that he was captain to the man who had shattered her life again and again.

The pain in her chest sharpened enough that breathing became difficult. She stood there for a moment, pushing back against it, letting it sink into the fog that smothered her soul, and then trudged out the door.

•

The one benefit to scullery duty was that the kitchen was warm. Hot, even. The great brick oven and hearth ­were blazing, chasing away the morning mist that slithered in from the trees beyond the bay of windows above the copper sinks. There ­were only two other people in the kitchen—­a hunched old man tending to the bubbling pots on the hearth and a youth at the wooden table that split the kitchen in half, chopping onions and monitoring what smelled like bread. By the Wyrd, she was hungry. That bread smelled divine. And what was in those pots?

Despite the absurdly early hour, the young man’s merry prattling had echoed off the stones of the stairwell, but he’d fallen silent, both men stopping their work, when Rowan strode down the steps into the kitchen. The Fae prince had been waiting for her down the hall, arms crossed, already bored. But his animal-­bright eyes had narrowed slightly, as if he’d been half ­hoping she would oversleep ­and give him an excuse to punish her. As an immortal, he probably had endless patience and creativity when it came to thinking up miserable punishments.

Rowan addressed the old man by the hearth—­standing so still that Celaena wondered if the prince had learned it or been born with it. “Your new scullery maid for the morning shift. After breakfast, I have her for the rest of the day.” Apparently, his lack of greeting ­wasn’t personal. Rowan looked at her with raised brows, and she could see the words in his eyes as clearly as if he’d spoken them: You wanted to remain unidentified, so go ahead, Princess. Introduce yourself with what­ever name you want.

At least he’d listened to her last night. “Elentiya,” she choked out. “My name is Elentiya.” Her gut tightened.

Thank the gods Rowan didn’t snort at the name. She might have eviscerated him—­or tried to, at least—­if he mocked the name Nehemia had given her.

The old man hobbled forward, wiping his gnarled hands on a crisp white apron. His brown woolen clothes ­were simple and worn—­a bit threadbare in places—­and he seemed to have some trouble with his left knee, but his white hair was tied back neatly from his tan face. He bowed stiffly. “So good of you to find us additional help, Prince.” He shifted his chestnut-brown eyes to Celaena and gave her a no-­nonsense once-­over. “Ever work in a kitchen?”

With all the things she had done, all the places and things and people she had seen, she had to say no.

“Well, I hope you’re a fast learner and quick on your feet,” he said.

“I’ll do my best.” Apparently that was all Rowan needed to hear before he stalked off, his footsteps silent, every movement smooth and laced with power. Just watching him, she knew he’d held back last night when punching her. If he’d wanted to, he could have shattered her jaw.

“I’m Emrys,” the old man said. He hurried to the oven, grabbing a long, flat wooden shovel from the wall to pull a brown loaf out of the oven. Introduction over. Good. No wishy-­washy nonsense or smiling or any of that. But his ears—

Half-­breeds. Peeking up from Emrys’s white hair ­were the markers of his Fae heritage.

“And this is Luca,” the old man said, pointing to the youth at the worktable. Even though a rack of iron pots and pans hanging from the ceiling partially blocked her view of him, he gave Celaena a broad smile, his mop of tawny curls sticking up this way and that. He had to be a few years younger than her at least, and hadn’t yet grown into his tall frame or broad shoulders. He didn’t have properly fitting clothes, either, given how short the sleeves of his ordinary brown tunic ­were. “You and he will be sharing a lot of the scullery work, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, it’s absolutely miserable,” Luca chirped, sniffling loudly at the reek of the onions he was chopping, “but you’ll get used to it. Though maybe not the waking up before dawn part.” Emrys shot the young man a glare, and Luca amended, “At least the company’s good.”

She gave him her best attempt at a civilized nod and took in the layout again. Behind Luca, a second stone staircase spiraled up and out of sight, and the two towering cupboards on either side of it ­were crammed with well-­worn, if not cracked, dishes and cutlery. The top half of a wooden door by the windows was wide open, a wall of trees and mist swirling beyond a small clearing of grass. Past them, the ring of megaliths towered like eternal guardians.

She caught Emrys studying her hands and held them out, scars and all. “Already mangled and ruined, so you won’t find me weeping over broken nails.”

“Mother keep me. What happened?” But even as the old man spoke, she could see him putting the pieces together—­see him deciphering Celaena’s accent, taking in her swollen lip and the shadows under her eyes.

“Adarlan will do that to a person.” Luca’s knife thudded on the table, but Celaena kept her eyes on the old man. “Give me what­ever work you want. Any work.”

Let Rowan think she was spoiled and selfish. She was, but she wanted sore muscles and blistered hands and to fall into bed so exhausted she ­wouldn’t dream, ­wouldn’t think, ­wouldn’t feel much of anything.

Emrys clicked his tongue. There was enough pity in the man’s eyes that for a heartbeat, Celaena contemplated biting his head off. Then he said, “Just finish the onions. Luca, you mind the bread. I’ve got to start on the casseroles.”

Celaena took up the spot that Luca had already vacated at the end of the table, passing the giant hearth as she did so—­a mammoth thing of ancient stone, carved with symbols and odd faces. Even the posts of the brazier had been fashioned into standing figures, and displayed atop the thin mantel was a set of nine iron figurines. Gods and goddesses.

Celaena quickly looked away from the two females in the center—­one crowned with a star and armed with a bow and quiver, the other bearing a polished bronze disk upheld between her raised hands. She could have sworn she felt them watching her.

•

Breakfast was a mad­house.

As dawn filled the windows with golden light, chaos descended on the kitchen, people rushing in and out. There ­weren’t any servants, just weathered people doing their chores or even helping because they felt like it. Great tubs of eggs and potatoes and vegetables vanished as soon as they ­were placed on the table, whisked up the stairs and into what had to be the dining hall. Jugs of water, of milk, of the gods knew what ­were hauled up. Celaena was introduced to some of the people, but most didn’t cast a look in her direction.

And ­wasn’t that a lovely change from the usual stares and terror and whispers that had marked the past ten years of her life. She had a feeling Rowan would keep his mouth shut about her identity, if only because he seemed to hate talking to others as much as she did. In the kitchen, chopping vegetables and washing pans, she was absolutely, gloriously nobody.

Her dull knife was a nightmare when it came to chopping mushrooms, scallions, and an endless avalanche of potatoes. No one, except perhaps Emrys with his all-­seeing eyes, seemed to notice her perfect slices. Someone merely scooped them up and tossed them in a pot, then told her to cut something ­else.

Then—nothing. Everyone but her two companions vanished upstairs, and sleepy laughter, grumbling, and clinking silverware echoed down the stairwell. Famished, Celaena looked longingly at the food left on the worktable just as she caught Luca staring at her.

“Go ahead,” he said with a grin before moving to help Emrys haul a massive iron cauldron over toward the sink. Even with the insanity of the past hour, Luca had managed to chat up almost every person who came into the kitchen, his voice and laughter floating over the clanging pots and barked orders. “You’ll be at those dishes for a while and might as well eat now.”

Indeed, there was a tower of dishes and pots already by the sinks. The cauldron alone would take forever. So Celaena plunked down at the table, served herself some eggs and potatoes, poured a cup of tea, and dug in.

Devouring was a better word for what she did. Holy gods, it was delicious. Within moments, she’d consumed two pieces of toast laden with eggs, then started on the fried potatoes. Which ­were as absurdly good as the eggs. She ditched the tea in favor of downing a glass of the richest milk she’d ever tasted. Not that she ever really drank milk, since she’d had her pick of exotic juices in Rifthold, but . . . She looked up from her plate to find Emrys and Luca gaping from the hearth. “Gods above,” the old man said, moving to sit at the table. “When was the last time you ate?”

Good food like this? A while. And if Rowan was coming back at some point, she didn’t want to be swaying from hunger. She needed her strength for training. Magic training. Which was sure to be horrific, but she would do it—­to fulfill her bargain with Maeve and honor her vow to Nehemia. Suddenly not very hungry, she set down her fork. “Sorry,” she said.

“Oh, eat all you like,” Emrys said. “There’s nothing more satisfying to a cook than seeing someone enjoy his food.” He said it with enough humor and kindness that it chafed.

How would they react if they knew the things she’d done? What would they do if they knew about the blood she’d spilled, how she’d tortured Grave and taken him apart piece by piece, the way she’d gutted Archer in that sewer? The way she’d failed her friend. Failed a lot of people.

They ­were noticeably quieter as they sat down. They didn’t ask her any questions. Which was perfect, because she didn’t really want to start a conversation. She ­wouldn’t be ­here for long, anyway. Emrys and Luca kept to themselves, chatting about the training Luca was to do with some of the sentries on the battlements that day, the meat pies Emrys would make for lunch, the oncoming spring rains that might ruin the Beltane festival like last year. Such ordinary things to talk about, worry about. And they ­were so easy with each other—­a family in their own way.

Uncorrupted by a wicked empire, by years of brutality and slavery and bloodshed. She could almost see the three souls in the kitchen lined up beside each other: theirs bright and clear, hers a flickering black flame.

Do not let that light go out. Nehemia’s last words to her that night in the tunnels. Celaena pushed around the food on her plate. She’d never known anyone whose life hadn’t been overshadowed by Adarlan. She could barely remember her brief years before the continent had been enslaved, when Terrasen had still been free.

She could not remember what it was like to be free.

A pit yawned open beneath her feet, so deep that she had to move lest it swallow her ­whole.

She was about to get started on the dishes when Luca said from down the table, “So you either have to be very important or very unlucky to have Rowan training you to enter Doranelle.” Damned was more like it, but she kept her mouth shut. Emrys was looking on with cautious interest. “That is what you’re training for, right?”

“Isn’t that why you’re all ­here?” The words came out flatter than even she expected.

Luca said, “Yes, but I’ve got years until I learn whether I’ve met their qualifications.”

Years. Years? Maeve ­couldn’t mean for her to be ­here that long. She looked at Emrys. “How long have you been training?”

The old man snorted. “Oh, I was about fifteen when I came ­here, and worked for them for about . . . ten years, and I was never worthy enough. Too ordinary. Then I decided I’d rather have a home and my own kitchen ­here than be looked down upon in Doranelle for the rest of my days. It didn’t hurt that my mate felt the same way. You’ll meet him soon enough. He’s always popping in to steal food for himself and his men.” He chuckled, and Luca grinned.

Mate—not husband. The Fae had mates: an unbreakable bond, deeper than marriage, that lasted beyond death. Celaena asked, “So you’re all—half-­breeds?”

Luca stiffened, but flashed a smile as he said, “Only the pure-­blooded Fae call us that. We prefer demi-­Fae. But yes, most of us ­were born to mortal mothers, with the fathers unaware they’d sired us. The gifted ones usually get snatched away to Doranelle, but for us common offspring, the humans still aren’t comfortable with us, so . . . we go ­here, we come to Mistward. Or to the other border outposts. Few enough get permission to go to Doranelle that most just come ­here to live among their own kind.” Luca’s eyes narrowed on her ears. “Looks like you got more human in you than Fae.”

“Because I’m not half.” She didn’t want to share any more details than that.

“Can you shift?” Luca asked. Emrys shot him a warning look.

“Can you?” she asked.

“Oh, no. Neither of us can. If we could, we’d probably be in Doranelle with the other ‘gifted’ offspring that Maeve likes to collect.”

Emrys growled. “Careful, Luca.”

“Maeve ­doesn’t deny it, so why should I? That’s what Bas and the others are saying, too. Anyway, there are a few sentries ­here who have secondary forms, like Malakai—­Emrys’s mate. And they’re ­here because they want to be.”

She ­wasn’t at all surprised that Maeve took an interest in the gifted ones—­or that Maeve locked all the useless ones out. “And do either of you have—­gifts?”

“You mean magic?” Luca said, his mouth quirking to the side. “Oh, no—­neither of us got a lick of it. I heard your continent always had more wielders than we did, anyway, and more variety. Say, is it true that it’s all gone over there?”

She nodded. Luca let out a low whistle. He opened his mouth to ask more, but she ­wasn’t particularly in the mood to talk about it so she said, “Does anyone at this fortress have magic?” Maybe they’d be able to tell her what to expect with Rowan—­and Maeve.

Luca shrugged. “Some. They’ve only got a hint of boring stuff, like encouraging plants to grow or finding water or convincing rain to come. Not that we need it ­here.”

They’d be of no assistance with Rowan or Maeve, then. Wonderful.

“But,” Luca chattered on, “no one ­here has any exciting or rare abilities. Like shape-­shifting into what­ever form they want, or controlling fire”—­her stomach clenched at that—“or oracular sight. We did have a female wander in with raw magic two years ago—­she could do anything she wanted, summon any element, and she was ­here a week before Maeve called her to Doranelle and we never heard from her again. A shame—­she was so pretty, too. But it’s the same ­here as it is everywhere ­else: a few people with a pathetic trace of elemental powers that are really only fun for farmers.”

Emrys clicked his tongue. “You should pray the gods don’t strike you with lightning for speaking like that.” Luca groaned, rolling his eyes, but Emrys continued his lecture, gesturing at the youth with his teacup. “Those powers ­were gifts given to us by them long ago—­gifts we needed to survive—­and ­were passed down through the generations. Of course they’d be aligned with the elements, and of course they’d be watered down after so long.”

Celaena glanced toward those iron figurines on the mantel. She contemplated mentioning that some believed the gods had also bred with ancient humans and given them magic that way, but . . . that would involve more talking than necessary. She tilted her head to the side. “What do you know about Rowan? How old is he?” The more she learned, the better.

Emrys wrapped his wrinkled hands around his teacup. “He’s one of the few Fae we see around Mistward—­he stops in every now and then to retrieve reports for Maeve, but he keeps to himself. Never stays the night. Occasionally he’ll come with the others like him—­there are six of them who closely serve the Queen as war leaders or spies, you see. They never talk to us, and all we hear are rumors about where they go and what they do. But I’ve known Rowan since I first came ­here. Not that I really know him, mind you. Sometimes he’s gone for years, off serving Her Majesty. And I don’t think anyone knows how old he is. When I was fifteen, the oldest people living ­here had known him since they ­were younglings, so . . . I’d say he’s very old.”

“And mean as an adder,” Luca muttered.

Emrys gave him a warning look. “You’d best mind your tongue.” He glanced toward the doors, as if Rowan would be lurking there. When his gaze fell again on Celaena, it was wary. “I’ll admit that you’re probably in for a good heap of difficulty.”

“He’s a stone-­cold killer and a sadist is what he means,” Luca added. “The meanest of Maeve’s personal cabal of warriors, they say.”

Well, that ­wasn’t a surprise, either. But there ­were five others like him—that was an unpleasant fact. She said quietly, “I can handle him.”

“We’re not allowed to learn the Old Language until we enter Doranelle,” Luca said, “but I heard his tattoo is a list of all the people he’s slaughtered.”

“Hush,” Emrys said.

“It’s not like he ­doesn’t act like it.” Luca frowned again at Celaena. “Maybe you should consider whether Doranelle is worth it, you know? It’s not so bad living ­here.”

She’d already had enough interacting. “I can handle him,” she repeated. Maeve ­couldn’t intend to keep her ­here for years. If that started to seem likely, Celaena would leave. And find another way to stop the king.

Luca opened his mouth but Emrys hushed him again, his gaze falling on Celaena’s scarred hands. “Let her run her own course.”

Luca started chattering about the weather, and Celaena headed to the mountain of dishes. As she washed, she fell into a rhythm, as she’d done while cleaning her weapons aboard that ship.

The kitchen sounds turned muffled as she let herself spiral down, contemplating that horrible realization again and again: she could not remember what it was like to be free.

12

The Blackbeak Clan was the last to fully assemble at the Ferian Gap.

As a result, they got the smallest and farthest rooms in the warren of halls carved into the Omega, the last of the Ruhnn Mountains and the northernmost of the sister-­peaks flanking the snow-­blasted pass.

Across the gap was the Northern Fang, the final peak of the White Fangs, which was currently occupied by the king’s men—­massive brutes who still didn’t know quite what to make of the witches who had stalked in from every direction.

They’d been ­here for a day and Manon had yet to glimpse any sign of the wyverns the king had promised. She’d heard them, even though they ­were ­housed across the pass in the Northern Fang. No matter how deep you got into the Omega’s stone halls, the shrieks and roars vibrated in the stone, the air pulsed with the boom of leathery wings, and the floors hissed with the scrape of talon on rock.

It had been five hundred years since all three Clans had assembled. There had been over twenty thousand of them at one point. Now only three thousand remained, and that was a generous estimate. All that was left of a once-­mighty kingdom.

Still, the halls of the Omega ­were a dangerous place to be. Already she’d had to pull apart Asterin and a Yellowlegs bitch who hadn’t yet learned that Blackbeak sentinels—­especially members of the Thirteen—­didn’t take lightly to being called soft-­hearted.

There had been blue blood splattered on their faces, and though Manon was more than pleased to see that Asterin, beautiful, brash Asterin, had done most of the damage, she’d still had to punish her Second.

Three unblocked blows. One to the gut, so Asterin could feel her own powerlessness; one to the ribs, so she’d consider her actions every time she drew breath; and one to the face, so her broken nose would remind her that the punishment could have been far worse.

Asterin had taken them all without scream or complaint or plea, just as any of the Thirteen would have done.

And this morning, her Second, nose swollen and bruised at the bridge, had given Manon a fierce grin over their miserable breakfast of boiled oats. Had it been another witch, Manon would have dragged her by the neck to the front of the room and made her regret the insolence, but Asterin . . .

Even though Asterin was her cousin, she ­wasn’t a friend. Manon didn’t have friends. None of the witches, especially the Thirteen, had friends. But Asterin had guarded her back for a century, and the grin was a sign that she ­wouldn’t put a dagger in Manon’s spine the next time they ­were knee-­deep in battle.

No, Asterin was just insane enough to wear the broken nose like a badge of honor, and would love her crooked nose for the rest of her not-­so-­immortal life.

The Yellowlegs heir, a haughty bull of a witch named Iskra, had merely given her offending sentinel a warning to keep her mouth shut and sent her down to the infirmary in the belly of the mountain. Fool.

All the coven leaders ­were under orders to keep their sentinels in line—­to suppress the fighting between Clans. Or ­else the three Matrons would come down on them like a hammer. Without punishment, without Iskra making an example of her, the offending witch would keep at it until she got strung up by her toes by the new High Witch of the Yellowlegs Clan.

They’d held a sham of a memorial ser­vice last night for Baba Yellowlegs in the cavernous mess hall—­lighting any old candles in lieu of the traditional black ones, wearing what­ever hoods they could find, and going through the Sacred Words to the Three-­Faced Goddess as though they ­were reading a recipe.

Manon had never met Baba Yellowlegs, and didn’t particularly care that she’d died. She was more interested in who had killed her, and why. They all ­were, and it was those questions that ­were exchanged between the expected words of loss and mourning. Asterin and Vesta had done the talking, as they usually did, chatting up the other witches while Manon listened from nearby. No one knew anything, though. Even her two Shadows, concealed in the dark pockets of the mess hall as they’d been trained to do, had overheard nothing.

It was the not knowing that made her shoulders tight as Manon stalked up the sloped hallway to where the Matrons and all the Coven leaders ­were to assemble, Blackbeak and Yellowlegs witches stepping aside to let her pass. She resented not knowing anything that might be useful, that might give the Thirteen or the Blackbeaks an advantage. Of course, the Bluebloods ­were nowhere to be seen. The reclusive witches had arrived first and claimed the uppermost rooms in the Omega, saying they needed the mountain breeze to complete their rituals every day.

Religious fanatics with their noses in the wind, was what Mother Blackbeak had always called them. But it had been their insane devotion to the Three-­Faced Goddess and their vision of the Witch Kingdom under Ironteeth rule that had mustered the Clans five centuries ago—­even if it had been the Blackbeak sentinels who’d won the battles for them.

Manon treated her body as she would any other weapon: she kept it clean and honed and ready at any time to defend and destroy. But even her training ­couldn’t keep her from being out of breath when she reached the atrium by the black bridge that connected the Omega to the Northern Fang. She hated the expanse of stone without even touching it. It smelled wrong.

It smelled like those two prisoners she’d seen with the duke. In fact, this ­whole place reeked like that. The scent ­wasn’t natural; it didn’t belong in this world.

About fifty witches—­the highest-­ranking coven leaders in each Clan—­were gathered at the giant hole in the side of the mountain. Manon spotted her grandmother immediately, standing at the bridge entrance with what had to be the Blueblood and Yellowlegs Matrons.

The new Yellowlegs Matron was supposedly some half ­sister of Baba, and she certainly looked the part: huddled in brown robes, saffron ankles peeking out, white hair braided back to reveal a wrinkled, brutal face mottled with age. By rule, all Yellowlegs wore their iron teeth and nails on permanent display, and the new High Witch’s ­were shining in the dull morning light.

Unsurprisingly, the Blueblood Matron was tall and willowy, more priestess than warrior. She wore the traditional deep blue robes, and a band of iron stars circled her brow. As Manon approached the crowd, she could see that the stars ­were barbed. Not surprising, either.

Legend had it that all witches had been gifted by the Three-­Faced Goddess with iron teeth and nails to keep them anchored to this world when magic threatened to pull them away. The iron crown, supposedly, was proof that the magic in the Blueblood line ran so strong that their leader needed more—­needed iron and pain—­to keep her tethered in this realm.

Nonsense. Especially when magic had been gone these past ten years. But Manon had heard rumors of the rituals the Bluebloods did in their forests and caves, rituals in which pain was the gateway to magic, to opening their senses. Oracles, mystics, zealots.

Manon stalked through the ranks of the assembled Blackbeak coven leaders. They ­were the most numerous—­twenty coven leaders, over which Manon ruled with her Thirteen. Each leader touched two fingers to her brow in deference. She ignored them and took up a spot at the front of the crowd, where her grandmother gave her an acknowledging glance.

An honor, for any High Witch to acknowledge an individual. Manon bowed her head, pressing two fingers to her brow. Obedience, discipline, and brutality ­were the most beloved words in the Blackbeak Clan. All ­else was to be extinguished without second thought.

She still had her chin high, hands behind her back, when she spotted the other two heirs watching her.

The Blueblood heir, Petrah, stood closest to the High Witches, her group in the center of the crowd. Manon stiffened but held her gaze.

Her freckled skin was as pale as Manon’s, and her braided hair was as golden as Asterin’s—­a deep, brassy color that caught the gray light. She was beautiful, like so many of them, but grave. Above her blue eyes, a worn leather band rested on her brow in lieu of the iron-­star crown. There was no way of telling how old she was, but she ­couldn’t be much older than Manon if she looked this way after magic had vanished. There was no aggression, but no smile, either. Smiles ­were rare amongst witches—­unless you ­were on the hunt or on a killing field.

The Yellowlegs heir, though . . . Iskra was grinning at Manon, bristling with a challenge that Manon found herself aching to meet. Iskra hadn’t forgotten the brawl between their sentinels in the hallway yesterday. If anything, from the look in Iskra’s brown eyes, it seemed that the brawl had been an invitation. Manon found herself debating how much trouble she’d get into for shredding the throat of the Yellowlegs heir. It would put an end to any fights between their sentinels.

It would also put an end to her life, if the attack ­were unprovoked. Witch justice was swift. Dominance battles could end in loss of life, but the claim had to be made up front. Without a formal provocation from Iskra, Manon’s hands ­were tied.

“Now that ­we’re assembled,” the Blueblood Matron—­Cresseida—said, drawing Manon’s attention, “shall we show you what ­we’ve been brought ­here to do?”

Mother Blackbeak waved a hand to the bridge, black robes billowing in the icy wind. “We walk into the sky, witches.”

•

The crossing of the black bridge was more harrowing than Manon wanted to admit. First, there was the miserable stone, which throbbed beneath her feet, giving off that reek that no one ­else seemed to notice. Then there was the screeching wind, which battered them this way and that, trying to shove them over the carved railing.

They ­couldn’t even see the floor of the Gap. Mist shrouded everything below the bridge—­a mist that hadn’t vanished in the day they’d been ­here, or the days they’d hiked up the Gap. It was, she supposed, some trick of the king’s. Contemplating it led only to more questions, none of which she bothered to voice, or really care about all that much.

By the time they reached the cavernous atrium of the Northern Fang, Manon’s ears ­were frozen and her face was raw. She’d flown at high altitudes, in all kinds of weather, but not for a long while. Not without a fresh belly of meat in her, keeping her warm.

She wiped her runny nose on the shoulder of her red cloak. She’d seen the other coven leaders eyeing the crimson material—­as they always did, with yearning and scorn and envy. Iskra had gazed at it the ­longest, sneering. It would be nice—­really damn nice—­to peel off the Yellowlegs heir’s face one day.

They reached the gaping mouth into the upper reaches of the Northern Fang. ­Here the stone was scarred and gouged, splattered with the Triple Goddess knew what. From the tang of it, it was blood. Human blood.

Five men—­all looking hewn from the same scarred stone themselves—­met the three Matrons with grim nods. Manon fell into step behind her grandmother, one eye on the men, the other on their surroundings. The other two heirs did the same. At least they agreed on that.

As heirs, their foremost duty was to protect their High Witches, even if it meant sacrificing themselves. Manon glanced at the Yellowlegs Matron, who held herself just as proudly as the two Ancients as they walked into the shadows of the mountain. But Manon didn’t take her hand off her blade, Wind-­Cleaver, for a heartbeat.

The screams and wing beats and clank of metal ­were far louder ­here.

“This is where we breed and train ’em until they can make the Crossing to the Omega,” one of the men was saying, gesturing to the many cave mouths they passed as they strode through the cavernous hall. “Hatcheries are in the belly of the mountain, a level above the forges for the armory—­to keep the eggs warm, you see. Dens are a level above that. We keep ’em separated by gender and type. The bulls we hold in their own pens unless we want to breed ’em. They kill anyone in their cages. Learned that the hard way.” The men chuckled, but the witches did not. He went on about the different types—­the bulls ­were the best, but a female could be just as fierce and twice as smart. The smaller ones ­were good for stealth, and had been bred to be totally black against the night sky, or a pale blue to blend into daylight patrols. The average wyvern’s colors they didn’t care about so much, since they wanted their enemies to drop dead from terror, the man claimed.

They descended steps carved into the stone itself, and if the reek of blood and waste didn’t overwhelm every sense, then the din of the wyverns—­a roaring and screeching and booming of wings and flesh on rock—­nearly drowned out the man’s words. But Manon stayed focused on her grandmother’s position, on the positions of the others around her. And she knew that Asterin, one step behind her, was doing the same for her.

He led them onto a viewing platform in a massive cavern. The sunken floor was at least forty feet below, one end of the chamber wholly open to the cliff face, the other sealed with an iron grate—­no, a door.

“This is one of the training pits,” the man explained. “It’s easy to sort out the natural-­born killers, but we discover a lot of them show their mettle in the pits. Before you . . . ladies,” he said, trying to hide his wince at the word, “even lay eyes on them, they’ll be in ­here, fighting it out.”

“And when,” said Mother Blackbeak, pinning him with a stare, “will we select our mounts?”

The man swallowed. “We trained a brood of gentler ones to teach you the basics.”

A growl from Iskra. Manon might also have snarled at the implied insult, but the Blueblood Matron spoke. “You don’t learn to ­ride by hopping on a war­horse, do you?”

The man almost sagged with relief. “Once you’re comfortable with the flying—”

“We ­were born on the back of the wind,” said one of the coven leaders in the back. Some grunts of approval. Manon kept silent, as did her Blackbeak coven leaders. Obedience. Discipline. Brutality. They did not descend to boasting.

The man fidgeted and kept his focus on Cresseida, as if she ­were the only safe one in the room, even with her barbed crown of stars. Idiot. Manon sometimes thought the Bluebloods ­were the deadliest of them all.

“Soon as you’re ready,” he said, “we can begin the selection pro­cess. Get you on your mounts, and start the training.”

Manon risked taking her eyes off her grandmother to study the pit. There ­were giant chains anchored in one of the walls, and enormous splotches of dark blood stained the stones, as if one of these beasts had been pushed against it. A giant crack spider-webbed from the center. What­ever hit the wall had been tossed hard.

“What are the chains for?” Manon found herself asking. Her grandmother gave her a warning look, but Manon focused on the man. Predictably, his eyes widened at her beauty—­then stayed wide as he beheld the death lurking beneath it.

“Chains are for the bait beasts,” he said. “They’re the wyverns we use to show the others how to fight, to turn their aggression into a weapon. ­We’re under orders not to put any of ’em down, even the runts and broken ones, so we put the weaklings to good use.”

Just like dog fighting. She looked again to the splotch and the crack in the wall. The bait beast had probably been thrown by one of the bigger ones. And if the wyverns could hurl each other like that, then the damage to humans . . . Her chest tightened with anticipation, especially as the man said, “Want to see a bull?”

A glimmer of iron nails as Cresseida made an elegant gesture to continue. The man let out a sharp whistle. None of them spoke as chains rattled, a whip cracked, and the iron gate to the pit groaned as it lifted. And then, heralded by men with whips and spears, the wyvern appeared.

A collective intake of breath, even from Manon.

“Titus is one of our best,” the man said, pride gleaming in his voice.

Manon ­couldn’t tear her eyes away from the gorgeous beast: his mottled gray body covered in a leathery hide; his massive back legs, armed with talons as big as her forearm; and his enormous wings, tipped with a claw and used to propel him forward like a front set of limbs.

The triangular head swiveled this way and that, and his dripping maw revealed yellow, curved fangs. “Tail’s armed with a venomous barb,” the man said as the wyvern emerged fully from the pit, snarling at the men down there with him. The reverberations of the snarl echoed through the stone, into her boots and up her legs, right into her husk of a heart.

A chain was clamped around his back leg, undoubtedly to keep him from flying out of the pit. The tail, as long as his body and tipped with two curved spikes, flicked back and forth like a cat’s.

“They can fly hundreds of miles in a day and still be ready to fight when they arrive,” the man said, and the witches all hissed in a breath. That sort of speed and endurance . . .

“What do they eat?” asked Petrah, freckled face still calm and grave.

The man rubbed his neck. “They’ll eat anything. But they like it fresh.”

“So do we,” said Iskra with a grin. Had anyone but the Yellowlegs heir said it, Manon would have joined in with the other grins around her.

Titus gave a sudden thrash, lunging for the nearest man while using his magnificent tail to snap the raised spears behind him. A whip cracked, but it was too late.

Blood and screams and the crunch of bone. The man’s legs and head tumbled to the ground. The torso was swallowed down in one bite. The smell of blood filled the air, and every single one of the Ironteeth witches inhaled deeply. The man in front of them took a too-­casual step away.

The bull in the pit was now looking up at them, tail still slashing against the floor.

Magic was gone, and yet this was possible—­this creation of magnificent beasts. Magic was gone, and yet Manon felt the sureness of the moment settle along her bones. She was meant to be ­here. She’d have Titus or no other.

Because she’d suffer no creature to be her mount but the fiercest, the one whose blackness called to her own. As her eyes met with the endless dark of Titus’s, she smiled at the wyvern.

She could have sworn he smiled back.

13

Celaena didn’t realize how exhausted she was until all sounds—­Emrys’s soft singing from the table, the thud of dough as he kneaded it, the chopping of Luca’s knife and his ceaseless chatter about everything and anything—­stopped. And she knew what she’d find when she turned toward the stairwell. Her hands ­were pruny, fingers aching, back and neck throbbing, but . . . Rowan was leaning against the archway of the stairwell, arms crossed and violence beckoning in his lifeless eyes. “Let’s go.”

Though his features remained cold, she had the distinct impression that he was somewhat annoyed at her for not sulking in a corner, bemoaning the state of her nails. As she left, Luca drew a finger across his neck as he mouthed good luck.

Rowan led her through a small courtyard, where sentries tried to pretend they ­weren’t watching their every move, and out into the forest. The ward-­magic woven between the ring of megaliths again nipped at her skin as they passed, and nausea washed through her. Without the constant heat of the kitchen, she was half-frozen by the time they strode between the moss-­coated trees, but even that was only a vague flicker of feeling.

Rowan trekked up a rocky ridge toward the highest reaches of the forest, still clouded in mist. She barely paused to take in the view of the foothills below, the plains before them, all green and fresh and safe from Adarlan. Rowan didn’t utter a single word until they reached what looked like the weather-­stained ruins of a temple.

It was now no more than a flat bed of stone blocks and columns whose carvings had been dulled by wind and rain. To her left lay Wendlyn, foothills and plains and peace. To her right arose the wall of the Cambrian Mountains, blocking any sight of the immortal lands beyond. Behind her, far down, she could make out the fortress snaking along the spine of the mountain.

Rowan crossed the cracked stones, his silver hair battered by the crisp, damp wind. She kept her arms loose at her sides, more out of reflex than anything. He was armed to the teeth, his face a mask of unyielding brutality.

She made herself give a little smile, her best attempt at a dutiful, eager expression. “Do your worst.”

He looked her over from head to toe: the mist-­damp shirt, now icy against her puckered skin, the equally stained and damp pants, the position of her feet . . .

“Wipe that smarmy, lying smile off your face.” His voice was as dead as his eyes, but it had a razor-­sharp bite behind it.

She kept her smarmy, lying smile. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He stepped toward her, the canines coming out this time. “Here’s your first lesson, girl: cut the ­horse­shit. I don’t feel like dealing with it, and I’m probably the only one who ­doesn’t give a damn about how angry and vicious and awful you are underneath.”

“I don’t think you particularly want to see how angry and vicious and awful I am underneath.”

“Go ahead and be as nasty as you want, Princess, because I’ve been ten times as nasty, for ten times longer than you’ve been alive.”

She didn’t let it out—­no, because he didn’t truly understand a thing about what lurked under her skin and ran claws down her insides—­but she stopped any attempt to control her features. Her lips pulled back from her teeth.

“Better. Now shift.”

She didn’t bother to sound pleasant as she said, “It’s not something I can control.”

“If I wanted excuses, I’d ask for them. Shift.”

She didn’t know how. She had never mastered it as a child, and there certainly hadn’t been any opportunities to learn in the past de­cade. “I hope you brought snacks, because ­we’re going to be ­here a long, long while if today’s lesson is dependent upon my shifting.”

“You’re really going to make me enjoy training you.” She had a feeling he could have switched out training you for eating you alive.

“I’ve already participated in a dozen versions of the master-­disciple training saga, so why don’t we cut that ­horse­shit, too?”

His smile turned quieter, more lethal. “Shut your smart-­ass mouth and shift.”

A shuddering rush went through her—­a spear of lightning in the abyss. “No.”

And then he attacked.

She’d contemplated his blows all morning, the way he’d moved, the swiftness and angles. So she dodged the first blow, sidestepping his fist, strands of her hair snapping in the wind.

She even twisted far enough in the other direction to avoid the second strike. But he was so damn fast she could barely register the movements—­so fast that she had no chance of dodging or blocking or anticipating the third blow. Not to her face but to her legs, just as he had the night before.

One sweep of his foot and she was falling, twisting to catch herself, but not fast enough to avoid thudding her brow against a weather-­smooth rock. She rolled, the gray sky looming, and tried to remember how to breathe as the impact echoed through her skull. Rowan pounced with fluid ease, his powerful thighs digging into her ribs as he straddled her. Breathless, head reeling, and muscles drained from a morning in the kitchen and weeks of hardly eating, she ­couldn’t twist and toss him—­couldn’t do anything. She was outweighed, outmuscled, and for the first time in her life, she realized she was utterly outmatched.

“Shift,” he hissed.

She laughed up at him, a dead, wretched sound even to her own ears. “Nice try.” Gods, her head throbbed, a warm trickle of blood was leaking from the right side of her brow, and he was now sitting on her chest. She laughed again, strangled by his weight. “You think you can trick me into shifting by pissing me off ?”

He snarled, his face speckled with the stars floating in her vision. Every blink shot daggers of pain through her. It would probably be the worst black eye of her life.

“Here’s an idea: I’m rich as hell,” she said over the pounding in her head. “How about we pretend to do this training for a week or so, and then you tell Maeve I’m good and ready to enter her territory, and I’ll give you all the gods-­damned gold you want.”

He brought his canines so close to her neck that one movement would have him ripping out her throat. “Here’s an idea,” he growled. “I don’t know what the hell you’ve been doing for ten years, other than flouncing around and calling yourself an assassin. But I think you’re used to getting your way. I think you have no control over yourself. No control, and no discipline—­not the kind that counts, deep down. You are a child, and a spoiled one at that. And,” he said, those green eyes holding nothing but distaste, “you are a coward.”

Had her arms not been pinned, she would have clawed his face off right then. She struggled, trying every technique she’d ever learned to dislodge him, but he didn’t move an inch.

A low, nasty laugh. “Don’t like that word?” He leaned closer still, that tattoo of his swimming in her muddled vision. “Coward. You’re a coward who has run for ten years while innocent people ­were burned and butchered and—”

She stopped hearing him.

She just—­stopped.

It was like being underwater again. Like charging into Nehemia’s room and finding that beautiful body mutilated on the bed. Like seeing Galan Ashryver, beloved and brave, riding off into the sunset to the cheers of his people.

She lay still, watching the churning clouds above. Waiting for him to finish the words she ­couldn’t hear, waiting for a blow she was fairly certain she ­wouldn’t feel.

“Get up,” he said suddenly, and the world was bright and wide as he stood. “Get up.”

Get up. Chaol had said that to her once, when pain and fear and grief had shoved her over an edge. But the edge she’d gone over the night Nehemia had died, the night she’d gutted Archer, the day she’d told Chaol the horrible truth . . . Chaol had helped shove her over that edge. She was still on the fall down. There was no getting up, because there was no bottom.

Powerful, rough hands under her shoulders, the world tilting and spinning, then that tattooed, snarling face in hers. Let him take her head between those massive hands and snap her neck.

“Pathetic,” he spat, releasing her. “Spineless and pathetic.”

For Nehemia, she had to try, had to try—

But when she reached in, toward the place in her chest where that monster dwelled, she found only cobwebs and ashes.

•

Celaena’s head was still reeling, and dried blood now itched down the side of her face. She didn’t bother to wipe it off, or to really care about the black eye that she was positive had blossomed during the miles they’d hiked from the temple ruins and into the forested foothills. But not back to Mistward.

She was swaying on her feet when Rowan drew a sword and a dagger and stopped at the edge of a grassy plateau, speckled with small hills. Not hills—­barrows, the ancient tombs of lords and princes long dead, rolling to the other edge of trees. There ­were dozens, each marked with a stone threshold and sealed iron door. And through the murky vision, the pounding headache, the hair on the back of her neck ­rose.

The grassy mounds seemed to . . . breathe. To sleep. Iron doors—­to keep the wights inside, locked with the trea­sure they’d stolen. They infiltrated the barrows and lurked there for eons, feeding on what­ever unwitting fools dared seek the gold within.

Rowan inclined his head toward the barrows. “I had planned to wait until you had some handle on your power—­planned to make you come at night, when the barrow-­wights are really something to behold, but consider this a favor, as there are few that will dare come out in the day. Walk through the mounds—­face the wights and make it to the other side of the field, Aelin, and we can go to Doranelle whenever you wish.”

It was a trap. She knew that well enough. He had the gift of endless time, and could play games that lasted centuries. Her impatience, her mortality, the fact that every heartbeat brought her closer to death, was being used against her. To face the wights . . .

Rowan’s weapons gleamed, close enough to grab. He shrugged those powerful shoulders as he said, “You can either wait to earn back your steel, or you can enter as you are now.”

The flash of temper snapped her out of it long enough to say, “My bare hands are weapon enough.” He just gave a taunting grin and sauntered into the maze of hills.

She trailed him closely, following him around each mound, knowing that if she fell too far behind, he’d leave her out of spite.

Steady breathing and the yawns of awakening things arose beyond those iron doors. They ­were unadorned, bolted into the stone lintels with spikes and nails that ­were so old they probably predated Wendlyn itself.

Her footsteps crunched in the grass. Even the birds and insects did not utter a too-­loud sound ­here. The hills parted to reveal an inner circle of dead grass around the most crumbling barrow of all. Where the others ­were rounded, this one looked as if some ancient god had stepped on it. Its flattened top had been overrun with the gnarled roots of bushes; the three massive stones of the threshold ­were beaten, stained, and askew. The iron door was gone.

There was only blackness within. Ageless, breathing blackness.

Her heartbeat pounded in her ears as the darkness reached for her.

“I leave you ­here,” Rowan said. He hadn’t set one foot inside the circle, his boots just an inch shy of the dead grass. His smile turned feral. “I’ll meet you on the other side of the field.”

He expected her to bolt like a hare. And she wanted to. Gods, this place, that damned barrow only a hundred yards away, made her want to run and run and not stop until she found a place where the sun shone day and night. But if she did this, then she could go to Doranelle tomorrow. And those wights waiting in the other half of the field . . . they ­couldn’t be worse than what she’d already seen, and fought, and found dwelling in the world and inside of herself.

So she inclined her head to Rowan, and walked onto the dead field.

14

Each step toward the central mound had Celaena’s blood roaring. The darkness between the stained, ancient stones grew, swirling. It was colder, too. Cold and dry.

She ­wouldn’t stop, not with Rowan still watching, not when she had so much to do. She didn’t dare look too long toward the open doorway and the thing lurking beyond. A lingering shred of pride—­stupid, mortal pride—­kept her from bolting through the rest of the field. Running, she remembered, only attracted some predators. So she kept her steps slow and called on every bit of training she’d had, even as the wight slunk closer to the threshold, no more than a ripple of ravenous hunger encased in rags.

Yet the wight remained within its mound, even as she came near enough to drag into the barrow, as if it ­were . . . hesitating.

She was just passing the barrow when a pulsing, stale bit of air pushed against her ears. Maybe running was a good idea. If magic was the only weapon against wights, then her hands would be useless. Still, the wight lingered beyond the threshold.

The strange, dead air pushed against her ears again, a high-­pitched ringing wending itself into her head. She hurried, grass crunching as she gathered every detail she could to wield against what­ever assailant lurked nearby. Treetops swayed in the misty breeze on the other end of the field. It ­wasn’t far.

Celaena passed the central mound, cracking her jaw against the ringing in her ears, worse and worse with each step. Even the wight cringed away. It hadn’t been hesitating because of her, or Rowan.

The circle of dead grass ended a few steps away—­just a few. Just a few, and then she could run from what­ever it was that could make a wight tremble in fear.

And then she saw him. The man standing behind the barrow.

Not a wight. She glimpsed only a flash of pale skin, night-­dark hair, unfathomable beauty, and an onyx torque around his strong column of a neck, and—

Blackness. A wave of it, slamming down on her.

Not oblivion but actual dark, as if he’d thrown a blanket over the two of them.

The ground felt grassy, but she ­couldn’t see it. ­Couldn’t see anything. Not beyond, not to the side, not behind. There was only her and the swirling black.

Celaena crouched, biting down on a curse as she scanned the dark. What­ever he was, despite his shape, he ­wasn’t mortal. In his perfection, in those depthless eyes, there was nothing human.

Blood tickled her upper lip—­a nosebleed. The pounding in her ears began to drown out her thoughts, any plan, as if her body ­were repulsed by the very essence of what­ever this thing was. The darkness remained, impenetrable, unending.

Stop. Breathe.

But someone was breathing behind her. Was it the man, or something ­else?

The breathing was louder, closer, and a chill air brushed her nose, her lips, licking along her skin. Running—­running was smarter than just waiting. She took several bounding steps that should have taken her toward the edge of the field, but—

Nothing. Only endless black and the breathing thing that was closer now, reeking of dust and carrion and another scent, something she hadn’t smelled for a lifetime but could never forget, not when it had been coating that room like paint.

Oh, gods. Breath on her neck, snaking up the shell of her ear.

She whirled, drawing in what might very well be her last breath, and the world flashed bright. Not with clouds and dead grass. Not with a Fae Prince waiting nearby. The room . . .

This room . . .

The servant woman was screaming. Screaming like a teakettle. There ­were still puddles just inside the shut windows—­windows Celaena herself had sealed the night before when they’d been flapping in the swift and sudden storm.

She had thought the bed was wet because of the rain. She’d climbed in because the storm had made her hear such horrible things, made her feel like there was something wrong, like there was someone standing in the corner of her room. It was not rain soaking the bed in that elegantly rugged chamber at the country manor.

It was not rain that had dried on her, on her hands and skin and nightgown. And that smell—­not just blood, but something ­else . . . “This is not real,” Celaena said aloud, backing away from the bed on which she was standing like a ghost. “This is not real.”

But there ­were her parents, sprawled on the bed, their throats sliced ear to ear.

There was her father, broad-­shouldered and handsome, his skin already gray.

There was her mother, her golden hair matted with blood, her face . . . her face . . .

Slaughtered like animals. The wounds ­were so vulgar, so gaping and deep, and her parents looked so—­so—

Celaena vomited. She fell to her knees, her bladder loosening just before she vomited a second time.

“This is not real, this is not real,” she gasped as a wet warmth soaked her pants. She ­couldn’t breathe, ­couldn’t breathe, ­couldn’t—

And then she was pushing to her feet, bolting away from that room, toward the wood-­paneled walls, through them like a wraith herself, until—

Another bedroom, another body.

Nehemia. Carved up, mutilated, violated and broken.

The thing lurking behind her slid a hand over her waist, along her abdomen, pulling her back against its chest with a lover’s gentleness. Panic surged, so strong that she slammed her elbow back and up—­hitting what felt like flesh and bone. It hissed, releasing her. That was all she needed. She ran, treading through the illusion of her friend’s blood and organs, and then—

Watery sunlight and dead grass and a heavily armed silver-­haired warrior whom she sprinted toward, not caring about the vomit on her clothes, her soiled pants, the gasping, shrieking noise coming out of her throat. She ran until she reached him and fell to the green grass, gripping it, shredding it, retching even though she had nothing left in her but a trickle of bile. She was screaming or sobbing or not making any sound at all.

Then she felt the shift and the surge, a well opening beneath her stomach and filling with burning, relentless fire.

No. No.

Agony cleaved her in a pulse, her vision jumping between crystal clarity and the muted eyesight of mortals, her teeth aching as the fangs punched out and retracted, ebb and flow, immortal and mortal, mortal and immortal, shifting as fast as a hummingbird’s flapping wings—

With each shift, the well deepened, that wildfire rising and falling and reaching up, up . . .

She really did scream then, because her throat burned, or maybe that was the magic coming out, at last unleashed.

Magic—

•

Celaena awoke under the canopy of the forest. It was still daylight, and from the dirt on her shirt and pants and boots, it seemed like Rowan had dragged her ­here from the barrows.

That was vomit on her shirt and pants. And then there was . . . She’d wet herself. Her face heated, but she shoved away the thoughts about why she had pissed herself, why she had hurled her guts up. And that last thought, about magic—

“No discipline, no control, and no courage,” came a growling voice.

Head throbbing, she found Rowan sitting on a rock, his muscular arms braced on his knees. A dagger hung from his left hand, as if he’d been idly tossing the damn thing in the air while she lay in her own filth. “You failed,” he said flatly. “You made it to the other side of the field, but I said to face the wights—­not throw a magical tantrum.”

“I will kill you,” she said, the words raw and gasping. “How dare—”

“That was not a wight, Princess.” He flicked his attention toward the trees beyond her. She might have roared about using specifics to escape his bargain to bring her to Doranelle, but when his eyes met hers again, he seemed to say, That thing should not have been there.

Then what in hell was it, you stupid bastard? she silently shot back.

He clenched his jaw before he said aloud, “I don’t know. ­We’ve had skinwalkers on the prowl for weeks, roaming down from the hills to search for human pelts, but this . . . this was something different. I have never encountered its like, not in these lands or any other. Thanks to having to drag you away, I don’t think I’ll learn anytime soon.” He gave a pointed look at her current state. “It was gone when I circled back. Tell me what happened. I saw only darkness, and when you emerged, you ­were . . . different.” She dared a look at herself again. Her skin was bone-­white, as if the little color she’d received lying on those rooftops in Varese had been leeched away, and not only by fright and sickness.

“No,” she said. “And you can go to hell.”

“Other lives might depend on it.”

“I want to go back to the fortress,” she breathed. She didn’t want to know about the creatures or about the skinwalkers or about any of it. Each word was an effort. “Right now.”

“You’re done when I say you’re done.”

“You can kill me or torture me or throw me off a cliff, but I am done for today. In that darkness, I saw things that no one should be able to see. It dragged me through my memories—­and not the decent ones. Is that enough for you?”

He spat out a noise, but got to his feet and began walking. She staggered and stumbled, knees trembling, and kept moving after him, all the way into the halls of Mistward, where she angled her body so that none of the passing sentries or workers could see her soiled pants, the vomit. There was no hiding her face, though. She kept her attention on the prince, until he opened a wooden door and a wall of steam hit her. “These are the female baths. Your room is a level up. Be in the kitchens at dawn tomorrow.” And then he left her again.

Celaena trudged into the steamy chamber, not caring who was in there as she shucked off her clothes, collapsed into one of the sunken stone tubs, and did not stir for a long, long while.

15

Chaol ­wasn’t at all surprised that his father was twenty minutes late to their meeting. Nor was he surprised when his father strode into Chaol’s office, slid into the chair opposite his desk, and offered no explanation for his tardiness. With calculated cool and distaste, he surveyed the office: no windows, a worn rug, an open trunk of discarded weapons that Chaol had never found the time to polish or send for repairs.

At least it was or­ga­nized. The few papers on his desk ­were stacked; his glass pens ­were in their proper holders; his suit of armor, which he rarely had occasion to wear, gleamed from its dummy in the corner. His father said at last, “This is what our illustrious king gives the Captain of his Guard?”

Chaol shrugged, and his father studied the heavy oak desk. A desk he’d inherited from his pre­de­ces­sor, and one on which he and Celaena had—

He shut down the memory before it could boil his blood, and instead smiled at his father. “There was a larger office available in the glass addition, but I wanted to be accessible to my men.” It was the truth. He also hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near the administrative wing of the castle, sharing a hallway with courtiers and councilmen.

“A wise decision.” His father leaned back in the ancient wooden chair. “A leader’s instincts.”

Chaol pinned him with a long stare. “I’m to return to Anielle with you—­I’m surprised you waste your breath on flattery.”

“Is that so? From what I’ve seen, you have been making no move to prepare for this so-­called return. You’re not even looking for a re­­placement.”

“Despite your low opinion of my position, it’s one I take seriously. I won’t have just anyone looking after this palace.”

“You ­haven’t even told His Majesty that you’re leaving.” That pleasant, dead smile remained on his father’s face. “When I begged for my leave next week, the king made no mention of you accompanying me. Rather than land you in hot water, boy, I held my tongue.”

Chaol kept his face bland, neutral. “Again, I’m not leaving until I find a proper replacement. It’s why I asked you to meet me. I need time.” It was true—­partially, at least.

Just as he had for the past few nights, Chaol had dropped by Aedion’s party—­another tavern, even more expensive, even more packed. Aedion ­wasn’t there again. Somehow everyone thought the general was there, and even the courtesan who’d left with him the first night said the general had given her a gold coin—­without utilizing her services—­and gone off to find more sparkling wine.

Chaol had stood on the street corner where the courtesan said she’d left him, but found nothing. And ­wasn’t it fascinating that no one really seemed to know exactly when the Bane would arrive, or where they ­were currently camped—­only that they ­were on their way. Chaol was too busy during the day to track Aedion down, and during the king’s various meetings and luncheons, confronting the general was impossible. But to­night he planned to arrive at the party early enough that he’d see if Aedion even showed and where he slipped off to. The sooner he could get something on Aedion, the sooner he could settle all this nonsense and keep the king from looking too long in his direction before he turned in his resignation.

He’d only called this meeting because of a thought that had awoken him in the middle of the night—­a slightly insane, highly dangerous plan that would likely get him killed before it even accomplished anything. He’d skimmed through all those books Celaena had found on magic, and found nothing at all about how he might help Dorian—­and Celaena—­by freeing it. But Celaena had once told him that the rebel group Archer and Nehemia had run claimed two things: one, that they knew where Aelin Galathynius was; and two, that they ­were close to finding a way to break the King of Adarlan’s mysterious power over the continent. The first one was a lie, of course, but if there was the slightest chance that these rebels knew how to free magic . . . he had to take it. He was already going out to trail Aedion, and he’d seen all of Celaena’s notes about the rebel hideouts, so he had an idea of where they could be found. This would have to be dealt with carefully, and he still needed as much time as he could buy.

His father’s dead smile faded, and true steel, honed by de­cades of ruling Anielle, shone through. “Rumor has it you consider yourself a man of honor. Though I wonder what manner of man you truly are, if you do not honor your bargains. I wonder . . .” His father made a good show of chewing on his bottom lip. “I wonder what your motive was, then, in sending your woman to Wendlyn.” Chaol fought the urge to stiffen. “For the noble Captain Westfall, there would be no question that he truly wanted His Majesty’s Champion to dispatch our foreign enemies. Yet for the oath-­breaker, the liar . . .”

“I am not breaking my vow to you,” Chaol said, meaning every word. “I intend to go to Anielle—­I will swear that in any temple, before any god. But only when I’ve found a replacement.”

“You swore a month,” his father growled.

“You’re to have me for the rest of my damned life. What is a month or two more to you?”

His father’s nostrils flared. What purpose, then, did his father have in wanting him to return so quickly? Chaol was about to ask, itching to make his father squirm a bit, when an envelope landed on his desk.

It had been years—­years and years, but he still remembered his mother’s handwriting, still recalled the elegant way in which she drew his name. “What is this?”

“Your mother sent a letter to you. I suppose she’s expressing her joy at your anticipated return.” Chaol didn’t touch the envelope. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“I have nothing to say to her, and no interest in what she has to say to me,” Chaol lied. Another trap, another way to unnerve him. But he had so much to do ­here, so many things to learn and uncover. He’d honor his vow soon enough.

His father snatched back the letter, tucking it into his tunic. “She will be most saddened to hear that.” And he knew his father, well aware of Chaol’s lie, would tell his mother exactly what he’d said. For a heartbeat, his blood roared in his ears, the way it always had when he’d witnessed his father belittling his mother, reprimanding her, ignoring her.

He took a steadying breath. “Four months, then I’ll go. Set the date and it’ll be done.”

“Two months.”

“Three.”

A slow smile. “I could go to the king right now and ask for your dismissal instead of waiting three months.”

Chaol clenched his jaw. “Name your price, then.”

“Oh, there’s no price. But I think I like the idea of you owing me a favor.” That dead smile returned. “I like that idea very much. Two months, boy.”

They did not bother with good-­byes.

•

Sorscha was called up to the Crown Prince’s chambers just as she was settling in to brew a calming tonic for an overworked kitchen girl. And though she tried not to seem too eager and pathetic, she found a way to very, very quickly dump the task on one of the lower-­level apprentices and make the trek to the prince’s tower.

She’d never been ­here, but she knew where it was—­all the healers did, just in case. The guards let her pass with hardly a nod, and by the time she’d ascended the spiral staircase, the door to his chambers was already open.

A mess. His rooms ­were a mess of books and papers and discarded weapons. And there, sitting at a table with hardly a foot of space cleared for him, was Dorian, looking rather embarrassed—­either at the mess, or at his split lip.

She managed to bow, even as that traitorous heat flooded her again, up her neck and across her face. “Your Highness summoned me?”

A cleared throat. “I—­well, I think you can see what needs repairing.”

Another injury to his hand. This one looked like it was from sparring, but the lip . . . getting that close to him would be an effort of will. Hand first, then. Let that distract her, anchor her.

She set down her basket of supplies and lost herself in the work of readying ointments and ban­dages. His scented soap caressed her nose, strong enough to suggest he’d just bathed. Which was a horrible thing to think about as she stood beside his chair, because she was a professional healer, and imagining her patients naked was not a—

“Aren’t you going to ask what happened?” the prince said, peering up at her.

“It’s not my place to ask—­and unless it’s relevant to the injury, it’s nothing I need to know.” It came out colder, harder than she meant. But it was true.

Efficiently, she patched up his hand. The silence didn’t bother her; she’d sometimes spent days in the catacombs without speaking to anyone. She’d been a quiet child before her parents had died, and after the massacre in the city square, she’d become even more so. It ­wasn’t until she’d come to the castle that she found friends—­found that she sometimes liked talking. Yet now, with him . . . well, it seemed that the prince didn’t like silence, because he looked up at her again and said, “Where are you from?”

Such a tricky question to answer, since the how and why of her journey to this castle ­were stained by the actions of his father. “Fenharrow,” she said, praying that would be the end of it.

“Where in Fenharrow?”

She almost cringed, but she had more self-­control than that after five years of tending gruesome injuries and knowing that one flicker of disgust or fear on her face could shatter a patient’s control. “A small village in the south. Most people have never heard of it.”

“Fenharrow is beautiful,” he said. “All that open land, stretching on forever.”

She did not remember enough of it to recall whether she had loved the flat expanse of farmland, bordered on the west by mountains and on the east by the sea.

“Did you always want to be a healer?”

“Yes,” she said, because she was entrusted to heal the heir to the empire and could show nothing but absolute certainty.

A slash of a grin. “Liar.”

She didn’t mean to, but she met his gaze—­those sapphire eyes so bright in the late afternoon sun streaming through the small window. “I did not mean any offense, Your—”

“I’m prying.” He tested the ban­dages. “I was trying to distract myself.”

She nodded, because she had nothing to say and could never come up with anything clever anyway. She drew out her tin of disinfecting salve. “For your lip, if you don’t mind, Your Highness, I want to make sure there’s no dirt or anything in the wound so it—”

“Sorscha.” She tried not to let it show, what it did to her to have him remember her name. Or to hear him say it. “Do what you need to do.”

She bit her lip, a stupid ner­vous habit, and nodded as she tilted his chin up so she could better see his mouth. His skin was so warm. She touched the wound and he hissed, his breath caressing her fingers, but didn’t pull back or reprimand or strike her as some of the other cour­tiers did.

She applied the salve to his lip as quickly as she could. Gods, his lips ­were soft.

She hadn’t known he was the prince the day she first saw him, striding through the gardens, the captain in tow. They ­were barely into their teenage years, and she was an apprentice in hand-­me-­down clothes, but for a moment, he’d looked at her and smiled. He’d seen her when no one ­else had for years, so she found excuses to be in the upper levels of the castle. But she’d wept the next month when she spied him again, and two apprentices had whispered about how handsome the prince was—­Dorian, heir to the throne.

It had been secret and stupid, this infatuation with him. Because when she finally encountered him again, years later while helping Amithy with a patient, he did not look at her. She had become invisible, like many of the healers—­invisible, just as she had wanted. “Sorscha?”

Her horror achieved new depths as she realized she’d been staring at his mouth, fingers still in her tin of salve. “I’m sorry,” she said, wondering whether she should throw herself from the tower and end her humiliation. “It’s been a long day.” That ­wasn’t a lie.

She was acting like a fool. She’d been with a man before—­one of the guards, just once and long enough to know she ­wasn’t particularly interested in letting another one touch her anytime soon. But standing so close, his legs brushing the skirt of her brown homespun dress . . .

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” he asked quietly. “About me and my friends.”

She backed away a step but held his stare, even though training and instinct told her to avert her eyes. “You ­were never cruel to the healers—­to anyone. I like to think that the world needs . . .” Saying that was too much. Because the world was his father’s world.

“Needs better people,” he finished for her, standing. “And you think my father would have used your knowledge of our . . . comings and goings against us.”

So he knew that Amithy reported anything unusual. Amithy had told Sorscha to do the same, if she knew what was good for her. “I don’t mean to imply that His Majesty would—”

“Does your village still exist? Are your parents still alive?”

Even years later, she ­couldn’t keep the pain from her voice as she said, “No. It was burned. And no: they brought me to Rifthold and ­were killed in the city’s immigrant purge.”

A shadow of grief and horror in his eyes. “So why would you ever come ­here—­work ­here?”

She gathered her supplies. “Because I had nowhere ­else to go.” Agony flickered on his face. “Your Highness, have I—”

But he was staring as if he understood—­and saw her. “I’m sorry.”

“It ­wasn’t your decision. Or your soldiers who rounded up my ­parents.”

He only looked at her for a long moment before thanking her. A polite dismissal. And she wished, as she left that cluttered tower, that she’d never opened her mouth—­because perhaps he’d never call on her again for the sheer awkwardness of it. She ­wouldn’t lose her position, because he ­wasn’t that cruel, but if he refused her ser­vices, then it might lead to questions. So Sorscha resolved, as she lay that night in her little cot, to find a way to apologize—­or maybe find excuses to keep the prince from seeing her again. Tomorrow, she’d figure it out tomorrow.

The following day she didn’t expect the messenger who arrived after breakfast, asking for the name of her village. And when she hesitated, he said that the Crown Prince wanted to know.

Wanted to know, so he could have it added to his personal map of the continent.

16

Of all the spaces in the Omega, the mess hall was by far the most dangerous.

The three Ironteeth Clans had been divided into rotating shifts that kept them mostly separated—­training with the wyverns, training in the weapons room, and training in mortal warfare. It was smart to separate them, Manon supposed, since tensions ­were high, and would continue to run high until the wyverns ­were selected. Everyone wanted a bull. Though Manon fully expected to get one, perhaps even Titus, it didn’t keep her from wanting to punch out the teeth of anyone who even whispered about coveting a bull of her own.

There ­were only a few overlapping minutes between their three-­hour rotations, and the coven leaders did their best to keep them from running into each other. At least Manon did. Her temper was on a tight leash these days, and one more sneer from the Yellowlegs heir was likely to end in bloodshed. The same could be said of her Thirteen, two of whom—­the green-­eyed twins Faline and Fallon, more demon than witch—­had gotten into a brawl with some Yellowlegs idiots, unsurprisingly. She’d punished them just as she’d punished Asterin: three blows each, public and humiliating. But, like clockwork, fights still broke out between other covens whenever they ­were in close quarters.

Which was what made the mess hall so deadly. The two daily meals ­were the only time they all shared together—­and while they kept to their own tables, the tension was so thick Manon could slice it with her blade.

Manon stood in line for her bowl of slop—­that was the best name she could give the doughy goop the mess hall served—­flanked by Asterin, with the last of the Blueblood witches in the line ahead of her. Somehow, the Bluebloods ­were always first—­first in line for food, first to ­ride the wyverns (the Thirteen had yet to get airborne), and likely to get first pick of the beasts. A growl rumbled deep in her throat, but Manon pushed her tray along the table, watching the pale-­faced server heap a grayish-­white ball of food into the bowl of the Blueblood in front of her.

She didn’t bother to note the details of his features as the thick vein in his throat pulsed. Witches didn’t need blood to survive, but humans didn’t need wine, either. The Bluebloods ­were picky about whose blood they drank—­virgins, young men, pretty girls—­but the Blackbeaks didn’t particularly care one way or another.

The man’s ladle began shaking, tip-­tapping along the side of the cauldron.

“Rules are rules,” drawled a voice to her left. Asterin let out a warning snarl, and Manon didn’t have to look to know that the Yellowlegs heir, Iskra, lurked there. “No eating the rabble,” the dark-­haired witch added, shoving her bowl in front of the man, cutting the line. Manon took in the iron nails and teeth, the calloused hand so blatantly making a show of dominance.

“Ah. I was wondering why no one’s bothered to eat you,” Manon said.

Iskra shouldered her way farther in front of Manon. Manon could feel the eyes in the room shifting toward them, but she reined in her temper, allowing the disrespect. Mess hall posturing meant nothing. “I hear your Thirteen are taking to the air today,” said the Yellowlegs heir as Manon received her own ration.

“What business is it of yours?”

Iskra shrugged her toned shoulders. “They say you ­were once the best flier in all three Clans. It would be a shame if it were just more gossip.”

It was true—­she’d earned her spot as coven leader as much as she’d inherited it.

Iskra went on, sliding her plate along to the next server, who spooned some pale root vegetable onto her slop. “There’s talk of skipping our training rotation so we can see the legendary Thirteen take to the skies for the first time in a de­cade.”

Manon clicked her tongue in pretend thought. “I also heard there’s talk that the Yellowlegs need all the help they can get in the sparring room. But I suppose any army needs its supply drivers.”

A low laugh from Asterin, and Iskra’s brown eyes flashed. They reached the end of the serving table, where Iskra faced Manon. With their trays in hand, neither could reach for the blades at their sides. The room had gone silent, even the high table at which the three Matrons sat.

Manon’s gums stung as her iron teeth shot from their slits and snapped down. She said quietly, but loud enough for everyone to hear, “Any time you need a lesson in combat, Iskra, you just let me know. I’d be happy to teach you a few things about soldiering.”

Before the heir could reply, Manon stalked across the room. Asterin gave Iskra a mocking bow of the head, followed by identical gestures from the rest of her Thirteen, but Iskra remained staring at Manon, simmering.

Manon plunked down at her table to find her grandmother smiling faintly. And when all of Manon’s twelve sentinels ­were seated around her, Thirteen from now until the Darkness embraced them, Manon allowed herself a smile, too.

They ­were going to fly today.

•

As if the open cliff face weren’t enough to make the two gathered Blackbeak covens shift on their feet, the twenty-­six tethered wyverns in a tight space, none of them that docile, made even Manon twitchy.

But she showed no fear as she approached the wyvern at the center. Two lines of thirteen stood chained and ready. The Thirteen took the first. The other coven took the one behind. Manon’s new riding gear was heavy and awkward—­leather and fur, capped with steel shoulder-­guards and leather wrist-­braces. More than she was used to wearing, especially with her red cloak.

They’d already practiced saddling the mounts for two days, though they’d usually have handlers around to do it for them. Manon’s mount for the day—­a small female—­was lying on her belly, low enough that Manon easily climbed her hind leg and hauled herself into the saddle at the spot where the long neck met the massive shoulders. A man approached to adjust the stirrups, but Manon leaned to do it herself. Breakfast had been bad enough. Coming close to a human throat now would only tempt her further.

The wyvern shifted, its body warm against her cold legs, and Manon tightened her gloved grip on the reins. Down the line, her sentinels mounted their beasts. Asterin was ready, of course, her cousin’s gold hair tightly braided back, her fur collar ruffling in the biting wind from the open drop ahead of them. She flashed Manon a grin, her dark, gold-­flecked eyes bright. Not a trace of fear—­just the thrill.

The beasts knew what to do, the handlers had said. They knew how to make the Crossing on instinct alone. That’s what they called the sheer plunge between the two mountain peaks, the final test for a rider and mount. If the wyverns ­couldn’t make it, they’d splatter on the rocks far below. With their riders.

There was movement on the viewing platforms on either side, and the Yellowlegs heir’s coven swaggered in, all of them smiling, none more broadly than Iskra.

“Bitch,” Asterin murmured. As if it ­weren’t bad enough that Mother Blackbeak stood on the opposite viewing platform, flanked by the other two High Witches. Manon lifted her chin and looked to the drop ahead.

“Just like we practiced,” the overseer said, climbing from the open-­faced pit to the viewing platform where the three Matrons stood. “Hard kick in the side sends ’em off. Let ’em navigate the Crossing. Best advice is to hold on like hell and enjoy the ­ride.” A few ner­vous laughs from the coven behind her, but the Thirteen remained silent. Waiting. Just as they would faced with any army, before any battle.

Manon blinked, the muscles behind her golden eyes pulling down the clear film that would shield her vision from the wind. Manon allowed herself a moment to adjust to the thickness of the extra lid. Without it, they’d fly like mortals, squinting and streaming tears all over the place.

“Ready at your command, lady,” the man called to her.

Manon studied the open gap ahead, the bridge barely visible above, the gray skies and mist. She looked down the line, into each of the six faces on either side. Then she turned ahead, to the drop and the world waiting beyond.

“We are the Thirteen, from now until the Darkness claims us.” She said it quietly, but knew all could hear her. “Let’s remind them why.”

Manon kicked her mount into action. Three galloping, thunderous steps beneath her, surging forward, forward, forward, a leap into freezing air, the clouds and the bridge and the snow all around, and then the drop.

Her stomach shot right into her throat as the wyvern arced and angled down, wings tucked in tight. As she’d been instructed, Manon ­rose into a crouch over the neck, keeping her face close to the leathery skin, the wind screaming in her face.

The air rippled behind her, her Thirteen mere feet away, falling as one, past rock and snow, shooting for the earth.

Manon gritted her teeth. The blur of stone, the kiss of mist, her hair ripping out of her braid, waving like a white banner above her.

The mist parted, and Darkness embrace her, there was the Gap floor, so close, and—

Manon held on to the saddle, to the reins, to conscious thought as massive wings spread and the world tilted, and the body beneath her flipped up, up, riding the wind’s current in a sheer climb along the side of the Northern Fang.

There ­were triumphant howls from below, from above, and the wyvern kept climbing, swifter than Manon had ever flown on her broom, past the bridge and up into the open sky.

That fast, Manon was back in the skies.

The cloudless, endless, eternal sky held them as Asterin and then Sorrel and Vesta flanked her, then the rest of the Thirteen, and Manon schooled her face into cool victory.

To her right, Asterin was beaming, her iron teeth shining like silver. To her left, red-­haired Vesta was just shaking her head, gaping at the mountains below. Sorrel was as stone-­faced as Manon, but her black eyes danced. The Thirteen ­were airborne again.

The world spread beneath them, and ahead, far to the West, was the home they would someday reclaim. But now, now . . .

The wind caressed and sang to her, telling her of its currents, more an instinct than a magical gift. An instinct that had made her the best flier in all three Clans.

“What now?” Asterin called. And though she’d never seen any of her Thirteen cry, Manon could have sworn there ­were tears shining in the corners of her cousin’s eyes.

“I say we test them out,” Manon said, keeping that wild exuberance locked up tight in her chest, and reined her mount toward where the first canyon run awaited them. The whoops and cackles of her Thirteen as they rode the current ­were finer than any mortal music.

•

Manon stood at attention in her grandmother’s small room, staring at the far stone wall until she was spoken to. Mother Blackbeak sat at the wooden desk, her back to Manon as she pored over some document or letter. “You did well today, Manon,” her grandmother said at last.

Manon touched two fingers to her brow, though her grandmother still studied the papers.

Manon hadn’t needed to be told by the overseer that it was the best Crossing he had witnessed to date. She’d taken one look at the empty platform where the Yellowlegs coven had been and known they’d left as soon as Manon didn’t splatter on the ground.

“Your Thirteen and all the Blackbeak covens did well,” her grandmother went on. “Your work in keeping them disciplined these years is commendable.”

Manon’s chest swelled, but she said, “It’s my honor to serve you, Grandmother.”

Her grandmother scribbled something down. “I want you and the Thirteen to be Wing Leader—­I want you leading all the Clans.” The witch twisted to look at Manon, her face unreadable. “There are to be war games in a few months to decide the ranks. I don’t care how you do it, but I expect to crown you victor.”

Manon didn’t need to ask why.

Her grandmother’s eyes fell on Manon’s red cloak and she smiled faintly. “We don’t yet know who our enemies will be, but once we are done with the king’s war and reclaim the Wastes, it will not be a Blueblood or Yellowlegs sitting on the Ironteeth throne. Understand?”

Become Wing Leader, command the Ironteeth armies, and keep control of those armies once the Matrons eventually turned on one another. Manon nodded. It would be done.

“I suspect the other Matrons will give similar orders to their heirs. Make sure your Second keeps close to you.”

Asterin was already outside, guarding the door, but Manon said, “I can look after myself.”

Her grandmother hissed. “Baba Yellowlegs was seven hundred years old. She tore down the walls of the Crochan capital with her bare hands. And yet someone slipped into her wagon and murdered her. Even if you live to be a thousand, you’ll be lucky to be half the witch she was.” Manon kept her chin high. “Watch your back. I will not be pleased if I have to find myself another heir.”

Manon bowed her head. “As you will it, Grandmother.”

17

Celaena awoke, freezing and groaning from a relentless headache. That, she knew, was from hitting her head on the temple stones. She hissed as she sat up, and every inch of her body, from her ears to her toes to her teeth, gave a collective burst of pain. It felt as if she’d been pummeled by a thousand iron fists and left to rot in the cold. That was from the uncontrolled shifting she’d done yesterday. The gods knew how many times she’d shuddered between one form and the other. From the tenderness of her muscles, it had to have been dozens.

But she hadn’t lost control of the magic, she reminded herself as she ­rose, gripping the chipped bedpost. She pulled the pale robe tighter around her as she shuffled for the dresser and basin. After the bath, she’d realized she had nothing to change into and had stolen one of the many robes, leaving her reeking clothes heaped by the door. She’d barely made it to her room before she collapsed on the bed, pulled the scrap of blanket over her, and slept.

And slept. And slept. She didn’t feel like talking with anyone. And no one came for her, anyway.

Celaena braced her hands on the dresser and grimaced at her reflection. She looked like shit, felt like shit. Even more grim and gaunt than yesterday. She picked up the tin of salve Rowan had given her, but then decided he should see what he’d done. And she’d looked worse—­two years ago, when Arobynn had beaten her to a bloody pulp for disobeying his orders. This was nothing compared to how mangled she’d been then.

She opened the door to find that someone had left clothes—­the same as yesterday, but fresh. Her boots had been cleaned of mud and dust. Either Rowan had left them, or someone ­else had noticed her filthy clothing. Gods—­she’d soiled herself in front of him.

She didn’t let herself wallow in the humiliation as she dressed and went to the kitchens, the halls dark in the moments before dawn. Already, Luca was prattling about the fighting knife a sentry had loaned him for his training, and on and on and on.

Apparently she had underestimated how horrific her face was, because Luca stopped his chattering midsentence to swear. Whirling, Emrys took one look at her and dropped his earthenware bowl before the hearth. “Great Mother and all her children.”

Celaena went to the heap of garlic cloves on the worktable and picked up a knife. “It looks worse than it feels.” A lie. Her head was still pounding from the cut on her brow, and her eye was deeply bruised beneath.

“I’ve got some salve in my room—” Luca started from where he was already washing dishes, but she gave him a long look.

She began peeling the cloves, her fingers instantly sticky. They ­were still staring, so she flatly said, “It’s none of your business.”

Emrys left his shattered bowl on the hearthstones and hobbled over, anger dancing in those bright, clever eyes. “It’s my business when you come into my kitchen.”

“I’ve been through worse,” she said.

Luca said, “What do you mean?” He eyed her mangled hands, her black eye, and the ring of scars around her neck, courtesy of Baba Yellowlegs. She silently invited him to do the calculations: a life in Adarlan with Fae blood, a life in Adarlan as a woman . . . His face paled.

After a long moment, Emrys said, “Leave it alone, Luca,” and stooped to pick up the fragments of the bowl.

Celaena went back to the garlic, Luca markedly quieter as he worked. Breakfast was made and sent upstairs in the same chaotic rush as yesterday, but a few more demi-­Fae noticed her today. She either ignored them or stared them down, marking their faces. Many had pointed ears, but most seemed human. Some wore civilian clothing—­tunics and simple gowns—­while the sentries wore light leather armor and heavy gray cloaks with an array of weapons (many the worse for wear). The warriors looked her way the most, men and women both, wariness and curiosity mingling.

She was busy wiping down a copper pot when someone let out a low, appreciative whistle in her direction. “Now that is one of the most glorious black eyes I’ve ever beheld.” A tall old man—­handsome despite being around Emrys’s age—­strode through the kitchen, empty platter in his hands.

“You leave her be, too, Malakai,” Emrys said from the hearth. His husband—­mate. The old man gave a dashing grin and set down the platter on the counter near Celaena.

“Rowan ­doesn’t pull punches, does he?” His gray hair was cropped short enough to reveal his pointed ears, but his face was ruggedly human. “And it looks like you don’t bother using a healing salve.” She held his gaze but gave no reply. Malakai’s grin faded. “My mate works too much as it is. You don’t add to that burden, understand?”

Emrys growled his name, but Celaena shrugged. “I don’t want to bother with any of you.”

Malakai caught the unspoken warning in her words—so don’t try to bother with me—­and gave her a curt nod. She heard, more than saw, him stride to Emrys and kiss him, then the rumble of some murmured, stern words, and then his steady footsteps as he walked out again.

“Even the demi-­Fae warrior males push overprotective to a ­whole new level,” Emrys said, the words laced with forced lightness.

“It’s in our blood,” Luca said, lifting his chin. “It is our duty, honor, and life’s mission to make sure our families are cared for. Especially our mates.”

“And it makes you a thorn in our side,” Emrys clucked. “Possessive, territorial beasts.” The old man strode to the sink, setting down the cool kettle for Celaena to wash. “My mate means well, lass. But you’re a stranger—­and from Adarlan. And you’re training with . . . someone none of us quite understand.”

Celaena dumped the kettle in the sink. “I don’t care,” she said. And meant it.

•

Training was horrible that day. Not just because Rowan asked if she was going to vomit or piss herself again, but also because for hours—hours—he made her sit amongst the temple ruins on the ridge, battered by the misty wind. He wanted her to shift—­that was his only command.

She demanded to know why he ­couldn’t teach her the magic without shifting, and he gave her the same answer again and again: no shift, no magic lessons. But after yesterday, nothing short of him taking his long dagger and cutting her ears into points would get her to change forms. She tried once—­when he stalked into the woods for some privacy. She tugged and yanked and pulled at what­ever lay deep inside her, but got nothing. No flash of light or searing pain.

So they sat on the mountainside, Celaena frozen to the bone. At least she didn’t lose control again, no matter what insults he threw her way, either aloud or through one of their silent, vicious conversations. She asked him why he ­wasn’t pursuing the creature that had been in the barrow-­wights’ field, and he merely said that he was looking into it, and the rest was none of her concern.

Thunderclouds clustered during the late afternoon. Rowan forced her to sit through the storm until her teeth ­were clattering in her skull and her blood was thick with ice, and then they finally made the trek to the fortress. He ditched her by the baths again, eyes glimmering with an unspoken promise that tomorrow would be worse.

When she finally emerged, there ­were dry clothes in her room, folded and placed with such care that she was starting to wonder whether she didn’t have some invisible servant shadowing her. There was no way in hell an immortal like Rowan would have bothered to do that for a human.

She debated staying in her rooms for the rest of the night, especially as rain lashed at her window, lightning illuminating the trees beyond. But her stomach gurgled. She was light-­headed again, and knew she’d been eating like an idiot. With her black eye, the best thing to do was eat—­even if it meant going to the kitchens.

She waited until she thought everyone had gone upstairs. There ­were always leftovers after breakfast—­there had to be some at dinner. Gods, she was bone-­tired. And ached even worse than she had this morning.

She heard the voices long before she entered the kitchen and almost turned back, but—­no one had spoken to her at breakfast save Malakai. Surely everyone would ignore her now, too.

She’d estimated a good number of people in the kitchen, but was still a bit surprised by how packed it was. Chairs and cushions had been dragged in, all facing the hearth, before which Emrys and Malakai sat, chatting with those gathered. There was food on every surface, as if dinner had been held in ­here. Keeping to the shadows atop the stairs, she observed them. The dining hall was spacious, if a bit cold—­why gather around the kitchen hearth?

She didn’t particularly care—­not when she saw the food. She slipped in through the gathered crowd with practiced stealth and ease, filling up a plate with roast chicken, potatoes (gods, she was already sick of potatoes), and hot bread. Everyone was still chatting; those who didn’t have seats ­were standing against the counters or walls, laughing and sipping from their mugs of ale.

The upper half of the kitchen door was open to let out the heat from all the bodies, the sound of rain filling the room like a drum. She caught a glimmer of movement outside, but when she looked, there was nothing there.

Celaena was about to slip back up the stairs when Malakai clapped his hands and everyone stopped talking. Celaena paused again in the shadows of the stairwell. Smiles spread, and people settled in. Seated on the floor in front of Emrys’s chair was Luca, a pretty young woman pressed into his side, his arm casually draped around her shoulders—­casually, but with enough of a grip to tell every other male in the room that she was his. Celaena rolled her eyes, not at all surprised.

Still, she caught the look Luca gave the girl, the mischief in his eyes that sent a pang of jealousy right through her. She’d looked at Chaol with that same expression. But their relationship had never been as unburdened, and even if she hadn’t ended things, it never would have been like that. The ring on her finger became a weight.

Lightning flashed, revealing the grass and forest beyond. Seconds later, thunder shook the stones, triggering a few shrieks and laughs.

Emrys cleared his throat, and every eye snapped to his lined face. The ancient hearth illuminated his silver hair, casting shadows throughout the room. “Long ago,” Emrys began, his voice weaving between the drumming rain and grumbling thunder and crackling fire, “when there was no mortal king on Wendlyn’s throne, the faeries still walked among us. Some ­were good and fair, some ­were prone to little mischiefs, and some ­were fouler and darker than the blackest night.”

Celaena swallowed. These ­were words that had been spoken in front of hearths for thousands of years—­spoken in kitchens like this one. Tradition.

“It was those wicked faeries,” Emrys went on, the words resonating in every crack and crevice, “that you always had to watch for on the ancient roads, or in the woods, or on nights like this, when you can hear the wind moaning your name.”

“Oh, not that one,” Luca groaned, but it ­wasn’t heartfelt. Some of the others laughed—­a bit ner­vous­ly, even. Someone ­else protested, “I won’t sleep for a week.”

Celaena leaned against the stone wall, shoveling food down her throat as the old man wove his tale. The hair on her neck stood on end for the duration of it, and she could see every horrific moment of the story as clearly as if she had lived it.

As Emrys finished his tale, thunder boomed, and even Celaena flinched, almost upsetting her empty plate. There ­were some wary laughs, some taunts and gentle pushes. Celaena frowned. If she’d heard this story—­with the wretched creatures who delighted in skin-­sewing and bone-­crunching and lightning-­crisping—before traveling ­here with Rowan, she never would have followed him. Not in a million years.

Rowan hadn’t lit a single fire on the journey ­here—­hadn’t wanted to attract attention. From these sorts of creatures? He hadn’t known what that thing was the day before in the barrows. And if an immortal didn’t know . . . She used breathing exercises to calm her pounding heart. Still, she’d be lucky if she slept to­night.

Though everyone ­else seemed to be waiting for the next story, Celaena stood. As she turned to leave, she looked again to that half-­open kitchen door, just to make sure there was nothing lurking outside. But it was not some fell creature who waited in the rain. A large white-tailed hawk was perched in the shadows.

It sat absolutely still. But the hawk’s eyes—­there was something strange about them . . . She’d seen that hawk before. It had watched her for days as she’d lazed on that rooftop in Varese, watched her drink and steal and doze and brawl.

At least she now knew what Rowan’s animal form was. What she didn’t know was why he bothered to listen to these stories.

“Elentiya.” Emrys was extending a hand from where he sat before the hearth. “Would you perhaps share a story from your lands? We’d love to hear a tale, if you’d do us the honor.”

Celaena kept her eyes on the old man as everyone turned to where she stood in the shadows. Not one of them offered a word of encouragement, save for Luca, who said, “Tell us!”

But she had no right to tell those stories as if they ­were her own. And she could not remember them correctly, not as they had been told at her bedside.

She clamped down on the thought as hard as she could, shoving it back long enough to calmly say, “No, thank you,” and walk away. No one came after her. She didn’t give a damn what Rowan made of the ­whole thing.

The whispers died with each step, and it ­wasn’t until she’d shut the door to her freezing room and slid into bed that she loosed a sigh. The rain stopped, the clouds cleared on a brisk wind, and through the window, a patch of stars flickered above the tree line.

She had no stories to tell. All the legends of Terrasen ­were lost to her, and only fragments ­were strewn through her memories like rubble.

She pulled her scrap of blanket higher and draped an arm over her eyes, shutting out the ever-­watching stars.

18

Mercifully, Dorian ­wasn’t forced to entertain Aedion again, and saw little of him outside of state dinners and meetings, where the general pretended he didn’t exist. He saw little of Chaol, too, which was a relief, given how awkward their conversations had been of late. But he’d begun to spar with the guards in the mornings. It was about as fun as lying on a bed of hot nails, but at least it gave him something to do with the restless, anxious energy that hounded him day and night.

Not to mention all those cuts and scrapes and sprains gave him an excuse to go to the healers’ catacombs. Sorscha, it seemed, had caught on to his training schedule, and her door was always open when he arrived.

He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what she’d said in his room, or wondering why someone who had lost everything would dedicate her life to helping the family of the man who had taken it all away. And when she’d said Because I had nowhere ­else to go . . . for a second, it hadn’t been Sorscha but Celaena, broken with grief and loss and rage, coming to his room because there was no one ­else to turn to. He’d never known what that was like, that loss, but Sorscha’s kindness to him—­which he’d repaid so foully until now—­hit him like a stone to the head.

Dorian entered her workroom, and Sorscha looked up from the table and smiled, broadly and prettily and . . . well, ­wasn’t that exactly the reason he found excuses to come ­here every day.

He held up his wrist, already stiff and throbbing. “Landed on it badly,” he said by way of greeting. She came around the table, giving him enough time to admire the long lines of her figure in her simple gown. She moved like water, he thought, and often caught himself marveling at the way she used her hands.

“There’s not much I can do for that,” she said after examining his wrist. “But I have a tonic for the pain—­only to subdue it, and I can put your arm in a sling if—”

“Gods, no. No sling. I’ll never hear the end of it from the guards.”

Her eyes twinkled, just a bit—­in that way they did when she was amused and tried hard not to be.

But if there was no sling, then he had no excuse to be ­here, and even though he had an inane council meeting in an hour and still needed to bathe . . . He stood. “What are you working on?”

She took a careful step back from him. She always did that, to keep the wall up. “Well, I have a few tonics and salves to make for some of the servants and guards today—to replenish their stocks.” He knew he shouldn’t, but he moved to peer over her narrow shoulder at the work­table, at the bowls and vials and beakers. She made a small noise in her throat, and he swallowed his smile as he leaned a bit closer. “This is normally a task for apprentices, but they ­were so busy today that I offered to take some of their workload.” She usually talked like this when she was ner­vous. Which, Dorian had noticed with some satisfaction, was when he came near. And not in a bad way—­if he’d sensed that she was truly uncomfortable, he’d have kept his distance. This was more . . . flustered. He liked flustered.

“But,” she went on, trying to sidestep away, “I’ll make your tonic right now, Your Highness.”

He gave her the space she needed as she hurried about the table with graceful efficiency, mea­sur­ing powders and crushing dried leaves, so steady and self-­assured . . . He realized he’d been staring when she spoke again. “Your . . . friend. The King’s Champion. Is she well?”

Her mission to Wendlyn was fairly secret, but he could get around that. “She’s off on my father’s errand for the next few months. I certainly hope she’s well, though I have no doubt she can care for herself.”

“And her hound—­she’s well?”

“Fleetfoot? Oh, she’s fine. Her leg’s healed beautifully.” The hound now slept in his bed, of course, and bullied him for scraps and treats to no end, but . . . it was nice to have some piece of his friend while she was gone. “Thanks to you.”

A nod, and silence fell as she mea­sured and then poured some green-­looking liquid. He sincerely hoped he ­wasn’t going to drink that.

“They said . . .” Sorscha kept her spectacular eyes down. “They said there was some wild animal roaming the halls a few months ago—­that’s what killed all those people before Yulemas. I never heard whether they caught it, but then . . . your friend’s dog looked like she’d been attacked.”

Dorian willed himself to keep still. She’d truly put some things together, then. And hadn’t told anyone. “Ask it, Sorscha.”

Her throat bobbed, and her hands shook a little—­enough that he wanted to reach out and cover them. But he ­couldn’t move, not until she spoke. “What was it?” she breathed.

“Do you want the answer that will keep you asleep at night, or the one that might ensure you never sleep again?” She lifted her gaze to him, and he knew she wanted the truth. So he loosed a breath and said, “It was two different . . . creatures. My father’s Champion dealt with the first. She didn’t even tell the captain and me until we faced the second.” He could still hear that creature’s roar in the tunnel, still see it squaring off against Chaol. Still had nightmares about it. “The rest is a bit of a mystery.” It ­wasn’t a lie. There was still so much he didn’t know. And didn’t want to learn.

“Would His Majesty punish you for it?” A quiet, dangerous question.

“Yes.” His blood chilled at the thought. Because if he knew, if his father learned Celaena had somehow opened a portal . . . Dorian ­couldn’t stop the ice spreading through him.

Sorscha rubbed her arms and glanced at the fire. It was still burning high, but . . . Shit. He had to go. Now. Sorscha said, “He’d kill her, ­wouldn’t he? That’s why you said nothing.”

Dorian slowly started backing out, fighting against the panicked, wild thing inside of him. He ­couldn’t stop the rising ice, didn’t even know where it was coming from, but he kept seeing that creature in the tunnels, kept hearing Fleetfoot’s pained bark, seeing Chaol choose to sacrifice himself so they could get away—

Sorscha stroked the length of her dark braid. “And—­and he’d probably kill the captain, too.”

His magic erupted.

•

After Sorscha had been forced to wait in the cramped office for twenty minutes, Amithy finally paraded in, her tight bun making her harsh face even more severe. “Sorscha,” she said, sitting down at her desk and frowning. “What am I to do with you? What example does this set for the apprentices?”

Sorscha kept her head down. She knew she’d been kept waiting in order to make her fret over what she’d done: accidentally knocking over her entire worktable and destroying not only countless hours and days of work, but also a good number of expensive tools and containers. “I slipped—­I spilled some oil and forgot to wipe it up.”

Amithy clicked her tongue. “Cleanliness, Sorscha, is one of our most important assets. If you cannot keep your own workroom clean, how can you be trusted to care for our patients? For His Highness, who was there to witness your latest bout of unprofessionalism? I’ve taken the liberty of apologizing in person, and offered to oversee his future care, but . . .” Amithy’s eyes narrowed. “He said he would pay for the repair costs—­and would still like you to serve him.”

Sorscha’s face warmed. It had happened so quickly.

As the blast of ice and wind and something ­else surged toward her, Sorscha’s scream had been cut off by the door slamming shut. That had probably saved their lives, but all she could think of was getting out of the way. So she’d crouched beneath her table, hands over her head, and prayed.

She might have dismissed it as a draft, might have felt foolish, if the prince’s eyes hadn’t seemed to glow in that moment before the wind and cold, had the glasses on the table not all shattered, had ice not coated the floor, had he not just stayed there, untouched.

It ­wasn’t possible. The prince . . . There was a choking, awful sound, and then Dorian was on his knees, peering under the worktable. “Sor­scha. Sorscha.”

She’d gaped at him, unable to find the words.

Amithy drummed her long, bony fingers on the wooden desk. “Forgive me for being indelicate,” she said, but Sorscha knew the woman didn’t care one bit about manners. “But I’ll also remind you that interacting with our patients outside of our duties is prohibited.”

There could be no other reason for Prince Dorian to prefer Sor­scha’s ser­vices over Amithy’s, of course. Sorscha kept her eyes on her clenched hands in her lap, still flecked with cuts from some of the small shards of glass. “You needn’t worry about that, Amithy.”

“Good. I’d hate to see your position compromised. His Highness has a reputation with women.” A little, smug smile. “And there are many beautiful ladies at this court.” And you are not one of them.

Sorscha nodded and took the insult, as she always did and had always done. That was how she survived, how she had remained invisible all these years.

It was what she’d promised the prince in the minutes after his explosion, when her shaking ceased and she’d seen him. Not the magic but the panic in his eyes, the fear and pain. He ­wasn’t an enemy using forbidden powers, but—­a young man in need of help. Her help.

She could not turn away from it, from him, could not tell anyone what she’d witnessed. It was what she would have done for anyone ­else.

In the cool, calm voice that she reserved for her most grievously injured patients, she had said to the prince, “I am not going to tell anyone. But right now, you are going to help me knock this table over, and then you are going to help me clean this up.”

He’d just stared at her. She stood, noting the hair-­thin slices on her hands that had already starting stinging. “I am not going to tell anyone,” she said again, grabbing one corner of the table. Wordlessly, he went to the other end and helped her ease the table onto its side, the remaining glass and ceramic jars tumbling to the ground. For all the world, it looked like an accident, and Sorscha went to the corner to grab the broom.

“When I open this door,” she had said to him, still quiet and calm and not quite herself, “we will pretend. But after today, after this . . .” Dorian stood rigid, as if he ­were waiting for the blow to fall. “After this,” she said, “if you are all right with it, we will try to find ways to keep this from happening. Perhaps there’s some tonic to suppress it.”

His face was still pale. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, and she knew he meant it. She went to the door and gave him a grim smile.

“I will start researching to­night. If I find anything, I’ll let you know. And perhaps—­not now, but later . . . if Your Highness has the inclination, you could tell me a bit about how this is possible. It might help me somehow.” She didn’t give him time to say yes, but instead opened the door, walked back to the mess, and said a little louder than usual, “I am truly sorry, Your Highness . . . there was something on the floor, and I slipped, and—”

From there, it had been easy. The snooping healers had arrived to see what the commotion was about, and one of them had scuttled off to Amithy. The prince had left, and Sorscha had been ordered to wait ­here.

Amithy braced her forearms on the desk. “His Highness was extraordinarily generous, Sorscha. Let it be a lesson for you. You’re lucky you didn’t injure yourself further.”

“I’ll make an offering to Silba today,” Sorscha lied, quiet and small, and left.

•

Chaol pressed himself into the darkened alcove of a building, holding his breath as Aedion approached the cloaked figure in the alley. Of all the places he’d expected Aedion to go when he slipped out of his party at the tavern, the slums ­were not one of them.

Aedion had made a spectacular show of playing the generous, wild host: buying drinks, saluting his guests, ensuring everyone saw him doing something. And just when no one was looking, Aedion had walked right out the front, as if he ­were too lazy to go to the privy in the back. A staggering drunk, arrogant and careless and haughty.

Chaol had almost bought it. Almost. Then Aedion had gotten a block away, thrown his hood over his head, and prowled into the night, stone-­cold sober.

He’d trailed from the shadows as Aedion left the wealthier district and strolled into the slums, taking alleys and crooked streets. He could have passed for a wealthy man seeking another sort of woman. Until he’d stopped outside this building and that cloaked figure with the twin blades approached him.

Chaol ­couldn’t hear the words between Aedion and the stranger, but he could read the tension in their bodies well enough. After a moment, Aedion followed the newcomer, though not before he thoroughly scanned the alley, the rooftops, the shadows.

Chaol kept his distance. If he caught Aedion buying illicit substances, that might be enough to get him to calm down—­to keep the parties at a minimum and control the Bane when it arrived.

Chaol tracked them, mindful of the eyes he passed, every drunk and orphan and beggar. On a forgotten street by the Avery’s docks, Aedion and the cloaked figure slipped into a crumbling building. It ­wasn’t just any building, not with sentries posted on the corner, by the door, on the rooftop, even milling about the street, trying to blend in. They ­weren’t royal guards, or soldiers.

It ­wasn’t a place to purchase opiates or flesh, either. He’d been memorizing the information Celaena had gathered about the rebels, and had stalked them as often as he’d trailed Aedion, mostly to no avail. Celaena had claimed they’d been looking for a way to defeat the king’s power. Larger implications aside, if he could find out not only how the king had stifled magic but also how to liberate it before he was dragged back to Anielle, then Dorian’s secret might be less explosive. It might help him, somehow. And Chaol would always help him, his friend, his prince.

He ­couldn’t stop a shiver down his spine as he touched the Eye of Elena and realized the derelict building, with this pattern of guards, positively reeked of the rebels’ habits. Perhaps it ­wasn’t mere coincidence that had led him ­here.

He was so focused on his thundering heart that Chaol didn’t have a chance to turn as a dagger pricked his side.

19

Chaol didn’t put up a fight, ­though he knew he was as likely to receive death as he was answers. He recognized the sentries by their worn weapons and their fluid, precise movements. He’d never forget those details, not after he’d spent a day being held prisoner in a ware­house by them—­and witnessed Celaena cut through them as though they were stalks of wheat. They’d never known that it had been their lost queen who came to slaughter them.

The sentries forced him to his knees in an empty room that smelled of old hay. Chaol found Aedion and a familiar-­looking old man staring down at him. The one who had begged Celaena to stop that night in the ware­house. There was nothing remarkable about the old man; his worn clothes ­were ordinary, his body lean but not yet withered. Beside him stood a young man Chaol knew by his soft, vicious laugh: the guard who had taunted him when he’d been held prisoner. Shoulder-­length dark hair hung loose around a face that was more cruel than handsome, especially with the wicked scar slashing through his eyebrow and down his cheek. He dismissed the sentries with a jerk of his chin.

“Well, well,” Aedion said, circling Chaol. His sword was out, gleaming in the dim light. “Captain of the Guard, heir of Anielle, and spy? Or has your lover been giving you some tricks of the trade?”

“When you throw parties and convince my men to leave their posts, when you’re not at those parties because you’re sneaking through the streets, it’s my duty to know why, Aedion.”

The scarred young man with the twin swords stepped closer, circling with Aedion now. Two predators, sizing up their prey. They’d probably fight over his carcass.

“Too bad your Champion isn’t ­here to save you this time,” the scarred one said quietly.

“Too bad you ­weren’t there to save Archer Finn,” Chaol said.

A flare of nostrils, a flash of fury in cunning brown eyes, but the young man fell silent as the old man held out a hand. “Did the king send you?”

“I came because of him.” Chaol jerked his chin at Aedion. “But I’ve been looking for you two—­and your little group—­as well. Both of you are in danger. What­ever you think Aedion wants, what­ever he offers you, the king keeps him on a tight leash.” Perhaps that bit of honesty would buy him what he needed: trust and information.

But Aedion barked out a laugh. “What?” His companions turned to him, brows raised. Chaol glanced at the ring on the general’s finger. He hadn’t been mistaken. It was identical to the ones the king, Perrington, and others had worn.

Aedion caught Chaol’s look and stopped his circling.

For a moment, the general stared at him, a glimmer of surprise and amusement darting across his tan face. Then Aedion purred, “You’ve turned out to be a far more interesting man than I thought, Captain.”

“Explain, Aedion,” the old man said softly, but not weakly.

Aedion smiled broadly as he yanked the black ring off his finger. “The day the king presented me with the Sword of Orynth, he also offered me a ring. Thanks to my heritage, my senses are . . . sharper. I thought the ring smelled strange—­and knew only a fool would accept that kind of gift from him. So I had a replica made. The real one I chucked into the sea. But I always wondered what it did,” he mused, tossing the ring with one hand and catching it. “It seems the captain knows. And disapproves.”

The man with the twin swords ceased his circling, and the grin he gave Chaol was nothing short of feral. “You’re right, Aedion,” he said without taking his eyes off Chaol. “He is more interesting than he seems.”

Aedion pocketed the ring as if it ­were—­as if it ­were indeed a fake. And Chaol realized that he’d revealed far more than he’d ever intended.

Aedion began circling again, the scarred young man echoing the graceful movements. “A magical leash—­when there is no magic left,” the general mused. “And yet you still followed me, believing I was under the king’s spell. Thinking you could use me to win the rebels’ favor? Fascinating.”

Chaol kept his mouth shut. He’d already said enough to damn himself.

Aedion went on, “These two said your assassin friend was a rebel sympathizer. That she handed over information to Archer Finn without thinking twice—­that she allowed rebels to sneak out of the city when she was commanded to put them down. Was she the one who told you about the king’s rings, or did you discover that tidbit all on your own? What, exactly, is going on in that glass palace when the king isn’t looking?”

Chaol clamped down on his retort. When it became clear he ­wouldn’t speak, Aedion shook his head.

“You know how this has to end,” Aedion said, and there ­wasn’t anything mocking in it. Just cold calculation. The true face of the Northern Wolf. “The way I see it, you signed your own death warrant when you decided to trail me, and now that you know so much . . . You have two options, Captain: we can torture it out of you and then we’ll kill you, or you can tell us what you know and we’ll make it quick for you. As painless as possible, on my honor.”

They stopped circling.

Chaol had faced death a few times in the past months. Had faced and seen and dealt it. But this death, where Celaena and Dorian and his mother would never know what happened to him . . . It disgusted him, somehow. Enraged him.

Aedion stepped closer to where Chaol knelt.

He could take out the scarred one, then hope he could stand against Aedion—­or at least flee. He would fight, because that was the only way he could embrace this sort of death.

Aedion’s sword was at the ready—­the sword that belonged to Celaena by blood and right. Chaol had assumed he was a two-­faced butcher. Aedion was a traitor. But not to Terrasen. Aedion had been playing a very dangerous game since arriving ­here—­since his kingdom fell ten years ago. And tricking the king into thinking that he’d been wearing his ring all this time—­that was indeed information Aedion would be willing to kill to keep safe. Yet there was other information Chaol could use, perhaps, to get out of this alive.

Regardless of how shattered she’d been when she left, Celaena was safe now. She was away from Adarlan. But Dorian, with his magic, with the threat he secretly posed, was not. Aedion took a readying breath to kill him. Keeping Dorian protected was all he had left, all that had ever really mattered. If these rebels did indeed know something—anything—about magic that might help to free it, if he could use Aedion to get that information . . .

It was a gamble—­the biggest gamble he’d ever made. Aedion raised his sword.

With a silent prayer for forgiveness, Chaol looked straight at Aedion. “Aelin is alive.”

•

Aedion Ashryver had been called Wolf, general, prince, traitor, and murderer. And he was all of those things, and more. Liar, deceiver, and trickster ­were his par­tic­u­lar favorites—­the titles only those closest to him knew.

Adarlan’s Whore, that’s what the ones who didn’t know him called him. It was true—­in so many ways, it was true, and he had never minded it, not really. It had allowed him to maintain control in the North, to keep the bloodshed down to a minimum and a lie. Half the Bane ­were rebels, and the other half sympathizers, so many of their “battles” in the North had been staged, the body count a deceit and an exaggeration—­at least, once the corpses got up from the killing field under cover of darkness and went home to their families. Adarlan’s Whore. He had not minded. Until now.

Cousin—that had been his most beloved title. Cousin, kin, protector. Those ­were the secret names he harbored deep within, the names he whispered to himself when the northern wind was shrieking through the Staghorns. Sometimes that wind sounded like the screams of his people being led to the butchering blocks. And sometimes it sounded like Aelin—­Aelin, whom he had loved, who should have been his queen, and to whom he would have one day sworn the blood oath.

Aedion stood on the decaying planks of an empty dock in the slums, staring at the Avery. The captain was beside him, spitting blood into the water thanks to the beating given to him by Ren Allsbrook, Aedion’s newest conspirator and yet another dead man risen from the grave.

Ren, heir and Lord of Allsbrook, had trained with Aedion as a child—­and had once been his rival. Ten years ago, Ren and his grandfather, Murtagh, had escaped the butchering blocks thanks to a diversion started by Ren’s parents that cost them their lives and gave Ren the nasty scar down his face. But Aedion hadn’t known—­he’d thought them dead, and had been stunned to learn that they ­were the secret rebel group he’d hunted down upon arriving in Rifthold. He’d heard the claims that Aelin was alive and raising an army and had dragged himself down from the north to get to the bottom of it and destroy the liars, preferably cutting them up piece by piece.

The king’s summons had been a con­ve­nient excuse. Ren and Murtagh had instantly admitted that the rumors had been spread by a former member of their rebel group. They had never had or heard of any contact with their dead queen. But seeing Ren and Murtagh, he’d since wondered who ­else might have survived. He had never allowed himself to hope that Aelin . . .

Aedion set his sword on the wooden rail and ran his scarred fingers down it, taking in the nicks and lines, each mark a tale of legendary battles fought, of great kings long dead. The sword was the last shred of proof that a mighty kingdom had once existed in the North.

It ­wasn’t his sword, not really. In those initial days of blood and conquest, the King of Adarlan had snatched the blade from Rhoe Galathynius’s cooling body and brought it to Rifthold. And there it had stayed, the sword that should have been Aelin’s.

So Aedion had fought for years in those war camps and battlefields, fought to prove his invaluable worth to the king, and had taken everything that was done to him, again and again. When he and the Bane won that first battle and the king had proclaimed him the Northern Wolf and offered him a boon, Aedion had asked for the sword.

The king attributed the request to an eighteen-­year-­old’s romanticism, and Aedion had swaggered about his own glory until everyone believed that he was a traitorous, butchering bastard who made a mockery of the sword just by touching it. But winning back the sword didn’t erase his failure.

Even though he’d been thirteen, and even though he’d been forty miles away in Orynth when Aelin had been killed on the country estate, he should have stopped it. He’d been sent to her land upon his mother’s death to become Aelin’s sword and shield, to serve in the court she was supposed to have ruled, that child of kings. So he should have ridden out when the castle erupted with news that Orlon Gala­thynius had been assassinated. By the time anyone did, Rhoe, Evalin, and Aelin ­were dead.

It was that reminder he’d carried with him on his back, the reminder of who the sword belonged to, and to whom, when he took his last breath and went to the Otherworld, he’d finally give it.

But now the sword, that weight he’d embraced for years, felt . . . lighter and sharper, far more fragile. Infinitely precious. The world had slipped from beneath his feet.

No one had spoken for a moment after the Captain of the Guard made his claim. Aelin is alive. Then the captain had said he’d only speak with Aedion about it.

Just to show they ­weren’t bluffing about torturing him, Ren had bloodied him up with a cool precision that Aedion grudgingly admired, but the captain had taken the blows. And whenever Ren paused, Murtaugh looking on disapprovingly, the captain said the same thing. After it became clear that the captain would either tell only Aedion or die, he’d called off Ren. The heir of Allsbrook bristled, but Aedion had dealt with plenty of young men like him in the war camps. It never took much to get them to fall in line. Aedion gave him a long, hard stare, and Ren backed down.

Which was how they wound up ­here, Chaol cleaning off his face with a scrap of his shirt. For the past few minutes, Aedion had listened to the most unlikely story he’d ever heard. The story of Celaena Sardothien, the infamous assassin, being trained by Arobynn Hamel, the story of her downfall and year in Endovier, and how she’d wound up in the ridiculous competition to become the King’s Champion. The story of Aelin, his Queen, in a death camp, and then serving in her enemy’s ­house.

Aedion braced his hands on the rail. It ­couldn’t be true. Not after ten years. Ten years without hope, without proof.

“She has your eyes,” Chaol said, working his jaw. If this assassin—an assassin, gods above—­was truly Aelin, then she was the King’s Champion. Then she was the captain’s—

“You sent her to Wendlyn,” Aedion said, his voice ragged. The tears would come later. Right now, he was emptied. Gutted. Every lie, every rumor and act and party he’d thrown, every battle, real or faked, every life he’d taken so more could live . . . How would he ever explain that to her? Adarlan’s Whore.

“I didn’t know who she was. I just thought she would be safer there because of what she is.”

“You realize you’ve only given me a bigger reason to kill you.” Aedion clenched his jaw. “Do you have any idea what kind of risk you took in telling me? I could be working for the king—­you thought I was in thrall to him, and all you had for proof against it was a quick story. You might as well have killed her yourself.” Fool—­stupid, reckless fool. But the captain still had the upper hand ­here—­the king’s noble captain, who was now toeing the line of treason. He’d wondered about the captain’s allegiance when Ren told him about the involvement of the King’s Champion with the rebels, but—­damn. Aelin. Aelin was the King’s Champion, Aelin had helped the rebels, and gutted Archer Finn. His knees threatened to buckle, but he swallowed the shock, the surprise and terror and glimmer of delight.

“I know it was a risk,” the captain said. “But the men who have those rings—­something changes in their eyes, a kind of darkness that sometimes manifests physically. I ­haven’t seen it in you since you’ve been ­here. And I’ve never seen someone throw so many parties, but only attend for a few minutes. You ­wouldn’t go to such lengths to hide your meetings with the rebels if you ­were enslaved to the king, especially when during all this time the Bane still hasn’t come, despite your assurances that it will be ­here soon. It ­doesn’t add up.” The captain met his stare. Perhaps not quite a fool, then. “I think she’d want you to know.”

The captain looked down the river toward the sea. This place reeked. Aedion had smelled and seen worse in war camps, but the slums of Renaril certainly gave them a run for their money. And Terrasen’s capital, Orynth, its once-­shining tower now a slab of filthy white stone, was well on its way to falling into this level of poverty and despair. But maybe, someday soon . . .

Aelin was alive. Alive, and as much of a killer as he was, and working for the same man. “Does the prince know?” He’d never been able to speak with the prince without remembering the days before Terrasen’s downfall; he’d never been able to hide that hatred.

“No. He ­doesn’t even know why I sent her to Wendlyn. Or that she’s—­you’re both . . . Fae.”

Aedion had never possessed a fraction of the power that had smoldered in her veins, which had burned libraries and caused such general worry that there had been talk—­in those months before the world went to hell—­of sending her somewhere so that she could learn to control it. He’d overheard debate over packing her off to various academies or tutors in distant lands, but never to their aunt Maeve, waiting like a spider in a web to see what became of her niece. And yet she’d wound up in Wendlyn, on her aunt’s doorstep.

Maeve had either never known or never cared about his inherited gifts. No, all he had ­were some of the physical traits of their immortal kin: strength, swiftness, sharp hearing, keen smell. It had made him a formidable opponent on the battlefield—­and saved his life more than once. Saved his very soul, if the captain was right about those rings.

“Is she coming back?” Aedion asked quietly. The first of the many, many questions he had for the captain, now that he’d proved himself to be more than a useless servant of the king.

There was enough agony in the captain’s eyes that Aedion knew that he loved her. Knew, and felt a tug of jealousy, if only because the captain knew her that well. “I don’t know,” Chaol admitted. If he hadn’t been his enemy, Aedion would have respected the man for the sacrifice implied. But Aelin had to come back. She would come back. Unless that return only earned her a walk to the butchering block.

He would sort through each wild thought when he was alone. He gripped the damp rail harder, fighting the urge to ask more.

But then the captain gave him a weighing look, as if he could see through every mask Aedion had ever worn. For a heartbeat, Aedion considered ­putting the blade right through the captain and dumping his body in the Avery, despite the information he possessed. The captain glanced at the blade, too, and Aedion wondered if he was thinking the same thing—­regretting his decision to trust him. The captain should regret it, should curse himself for a fool.

Aedion said, “Why ­were you tracking the rebels?”

“Because I thought they might have valuable information.” It had to be truly valuable, then, if he’d risk revealing himself as a traitor to get it.

Aedion had been willing to torture the captain—­to kill him, too. He’d done worse before. But torturing and killing his queen’s lover ­wouldn’t go over well if—when she returned. And the captain was now his greatest source of information. He wanted to know more about Aelin, about her plans, about what she was like and how he could find her. He wanted to know everything. Anything. Especially where the captain now stood on the game board—­and what the captain knew about the king. So Aedion said, “Tell me more about those rings.”

But the captain shook his head. “I want to make a bargain with you.”

20

The black eye was still gruesome, but it improved over the next week as Celaena worked in the kitchens, tried and failed to shift with Rowan, and generally avoided everyone. The spring rains had come to stay and the kitchen was packed every night, so Celaena took to eating dinner on the shadowed steps, arriving just before the Story Keeper began speaking.

Story Keeper—­that’s what Emrys was, a title of honor amongst both Fae and humans in Wendlyn. What it meant was that when he began telling a story, you sat down and shut up. It also meant that he was a walking library of the kingdom’s legends and myths.

By that time, Celaena knew most of the fortress’s residents, if only in the sense that she could put names to faces. She’d observed them out of instinct, to learn her surroundings, her potential enemies and threats. She knew they observed her, too, when they thought she ­wasn’t paying attention. And any shred of regret she felt at not approaching them was burned up by the fact that no one bothered to approach her, either.

The only person who made an effort was Luca, who still peppered Celaena with questions as they worked, still prattled on and on about his training, the fortress gossip, the weather. He’d only talked to her once about anything ­else—­on a morning when it had taken a monumental effort to peel herself out of bed, and only the scar on her palm had made her plant her feet on the icy floor. She’d been washing the breakfast dishes, staring out the window without seeing anything, too heavy in her bones, when Luca had dumped a pot in the sink and quietly said, “For a long while, I ­couldn’t talk about what happened to me before I came ­here. There ­were some days I ­couldn’t talk at all. ­Couldn’t get out of bed, either. But if—­when you need to talk . . .”

She’d shut him down with a long look. And he hadn’t said anything like it since.

Thankfully, Emrys gave her space. Lots of space, especially when Malakai arrived during breakfast to make sure Celaena hadn’t caused any trouble. She usually avoided looking at the other fortress couples, but ­here, where she ­couldn’t walk away . . . she hated their closeness, the way Malakai’s eyes lit up every time he saw him. Hated it so much that she choked on it.

She never asked Rowan why he, too, came to hear Emrys’s stories. As far as they ­were each concerned, the other didn’t exist outside of training.

Training was a generous way to describe what they ­were doing, as she had accomplished nothing. She didn’t shift once. He snarled and sneered and hissed, but she ­couldn’t do it. Every day, always when Rowan disappeared for a few moments, she tried, but—­nothing. Rowan threatened to drag her back to the barrows, as that seemed to be the only thing that had triggered any sort of response, but he’d backed off—­to her surprise—­when she told him that she’d slit her own throat before entering that place again. So they swore at each other, sat in brooding silence on the temple ruin, and occasionally had those unspoken shouting matches. If she was in a particularly nasty mood, he made her chop wood—­log after log, until she could hardly lift the ax and her hands ­were blistered. If she was going to be pissed off at the ­whole damn world, he said, if she was going to waste his time by not shifting, then she might as well be useful in some way.

All this waiting—­for her. For the shift that made her shudder to think about.

It was on the eighth day after her arrival, after scrubbing pots and pans until her back throbbed, that Celaena stopped in the middle of their hike up the now-­familiar ridge. “I have a request.” She never spoke to him unless she needed to—­mostly to curse at him. Now she said, “I want to see you shift.”

A blink, those green eyes flat. “You don’t have the privilege of giving orders.”

“Show me how you do it.” Her memories of the Fae in Terrasen ­were foggy, as if someone had smeared oil over them. She ­couldn’t remember seeing one of them change, where their clothes had gone, how fast it had been . . . He stared her down, seeming to say, Just this once, and then—

A soft flash of light, a ripple of color, and a hawk was flapping midair, beating for the nearest tree branch. He settled on it, clicking his beak. She scanned the mossy earth. No sign of his clothes, his weapons. It had taken barely more than a few heartbeats.

He gave a battle cry and swooped, talons slashing for her eyes. She lunged behind the tree just as there was another flash and shudder of color, and then he was clothed and armed and growling in her face. “Your turn.”

She ­wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her tremble. It was—­incredible. Incredible to see the shift. “Where do your clothes go?”

“Between, somewhere. I don’t particularly care.” Such dead, joyless eyes. She had a feeling she looked like that these days. She knew she had looked like that the night Chaol had caught her gutting Archer in the tunnel. What had left Rowan so soulless?

He bared his teeth, but she didn’t submit. She’d been watching the demi-­Fae warrior males at the fortress, and they growled and showed their teeth about everything. They ­were not the ethereal, gentle folk that legend painted, that she vaguely remembered from Terrasen. No holding hands and dancing around the maypole with flowers in their hair. They ­were predators, the lot of them. Some of the dominant females ­were just as aggressive, prone to snarling when challenged or annoyed or even hungry. She supposed she might have fit in with them if she’d bothered to try.

Still holding Rowan’s stare, Celaena calmed her breathing. She imagined phantom fingers reaching down, pulling her Fae form out. Imagined a wash of color and light. Pushed herself against her mortal flesh. But—nothing.

“Sometimes I wonder whether this is a punishment for you,” she said through her teeth. “But what could you have done to piss off her Immortal Majesty?”

“Don’t use that tone when you talk about her.”

“Oh, I can use what­ever tone I want. And you can taunt and snarl at me and make me chop wood all day, but short of ripping out my tongue, you ­can’t—”

Faster than lightning, his hand shot out and she gagged, jolting as he grabbed her tongue between his fingers. She bit down, hard, but he didn’t let go. “Say that again,” he purred.

She choked as he kept pinching her tongue, and she went for his daggers, simultaneously slamming her knee up between his legs, but he shoved his body against hers, a wall of hard muscle and several hundred years of lethal training trapping her against a tree. She was a joke by comparison—a joke—and her tongue—

He released her tongue, and she gasped for breath. She swore at him, a filthy, foul name, and spat at his feet. And that’s when he bit her.

She cried out as those canines pierced the spot between her neck and shoulder, a primal act of aggression—­the bite so strong and claiming that she was too stunned to move. He had her pinned against the tree and clamped down harder, his canines digging deep, her blood spilling onto her shirt. Pinned, like some weakling. But that was what she’d become, ­wasn’t it? Useless, pathetic.

She growled, more animal than sentient being. And shoved.

Rowan staggered back a step, teeth ripping her skin as she struck his chest. She didn’t feel the pain, didn’t care about the blood or the flash of light.

No, she wanted to rip his throat out—­rip it out with the elongated canines she bared at him as she finished shifting and roared.

21

Rowan grinned. “There you are.” Blood—­her blood—­was on his teeth, on his mouth and chin. And those dead eyes glowed as he spat her blood onto the earth. She probably tasted like a sewer to him.

There was a shrieking in her ears, and Celaena lunged at him. Lunged, and then stopped as she took in the world with stunning clarity, smelled it and tasted it and breathed it like the finest wine. Gods, this place, this kingdom smelled divine, smelled like—

She had shifted.

She panted, even though her lungs ­were telling her she was no longer winded and did not need as many breaths in this body. There was a tickling at her neck—­her skin slowly beginning to stitch itself together. She was a faster healer in this form. Because of the magic . . . Breathe. Breathe.

But there it was, rising up, wildfire crackling in her veins, in her fingertips, the forest around them so much kindling, and then—

She shoved back. Took the fear and used it like a battering ram inside herself, against the power, shoving it down, down.

Rowan prowled closer. “Let it out. Don’t fight it.”

A pulse beat against her, nipping, smelling of snow and pine. Rowan’s power, taunting hers. Not like her fire, but a gift of ice and wind. A freezing zap at her elbow had her falling back against the tree. The magic bit her cheek now. Magic—­attacking her.

The wildfire exploded in a wall of blue flame, rushing for Rowan, engulfing the trees, the world, herself, until—

It vanished, sucked out into nothing, along with the air she was breathing.

Celaena dropped to her knees. As she clutched at her neck as if she could claw open an airway for herself, Rowan’s boots appeared in the field of her vision. He’d pulled the air out—­suffocated her fire. Such power, such control. Maeve had not given her an instructor with similar abilities—­she’d instead sent someone with power capable of smothering her fire, someone who ­wouldn’t mind doing it should she become a threat.

Air rushed down her throat in a whoosh. She gasped it down in greedy gulps, hardly registering the agony as she shifted back into her mortal form, the world going quiet and dull again.

“Does your lover know what you are?” A cold question.

She lifted her head, not caring how he’d found out. “He knows everything.” Not entirely true.

His eyes flickered—­with what emotion, she ­couldn’t tell. “I won’t be biting you again,” he said, and she wondered just what he’d tasted in her blood.

She growled, but the sound was muted. Fangless. “Even if it’s the only way to get me to shift?”

He walked uphill—­to the ridge. “You don’t bite the women of other males.”

She heard, more than felt, something die from her voice as she said, “We’re not—­together. Not anymore. I let him go before I came ­here.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Why?” Flat, bored. But still, slightly curious.

What did she care if he knew? She’d curled her hand into a fist in her lap, her knuckles white. Every time she glanced at the ring, rubbed it, caught it gleaming, it punched a hole right through her.

She should take the damn thing off. But she knew she ­wouldn’t, if only because that near-­constant agony felt deserved. “Because he’s safer if he’s as repulsed by me as you are.”

“At least you’ve already learned one lesson.” When she cocked her head, he said, “The people you love are just weapons that will be used against you.”

She didn’t want to recall how Nehemia had been used—­had used herself—­against her, to force her to act. Wanted to pretend she ­wasn’t starting to forget what Nehemia had looked like.

“Shift again,” Rowan ordered, jerking his chin at her. “This time, try to—”

She was forgetting what Nehemia looked like. The shade of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the smell of her. Her laugh. The roaring in Celaena’s head went quiet, silenced by that familiar nothingness.

Do not let that light go out.

But Celaena didn’t know how to stop it. The one person she could have told, who might have understood . . . She was buried in an unadorned grave, so far from the sun-­warmed soil that she had loved.

Rowan gripped her by the shoulders. “Are you listening?”

She gave him a bored stare, even as his fingers dug into her skin. “Why don’t you just bite me again?”

“Why don’t I give you the lashing you deserve?”

He looked so dead set on it that she blinked. “If you ever take a whip to me, I will skin you alive.”

He let go of her and stalked around the clearing, a predator assessing its prey. “If you don’t shift again, you’re pulling double duty in the kitchens for the next week.”

“Fine.” At least working in the kitchens had some quantifiable results. At least in the kitchens, she could tell up from down and knew what she was doing. But this—­this promise she’d made, the bargain she’d struck with Maeve . . . She’d been a fool.

Rowan paused his stalking. “You’re worthless.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

He went on, “You would probably have been more useful to the world if you’d actually died ten years ago.”

She just looked him in the eye and said, “I’m leaving.”

•

Rowan didn’t stop her as she returned to the fortress and packed. It took all of a minute, as she hadn’t even unloaded her satchel and had no weapons left. She supposed she could have ripped the fortress apart to find where Rowan had stashed them, or stolen them from the demi-­Fae, but both would require time and bring more attention than she wanted. She didn’t talk to anyone as she walked out.

She’d find another way to learn about the Wyrdkeys and destroy the King of Adarlan and free Eyllwe. If she kept going like this, she’d have nothing left inside to fight with.

She’d marked the paths they’d taken on the way in, but as she entered the tree-­covered slopes, she mostly relied on the position of the cloud-­veiled sun to navigate. She’d make the trip back, find food along the way, and figure out something ­else. This had been a fool’s errand from the start. At least she hadn’t been too long delayed—­though she might now have to be quicker about finding the answers she needed, and—

“Is this what you do? Run away when things get hard?” Rowan was standing between two trees directly in her path, ­having undoubtedly flown ­here.

She brushed past him, her legs burning with the downhill walk. “You’re free of your obligation to train me, so I have nothing more to say to you, and you have nothing more to say to me. Do us both a favor and go to hell.”

A growl. “Have you ever had to fight for anything in your life?”

She let out a low, bitter laugh and walked faster, veering westward, not caring about the direction as much as getting away from him. But he kept up easily, his long, heavily muscled legs devouring the mossy ground. “You’re proving me right with every step you take.”

“I don’t care.”

“I don’t know what you want from Maeve—­what answers you’re looking for, but you—”

“You don’t know what I want from her?” It was more of a shout than a question. “How about saving the world from the King of Adarlan?”

“Why bother? Maybe the world’s not worth saving.” She knew he meant it, too. Those lifeless eyes spoke volumes.

“Because I made a promise. A promise to my friend that I would see her kingdom freed.” She shoved her scarred palm into his face. “I made an unbreakable vow. And you and Maeve—­all you gods-­damned bastards—­are getting in the way of that.” She went off down the hillside again. He followed.

“And what of your own people? What of your own kingdom?”

“They are better off without me, just as you said.”

His tattoo scrunched as he snarled. “So you’d save another land, but not yours. Why ­can’t your friend save her own kingdom?”

“Because she is dead!” She screamed the last word so loudly it burned in her throat. “Because she is dead, and I am left with my worthless life!”

He merely stared at her with that animal stillness. When she walked away, he didn’t come after her.

•

She lost track of how far she walked and in what direction she traveled. She didn’t really care. She hadn’t spoken the words—she is dead—­since the day after Nehemia had been taken from her. But she was dead. And Celaena missed her.

Night swept in earlier due to the cloud cover, the temperature plummeting as thunder grumbled in the distance. She made weapons as she went, finding a sharp stone to whittle down branches into rudimentary spears: the longer one she used as a walking stick, and though they ­were little more than stakes, she told herself the two short ones ­were daggers. Better than nothing.

Each step was heavier than the last, and she had enough of a sense of self-­preservation left to start looking for a place to spend the night. It was almost dark when she found a decent spot: a shallow cave in the side of a granite ledge.

She swiftly gathered enough wood for a fire. The irony of it ­wasn’t wasted on her. If she had any control over her magic—­she shut down that thought before it finished. She hadn’t made a fire in years, so it took a few tries, but it worked. Just as thunder cracked above her little cave and the skies opened up.

She was hungry, and thankfully found some apples at the bottom of her satchel, along with old teggya from Varese that was still edible, if hard to chew. After she ate as much of it as she could stand, she pulled her cloak around herself and nestled into the side of the cave.

She didn’t fail to notice the small, glowing eyes that gathered, peering through the brambles or over boulders or around trees. None of them had bothered her since that first night, and they didn’t come closer. Her instincts, warped as they had felt these last few weeks, didn’t raise any alarms, either. So she didn’t tell them off, and didn’t really mind them at all.

With the fire and the pounding rain, it was almost cozy—­not like her freezing room. Though she was exhausted, she felt somewhat clearheaded. Almost like herself again, with her makeshift weapons. She’d made a smart choice to leave. Do what needs to be done, Elena had told her. Well, she’d needed to leave before Rowan shredded her into so many pieces that she would never stand a chance of putting herself back together.

Tomorrow, she’d start over. She’d spotted what looked like a crumbling, forgotten road that she could follow downhill. As long as she kept going toward the plains, she could find her way back to the coast. And come up with a new plan as she went.

It was good she had left.

Exhaustion hit her so thoroughly that she was asleep moments after she sprawled beside the fire, one hand clasped around her spear. She probably would have dozed until dawn had a sudden silence not jerked her awake.

22

Celaena’s fire was still crackling, the rain still pounding beyond the cave mouth. But the forest had gone quiet. Those little watching eyes had vanished.

She uncoiled to her feet, spear in one hand and a stake in the other, and crept to the narrow cave entrance. With the rain and the fire, she ­couldn’t make out anything. But every hair on her body was standing, and a growing reek was slithering in from the forest beyond. Like leather and carrion. Different from what she’d whiffed at the barrows. Older and earthier and . . . hungrier.

Suddenly, the fire seemed like the stupidest thing she had ever done.

No fires. That had been Rowan’s only rule while trekking to the fortress. And they had stayed off the roads—­veering away entirely from the forgotten, overgrown ones. Ones like the path she’d spied nearby.

The silence deepened.

She slipped into the drenched forest, stubbing her toes on rocks and roots as her eyes adjusted to the dark. But she kept moving ahead—­curving down and away from the ancient path.

She’d made it far enough that her cave was little more than a glow on the hill above, a flicker of light illuminating the trees. A gods-­damned beacon. She angled her stake and spear into better positions, about to continue on when lightning flashed.

Three tall, lanky silhouettes lurked in front of her cave.

Though they stood like humans, she knew, deep in her bones from some collective mortal memory, that they ­were not. They ­were not Fae, either.

With expert quiet, she took another step, then another. They ­were still poking around the cave entrance, taller than men, neither male nor female.

Skinwalkers are on the prowl, Rowan had warned that first day they’d trained, searching for human pelts to bring back to their caves. She had been too dazed to ask or care. But now—­now that carelessness, that wallowing, was going to get her killed. Skinned.

Wendlyn. Land of nightmares made flesh, where legends roamed the earth. Despite years of stealth training, each step felt like a snap, her breathing too loud.

Thunder grumbled, and she used the cover of the sound to take a few bounding steps. She stopped behind another tree, breathing as quietly as she could, and peered around it to survey the hillside behind her. Lightning flashed again.

The three figures ­were gone. But the leathery, rancid smell swarmed all around her now. Human pelts.

She eyed the tree she’d ducked behind. The trunk was too slick with moss and rain to scale, the branches too high. The other trees ­weren’t any better. And what good was being stuck up a tree in a lightning storm?

She darted to the next tree, carefully avoiding any sticks or leaves, cursing silently at the slowness of her pace, and— Damn it all to hell. She burst into a run, the mossy earth treacherous underfoot. She could make out the trees, some larger rocks, but the slope was steep. She kept her feet under her, even as undergrowth cracked behind, faster and faster.

She didn’t dare take her focus off the trees and rocks as she hurtled down the slope, desperate for any flat ground. Perhaps their hunting territory ended somewhere—­perhaps she could outrun them until dawn. She veered eastward, still going downhill, and grabbed on to a trunk to swing herself around, almost losing her balance as she slammed into something hard and unyielding.

She slashed with her stake—­only to be grabbed by two massive hands.

Her wrists sang in agony as the fingers squeezed hard enough that she ­couldn’t stab either weapon into her captor. She twisted, bringing up a foot to smash into her assailant, and caught a flash of fangs before—­ Not fangs. Teeth.

And there was no gleam of flesh-­pelts. Only silver hair, shining with rain.

Rowan dragged her against him, pressing them into what appeared to be a hollowed-­out tree.

She kept her panting quiet, but breathing didn’t become any easier when Rowan gripped her by the shoulders and put his mouth to her ear. The crashing footsteps had stopped.

“You are going to listen to every word I say.” Rowan’s voice was softer than the rain outside. “Or ­else you are going to die to­night. Do you understand?” She nodded. He let go—­only to draw his sword and a wicked-­looking hatchet. “Your survival depends entirely on you.” The smell was growing again. “You need to shift now. Or your mortal slowness will kill you.”

She stiffened, but reached in, feeling for some thread of power. There was nothing. There had to be some trigger, some place inside her where she could command it . . . A slow, shrieking sound of stone on metal sounded through the rain. Then another. And another. They ­were sharpening their blades. “Your magic—”

“They do not breathe, so have no airways to cut off. Ice would slow them, not stop them. My wind is already blowing our scent away from them, but not for long. Shift, Aelin.”

Aelin. It was not a test, not some elaborate trick. The skinwalkers did not need air.

Rowan’s tattoo shone as lightning filled their little hiding spot. “We are going to have to run in a moment. What form you take when we do will determine our fates. So breathe, and shift.”

Though every instinct screamed against it, she closed her eyes. Took a breath. Then another. Her lungs opened, full of cool, soothing air, and she wondered if Rowan was helping with that, too.

He was helping. And he was willing to meet a horrible fate in order to keep her alive. He hadn’t left her alone. She hadn’t been alone.

There was a muffled curse, and Rowan slammed his body against hers, as if he could somehow shield her. No, not shield her. Cover her, the flash of light.

She barely registered the pain—­if only because the moment her Fae senses snapped into place, she had to shove a hand against her own mouth to keep from retching. Oh, gods, the festering smell of them, worse than any corpse she’d ever dealt with.

With her delicately pointed ears, she could hear them now, each step they took as the three of them systematically made their way down the hill. They spoke in low, strange voices—­at once male and female, all ravenous.

“There are two of them now,” one hissed. She didn’t want to know what power it wielded to allow it to speak when it had no airways. “A Fae male joined the female. I want him—­he smells of storm winds and steel.” Celaena gagged as the smell shoved down her throat. “The female we’ll bring back with us—­dawn’s too close. Then we can take our time peeling her apart.”

Rowan eased off her and said quietly, not needing to be near for her to hear while he assessed the forest beyond, “There is a swift river a third of a mile east, at the base of a large cliff.” He didn’t look at her as he extended two long daggers, and she didn’t nod her thanks as she silently discarded her makeshift weapons and gripped the ivory hilts. “When I say run, you run like hell. Step where I step, and don’t turn around for any reason. If we are separated, run straight—­you’ll hear the river.” Order after order—­a commander on the battlefield, solid and deadly. He peered out of the tree. The smell was nearly overpowering now, swarming from every angle. “If they catch you, you cannot kill them—­not with a mortal weapon. Your best option is to fight until you can get free and run. Understand?”

She gave another nod. Breathing was hard again, and the rain was now torrential.

“On my mark,” Rowan said, smelling and hearing things that ­were lost even to her heightened senses. “Steady . . .” She sank onto her haunches as Rowan did the same.

“Come out, come out,” one of them hissed—­so close it could have been inside the tree with them. There was a sudden rustling in thebrush to the west, almost as if two people ­were running. In­stantly, the reek of the skinwalkers lessened as they raced after the cracking branches and leaves that Rowan’s wind led in the other direction.

“Now,” Rowan hissed, and burst out of the tree.

Celaena ran—­or tried to. Even with her sharpened vision, the brush and stones and trees proved a hindrance. Rowan raced toward the rising roar of the river, swollen from the spring rains, his pace slower than she’d expected, but . . . but he was slowing for her. Because this Fae body was different, and she was adjusting wrong, and—

She slipped, but a hand was at her elbow, keeping her upright. “Faster,” was all he said, and as soon as she’d found her footing, he was off again, shooting through the trees like a mountain cat.

It took all of a minute before the force of that smell gnawed on her heels and the snapping of the brush closed in. But she ­wouldn’t take her eyes off Rowan, and the brightening ahead—­the end of the tree line. Not much farther until they could jump, and—

A fourth skinwalker leapt out of where it had somehow been lurking undetected in the brush. It lunged for Rowan in a flash of leathery, long limbs marred with countless scars. No, not scars—stitches. The stitches holding its various hides together.

She shouted as the skinwalker pounced, but Rowan didn’t falter a step as he ducked and twirled with inhuman speed, slashing down with his sword and viciously slicing with the hatchet.

The skinwalker’s arm severed at the same moment its head toppled off its neck.

She might have marveled at the way he moved, the way he killed, but Rowan didn’t stop sprinting, so Celaena raced after him, glancing once at the body the Fae warrior had left in pieces.

Sagging bits of leather on the wet leaves, like discarded clothes. But still twitching and rustling—­as if waiting for someone to stitch it back together.

She ran faster, Rowan still bounding ahead.

The skinwalkers closed in from behind, shrieking with rage. Then they fell silent, until—

“You think the river can save you?” one of them panted, letting out a laugh that raked along her bones. “You think if we get wet, we’ll lose our form? I have worn the skins of fishes when mortals ­were scarce, female.”

She had an image then, of the chaos waiting in that river—­a flipping and near-­drowning and dizziness—­and something pulling her down, down, down to the still bottom.

“Rowan,” she breathed, but he was already gone, his massive body hurtling straight off the cliff edge in a mighty leap.

There was no stopping the pursuit behind her. The skinwalkers ­were going to jump with them. And there would be nothing they could do to kill them, no mortal weapon they could use.

A well ripped open inside of her, vast and unyielding and horrible. Rowan had claimed no mortal weapon could kill them. But what of immortal ones?

Celaena broke through the line of trees, sprinting for the ledge that jutted out, bare granite beneath her as she threw her strength into her legs, her lungs, her arms, and jumped.

As she plummeted, she twisted to face the cliff, to face them. They ­were no more than three lean bodies leaping into the rainy night, shrieking with primal, triumphant, anticipated plea­sure.

“Shift!” was the only warning she gave Rowan. There was a flash of light to tell her he’d obeyed.

Then she ripped everything from that well inside her, ripped it out with both hands and her entire raging, hopeless heart.

As she fell, hair whipping her face, Celaena thrust her hands toward the skinwalkers.

“Surprise,” she hissed. The world erupted in blue wildfire.

•

Celaena shuddered on the riverbank, from cold and exhaustion and terror. Terror at the skinwalkers—­and terror at what she had done.

His clothes dry thanks to shifting, Rowan stood a few feet away, monitoring the smoldering cliffs upriver. She’d incinerated the skinwalkers. They hadn’t even had time to scream.

She hunched over her knees, arms wrapped around herself. The forest was burning on either side of the river—­a radius that she didn’t have the nerve to mea­sure. It was a weapon, her power. A different sort of weapon than blades or arrows or her hands. A curse.

It took several attempts, but at last she spoke. “Can you put it out?”

“You could, if you tried.” When she didn’t respond, he said, “I’m almost done.” In a moment the flames nearest the cliffs went out. How long had he been working to suffocate them? “We don’t need something ­else attracted to your fires.”

She might have bothered to respond to the jab, but she was too tired and cold. The rain filled the world, and for a while, silence reigned.

“Why is my shifting so vital?” she asked at last.

“Because it terrifies you,” he said. “Mastering it is the first step toward learning to control your power. Without that control, with a blast like that, you could easily have burnt yourself out.”

“What do you mean?”

Another stormy look. “When you access your power, what does it feel like?”

She considered. “A well,” she said. “The magic feels like a well.”

“Have you felt the bottom of it?”

“Is there a bottom?” She prayed there was.

“All magic has a bottom—­a breaking point. For those with weaker gifts, it’s easily depleted and easily refilled. They can access most of their power at once. But for those with stronger gifts, it can take hours to hit the bottom, to summon their powers at full strength.”

“How long does it take you?”

“A full day.” She jolted. “Before battle, we take the time, so that when we walk onto the killing field, we can be at our strongest. You can do other things at the same time, but some part of you is down in there, pulling up more and more, until you reach the bottom.”

“And when you pull it all out, it just—­releases in some giant wave?”

“If I want it to. I can release it in smaller bursts, and go on for a while. But it can be hard to hold it back. People sometimes ­can’t tell friend from foe when they’re handling that much magic.”

When she’d drawn her power on the other side of the portal months ago, she’d felt that lack of control—­known she was almost as likely to hurt Chaol as she was to hurt the demon he was facing. “How long does it take you to recover?”

“Days. A week, depending on how I used the power and whether I drained every last drop. Some make the mistake of trying to take more before they’re ready, or holding on for too long, and they either burn out their minds or just burn up altogether. Your shaking isn’t just from the river, you know. It’s your body’s way of telling you not to do that again.”

“Because of the iron in our blood pushing against the magic?”

“That’s how our enemies will sometimes try to fight against us if they don’t have magic—­iron everything.” He must have seen her brows rise, because he added, “I was captured once. While on a campaign in the east, in a kingdom that ­doesn’t exist anymore. They had me shackled head to toe in iron to keep me from choking the air out of their lungs.”

She let out a low whistle. “Were you tortured?”

“Two weeks on their tables before my men rescued me.” He unbuckled his vambrace and pushed back the sleeve of his right arm, revealing a thick, wicked scar curving around his forearm and elbow. “Cut me open bit by bit, then took the bones ­here and—”

“I can see very well what happened, and know exactly how it’s done,” she said, stomach tightening. Not at the injury, but—­Sam. Sam had been strapped to a table, cut open and broken by one of the most sadistic killers she’d ever known.

“Was it you,” Rowan said quietly, but not gently, “or someone ­else?”

“I was too late. He didn’t survive.” Again silence fell, and she cursed herself for a fool for telling him. But then she said hoarsely, “Thank you for saving me.”

A slight shrug, barely a movement at all. As if her gratitude were harder to endure than her hatred and reticence. “I am bound by an unbreakable blood oath to my Queen, so I had no choice but to ensure you didn’t die.” A bit of that earlier heaviness settled in her veins again. “But,” he went on, “I would not have left anyone to a fate at the hands of the skinwalkers.”

“A warning would have been nice.”

“I said they ­were on the loose—­weeks ago. But even if I’d warned you today, you would not have listened.”

It was true. She shivered again, this time so violently that her body shifted back, a flash of light and pain. If she’d thought she was cold in her Fae body, it was nothing compared to the cold of being human again.

“What was the trigger when you shifted earlier?” he asked, as if this moment were a reprieve from the real world, where the freezing storm and the surging river could muffle their words from the gods. She rubbed at her arms, desperate for any kind of warmth.

“It was nothing.” His silence demanded information for ­information—­a fair trade. She sighed. “Let’s just say it was fear and necessity and impressively deep-­rooted survival instincts.”

“You didn’t lose control immediately upon shifting. When you finally used your magic, your clothes didn’t burn; neither did your hair. And the daggers didn’t melt.” As if just now remembering that she still had them, he swiped them from her.

He was right. The magic hadn’t swarmed her the moment she’d shifted, and even in the explosion that had spread out in every direction, she’d had enough control to preserve herself. Not a single hair had burned.

“Why was it different this time?” he pressed.

“Because I didn’t want you to die to save me,” she admitted.

“Would you have shifted to save yourself ?”

“Your opinion of me is pretty much identical to my own, so you know the answer.”

He was quiet for long enough that she wondered if he was piecing the bits of her together. “You’re not leaving,” Rowan said at last, arms crossed. “I’m not letting you off double duty in the kitchens, but you’re not leaving.”

“Why?”

He unfastened his cloak. “Because I said so, that’s why.” And she might have told him it was the worst gods-­damned reason she had ever heard, and that he was an arrogant prick, had he not tossed her his cloak—­dry and warm. Then he dropped his jacket in her lap, too.

When he turned to go back to the fortress, she followed him.

23

For the past week, not much had changed for Manon and the Blackbeaks. They still flew daily to master the wyverns, and still managed to avoid outright war in the mess hall twice a day. The Yellowlegs heir tried to rile Manon whenever she could, but Manon paid her no more attention than she would a gnat buzzing about her head.

All that changed the day of the selection, when the heirs and their covens chose their mounts.

With three covens plus three Matrons, there ­were forty-­two witches crowded around the training pit in the Northern Fang. Handlers rushed about below the viewing platform, readying themselves. The wyverns would be brought out one by one, and, using the bait beasts, would show off their qualities. Like the other witches, Manon had been sneaking by the cages every day. She still wanted Titus.

Wanted was a mortal word. Titus was hers. And if it came down to it, she’d disembowel any witch who challenged her. She’d sharpened her nails this morning in anticipation of it. All of the Thirteen had.

Claims would be settled in a civilized manner, however. The three Matrons would draw sticks if more than one claim was made on a mount. When it came to Titus, Manon knew precisely who would vie for him: Iskra and Petrah, the Yellowlegs and Blueblood heirs. She’d seen them both watching him with hungry eyes. Had Manon gotten her way, they would have fought for him in the sparring ring. She’d even suggested as much to her grandmother, but was told they didn’t need to quarrel amongst themselves any more than necessary. It would be luck of the draw.

That didn’t sit well with Manon, who stood along the open edge of the platform, Asterin flanking her. Her edginess only sharpened as the heavy grate lifted at the back of the pit. The bait beast was already chained to the bloodstained wall, a broken, scarred wyvern, half the size of the bulls, his wings tucked in tight. From the platform, she could see that the venomous spikes in his tail had been sawn off to keep him from defending himself against the invaluable mounts.

The bait beast lowered his head as the gate groaned open and the first wyvern was paraded in on tight chains held by very pale-­faced men. They darted back as soon as the beast was through, dodging that deadly tail, and the grate shut behind them.

Manon loosed a breath. It ­wasn’t Titus, but one of the medium-­sized bulls.

Three sentinels stepped forward to claim him, but the Blueblood Matron, Cresseida, held up a hand. “Let us see him in action first.”

One of the men whistled sharply. The wyvern turned on the bait beast.

Teeth and scales and claws, so fast and vicious that even Manon held her breath. Chained as he was, the bait beast didn’t stand a chance and was pinned within a second, massive jaws holding down his neck. One command, one whistle, and the wyvern would snap it.

But the man let out a lower-­note whistle, and the bull backed off. Another whistle and he sat on his haunches. Two more sentinels stepped forward. Five in the running. Cresseida held out a fistful of twigs to the contenders.

It went to the Blueblood sentinel, who grinned at the others, then down at her wyvern as it was led back into the tunnel. The bait beast, bleeding from his side, heaved himself into the shadows by the wall, waiting for the next assault.

One after another, the wyverns ­were brought out, attacking with swift, wicked force. And one by one, the sentinels claimed them. No Titus, not yet. She had a feeling the Matrons ­were drawing this out as some test—­to see how well the heirs could control themselves while waiting for the best mounts, to see who would hold out longest. Manon kept one eye on the beasts and another on the other heirs, who watched her in turn as each wyvern was paraded.

Yet the first truly enormous female had Petrah, the Blueblood heir, stepping forward. The female was nearly Titus’s size, and wound up taking a chunk out of the bait beast’s flank before the trainers could get her to stop. Wild, unpredictable, lethal. Magnificent.

No one challenged the Blueblood heir. Petrah’s mother only gave her a nod, as though they had already known what mount she desired.

Asterin took the fiercest stealth wyvern that came along, a cunning-­eyed female. Her cousin had always been the best at scouting, and after a talk with Manon and the other sentinels that went long into the night, it had been decided that Asterin would continue that role in the Thirteen’s new duties.

So when the pale blue female was presented, Asterin claimed her, her eyes promising such brutality to anyone who got in her way that they practically glowed. No one dared challenge her.

Manon was watching the tunnel entrance when she smelled the myrrh and rosemary scent of the Blueblood heir beside her. Asterin snarled a soft warning.

“Waiting for Titus, aren’t you?” Petrah murmured, eyes also on the tunnel.

“And if I am?” Manon asked.

“I’d rather you have him than Iskra.”

The witch’s serene face was unreadable. “So would I.” She ­wasn’t sure what, exactly, but the conversation meant something.

Clearly, seeing them quietly talking meant something to everyone ­else, too. Especially Iskra, who sauntered over to Manon’s other side. “Plotting already?”

The Blueblood heir lifted her chin. “I think Titus would make a good mount for Manon.”

A line in the sand, Manon thought. What had the Blueblood Matron told Petrah about her? What schemes was she hatching?

Iskra’s mouth twisted into a half grin. “We’ll see what the Three-­Faced Mother has to say.”

Manon might have said something back, but then Titus thundered out.

As it had every other time, the breath went out of her at his sheer size and viciousness. The men had barely scrambled back through the gate before Titus whirled, snapping for them. They’d made only a few successful runs with him, she’d been told. Yet under the right rider, he’d fully break.

Titus didn’t wait for the whistle before he wheeled on the bait beast, striking with his barbed tail. The chained beast ducked with surprising swiftness, as if he’d sensed the bull’s attack, and Titus’s tail imbedded itself in the stone.

Debris rained on the bait beast, and as he cringed back, Titus struck again. And again.

Chained to the wall, the bait beast could do nothing. The man whistled, but Titus kept at it. He moved with the fluid grace of untamed savagery.

The bait beast yelped, and Manon could have sworn the Blueblood heir flinched. She’d never heard a cry of pain from any of the wyverns, yet as Titus sank back on his haunches, she saw where he’d struck—­right atop the earlier wound in the bait beast’s flank.

As if Titus knew where to hit to inflict the most agony. She knew they ­were intelligent, but how intelligent? The man whistled again, and a whip sounded. Titus just kept pacing in front of the bait beast, contemplating how he would strike. Not out of strategy. No, he wanted to savor it. To taunt.

A shiver of delight went down Manon’s spine. Riding a beast like Titus, ripping apart her enemies with him . . .

“If you want him so badly,” Iskra whispered, and Manon realized she was still standing beside her, now only a step away, “why don’t you go get him?”

And before Manon could move—­before anyone could, because they ­were all enthralled by that glorious beast—­iron claws shoved into her back.

Asterin’s shout echoed, but Manon was falling, plunging the forty feet right into the stone pit. She twisted, colliding with a small, crumbling ledge jutting from the wall. It slowed her fall and saved her life, but she kept going until—

She slammed into the ground, her ankle wrenching. Cries came from above, but Manon didn’t look up. If she had, she might have seen Asterin tackle Iskra, claws and teeth out. She might have seen her grandmother give the order that no one was to jump into the pit.

But Manon ­wasn’t looking at them.

Titus turned toward her.

The wyvern stood between her and the gate, where the men ­were rushing to and fro, as if trying to decide whether they should risk saving her or wait until she was carrion.

Titus’s tail lashed back and forth, his dark eyes pinned on her. Manon drew Wind-­Cleaver. It was a dagger compared to the mass of him. She had to get to that gate.

She stared him down. Titus settled onto his haunches, preparing to attack. He knew where the gate was, too, and what it meant for her. His prey.

Not rider or mistress, but prey.

The witches had gone silent. The men at the gate and upper ­platforms had gone silent.

Manon rotated her sword. Titus lunged.

She had to roll to avoid his mouth, and was up in a second, sprinting like hell for that gate. Her ankle throbbed, and she limped, swallowing her scream of pain. Titus turned, fast as a spring stream down a mountainside, and as she hurtled for the gate, he struck with his tail.

Manon had enough sense to whirl to avoid the venomous barbs, but she caught an upper edge of the tail in the side and went flying, Wind-­Cleaver wrenching from her grip. She hit the dirt near the opposite wall and slid, face scraping on the rocks. Her ribs bleated in agony as she scrambled into a sitting position and gauged the distance between herself and the sword and Titus.

But Titus was hesitating, his eyes lifted behind her, above her, to—

Darkness embrace her. She’d forgotten about the bait beast. The creature chained behind her, so close she could smell the carrion on his breath.

Titus’s stare was a command for the bait beast to stand down. To let him eat Manon.

Manon dared a glance over her shoulder, to the sword in the shadows, so close to the chained anchor of the bait beast. She might have risked it if the beast ­wasn’t there, if he ­wasn’t looking dead at her, looking at her like she was—

Not prey.

Titus growled a territorial warning at the bait beast again, so loud she could feel it in every bone. Instead, the bait beast, small as he was, was gazing at her with something like rage and determination. Emotion, she might have called it. Hunger, but not for her.

No, she realized as the beast lifted its black gaze to Titus, letting out a low snarl in response. Not submissive in the least, that sound. A threat—­a promise. The bait beast wanted a shot at Titus.

Allies. If only for this moment.

Again, Manon felt that ebb and flow in the world, that invisible current that some called Fate and some called the loom of the Three-­Faced Goddess. Titus roared his final threat.

Manon twisted to her feet and ran.

Every step made stars flash, and the ground shook as Titus barreled after her, willing to tear through the bait beast to kill her if necessary.

Manon scooped up her sword and whirled, bringing it down upon the thick, rusted chain with every bit of strength left in her.

Wind-­Cleaver, they called her blade. Now they would call it Iron-­Cleaver. The chain snapped free as Titus leapt for her.

Titus didn’t see it coming, and there was something like shock in his eyes as the bait beast tackled him and they rolled.

Titus was twice its size and uninjured, and Manon didn’t wait to see the outcome before she took off for the tunnel, where the men ­were frantically lifting the grate.

But then a boom and a shocked murmur sounded, and Manon dared one look in time to see the wyverns leap apart and the bait beast strike again.

The blow from that scarred, useless tail was so strong Titus’s head slammed into the dirt.

As Titus surged to his legs, the bait beast feinted with its tail and made a swipe with jagged claws that had Titus roaring in pain.

Manon froze, barely fifteen feet from the gate.

The wyverns circled each other, wings scraping against the ground. It should have been a joke. And yet the bait beast ­wouldn’t stand down, despite the limp, despite the scars and the blood.

Titus went right for the throat with no warning growl.

The bait beast’s tail connected with Titus’s head. Titus reeled back but then lunged, jaws and tail snapping. Once those barbs got into the flesh of the bait beast, it would be done. The bait beast dodged the tail by slamming its own down atop it, but ­couldn’t escape the jaws that latched on to its neck.

Over. It should be over.

The bait beast thrashed, but ­couldn’t get free. Manon knew she should run. Others ­were shouting. She had been born without sympathy or mercy or kindness. She didn’t care which one of them lived or died, so long as she escaped. But that current was still flowing, flowing toward the fight, not away from it. And she owed the bait beast a life debt.

So Manon did the most foolish thing she’d ever done in her long, wicked life.

She ran for Titus and brought Wind-­Cleaver down upon his tail. She severed clean through flesh and bone, and Titus roared, releasing his prey. The stump of his tail lashed at her, and Manon took it right in the stomach, the air knocked out of her before she even hit the ground. When she raised herself, she saw the final lunge that ended it.

Throat exposed by his bellow of pain, Titus didn’t stand a chance as the bait beast pounced and closed its jaws around that mighty neck.

Titus had one last thrash, one final attempt to pry himself free. The bait beast held firm, as though he’d been waiting for weeks or months or years. He clamped down and wrenched his head away, taking Titus’s throat with him.

Silence fell. As if the world itself stopped when Titus’s body crashed to the ground, black blood spilling everywhere.

Manon stood absolutely still. Slowly, the bait beast lifted its head from the carcass, Titus’s blood dripping from his maw. Their eyes met.

People ­were shouting at her to run, and the gate groaned open, but Manon stared into those black eyes, one of them horribly scarred but intact. He took a step, then another toward her.

Manon held her ground. It was impossible. Impossible. Titus was twice his size, twice his weight, and had years of training.

The bait beast had trounced him—­not because he was bigger or stronger, but because he wanted it more. Titus had been a brute and a killer, yet this wyvern before her . . . he was a warrior.

Men ­were rushing in with spears and swords and whips, and the bait beast growled.

Manon held up a hand. And again, the world stopped.

Manon, eyes still upon the beast, said, “He’s mine.”

He had saved her life. Not by coincidence, but by choice. He’d felt the current running between them, too. “What?” her grandmother barked from above.

Manon found herself walking toward the wyvern, and stopped with not five feet between them. “He’s mine,” Manon said, taking in the scars, the limp, the burning life in those eyes.

The witch and the wyvern looked at each other for a moment that lasted for a heartbeat, that lasted for eternity. “You’re mine,” Manon said to him.

The wyvern blinked at her, Titus’s blood still dripping from his cracked and broken teeth, and Manon had the feeling that he had come to the same decision. Perhaps he had known long before to­night, and his fight with Titus hadn’t been so much about survival as it had been a challenge to claim her.

As his rider. As his mistress. As his.

•

Manon named her wyvern Abraxos, after the ancient serpent who held the world between his coils at the behest of the Three-­Faced Goddess. And that was about the only pleasant thing that happened that night.

When she’d returned to the others, Abraxos taken away for cleaning and mending and Titus’s carcass hauled off by thirty men, Manon had stared down each and every witch who dared meet her eyes.

The Yellowlegs heir was being held by Asterin in front of the Matrons. Manon gazed at Iskra for a long moment before she simply said, “Looks like I lost my footing.”

Iskra steamed at the ears, but Manon shrugged, wiping the dirt and blood from her face before limping back to the Omega. She ­wouldn’t give Iskra the satisfaction of claiming she’d almost killed her. And Manon was in no shape to settle this in a proper fight.

Attack or clumsiness, Asterin was punished by Mother Blackbeak that night for letting the heir fall into the pit. Manon had asked to be the one to dispense the whipping, but her grandmother ignored her. Instead, she had the Yellowlegs heir do it. As Asterin’s failure had occurred in plain sight of the other Matrons and their heirs, so would her punishment.

Standing in the mess hall, Manon watched each brutal lash, all ten of them at full strength, as Iskra sported a bruise on her jaw courtesy of Asterin.

To her everlasting credit, Asterin didn’t scream. Not once. It still took all of Manon’s self-­restraint to keep from grabbing the whip and using it to strangle Iskra.

Then came the conversation with her grandmother. It ­wasn’t so much a conversation as it was a slap in the face, then a verbal beating that—­a day later—­still made Manon’s ears ring.

She’d humiliated her grandmother and every Blackbeak in history by picking that “runty scrap of meat,” regardless of his victory. It was a fluke that he’d killed Titus, her grandmother ranted. Abraxos was the smallest of any of the mounts, and on top of that, because of his size, he had never flown a day in his life. They had never let him out of the warrens.

They didn’t even know if he could fly after his wings had taken a beating for so long, and the handlers ­were of the opinion that should Abraxos attempt the Crossing, he’d splatter himself and Manon on the Gap floor. They claimed no other wyverns would ever accept his dominance, not as a Wing Leader. Manon had ruined all of her grandmother’s plans.

All these facts ­were shouted at her again and again. She knew that if she even wanted to change mounts, her grandmother would force her to keep Abraxos, just to humiliate her when she failed. Even if it got her killed in the pro­cess.

Her grandmother hadn’t been in the pit, though. She hadn’t looked into Abraxos’s eyes and seen the warrior’s heart beating in him. She hadn’t noticed that he’d fought with more cunning and ferocity than any of the others. So Manon held firm and took the slap to the face, and the lecture, and then the second slap that left her cheek throbbing.

Manon’s face was still aching when she reached the pen in which Abraxos now made his home. He was curled by the far wall, silent and still when so many of the creatures ­were pacing or shrieking or growling.

Her escort, the overseer, peered through the bars. Asterin lurked in the shadows. After the whipping last night, her Second ­wasn’t going to let her out of her sight anytime soon.

Manon hadn’t apologized for the whipping. The rules ­were the rules, and her cousin had failed. Asterin deserved the lashing, just as Manon deserved the bruise on her cheek.

“Why’s he curled up like that?” Manon asked the man.

“Suspect it’s ’cause he’s never had a pen to himself. Not this big, anyway.”

Manon studied the penned-­in cavern. “Where did they keep him before?”

The man pointed at the floor. “With the other baiters in the sty. He’s the oldest of the baiters, you know. Survived the pits and the stys. But that ­doesn’t mean he’s suitable for you.”

“If I wanted your opinion on his suitability, I’d ask for it,” Manon said, eyes still on Abraxos as she approached the bars. “How long to get him in the skies?”

The man rubbed his head. “Could be days or weeks or months. Could be never.”

“We begin training with our mounts this afternoon.”

“Not going to happen.” Manon raised her brows. “This one needs to be trained alone first. I’ll get our best trainers on it, and you can use another wyvern in the meantime to—”

“First of all, human,” Manon interrupted, “don’t give me orders.” Her iron teeth snapped out, and he flinched. “Second, I won’t be training with another wyvern. I’ll train with him.”

The man was pale as death as he said, “All your sentinels’ mounts will attack him. And the first flight will spook him so bad that he’ll fight back. So unless you want your soldiers and their mounts to tear each other apart, I suggest you train alone.” He trembled and added, “Milady.”

The wyvern was watching them. Waiting. “Can they understand us?”

“No. Some spoken commands and whistles, but no more than a dog.”

Manon didn’t believe that for one moment. It ­wasn’t that he was lying to her. He just didn’t know any better. Or maybe Abraxos was different.

She’d use every moment until the War Games to train him. When she and her Thirteen ­were crowned victors, she’d make each and every one of the witches who doubted her, her grandmother included, curse themselves for fools. Because she was Manon Blackbeak, and she’d never failed at anything. And there would be nothing better than watching Abraxos bite off Iskra’s head on the battlefield.

24

It was far too easy to lie to his men about the bruises and cuts on his face when Chaol returned to the castle—­an unfortunate incident with a drunk vagrant in Rifthold. Enduring the lies and the injuries was better than being carrion. Chaol’s bargain with Aedion and the rebels had been simple: information for information.

He’d promised more information about their queen, as well as about the king’s black rings, in exchange for what they knew regarding the king’s power. It had kept him alive that night, and every night afterward, when he’d waited for them to change their minds. But they never came for him, and to­night, he and Aedion waited until well past twelve before slipping into Celaena’s old rooms.

It was the first time he’d dared return to the tomb since that night with Celaena and Dorian, and the skull-­shaped bronze knocker, Mort, didn’t move or speak at all. Even though Chaol wore the Eye of Elena at his throat, the knocker remained frozen. Perhaps Mort only answered to those with Brannon Galathynius’s blood in their veins.

So he and Aedion combed through the tomb, the dusty halls, scouring every inch for signs of spies or ways to be discovered. When they ­were at last satisfied that no one could overhear them, Aedion said, “Tell me what I’m doing down ­here, Captain.”

The general had shown no awe or surprise as Chaol had led him into Elena and Gavin’s resting place, though his eyes had widened slightly at Damaris. But whether or not Aedion knew what it was, he’d said nothing. For all his brashness and arrogance, Chaol had a feeling the man had many, many secrets—­and was damn good at concealing them.

It was the other reason why he’d offered the bargain to Aedion and his companions: if the prince’s gifts ­were discovered, Dorian would need somewhere to hide, and someone to get him to safety if Chaol ­were incapacitated. Chaol said, “Are you prepared to share what­ever information you’ve gathered from your allies?”

Aedion gave him a lazy grin. “So long as you share yours.”

Chaol prayed to any god that would listen that he ­wasn’t making the wrong move as he pulled the Eye of Elena from his tunic. “Your Queen gave this necklace to me when she left for Wendlyn. It belonged to her ancestor—­who summoned her ­here, to give it to her.” Aedion’s eyes narrowed as he took in the amulet, the blue stone shimmering in the moonlight. “What I am about to tell you,” Chaol said, “changes everything.”

•

Dorian stood in the shadows of the stairwell, listening. Listening, and not quite wanting to accept that Chaol was in the tomb with Aedion Ashryver.

That had been the first shock. For the past week, he’d been creeping down ­here to hunt for answers after his explosion with Sorscha. Especially now that she had lied through her teeth and risked everything to keep his secret—­and to help him find a way to control it.

To­night he’d been horrified to find the secret door left slightly ajar. He shouldn’t have come, but he’d done it anyway, making up an easy list of lies to tell should he find an unfriendly face down ­here. Then he’d gotten close enough to hear the two male voices and almost fled . . . Almost, until he’d realized who was talking.

It was impossible, because they hated each other. Yet there they ­were, in Elena’s tomb. Allies. It was enough, too much. But then he’d heard it—­heard what Chaol said to the general, so quietly it was barely audible. “Your Queen gave this necklace to me when she left for Wendlyn.”

It was a mistake. It had to be a mistake, because . . . His chest had become too tight, too small.

You will always be my enemy. That’s what Celaena had screamed at Chaol the night Nehemia died. And she’d said—­said that she’d lost people ten years ago, but . . .

But.

Dorian ­couldn’t move as Chaol launched into another story, another truth. About Dorian’s own father. About the power the king wielded. Celaena had discovered it. Celaena was trying to find a way to destroy it.

His father had made that thing they’d fought in the library catacombs—­that monstrous thing that had seemed human. Wyrdkeys. Wyrdgates. Wyrd-­stone.

They had lied to him, too. They had decided he ­wasn’t to be trusted. Celaena and Chaol—­they’d decided against him. Chaol had known who and what Celaena truly was.

It was why he’d sent her to Wendlyn—­why he’d gotten her out of the castle. Dorian was still frozen on the stairs when Aedion slipped out of the tomb, sword out and looking ready to attack what­ever enemy he’d detected.

Spotting him, Aedion swore, low and viciously, his eyes bright in the glow of his torch.

Celaena’s eyes. Aelin Ashryver—Ashryver—Galathynius’s eyes.

Aedion was her cousin. And he was still loyal to her—­lying through his teeth, through every action, about where his allegiance lay.

Chaol rushed into the hall, a hand lifted beseechingly. “Dorian.”

For a moment, he could only stare at his friend. Then he managed to say, “Why?”

Chaol loosed a breath. “Because the fewer people who know, the safer—­for her, for everyone. For you. They have information that might help you.”

“You think I’d run to my father?” The words ­were barely more than a strangled whisper as the temperature plummeted.

Chaol stepped forward, putting himself between Aedion and Dorian, his palms exposed. Placating. “I ­can’t afford to guess—­to hope. Even with you.”

“How long?” Ice coated his teeth, his tongue.

“She told me about your father before she left. I figured out who she is soon afterward.”

“And you’re working with him now.”

The captain’s breath clouded in front of him. “If we can find a way to free magic, it could save you. They think they might have some answers about what happened, and how to reverse it. But if Aedion and his allies are caught, if she is caught . . . they will die. Your father will put them all down, starting with her. And right now, Dorian, we need them.”

Dorian turned to Aedion. “Are you going to kill my father?”

“Does he not deserve to die?” was the general’s reply.

Dorian could see the captain wincing—­not at the general’s words, but at the cold. “Did you tell him—­about me?” Dorian ground out.

“No,” Aedion answered for Chaol. “Though if you don’t learn to control yourself, there soon won’t be a soul in the realm who ­doesn’t know you have magic.” Aedion slid those heirloom eyes to the captain. “So that’s why you ­were so desperate to trade secrets—­you wanted the information for his sake.” A nod from Chaol. Aedion smirked at Dorian, and ice coated the stairwell. “Does your magic manifest in ice and snow, then, princeling?” the general asked.

“Come closer and find out,” Dorian said with a faint smile. Perhaps he could throw Aedion across the hall, just as he had with that creature.

“Aedion can be trusted, Dorian,” Chaol said.

“He’s as two-­faced as they come. I don’t believe for one heartbeat that he ­wouldn’t sell us out if it meant furthering his own cause.”

“He won’t,” Chaol snapped, cutting off Aedion’s reply. Chaol’s lips went blue from the cold.

Dorian knew he was hurting him—­knew it, and didn’t quite care. “Because you want to be Aedion’s king someday?”

Chaol’s face drained of color, from the cold or from fear, and Aedion barked a laugh. “My queen will die heirless sooner than marry a man from Adarlan.”

Chaol tried to hide his flicker of pain, but Dorian knew his friend well enough to spot it. For a second he wondered what Celaena would think about Aedion’s claim. Celaena, who had lied—­Celaena, who was Aelin, whom he had met ten years ago, whom he had played with in her beautiful castle. And that day in Endovier—­that first day, he had felt as if there ­were something familiar about her . . . Oh gods.

Celaena was Aelin Galathynius. He had danced with her, kissed her, slept beside her, his mortal enemy. I’ll come back for you, she’d said her final day ­here. Even then, he’d known there was something ­else behind it. She would come back, but perhaps not as Celaena. Would it be to help him, or to kill him? Aelin Galathynius knew about his magic—­and wanted to destroy his father, his kingdom. Everything she had ever said or done . . . He’d once thought it had been a charade to win favor as his Champion, but what if it had been because she was the heir of Terrasen? Was that why she was friends with Nehemia? What if, after a year in Endovier . . .

Aelin Galathynius had spent a year in that labor camp. A queen of their continent had been a slave, and would bear the scars of it forever. Perhaps that entitled her, and Aedion, and even Chaol who loved her, to conspire to deceive and betray his father.

“Dorian, please,” Chaol said. “I’m doing this for you—­I swear it.”

“I don’t care,” Dorian said, staring them down as he walked out. “I will carry your secrets to the grave—­but I want no part of them.”

He ripped his cold magic from the air and turned it inward, wrapping it around his heart.

•

Aedion took the secret subterranean exit out of the castle. He’d told Chaol it was to avoid any suspicion, to lose anyone ­else trailing them as they went back to their rooms. One look from the captain told him he knew precisely where Aedion was headed.

Aedion contemplated what the captain had told him—­and though any other man would be horrified, though Aedion should be horrified . . . he ­wasn’t surprised. He’d suspected the king was wielding some sort of deadly power from the moment he’d given him that ring all those years ago, and it seemed in line with information his spies had long been gathering.

The Yellowlegs Matron had been ­here for a reason. Aedion was willing to bet good money that what­ever monstrosities or weapons the king was creating, they would see them soon enough, perhaps with the witches in tow. Men didn’t build more armies and forge more weapons without having plans to use them. And they certainly didn’t hand out bits of mind-­controlling jewelry unless they wanted absolute do­min­ion. But he would face what was coming just as he had every other trial in his life: precisely, unyieldingly, and with lethal efficiency.

He spotted the two figures waiting in the shadows of a ramshackle building by the docks, the fog off the Avery making them little more than wisps of darkness.

“Well?” Ren demanded as Aedion leaned against a damp brick wall. Ren’s twin swords ­were out. Good Adarlanian steel, nicked and scratched enough to show they’d been used, and well-­oiled enough to show Ren knew how to care for them. They seemed to be the only things Ren cared about—­his hair was shaggy, and his clothes looked a bit worse for wear.

“I already told you: we can trust the captain.” Aedion looked at Murtaugh. “Hello, old man.”

He ­couldn’t see Murtaugh’s face beneath the shadows of his hood, but his voice was too soft as he said, “I hope the information is worth the risks you are taking.”

Aedion snarled. He ­wouldn’t tell them the truth about Aelin, not until she was back at his side and could tell them herself.

Ren took a step closer. He moved with the self-­assurance of someone who was used to fighting. And winning. Still, Aedion had at least three inches and twenty pounds of muscle on him. Should Ren attack, he’d find himself on his ass in a heartbeat. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, Aedion,” Ren said, “but if you don’t tell us where she is, how can we can trust you? And how does the captain know? Does the king have her?”

“No,” Aedion said. It ­wasn’t a lie, but it felt like one. As Celaena, she’d signed her soul to him. “The way I see it, Ren, you and your grandfather have little to offer me—­or Aelin. You don’t have a war band, you don’t have lands, and the captain told me all about your affi­liation with that piece of shit Archer Finn. Do I need to remind you what happened to Nehemia Ytger on your watch? So I’m not going to tell you; you’ll receive information on a need-­to-­know basis.”

Ren started. Murtaugh put an arm between them. “It’s better we don’t know, just in case.”

Ren ­wouldn’t back down, and Aedion’s blood raced at the challenge. “What are we going to tell the court, then?” Ren demanded. “That she’s not some imposter as we ­were led to believe, but actually alive—­yet you won’t tell us where?”

“Yes,” Aedion breathed, wondering just how badly he could bloody up Ren without hurting Murtaugh in the pro­cess. “That’s exactly what you’ll tell them. If you can even find the court.”

Silence. Murtaugh said, “We know Ravi and Sol are still alive and in Suria.”

Aedion knew the story. Their family’s trade business had been too important to the king to warrant executing both their parents. So their father had chosen the execution block, and their mother had been left to keep Suria running as a vital trade port. The two Surian boys would be twenty and twenty-­two by now, and since his mother’s death, Sol had become Lord of Suria. In his years leading the Bane, Aedion had never set foot in the coastal city. He didn’t want to know if they’d damn him. Adarlan’s Whore.

“Will they fight,” Aedion said, “or will they decide they like their gold too much?”

Murtaugh sighed. “I’ve heard Ravi is the wilder one—­he might be the one to convince.”

“I don’t want anyone that we have to convince to join us,” Aedion said.

“You’ll want people who aren’t afraid of Aelin—­or you,” Murtaugh snapped. “You’ll want levelheaded people who won’t hesitate to ask the hard questions. Loyalty is earned, not given.”

“She ­doesn’t have to do a damn thing to earn our loyalty.”

Murtaugh shook his head, his cowl swaying. “For some of us, yes. But others might not be so easily convinced. She has ten years to account for—­and a kingdom in ruin.”

“She was a child.”

“She is a woman now, and has been for a few years. Perhaps she will offer an explanation. But until then, Aedion, you must understand that others might not share your fervor. And others might take a good amount of convincing about you as well—­about where your true loyalties lie and how you have demonstrated them over the years.”

He wanted to bash Murtaugh’s teeth down his throat, if only because he was right. “Who ­else of Orlon’s inner circle is still alive?”

Murtaugh named four. Ren quickly added, “We heard they ­were in hiding for years—­always moving around, like us. They might not be easy to find.”

Four. Aedion’s stomach dropped. “That’s it?” He’d been in Terrasen, but he’d never looked for an exact body count, never wanted to know who made it through the bloodshed and slaughter, or who had sacrificed everything to get a child, a friend, a family member out. Of course he’d known deep down, but there had always been some fool’s hope that most were still alive, still waiting to return.

“I’m sorry, Aedion,” Murtaugh said softly. “Some minor lords escaped, and even managed to hold onto their lands and keep them thriving.” Aedion knew and hated most of them—self-serving pigs. Murtaugh went on. “Vernon Lochan survived, but only because he was already the king’s puppet, and after Cal was executed, Vernon seized his brother’s mantle as Lord of Perranth. You know what happened to Lady Marion. But we never learned what happened to Elide.” Elide—­Lord Cal and Lady Marion’s daughter and heir, almost a year younger than Aelin. If she ­were alive, she would be at least seventeen by now. “Lots of children vanished in the initial weeks,” Murtaugh finished. Aedion didn’t want to think about those too-­small graves.

He had to look away for a moment, and even Ren stayed quiet. At last, Aedion said, “Send out feelers to Ravi and Sol, but hold off on the others. Ignore the minor lords for now. Small steps.”

To his surprise, Ren said, “Agreed.” For a heartbeat, their eyes met, and he knew that Ren felt what he often did—­what he tried to keep buried. They had survived, when so many had not. And no one ­else could understand what it was like to bear it, unless they had lost as much.

Ren had escaped at the cost of his parents’ lives—­and had lost his home, his title, his friends, and his kingdom. He had hidden and trained and never lost sight of his cause.

They ­were not friends now; they never really had been. Ren’s father hadn’t particularly liked that Aedion, not Ren, was favored to take the blood oath to Aelin. The oath of pure submission—­the oath that would have sealed Aedion as her lifelong protector, the one person in whom she could have absolute trust. Everything he possessed, everything he was, should have belonged to her.

Yet the prize now was not just a blood oath but a kingdom—­a shot at vengeance and rebuilding their world. Aedion made to walk away, but looked back. Just two cloaked figures, one hunched, the other tall and armed. The first shred of Aelin’s court. The court he’d raise for her to shatter Adarlan’s chains. He could keep playing the game—­for a little longer.

“When she returns,” Aedion said quietly, “what she will do to the King of Adarlan will make the slaughtering ten years ago look merciful.” And in his heart, Aedion hoped he spoke true.

25

A week passed without any further attempts to skin Celaena alive, so even though she made absolutely no progress with Rowan, she considered it to be a success. Rowan lived up to his word about her pulling double duty in the kitchens—­the only upside of which was that she was so exhausted when she tumbled into bed that she did not remember dreaming. Another benefit, she supposed, was that while she was scrubbing the eve­ning dishes, she could listen to Emrys’s stories—­which Luca begged for every night, regardless of rain.

Despite what had happened with the skinwalkers, Celaena was no closer to mastering her shift. Even though Rowan had offered his cloak that night beside the river, the next morning had brought them back to their usual vitriolic dislike. Hatred felt like a strong word, as she ­couldn’t quite hate someone who had saved her, but dislike fit pretty damn well. She didn’t particularly care what side of the hatred-­dislike line Rowan was on. But gaining his approval to enter Doranelle was undoubtedly a long, long way off.

Every day, he brought her to the temple ruins—­far enough away that if she did manage to shift and lost control of her magic in the pro­cess, she ­wouldn’t incinerate anyone. Everything—everything—depended on that command: shift. But the memory of what the magic had felt like as it seared out of her, when it threatened to swallow her and the ­whole world, plagued her, waking and asleep. It was almost as bad as the endless sitting.

Now, after two miserable hours of it, she groaned and stood, stalking around the ruins. It was unusually sunny that day, making the pale stones seem to glow. In fact, she could have sworn that the whispered prayers of long-­gone worshippers still resonated. Her magic had been flickering oddly in response—­strange, in her human form, where it was normally so bolted down.

As she studied the ruins, she braced her hands on her hips: anything to keep from ripping out her hair. “What was this place, anyway?” Only slabs of broken stone remained to show where the temple had stood. A few oblong stones—­pillars—were tossed about as if a hand had scattered them, and several stones grouped together indicated what had once been a road.

Rowan dogged her steps, a thundercloud closing in around her as she examined a cluster of white stones. “The Sun Goddess’s temple.”

Mala, Lady of Light, Learning, and Fire. “You’ve been bringing me ­here because you think it might help with mastering my powers—­my shifting?”

A vague nod. She put a hand on one of the massive stones. If she felt like admitting it, she could almost sense the echoes of the power that had dwelled ­here long ago, a delicious heat kissing its way up her neck, down her spine, as if some piece of that goddess were still curled up in the corner. It explained why today, in the sun, the temple felt different. Why her magic was jumpy. Mala, Sun Goddess and Light-­Bringer, was sister and eternal rival to Deanna, Keeper of the Moon.

“Mab was immortalized into godhood thanks to Maeve,” Celaena mused as she ran a hand down the jagged block. “But that was over five hundred years ago. Mala had a sister in the moon long before Mab took her place.”

“Deanna was the original sister’s name. But you humans gave her some of Mab’s traits. The hunting, the hounds.”

“Perhaps Deanna and Mala ­weren’t always rivals.”

“What are you getting at?”

She shrugged and kept running her hands along the stone, feeling, breathing, smelling. “Did you ever know Mab?”

Rowan was quiet for a long moment—­contemplating the usefulness of telling her, no doubt. “No,” he said at last. “I am old, but not that old.”

Fine—if he didn’t want to give her an actual number . . . “Do you feel old?”

He gazed into the distance. “I am still considered young by the standards of my kind.”

It ­wasn’t an answer. “You said that you once campaigned in a kingdom that no longer exists. You’ve been off to war several times, it seems, and seen the world. That would leave its mark. Age you on the inside.”

“Do you feel old?” His gaze was unflinching. A child—­a girl, he’d called her.

She was a girl to him. Even when she became an old woman—­if she lived that long—­she’d still be a child in comparison to his life span. Her mission depended upon his seeing her otherwise, but she still said, “These days, I am very glad to be a mortal, and to only have to endure this life once. These days, I don’t envy you at all.”

“And before?”

It was her turn to stare toward the horizon. “I used to wish I had a chance to see it all—­and hated that I never would.”

She could feel him forming a question, but she started moving again, examining the stones. As she dusted the block off, an image emerged of a stag with a glowing star between its antlers, so like the one in Terrasen. She’d heard Emrys tell the story of the sun stags, who held an immortal flame between their massive antlers and who had once been stolen from a temple in this land . . . “Is this where the stags ­were kept—­before this place was destroyed?”

“I don’t know. This temple ­wasn’t destroyed; it was abandoned when the Fae moved to Doranelle, and then ruined by time and weather.”

“Emrys’s stories said destroyed, not abandoned.”

“Again, what are you getting at?”

But she didn’t know, not yet, so she just shook her head and said, “The Fae on my continent—­in Terrasen . . . they ­weren’t like you. At least, I don’t remember them being that way. There ­weren’t many, but . . .” She swallowed hard. “The King of Adarlan hunted and killed them, so easily. Yet when I look at you, I don’t understand how he did it.” Even with the Wyrdkeys, the Fae had been stronger, faster. More should have survived, even if some had been trapped in their animal forms when magic vanished.

She looked over her shoulder at him, one hand still pressed against the warm carving. A muscle flickered in Rowan’s jaw before he said, “I’ve never been to your continent, but I heard that the Fae there ­were gentler—­less aggressive, very few trained in combat—­and they relied heavily on magic. Once magic was gone from your lands, many of them might not have known what to do against trained soldiers.”

“And yet Maeve ­wouldn’t send aid.”

“The Fae of your continent long ago severed ties with Maeve.” He paused again. “But there ­were some in Doranelle who argued in favor of helping. My queen wound up offering sanctuary to any who could make it ­here.”

She didn’t want to know more—­didn’t want to know how many had made it, and whether he had been one of the few who argued to save their western brethren. So she moved away from the carving of the mythical stag, instantly cold as she severed contact with the delightful heat living within the stone. Part of her could have sworn that ancient, strange power was sad to see her go.

The next day, Celaena finished her breakfast shift in the kitchens achy and more drained than usual, as Luca hadn’t been there to help, which meant she’d spent the morning chopping, washing, and then running the food upstairs.

Celaena passed a sentry she’d marked as Luca’s friend and a frequent listener to Emrys’s stories—­young, leanly muscled, with no evidence of Fae ears or grace. Bas, the leader of the fortress scouts. Luca prattled about him endlessly. Celaena gave him a small smile and nod. Bas blinked a few times, gave a tentative smile back, and sauntered on, probably to his watch on the wall. She frowned. She’d said a civilized hello to plenty of them by now, but . . . She was still puzzling over his reaction when she reached her room and shrugged on her jacket.

“You’re already late,” Rowan said from the doorway.

“There ­were extra dishes this morning,” she said, rebraiding her hair as she turned to where he lounged in the doorway. “Can I expect to do something useful with you today, or will it be more sitting and growling and glaring? Or will I just wind up chopping wood for hours on end?”

He merely started into the hall and she followed, still braiding her hair. They passed another two sentries. This time, she looked them both in the eye and smiled her greeting. Again, that blink, and a shared look between them, and a returned grin. Had she really become so unpleasant that a mere smile was surprising? Gods—­when had she smiled last, at anyone or anything?

They ­were well away from the fortress, headed south and up into the mountains, when Rowan said, “They’ve all been keeping their distance because of the scent you put out.”

“Excuse me?” She didn’t want to know how he’d read her thoughts.

Rowan stalked through the trees, not even out of breath as he said, “There are more males than females ­here—­and they’re fairly isolated from the world. ­Haven’t you wondered why they ­haven’t approached you?”

“They stayed away because I . . . smell?” She didn’t think she would have cared enough to be embarrassed, but her face was burning.

“Your scent says that you don’t want to be approached. The males smell it more than the females, and have been staying the hell away. They don’t want their faces clawed off.”

She had forgotten how primal the Fae ­were, with their scents and mating and territorial nature. Such a strange contrast to the civilized world beyond the wall of the mountains. “Good,” she wound up saying, though the idea of her having her emotions so easily identifiable was unsettling. It made lying and pretending almost worthless. “I’m not interested in men . . . males.”

His tattoo was vivid in the dappled sunlight that streamed through the canopy as he stared pointedly at her ring. “What happens if you become queen? Will you refuse a potential alliance through marriage?”

An invisible hand seemed to wrap around her throat. She had not let herself consider that possibility, because the weight of a crown and a throne ­were enough to make her feel like she was in a coffin. The thought of marrying like that, of someone ­else’s body on hers, someone who was not Chaol . . . She shoved the thought away.

Rowan was baiting her, as he always did. And she still had no plans to take up her uncle’s throne. Her only plan was to do what she’d promised Nehemia. “Nice try,” she said.

His canines gleamed as he smirked. “You’re learning.”

“You get baited by me every now and then, too, you know.”

He gave her a look that said, I let you bait me, in case you ­haven’t noticed. I’m not some mortal fool.

She wanted to ask why, but being cordial with him—­with anyone—­was already odd enough. “Where the hell are we going today? We never head west.”

The smirk vanished. “You want to do something useful. So ­here’s your chance.”

•

With Celaena in her human form, the bells of some nearby town ­were heralding three ­o’clock by the time they reached the pine wood.

She didn’t ask what they ­were doing ­here. He’d tell her if he wanted to. Slowing to a prowl, Rowan tracked markers left on trees and stones, and she quietly trailed him, thirsty and hungry and a bit light-­headed.

The terrain had shifted: pine needles crunched beneath her boots, and gulls, not songbirds, cried overhead. The sea had to be close. Celaena groaned as a cool breeze kissed her sweaty face, scented with salt and fish and sun-­warmed rock. It ­wasn’t until Rowan halted by a stream that she noticed the reek—­and the silence.

The ground had been churned up across the stream, the brush broken and trampled. But Rowan’s attention was fixed on the stream itself, on what had been wedged between the rocks.

Celaena swore. A body. A woman, by the shape of what was left of her, and—

A husk.

As if she had been drained of life, of substance. No wounds, no lacerations or signs of harm, save for a trickle of dried blood from her nose and ears. Her skin was leached of color, withered and dried, her hollowed-­out face still stuck in an expression of horror—­and sorrow. And the smell—­not just the rotting body, but around it . . . the smell . . .

“What did this?” she asked, studying the disturbed forest beyond the stream. Rowan knelt as he examined the remains. “Why not just dump her in the sea? Leaving her in a stream seems idiotic. They left tracks, too—­unless those are from whoever found her.”

“Malakai gave me the report this morning—­and he and his men are trained not to leave tracks. But this scent . . . I’ll admit it’s different.” Rowan walked into the water. She wanted to tell him to stop, but he kept studying the remains from above, then below, circling. His eyes flashed to hers. They ­were furious. “So you tell me, assassin. You wanted to be useful.”

She bristled at the tone, but—­that was a woman lying there, broken like a doll.

Celaena didn’t particularly want to smell anything on the remains, but she sniffed. And wished she hadn’t. It was a smell she’d scented twice now—­once in that bloody chamber a de­cade ago, and then recently . . . “You claimed you didn’t know what that thing in the barrow field was,” she managed to say. The woman’s mouth was open in a scream, her teeth brown and cracked below the dried nosebleed. Celaena touched her own nose and winced. “I think this is what it does.”

Rowan braced his hands on his hips, sniffing again, turning in the stream. He scanned Celaena, then the body. “You came out of that darkness looking as if someone had sucked the life from you. Your skin was a shade paler, your freckles gone.”

“It forced me to go through . . . memories. The worst kind.” The woman’s horrified, sorrowful face gaped up at the canopy. “Have you ever heard of a creature that can feed on such things? When I glimpsed it, I saw a man—­a beautiful man, pale and dark-­haired, with eyes of full black. He ­wasn’t human. I mean, he looked it, but his eyes—­they ­weren’t human at all.”

Her parents had been assassinated. She’d seen the wounds. But the smell in their room had been so similar . . . She shook her head as if to clear it, to shake the creeping feeling moving up her spine.

“Even my queen ­doesn’t know every foul creature roaming these lands. If the skinwalkers are venturing down from the mountains, perhaps other things are, too.”

“The townspeople might know something. Maybe they’ve seen it or heard rumors.”

Rowan seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he shook his head in disgust—­and sorrow, to her surprise. “We don’t have the time; ­you wasted daylight by coming ­here in your human form.” They hadn’t brought any overnight supplies, either. “We have an hour before we head back. Make the most of it.”

•

The path led absolutely nowhere. It ran into a sea cliff with no way to the narrow strip of beach below, no sign of anyone living nearby. Rowan stood at the cliff ’s edge, arms crossed as he stared out at the jade sea. “It ­doesn’t make sense,” he said, more to himself than to her. “This is the fourth body in the last few weeks—­none of them reported missing.” He squatted on the sandy ground and drew a rough line in the dirt with a tattooed finger. The shape of Wendlyn’s coastline. “They’ve been found ­here.” Little dots, seemingly random save for being close to the water. “We’re ­here,” he said, making another dot. He sat back on his heels as Celaena peered at the crude map. “And yet you and I encountered the creature lurking amongst the barrow-­wights ­here,” he added, and drew an X where she assumed the mounds ­were, deep inland. “I ­haven’t seen any further signs of it remaining by the barrows, and the wights have returned to their usual habits.”

“Were the other bodies the same?”

“All ­were drained like this, with expressions of terror on their faces—­not a hint of a wound, beyond dried blood at the nose and ears.” From the way his tan skin paled beneath his tattoo, the way he gritted his teeth, she knew that it rankled his immortal pride not to know what this thing was.

“All dumped in the forest, not the sea?” A nod. “But all within walking distance of the water.” Another nod. “If it ­were a skilled, sentient killer, it would hide the bodies better. Or, again, use the sea.” She gazed to the blinding water, the sun starting its afternoon descent. “Or maybe it ­doesn’t care. Maybe it wants us to know what it’s doing. There ­were—­there ­were times when I left bodies so that they’d be found by a certain person, or to send a type of message.” Grave being the latest of them. “What do the victims have in common?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We don’t even know their names or where they came from.” He ­rose and dusted his hands off. “We need to return to the fortress.”

She grabbed his elbow. “Wait. Have you seen enough of the body?”

A slow nod. Good. So had she—­and she’d had enough of the smell, too. She’d committed it to memory, noting everything that she could. “Then ­we’ve got to bury her.”

“The ground’s too hard ­here.”

She stalked through the trees, leaving him behind. “Then we’ll do it the ancient way,” she called. She’d be damned if she left that woman’s body decomposing in a stream, damned if she left her there for all eternity, wet and cold.

Celaena pulled the too-­light body out of the stream, laying it on the brown pine needles. Rowan didn’t say anything as she gathered kindling and branches and then knelt, trying not to look at the shriveled skin or the expression of lingering horror.

Neither did he mock her for the few times it took to get the fire started by hand, or make any snide comments once the pine needles finally crinkled and smoked, ancient incense for a rudimentary pyre. Instead, as she stepped from the rising flames, she felt him come to tower behind her, felt the surety and half wildness of him wrap around her like a phantom body. A warm breeze licked at her hair, her face. Air to help the fire; wind that helped consume the corpse.

The loathing she felt had nothing to do with her vow, or Nehemia. Celaena reached into the ageless pit inside her—­just once—­to see if she could pull up what­ever trigger it was that caused the shift, so she could help her sad little fire burn more evenly, more proudly.

Yet Celaena remained stale and empty, stranded in her mortal body.

Still, Rowan didn’t say anything about it, and his wind fed the flames enough to make quick work of the body, burning far faster than a mortal pyre. They watched in silence, until there was nothing but ashes—­until even those ­were carried up and away, over the trees, and toward the open sea.

26

Chaol hadn’t seen or heard from the general or the prince since that night in the tomb. According to his men, the prince was spending his time in the healers’ catacombs, courting one of the young women down there. He hated himself, but some part of him was relieved to hear it; at least Dorian was talking to someone.

The rift with Dorian was worth it. For Dorian, even if his friend never forgave him; for Celaena, even if she never came back; even if he wished she ­were still Celaena and not Aelin . . . it was worth it.

It was a week before he had time to meet with Aedion again—­to get the information that he hadn’t received thanks to Dorian interrupting them. If Dorian had snuck up on them so easily, then the tomb ­wasn’t the best place to meet. There was one place, however, where they could gather with minimal risk. Celaena had left it to him in her will, along with the address.

The secret apartment above the ware­house was untouched, though someone had taken the time to cover the ornate furniture. Pulling the sheets off one by one was like uncovering a bit more of who Celaena had been before Endovier—­proof that her lavish tastes ran deep. She’d bought this place, she’d once told him, to have somewhere to call her own, a place outside the Assassins’ Keep where she’d been raised. She’d dropped almost every copper she had into it—­but it had been necessary, she said, for the bit of freedom it had granted her. He could have left the sheets on, probably should have, but . . . he was curious.

The apartment consisted of two bedrooms with their own bathing rooms, a kitchen, and a great room in which a deep-­cushioned couch sprawled before a carved marble fireplace, accented by two oversized velvet armchairs. The other half of the room was occupied by an oak dining table capable of seating eight, its place settings still laid out: plates of porcelain and silver, flatware that had long since gone dull. It was the only evidence that this apartment had been untouched since whoever—­Arobynn Hamel, probably—­had ordered the place sealed up.

Arobynn Hamel, the King of the Assassins. Chaol gritted his teeth as he finished stuffing the last of the white sheets into the hallway closet. He’d been thinking a good deal about Celaena’s old master in the past few days. Arobynn was smart enough to have put things together when he found a washed-­up orphan right after the Princess of Terrasen went missing, her body vanished into the half-­frozen Florine River.

If Arobynn had known, and done those things to her . . . The scar on Celaena’s wrist flashed before him. He’d made her break her own hand. There must have been countless other brutalities that Celaena didn’t even tell him about. And the worst of them, the absolute worst . . .

He’d never asked Celaena why, when she was appointed Champion, her first priority ­wasn’t hunting down her master and cutting him into pieces for what he’d done to her lover, Sam Cortland. Arobynn had ordered Sam tortured and killed, and then devised a trap for Celaena that got her hauled off to Endovier. Arobynn must have expected to retrieve her someday, if he’d left this apartment untouched. He must have wanted to let her rot in Endovier—­until he decided to free her and she crawled back to him, his eternally loyal servant.

It was her right, Chaol told himself. Her right to decide when and how to kill Arobynn. It was Aedion’s right, too. Even the two lords of Terrasen had more of a claim on Arobynn’s head than he did. But if Chaol ever saw him, he ­wasn’t sure he would be able to restrain himself.

The rickety wooden staircase beyond the front door groaned, and Chaol had his sword drawn in a heartbeat. Then there was a low, two-­note whistle and he relaxed, just slightly, and whistled back. He kept his sword drawn until Aedion strode through the door, sword out.

“I was wondering whether you’d be ­here alone, or with a gaggle of men waiting in the shadows,” Aedion said by way of greeting, sheathing his sword.

Chaol glared at him. “Likewise.”

Aedion moved farther into the apartment, the fierceness on his face shifting among wariness, wonder, and sorrow. And it occurred to Chaol that this apartment was the first time Aedion was seeing a piece of his lost cousin. These ­were her things. She had selected everything, from the figurines atop the mantel to the green napkins to the old farm table in the kitchen, flecked and marred by what seemed like countless knives.

Aedion paused in the center of the room, scanning everything. Perhaps to see if there ­were indeed any hidden forces lying in wait, but . . . Chaol muttered something about using the bathing room and gave Aedion the privacy he needed.

•

This was her apartment. Whether she accepted or hated her past, she’d decorated the dining table in Terrasen’s royal colors—­green and silver. The table and the stag figurine atop the mantel ­were the only shreds of proof that she might remember. Might care.

Everything ­else was comfortable, tasteful, as if the apartment ­were for lounging and nights by the fire. And there ­were so many books—­on shelves, on the tables by the couch, stacked beside the large armchair before the curtained floor-­to-­ceiling window spanning the entire length of the great room.

Smart. Educated. Cultured, if the knickknacks ­were any indication. There ­were things from across the kingdoms, as if she’d picked up something everywhere she went. The room was a map of her adventures, a map of a ­whole different person. Aelin had lived. She’d lived, and seen and done things.

The kitchen was small but cozy—­and . . . Gods. She had a cooling box. The captain had mentioned her being notorious as an assassin, but he hadn’t mentioned that she was rich. All that blood money—­all these things just proof of what she’d lost. What he’d failed to protect.

She’d become a killer. A damn good one, if this apartment was any indication. Her bedroom was even more outrageous. It had a massive four-­poster bed with a mattress that looked like a cloud, and an attached marble-­tiled bathing room that possessed its own plumbing system.

Well, her closet hadn’t changed. His cousin had always loved pretty clothes. Aedion pulled out a deep blue tunic, gold embroidery around the lapels and buttons glimmering in the light from the sconces. These ­were clothes for a woman’s body. And the scent still clinging to the entire apartment belonged to a woman—­so similar to what he remembered from childhood, but wrapped in mystery and secret smiles. It was impossible for his Fae senses not to notice, to react.

Aedion leaned against the wall of the dressing room, staring at the gowns and the displays of jewelry, now coated in dust. He didn’t let himself care about what had been done to him in the past, the people he’d ruined, the battlefields he’d walked off covered in blood and gore that ­wasn’t his own. As far as he was concerned, he’d lost everything the day Aelin died. He had deserved the punishment for how badly he’d failed. But Aelin . . .

Aedion ran his hands through his hair before stepping into the great room. Aelin would come back from Wendlyn, no matter what the captain believed. Aelin would come back, and when she did . . . With every breath, Aedion felt that lingering scent wrapping tighter around his heart and soul. When she came back, he was never letting her go.

•

Aedion sank onto one of the armchairs before the fire as Chaol said, “Well, I think I’ve waited long enough to hear what you have to say about magic. I hope it’s worthwhile.”

“Regardless of what I know, magic shouldn’t be your main plan of defense—­or action.”

“I saw your queen cleave the earth in two with her power,” Chaol said. “Tell me that ­wouldn’t turn the tide on a battlefield—­tell me that you ­wouldn’t need that, and others like her.”

“She won’t be anywhere near those battlefields,” Aedion snarled softly.

Chaol highly doubted that was true, but wished it was. Aedion would probably have to bind Celaena to her throne to keep her from fighting on the front lines with her people. “Just tell me.”

Aedion sighed and gazed at the fire, as if beholding a distant horizon. “The burnings and executions had already started by the time magic disappeared, so the day it happened, I thought the birds ­were just fleeing the soldiers, or looking for carrion. I was locked in one of the tower rooms by the king’s orders. Most days I didn’t dare look out the window because I didn’t want to see what was happening in the city below, but there was such noise from the birds that day that I looked. And . . .” Aedion shook his head. “Something sent them all flying up in one direction, then another. And then the screaming started. I heard some people just died right on the spot, as if an artery had been cut.”

Aedion spread out a map on the low table between them and put a callused finger on Orynth. “There ­were two waves of birds. The first went north-northwest.” He traced a vague line. “From the tower, I could see far enough that I knew many of them had come from the south—­most of the birds near us didn’t move much. But then the second wave shoved all of them to the north and east, like something from the center of the land threw them that way.”

Chaol pointed to Perranth, the second-­largest city in Terrasen. “From ­here?”

“Farther south.” Aedion knocked Chaol’s hand out of the way. “Endovier or even lower.”

“You ­couldn’t have seen that far.”

“No, but the warrior-­lords of my court made me memorize the birds in Oakwald and all their calls for hunting—­and fighting. And there ­were birds flying up toward us that ­were only found in your country. I was counting them to distract myself while—” Another pause, as if Aedion hadn’t meant to say that. “I don’t remember hearing any birds from the three southern kingdoms.”

Chaol made a rough line, starting in Rifthold and going out toward the mountains, toward the Ferian Gap. “Like something shot out in this direction.”

“It ­wasn’t until the second wave that magic stopped.” Aedion raised a brow. “Don’t you remember that day?”

“I was ­here; ­if anyone felt pain, they hid it. Magic’s been illegal in Adarlan for de­cades. So where does all this get us, Aedion?”

“Well, Murtaugh and Ren had similar experiences.” So then the general launched into another tale: like Aedion, Ren and Murtaugh had experienced a frenzy of local animals and twin waves of something the day magic had disappeared. But they’d been in the southern part of their continent, having just arrived in Skull’s Bay.

It ­wasn’t until six months ago, when they’d been lured into the city by Archer Finn’s lies about Aelin’s reemergence, that they’d started considering magic—­contemplating ways to break the king’s power for their queen. After comparing notes with the other rebels in Rifthold, they realized that others had experienced similar phenomena. Wanting to get a full account, they’d found a merchant from the Deserted Peninsula who was willing to talk—­a man from Xandria who was surprisingly honest, despite the business he’d built on contraband items.

I stole an Asterion mare from the Lord of Xandria.

Of course Celaena had been to the Deserted Peninsula. And sought out trouble. Despite the ache in his chest, Chaol smiled at the memory as Aedion recalled Murtaugh’s report of the merchant’s account.

Not two waves when magic vanished in the desert, but three.

The first swept down from the north. The merchant had been with the Lord of Xandria in his fortress high above the city and had seen a faint tremor that made the red sand dance. The second came from the southwest, barreling right toward them like a sandstorm. The final pulse came from the same inland source Aedion remembered. Seconds later, magic was gone, and people ­were screaming in the streets, and the Lord of Xandria got the order, a week later, to put down all the known or registered magic-­wielders in his city. Then the screaming had become different.

Aedion gave him a sly grin as he finished. “But Murtaugh figured out more. ­We’re meeting in three days. He can tell you his theories then.”

Chaol started from his chair. “That’s it? That’s all you know—­what you’ve been lording over me these past few weeks?”

“There’s still more for you to tell me, so why should I tell you everything?”

“I’ve told you vital, world-­changing information,” Chaol said through his teeth. “You’ve just told me stories.”

Aedion’s eyes took on a lethal glint. “You’ll want to hear what Ren and Murtaugh have to say.” Chaol didn’t feel like waiting so long to hear it, but there ­were two state lunches and one formal dinner before then, and he was expected to attend all of them. And present the king with his defense plans for all the events as well.

After a moment, Aedion said, “How do you stand working for him? How do you pretend you don’t know what that bastard is doing, what he’s done to innocent people, to the woman you claim to love?”

“I’m doing what I have to do.” He didn’t think Aedion would understand, anyway.

“Tell me why the Captain of the Guard, a Lord of Adarlan, is helping his enemy. That’s all the information I want from you today.”

Chaol wanted to say that, given how much he’d already told him, he didn’t have to offer a damn thing. Instead he said, “I grew up being told we ­were bringing peace and civilization to the continent. What I’ve seen recently has made me realize how much of it is a lie.”

“You knew about the labor camps, though. About the massacres.”

“It is easy to be lied to when you do not know any of those people firsthand.” But Celaena with her scars, and Nehemia with her ­people butchered . . . “It’s easy to believe when your king tells you that the people in Endovier deserve to be there because they’re criminals or rebels who tried to slaughter innocent Adarlanian families.”

“And how many of your countrymen would stand against your king if they, too, learned the truth? If they stopped to consider what it would be like if it were their family, their village, being enslaved or murdered? How many would stand if they knew what power their prince possessed—­if their prince ­rose up to fight with us?”

Chaol didn’t know, and he ­wasn’t sure he wanted to. As for Dorian . . . he could not ask that of his friend. Could not expect it. His goal was keeping Dorian safe. Even if it would cost him their friendship, he didn’t want Dorian involved. Ever.

•

The past week had been terrifying and wonderful for Dorian.

Terrifying because two more people knew his secret, and because he walked such a fine line when it came to controlling his magic, which seemed more volatile with each passing day.

Wonderful because every afternoon, he visited the forgotten workroom Sorscha had discovered tucked in a lower level of the catacombs where no one would find them. She brought books from the gods knew where, herbs and plants and salts and powders, and every day, they researched and trained and pondered.

There ­weren’t many books about dampening a power like his—­many had been burned, she’d told him. But she looked at the magic like a disease: if she could find the right channels to block, she could keep it contained. And if not, she always said, they could resort to drugging him, just enough to even out his moods. She didn’t like the idea of it, and neither did he, though it was a comfort to know the option was there.

An hour each day was all they could manage together. For that hour, regardless of the laws they ­were breaking, Dorian felt like himself again. Not twisted and reeling and stumbling through the dark, but grounded. Calm. No matter what he told Sorscha, she never judged or betrayed him. Chaol had been that person once. Yet now, when it came to his magic, he could still see fear and a hint of disgust in Chaol’s eyes.

“Did you know,” Sorscha said from her spot across the worktable, “that before magic vanished, they had to find special ways of subduing gifted prisoners?”

Dorian looked up from his book, a useless tome on garden remedies. Before magic vanished . . . at the hand of his father and his Wyrdkeys. His stomach turned. “Because they’d use their magic to break out of prison?”

Sorscha studied the book again. “That’s why a lot of the old prisons use solid iron—­it’s immune to magic.”

“I know,” he said, and she raised a brow. She was slowly starting to come alive around him—­though he’d also learned to read her subtle expressions better. “Back when my power first appeared, I tried using it on an iron door, and . . . it didn’t go well.”

“Hmm.” Sorscha chewed on her lip. It was surprisingly distracting. “But iron’s in your blood, so how does that work?”

“I think it was the gods’ way of keeping us from growing too powerful: if we keep contact with the magic, if it’s flowing through us for too long, we faint. Or worse.”

“I wonder what would happen if we increased the iron in your diet, perhaps adding a large amount of treacle to your food. We give it to anemic patients, but if we gave you a highly concentrated dose . . . it would taste awful, and could be dangerous, but—”

“But perhaps if it’s in my body, then when the magic rises up . . .” He grimaced. He might have balked at the memory of the agony when he’d tried to seal that iron door, but . . . He ­couldn’t bring himself to say no to her. “Do you have any ­here? Just something to add to a drink?”

She didn’t, but she got some. And within a quarter of an hour, Dorian said a prayer to Silba and swallowed it, cringing at the obscene sweetness. Nothing.

Sorscha’s eyes darted from his own to the pocket watch in her hand. Counting. Waiting to see if there was an adverse reaction. A minute passed. And then ten. Dorian had to go soon, and so did she, but after a while, Sorscha quietly said, “Try it. Try summoning it. The iron should be in your blood now.” He shut his eyes, and she added, “It reacts when you’re upset—­angry or scared or sad. Think about something that makes you feel that way.”

She was risking her position, her life, everything for this. For him, the son of the man who had ordered his army to destroy her village, then slaughter her family with the other unwanted immigrants squatting in Rifthold. He didn’t deserve it.

He breathed in. Out. She also didn’t deserve the world of trouble he was bringing down upon her—­or would continue to bring to her door every time he came ­here. He knew when women liked him, and he’d known from the first moment he’d seen her that she found him attractive. He’d hoped that opinion hadn’t changed for the worse, but now . . . Think of what upsets you.

Everything upset him. It upset him that she was risking her life, that he had no choice but to endanger her. Even if he took that final step toward her, even if he took her into his bed like he so badly wanted to, he was still . . . the Crown Prince. You will always be my enemy, Celaena had once said.

There was no escaping his crown. Or his father, who would behead Sorscha, burn her, and scatter her ashes to the wind if he found out she’d helped him. His father, whom his friends ­were now working to destroy. They had lied to him and ignored him for that cause. Because he was a danger, to them, to Sorscha, and—

Roaring pain surged from his core and up his throat, and he gagged. There was another wave, and a cool breeze tried to kiss his face, but it vanished like mist under the sun as the pain trembled through him. He leaned forward, squeezing his eyes shut as the agony and then the nausea went through him again. And again.

But then it was quiet. Dorian opened his eyes to find Sorscha, clever, steady, wonderful Sorscha, standing there, biting her lip. She took one step—­toward him, not away, for once. “Did it—”

Dorian was on his feet so fast the chair rocked behind him, and had her face between his hands a heartbeat after that. “Yes,” he breathed, and kissed her. It was fast—­but her face was flushed, and her eyes wide as he pulled back. His own eyes ­were wide, gods be damned, and he was still rubbing his thumb against her soft cheek. Still contemplating going back for more, because that hadn’t been nearly enough.

But she pulled away, returning to her work. As if—­as if it hadn’t been anything, ­other than an embarrassment. “Tomorrow?” she murmured. She ­wouldn’t look at him.

He could hardly muster the words to tell her yes as he staggered out. She’d looked so surprised, and if he didn’t get out, he was likely to kiss her again.

But maybe she didn’t want to be kissed.

27

Standing atop a viewing platform on the side of the Omega, Manon watched the first Yellowlegs coven of the day take the Crossing. The plunge down followed by the violent sweep up was stunning, even when it was the Yellowlegs riders astride the wind.

Leading them along the sheer face of the Northern Fang was Iskra. Her bull, a massive beast named Fendir, was a force of nature in himself. Though smaller than Titus, he was twice as nasty.

“They suit each other,” Asterin said from beside Manon. The rest of the Thirteen ­were in the sparring room, instructing the other covens in hand-­to-­hand combat. Faline and Fallon, the green-­eyed demon-­twins, ­were undoubtedly taking some plea­sure from torturing the newest sentinels. They thrived on that sort of thing.

Iskra and Fendir swept over the uppermost peak of the Northern Fang and vanished into the clouds, the other twelve riders trailing in tight formation. The cold wind whipped at Manon’s face, beckoning to her. She was on her way to the caverns to see Abraxos, but she’d wanted to monitor the Yellowlegs Crossing first. Just to make sure they ­were truly gone for the next three hours.

She looked across the span of the bridge to the Fang and its giant entryway. Screeching and roaring echoed from it, reverberating across the mountains. “I want you to keep the Thirteen occupied for the rest of the day,” Manon said.

As Second, Asterin was the only one of the Thirteen with any sort of right to question her, and even then, it was only in very limited circumstances. “You’re going to train with him?” Manon nodded. “Your grandmother said she’d gut me if I let you out of my sight again.” Golden hair twining about her in the wind, Asterin’s face, with its now-­crooked nose, was wary.

“You’re going to have to decide,” Manon said, not bothering to bare her iron teeth. “Are you her spy or my Second?”

No hint of pain or fear or betrayal. Just a slight narrowing of her eyes. “I serve you.”

“She’s your Matron.”

“I serve you.”

For a heartbeat, Manon wondered when she’d ever earned that kind of loyalty. They ­weren’t friends—­at least, not in the way that humans seemed to be friends. Every Blackbeak already owed her their loyalty and obedience as the heir. But this . . .

Manon had never explained herself, her plans, or her intentions to anyone except her grandmother. But she found herself saying to her Second, “I’m still going to be Wing Leader.”

Asterin smiled, her iron teeth like quicksilver in the morning sun. “We know.”

Manon lifted her chin. “I want the Thirteen adding tumbling to their hand-­to-­hand training. And when you can handle your wyvern on your own, I want you in the skies when the Yellowlegs are aloft. I want to know where they fly, how they fly, and what they do.”

Asterin nodded. “I already have the Shadows watching the Yellowlegs in the halls,” she said, a glimmer of rage and bloodthirst in those gold-­flecked black eyes. When Manon raised a brow, Asterin said, “You didn’t think I’d let Iskra off so easily, did you?”

Manon could still feel the iron-­tipped fingers digging into her back, shoving her into the pit. Her ankle was sore and stiff from the fall, her ribs bruised from the beating she’d taken from Titus’s tail. “Keep them in line. Unless you want your nose broken a second time.”

Asterin flashed a grin. “We don’t move without your command, Lady.”

•

Manon didn’t want the overseer in the pen. Or his three handlers, all bearing spears and whips. She didn’t want any of them for three reasons.

The first was that she wanted to be alone with Abraxos, who was crouched against the back wall, waiting and watching.

The second was that the human smell of them, the beckoning warmth of the blood pulsing in their necks, was distracting. The stench of their fear was distracting. She’d debated for a good minute whether it would be worth it to gut one of them just to see what the others would do. Already, men ­were going missing from the Fang—­men who ­were rumored to have crossed the bridge to the Omega and never returned. Manon hadn’t killed any of the men ­here yet, but every minute alone with them tempted her to play.

And the third reason she resented their presence was that Abraxos loathed them, with their whips and spears and chains and their hulking presence. The wyvern ­wouldn’t move from his spot against the wall no matter how viciously they cracked their whips. He hated whips—­not just feared, but actually hated. The sound alone made him cringe and bare his teeth.

They’d been in the pen for ten minutes, attempting to get close enough to get him chained down and saddled. If it didn’t happen soon, she’d have to go back to the Omega before the Yellowlegs returned.

“He’s never taken a saddle,” the overseer said to her. “Probably won’t.” She heard the unspoken words. I’m not going to risk my men getting it on him. You’re just being proud. Pick another mount like a good girl.

Manon flashed her iron teeth at the overseer, her upper lip pulling back just enough to warn him. He backed up a step, whip drooping. Abraxos’s mutilated tail slashed across the ground, his eyes never leaving the three men trying to force him into submission.

One of them cracked the whip, so close to Abraxos that he flinched away. Another snapped it near his tail—­twice. Then Abraxos lunged, with both neck and tail. The three handlers scrambled, barely out of reach of his snapping teeth. Enough.

“Your men have cowards’ hearts,” she said, giving the overseer a withering look as she stalked across the dirt floor.

The overseer grabbed for her, but she slashed with iron-­tipped fingers and sliced his hand open. He cursed, but Manon kept walking, licking his blood off her nails. She almost spat it out.

Vile. The blood tasted rotten, as if it had curdled or festered inside a corpse for days. She glanced at the blood on the rest of her hand. It was too dark for human blood. If witches had indeed been killing these men, why had no one reported this? She bit down the questions. She would think about it another time. Maybe drag the overseer into a forgotten corner and open him up to see what was decaying inside him.

But right now . . . The men had gone quiet. Each step brought her closer to Abraxos. A line had been marked in the dirt where the safety of the chains ended. Manon took three steps beyond it, one for each face of their Goddess: Maiden. Mother. Crone.

Abraxos crouched, the powerful muscles of his body tense, ready to spring.

“You know who I am,” Manon said, gazing into those endless black eyes, not giving one inch to fear or doubt. “I am Manon Blackbeak, heir to the Blackbeak Clan, and you are mine. Do you understand?”

One of the men snorted, and Manon might have whirled to tear out his tongue right there, but Abraxos . . . Abraxos lowered his head ever so slightly. As if he understood.

“You are Abraxos,” Manon said to him, a chill slithering down her neck. “I gave you that name because he is the Great Beast, the serpent who wrapped the world in his coils, and who will devour it at the very end when the Three-­Faced Goddess bids him to. You are Abraxos,” she repeated, “and you are mine.”

A blink, then another. Abraxos took a step toward her. Leather groaned as someone tightened their grip on a coiled whip. But Manon held fast, lifting one hand toward her wyvern. “Abraxos.”

The mighty head came toward her, those eyes pools of liquid night meeting her own. Her hand was still extended, tipped in iron and stained with blood. He pressed his snout into her palm and huffed.

His gray hide was warm and surprisingly soft—­thick but supple, like worn leather. Up close, the variation in coloring was striking—­not just gray, but dark green, brown, black. It was marred all over by thick scars, so many that they could have been the stripes of a jungle cat. Abraxos’s teeth, yellow and cracked, gleamed in the torchlight. Some ­were missing, but those that remained ­were as long as a finger and twice as thick. His hot breath reeked, either from his diet or rotting teeth.

Each of the scars, the chipped teeth and broken claws, the mutilated tail—­they ­weren’t the markings of a victim. Oh, no. They ­were the trophies of a survivor. Abraxos was a warrior who’d had all the odds stacked against him and survived. Learned from it. Triumphed.

Manon didn’t bother to look at the men behind her as she said, “Get out.” She kept staring into those dark eyes. “Leave the saddle and get out. If you bring a whip in ­here again, I’ll use it on you myself.”

“But—”

“Now.”

Muttering and clicking their tongues, the handlers shuffled out and shut the gate. When they ­were alone, Manon stroked the massive snout.

However the king had bred these beasts, Abraxos had somehow been born different. Smaller, but smarter. Or perhaps the others didn’t ever need to think. Cared for and trained, they did what they ­were told. But Abraxos had learned to survive, and perhaps that had opened his mind. He could understand her words—­her expressions.

And if he could comprehend those things . . . he could possibly teach the other mounts of the Thirteen. It was a small edge, but an edge that could make them Wing Leader—­and make them invincible against the king’s enemies.

“I am going to put this saddle on you,” she said, still cupping that snout. He shifted, but Manon grabbed on tight, forcing him to look at her. “You want out of this shithole? Then you’ll let me put this saddle on you to check the fit. And when ­we’re done, you’re going to let me look at your tail. Those human bastards cut off your spikes, so I’m going to build some for you. Iron ones. Like mine,” she said, and flashed her iron nails for him to see. “And fangs, too,” she added, baring her iron teeth. “It’s going to hurt, and you’re going to want to kill the men who put them in, but you’re going to let them do it, because if you don’t, then you will rot down ­here for the rest of your life. Understand?”

A long, hot huff of air into her hands.

“Once all that is done,” she said, smiling faintly at her wyvern, “you and I are going to learn how to fly. And then we’ll stain this kingdom red.”

•

Abraxos did everything she asked, though he growled at the handlers who inspected and poked and prodded, and nearly bit off the arm of the physician who had to dig out his rotted teeth to make way for the iron fangs. It took five days to do it all.

He almost took out a wall when they welded the iron spikes onto his tail, but Manon stood with him the entire time, talking to him about what it was like to ­ride with the Thirteen on their ironwood brooms and hunt down the Crochan witches. She told the stories as much to distract him as she did to remind the men that if they made a mistake, if they hurt him, her retribution would be a long, bloody pro­cess. Not one of them made an error.

During the five days they worked on him, she missed her riding lessons with the Thirteen. And with each passing day, the window for getting Abraxos airborne became smaller and smaller.

Manon stood with Asterin and Sorrel in the training hall, watching the tail end of the day’s sparring session. Sorrel had been working with the youn­gest coven of Blackbeaks—­all of them under seventy, and few of them experienced.

“How bad?” Manon asked, crossing her arms.

Sorrel, small and dark-­haired, crossed her arms as well. “Not as bad as we feared. But they’re still sorting out coven dynamics—­and their leader is . . .” Sorrel frowned at a mousy-­looking witch who had just been thrown to the ground by an inferior. “I’d suggest either having her coven decide what to do with her or picking a new leader. One weak coven in the wing and we could lose the War Games.”

The coven leader was panting on the hard stone floor, nose dripping blue blood. Manon ground her teeth. “Give her two days—­let’s see if she sorts herself out.” No need to have word of unstable covens get around. “But have Vesta take her out to­night,” Manon added, glancing to the red-­haired beauty leading another coven in archery drills. “To wherever she’s been going to torment the men in the Northern Fang.”

Sorrel raised her thick brows innocently, and Manon rolled her eyes. “You’re a worse liar than Vesta. You think I ­haven’t noticed those men grinning at her at all hours of the day? Or the bite marks on them? Just keep the death toll down. We have enough to worry about as it is—­we don’t need a mutiny from the mortals.”

Asterin snorted, but when Manon gave her a sidelong look, the witch kept her gaze ahead, face all ­too innocent. Of course, if Vesta had been bedding and bleeding the men, then Asterin had been right there with her. Neither of them had reported anything about the men tasting strange.

“As you will it, Lady,” Sorrel said, a faint hint of color on her tan cheeks. If Manon was ice and Asterin was fire, then Sorrel was rock. Her grandmother had told her on occasion to make Sorrel her Second, as ice and stone ­were sometimes too similar. But without Asterin’s flame, without her Second being able to rile up a host or rip out the throat of any challenger to Manon’s dominance, Manon would not have led the Thirteen so successfully. Sorrel was grounded enough to even them both out. The perfect Third.

“The only ones having fun right now,” Asterin said, “are the green-­eyed demon-­twins.”

Indeed, the midnight-­haired Faline and Fallon ­were grinning with maniacal glee as they led three covens in knife-­throwing exercises, using their inferiors as target practice. Manon just shook her head. What­ever worked; ­whatever shook the dust off these Blackbeak ­warriors.

“And my Shadows?” Manon asked Asterin. “How are they doing?”

Edda and Briar, two cousins that ­were as close as sisters, had been trained since infancy to blend into any sliver of darkness and listen—­and they ­were nowhere to be seen in this hall. Just as Manon had ordered.

“They’ll have a report for you to­night,” Asterin said. Distant cousins to Manon, the Shadows bore the same moon-­white hair. Or they had, until they’d discovered eighty years ago that the silver hair was as good as a beacon and dyed it solid black. They rarely spoke, never laughed, and sometimes even Asterin herself ­couldn’t detect them until they ­were at her throat. It was their sole source of amusement: sneaking up on people, though they’d never dared do it to Manon. It was no surprise they’d taken two onyx wyverns.

Manon eyed her Second and Third. “I want you both in my room for their report, too.”

“I’ll have Lin and Vesta stand watch,” Asterin said. They ­were Manon’s fallback sentries—­Vesta for the disarming smiles, and Lin because if anyone ever called her by her full name, Linnea—­the name her softhearted mother had given her before Lin’s grandmother tore out her heart—­that person wound up with missing teeth at best. A missing face at worst.

Manon was about to turn away when she caught her Second and Third watching her. She knew the question they didn’t dare ask, and said, “I’ll be airborne with Abraxos in a week, and then we’ll be flying as one.”

It was a lie, but they believed her anyway.

28

Days passed, and not all of them ­were awful. Out of nowhere, Rowan decided to take Celaena to the commune of healers fifteen miles away, where the finest healers in the world learned, taught, and worked. Situated on the border between the Fae and mortal world, they ­were accessible to anyone who could reach them. It was one of the few good things Maeve had done.

As a child, Celaena had begged her mother to bring her. But the answer had always been no, accompanied by a vague promise that they would someday take a trip to the Torre Cesme in the southern continent, where many of the teachers had been taught by the Fae. Her mother had done everything she could to keep her from Maeve’s clutches. The irony of it ­wasn’t wasted on her.

So Rowan took her. She could have spent all day—­all month—­wandering the grounds under the clever, kind eyes of the Head Healer. But her time there was halved thanks to the distance and her inability to shift, and Rowan wanted to be home before nightfall. Honestly, while she’d actually enjoyed herself at the peaceful riverside compound, she wondered whether Rowan had just brought her there to make her feel bad about the life she’d fallen into. It had made her quiet on the long hike back.

And he didn’t give her a moment’s rest: they ­were to set out the following dawn on an overnight trip, but he ­wouldn’t say where. Fantastic.

Already making the day’s bread, Emrys only looked faintly amused as Celaena hurried in, stuffed her face with food and guzzled down tea, and hurried back out.

Rowan was waiting by her rooms, a small pack dangling from his hands. He held it open for her. “Clothes,” he said, and she stuffed the extra shirt and underclothes she’d laid out into the bag. He shouldered it—­which she supposed meant he was in a good mood, as she’d fully expected to play pack mule on their way to wherever they ­were going. He didn’t say anything until they ­were in the mist-­shrouded trees, again heading west. When the fortress walls had vanished behind them, the ward-­stones zinging against her skin as they passed through, he stopped at last, throwing back the heavy hood of his jacket. She did the same, the cool air biting her warm cheeks.

“Shift, and let’s go,” he said. His second words to her this morning.

“And ­here I was, thinking we’d become friends.”

He raised his brows and gestured with a hand for her to shift. “It’s twenty miles,” he said by way of encouragement, and gave her a wicked grin. “We’re running. Each way.”

Her knees trembled at the thought of it. Of course he’d make this into some sort of torture session. Of course. “And where are we going?”

He clenched his jaw, the tattoo stretching. “There was another body—­a demi-­Fae from a neighboring fortress. Dumped in the same area, same patterns. I want to go to the nearby town to question the citizens, but . . .” His mouth twisted to the side, then he shook his head at some silent conversation with himself. “But I need your help. It’ll be easier for the mortals to talk to you.”

“Is that a compliment?” He rolled his eyes.

Perhaps yesterday’s outing to the healers’ compound hadn’t been out of spite. Maybe he’d . . . been trying to do something nice for her. “Shift, or it’ll take us twice as long.”

“I ­can’t. You know it ­doesn’t work like that.”

“Don’t you want to see how fast you can run?”

“I ­can’t use my other form in Adarlan anyway, so what’s the point?” Which was the start of a ­whole massive issue she hadn’t yet let herself contemplate.

“The point is that you’re ­here now, and you ­haven’t properly tested your limits.” It was true. She hadn’t really seen what she was capable of. “The point is, another husk of a body was found, and I consider that to be unacceptable.”

Another body—­from that creature. A horrible, wretched death. It was unacceptable.

He gave her braid a sharp, painful tug. “Unless you’re still frightened.”

Her nostrils flared. “The only thing that frightens me is how very much I want to throttle you.” More than that, she wanted to find the creature and destroy it, for those it had murdered and for what it had made her walk through. She would kill it—­slowly. A miserable sort of pressure and heat began building under her skin.

Rowan murmured, “Hone it—­the anger.”

Was that why he’d told her about the body? Bastard—­bastard for manipulating her, for making her pull double duty in the kitchen. But his face was unreadable as he said, “Let it be a blade, Aelin. If you cannot find the peace, then at least hone the anger that guides you to the shift. Embrace and control it—­it is not your enemy.”

Arobynn had done everything he could to make her hate her heritage, to fear it. What he’d done to her, what she’d allowed herself to become . . . “This will not end well,” she breathed.

He didn’t back down. “See what you want, Aelin, and seize it. Don’t ask for it; don’t wish for it. Take it.”

“I’m certain the average magic instructor would not recommend this to most people.”

“You are not most people, and I think you like it that way. If it’s a darker set of emotions that will help you shift on command, then that’s what we’ll use. There might come a day when you find that anger ­doesn’t work, or when it is a crutch, but for now . . .” A contemplative look. “It was the common denominator those times you shifted—­anger of varying kinds. So own it.”

He was right—­and she didn’t want to think on it any more than that, or let herself get that enraged, not when she had been so angry for so long. For now . . .

Celaena took a long breath. Then another. She let the anger anchor her, a knife slicing past the usual hesitation and doubt and emptiness.

She brushed up against that familiar inner wall—­no, a veil, shimmering with a soft light. All this time, she thought she’d been reaching down for the power, but this was more of a reach in. Not a wish, but a command. She would shift—­because there was a creature prowling these lands, and it deserved to pay. With a silent growl, she punched herself through the veil, pain shooting along every inch and pore as she shifted.

A fierce, challenging grin, and Rowan moved, so fast she could hardly follow as he appeared on her other side and yanked on her braid again. When she whirled, he was already gone, and—­ She yelped as he pinched her side. “Stop—”

He was standing in front of her now, a wild invitation in his eyes. She’d been studying the way he moved, his tricks and tells, the way he assumed she’d react. So when she crossed her arms, feigning the tantrum he expected, she waited. Waited, and then—

He shot left to pinch or poke or hit her, and she whirled, slamming down his arm with an elbow and whacking him upside the head with her other hand. He stopped dead and blinked a few times. She smirked at him.

He bared his teeth in a feral, petrifying grin. “Oh, you’d better run now.”

When he lunged, she shot through the trees.

•

She had a suspicion that Rowan was letting her get ahead for the first few minutes, because though she moved faster, she could barely adjust enough to her altered body to leap over rocks and fallen trees. He’d said they ­were going southwest, and that was where she went, dodging between the trees, the anger simmering away, shifting into something ­else entirely.

Rowan was a silver and white streak beside and behind her, and every time he got too close, she veered the other way, testing out the senses that told her where the trees ­were without seeing them—­the smell of oak and moss and living things, the open coolness of the mist passing between them like a path that she followed.

They hit a plateau, the ground easy beneath her boots. Faster—­she wanted to see if she could go faster, if she could outrun the wind itself.

Rowan appeared at her left, and she pumped her arms, her legs, savoring the breath in her lungs—­smooth and calm, ready to see what she would do next. More—­this body wanted more.

She wanted more.

And then she was going swifter than she ever had in her life, the trees a blur, her immortal body singing as she let its rhythms fall into place. Her powerful lungs gobbled down the misty air and filled with the smell and taste of the world, only instinct and reflex guiding her, telling her she could go faster still, feet eating up the loamy earth step by step by step.

Gods. Oh, gods.

She could have flown, could have soared for the sudden surge of ecstasy in her blood, the sheer freedom granted by the marvel of creation that was her body.

Rowan shot at her from the right, but she dodged a tree with such ease she let out a whoop, then threw herself between two long-­hanging braches, mere hurdles that she landed with feline skill.

Rowan was at her side again, lunging with a snap of his teeth, but she whirled and leapt over a rock, letting the moves she’d honed as an assassin blend into the instincts of her Fae body.

She could die for love of this speed, this surety in her bones. How had she been afraid of this body for so long? Even her soul felt looser. As if it had been locked up and buried and was only now starting to shake free. Not joy, perhaps not ever, but a glimmer of what she had been before grief had decimated her so thoroughly.

Rowan raced beside her, but made no move to grab her. No, Rowan was . . . playing.

He threw a glance at her, breathing hard but evenly. And it might have been the sun through the canopy, but she could have sworn that she saw his eyes alight with a glimmer of that same, feral contentment. She could have sworn he was smiling.

•

It was the fastest twenty miles of her life. Granted, the last five ­were slower, and by the time Rowan brought them to a halt, they ­were both gulping down air. It was only then, as they stared at each other between the trees, that she realized the magic hadn’t once flared—­hadn’t once tried to overpower or erupt. She could feel it waiting down in her gut, warm but calm. Slumbering.

She wiped the sweat from her brow, her neck, her face. Though she was panting, she still could have run for miles more. Gods, if she had been this fast the night Nehemia had—

It ­wouldn’t have made a difference. Nehemia had orchestrated every step in her own destruction, and would have found another way. And she had only done it because Celaena refused to help—­refused to act. Having this glorious Fae body changed nothing.

She blinked, realizing she’d been staring at Rowan, and that what­ever satisfaction she’d seen on his face had again turned to ice. He tossed something at her—­the shirt he’d carried with him. “Change.” He turned and stripped off his own shirt. His back was just as tan and scarred as the rest of him. But seeing those markings didn’t make her want to show him what her own ruined back looked like, so she moved between the trees until she was sure he ­couldn’t see her, and swapped her shirt. When she returned to where he’d dumped the pack, he tossed her a skein of water, which she gulped down. It tasted . . . She could taste each layer of minerals in the water, and the musk of the skein itself.

By the time they strode into the red-­roofed little town, Celaena could breathe again.

They quickly learned that it was almost impossible to get anyone to talk, especially to two Fae visitors. Celaena debated returning to her human form, but with her accent and ever-­worsening mood, she was fairly certain a woman from Adarlan ­wouldn’t be much better received than a Fae. Windows ­were shuttered as they passed, probably because of Rowan, who looked like nothing short of death incarnate. But he was surprisingly calm with the villagers they approached. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t snarl, didn’t threaten. He didn’t smile, but for Rowan, he was downright cheerful.

Still, it got them nowhere. No, they had not heard of a missing demi-­Fae, or any other bodies. No, they had not seen any strange people lurking about. No, livestock ­were not disappearing, though there was a chicken thief a few towns away. No, they ­were perfectly safe and protected in Wendlyn, and didn’t appreciate Fae and demi-­Fae poking into their business, either.

Celaena had given up on flirting with a pock-­faced stable boy at the inn, who had just gawked at her ears and canines as though she were one heartbeat away from eating him alive.

She stalked down the pleasant main street, hungry and tired and annoyed that they ­were indeed going to need their bedrolls because the innkeeper had already informed them he had no vacancies. Rowan fell into step beside her, the storm clouds in his eyes saying enough about how his conversation with the taproom maid had gone.

“I could believe it was a half-­wild creature if at least some of them knew these people had vanished,” she mused. “But consistently selecting someone who ­wouldn’t be missed or noticed? It must be sentient enough to know who to target. The demi-­Fae has to be a message—­but what? To stay away? Then why leave bodies in the first place?” She tugged at the end of her braid, stopping in front of a clothier’s window. Simple, well-­cut dresses stood on display, not at all like the elegant, intricate fashions in Rifthold.

She noticed the wide-­eyed, pale shop­keep­er a heartbeat before the woman slashed the curtains shut. Well, then.

Rowan snorted, and Celaena turned to him. “You’re used to this, I assume?”

“A lot of the Fae who venture into mortal lands have earned themselves a reputation for . . . taking what they want. It went unchecked for too many years, but even though our laws are stricter now, the fear remains.” A criticism of Maeve?

“Who enforces these laws?”

A dark smile. “I do. When I’m not off campaigning, my aunt has me hunt down the rogues.”

“And kill them?”

The smile remained. “If the situation calls for it. Or I just haul them back to Doranelle and let Maeve decide what to do with them.”

“I think I’d prefer death at your hands to death at Maeve’s.”

“That might be the first wise thing you’ve said to me.”

“The demi-­Fae said you have five other warrior friends. Do they hunt with you? How often do you see them?”

“I see them whenever the situation calls for it. Maeve has them serve her as she sees fit, as she does with me.” Every word was clipped. “It is an honor to be a warrior serving in her inner circle.” Celaena hadn’t suggested otherwise, but she wondered why he felt the need to add it.

The street around them was empty; even food carts had been abandoned. She took a long breath, sniffing, and—­was that chocolate? “Did you bring any money?”

A hesitant lift of his brow. “Yes. They won’t take your bribes, though.”

“Good. More for me, then.” She pointed out the pretty sign swaying in the sea breeze. Confectionery. “If we ­can’t win them with charm, we might as well win them with our business.”

“Did you somehow not hear what I just—” But she had already reached the shop, which smelled divine and was stocked with chocolates and candies and oh gods, hazelnut truffles. Even though the confectioner blanched as the two of them overpowered the space, Celaena gave the woman her best smile.

Over her rotting corpse was she letting these people get away with shutting curtains in her face—­or letting them think that she was ­here to plunder. Nehemia had never once let the preening, bigoted idiots in Rifthold shut her out of any store, dining room, or ­house­hold.

And she had the sense that her friend might have been proud of the way she went from shop to shop that afternoon, head held high, and charmed the ever-­loving hell out of those villagers.

•

Once word spread that the two Fae strangers ­were spending silver on chocolates, then a few books, then some fresh bread and meat, the streets filled again. Vendors bearing everything from apples to spices to pocket watches ­were suddenly eager to chat, so long as they sold something. When Celaena popped in to the cramped messenger’s guild to mail a letter, she managed to ask a few novices if they’d been hired by anyone of interest. They hadn’t, but she still tipped them handsomely.

Rowan dutifully carried every bag and box Celaena bought save the chocolates, which she ate as she strolled around, one after another after another. When she offered one to him, he claimed he didn’t eat sweets. Ever. Not surprising.

The villagers wound up not knowing anything, which she supposed was good, because it meant that they hadn’t been lying, but the crab-­monger did say he’d found a few discarded knives—­small, sharp-­as-­death knives—­in his nets recently. He tossed them all back into the water as gifts for the Sea God. The creature had sucked these people dry, not cut them up. So it was likely that Wendlynite soldiers had somehow lost a trunk of their blades in some storm.

At sunset, the innkeeper even approached them about a suddenly vacant suite. The very best suite in town, he claimed, but Celaena was starting to wonder whether they might attract the wrong sort of attention, and she ­wasn’t particularly in the mood to see Rowan disembowel a would-­be thief. So she politely refused, and they set out down the street, the light turning thick and golden as they entered the forest once more.

Not a bad day, she realized as she nodded off under the forest canopy. Not bad at all.

•

Her mother had called her Fireheart.

But to her court, to her people, she would one day be Queen. To them, she was the heir to two mighty bloodlines, and to a tremendous power that would keep them safe and raise their kingdom to even greater heights. A power that was a gift—­or a weapon.

That had been the near-­constant debate for the first eight years of her life. As she grew older and it became apparent that while she’d inherited most of her mother’s looks, she’d received her father’s volatile temper and wildness, the wary questions became more frequent, asked by rulers in kingdoms far from their own.

And on days like this, she knew that everyone would hear of the event, for better or worse.

She was supposed to be asleep, and was wearing her favorite silk nightgown, her parents having tucked her in minutes ago. Though they had told her they ­weren’t, she knew they ­were exhausted, and frustrated. She’d seen the way the court was acting, and how her uncle had put a gentle hand on her father’s shoulder and told him to take her up to bed.

But she ­couldn’t sleep, not when her door was cracked open, and she could hear her parents from their bedroom in the suite they shared in the upper levels of the white castle. They thought they ­were speaking quietly, but it was with an immortal’s ears that she listened in the near-­dark.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do, Evalin,” her father said. She could almost hear him prowling before the giant bed on which she had been born. “What’s done is done.”

“Tell them it was exaggerated, tell them the librarians ­were making a fuss over nothing,” her mother hissed. “Start a rumor that someone ­else did it, trying to pin the blame on her—”

“This is all because of Maeve?”

“This is because she is going to be hunted, Rhoe. For her ­whole life, Maeve and others will hunt her for this power—”

“And you think agreeing to let those little bastards ban her from the library will prevent that? Tell me: why does our daughter love reading so much?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Tell me.” When her mother didn’t respond, her father growled. “She is eight—­and she has told me that her dearest friends are characters in books.”

“She has Aedion.”

“She has Aedion because he is the only child in this castle who isn’t petrified of her—­who hasn’t been kept away because we have been lax with her training. She needs training, Ev—­training, and friends. If she ­doesn’t have either, that’s when she’ll turn into what they’re afraid of.”

Silence, and then—­a huff from beside her bed.

“I’m not a child,” Aedion hissed from where he sat in a chair, arms crossed. He’d slipped in ­here after her parents had left—­to talk quietly to her, as he often did when she was upset. “And I don’t see why it’s a bad thing if I’m your only friend.”

“Quiet,” she hissed back. Though Aedion ­couldn’t shift, his mixed blood allowed him to hear with uncanny range and accuracy, better even than hers. And though he was five years older, he was her only friend. She loved her court, yes—­loved the adults who pampered and coddled her. But the few children who lived in the castle kept away, despite their parents’ urging. Like dogs, she’d sometimes thought. The others could smell her differences.

“She needs friends her age,” her father went on. “Maybe we should send her to school. Cal and Marion have been talking about sending Elide next year—”

“No schools. And certainly not that so-­called magic school, when it’s so close to the border and we don’t know what Adarlan is planning.”

Aedion loosed a breath, his legs propped on the mattress. His tan face was angled toward the cracked door, his golden hair shining faintly, but there was a crease between his brows. Neither of them took well to being separated, and the last time one of the castle boys had teased him for it, Aedion had spent a month shoveling ­horse dung for beating the boy into a pulp.

Her father sighed. “Ev, don’t kill me for this, but—­you’re not making this easy. For us, or for her.” Her mother was quiet, and she heard a rustle of clothing and a murmur of, “I know, I know,” before her parents started speaking too quietly for even her Fae ears.

Aedion growled again, his eyes—­their matching eyes—­gleaming in the dark. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. So what if you burned a few books? Those librarians deserve it. When ­we’re older, maybe we’ll burn it to the ground together.”

She knew he meant it. He’d burn the library, the city, or the ­whole world to ashes if she asked him. It was their bond, marked by blood and scent and something ­else she ­couldn’t place. A tether as strong as the one that bound her to her parents. Stronger, in some ways.

She didn’t answer him, not because she didn’t have a reply but because the door groaned, and before Aedion could hide, her bedroom flooded with light from the foyer.

Her mother crossed her arms. Her father, however, let out a soft laugh, his brown hair illuminated by the hall light, his face in shadow. “Typical,” he said, stepping aside to clear a space for Aedion to leave. “Don’t you have to be up at dawn to train with Quinn? You ­were five minutes late this morning. Two days in a row will earn you a week on stable duty. Again.”

In a flash, Aedion was on his feet and gone. Alone with her parents, she wished she could pretend to sleep, but she said, “I don’t want to go away to school.”

Her father walked to her bed, every inch the warrior Aedion aspired to be. A warrior-­prince, she heard people call him—­who would one day make a mighty king. She sometimes thought her father had no interest in being king, especially on days when he took her up into the Staghorns and let her wander through Oakwald in search of the Lord of the Forest. He never seemed happier than at those times, and always seemed a little sad to go back to Orynth.

“You’re not going away to school,” he said, looking over his broad shoulder at her mother, who lingered by the doorway, her face still in shadow. “But do you understand why the librarians acted the way they did today?”

Of course she did. She felt horrible for burning the books. It had been an accident, and she knew her father believed her. She nodded and said, “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” her father said, a growl in his voice.

“I wish I was like the others,” she said.

Her mother remained silent, unmoving, but her father gripped her hand. “I know, love. But even if you ­were not gifted, you would still be our daughter—­you would still be a Galathynius, and their queen one day.”

“I don’t want to be queen.”

Her father sighed. This was a conversation they’d had before. He stroked her hair. “I know,” he said again. “Sleep now—­we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

They ­wouldn’t, though. She knew they ­wouldn’t, because she knew there was no escaping her fate, even though she sometimes prayed to the gods that she could. She lay down again nonetheless, letting him kiss her head and murmur good night.

Her mother still said nothing, but as her father walked out, Evalin remained, watching her for a long while. Just as she was drifting off, her mother left—­and as she turned, she could have sworn that tears gleamed on her pale face.

•

Celaena jolted awake, hardly able to move, to think. It had to be the smell—­the smell of that gods-­damned body yesterday that had triggered the dream. It was agony seeing her parents’ faces, seeing Aedion. She blinked, focusing on her breathing, until she was no longer in that beautiful, jewel box–­like room, until the scent of the pine and snow on the northern wind had vanished and she could see the morning mist weaving through the canopy of leaves above her. The cold, damp moss seeped through her clothes; the brine of the nearby sea hung thick in the air. She lifted her hand to examine the long scar carved on her palm.

“Do you want breakfast?” Rowan asked from where he crouched over unlit logs—­the first fire she’d seen him assemble. She nodded, then rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. “Then start the fire,” he said.

“You ­can’t be serious.” He didn’t deign to respond. Groaning, she rotated on her sleeping roll until she sat cross-­legged facing the logs. She held a hand toward the wood.

“Pointing is a crutch. Your mind can direct the flames just fine.”

“Perhaps I like the dramatics.”

He gave her a look she interpreted to mean Light the fire. Now.

She rubbed her eyes again and concentrated on the logs.

“Easy,” Rowan said, and she wondered if that was approval in his voice as the wood began to smoke. “A knife, remember. You are in control.”

A knife, carving out a small bit of magic. She could master this. Light one single fire.

Gods, she was so heavy again. That stupid dream—­memory, what­ever it was. Today would be an effort.

A pit yawned open inside her, the magic rupturing out before she could shout a warning.

She incinerated the entire surrounding area.

When the smoke and flames cleared thanks to Rowan’s wind, he merely sighed. “At least you didn’t panic and shift back into your human form.”

She supposed that was a compliment. The magic had felt like a release—­a thrown punch. The pressure under her skin had lessened.

So Celaena just nodded. But shifting, it seemed, was to be the least of her problems.

29

It had just been a kiss, Sorscha told herself every day afterward. A quick, breathless kiss that made the world spin. The iron in the treacle had worked, though it bothered Dorian enough that they started to toy with the dosage . . . and ways to mask it. If he ­were caught ingesting powders at all hours of the day, it would lead to questions.

So it became a daily contraceptive tonic. Because no one would bat an eye at that—­not with his reputation. Sorscha was still reassuring herself that the kiss had meant nothing more than a thank-­you as she reached the door to Dorian’s tower room, his daily dose in hand.

She knocked, and the prince called her inside. The assassin’s hound was sprawled on his bed, and the prince himself was lounging on his shabby couch. He sat up, however, and smiled at her in that way of his.

“I think I found a better combination—­the mint might go down better than the sage,” she said, holding up the glass of reddish liquid. He came toward her, but there was something in his gait—­a kind of prowl—­that made her straighten. Especially as he set down the glass and stared at her, long and deep. “What?” she breathed, backing up a step.

He gripped her hand—­not hard enough to hurt, but enough to stop her retreat. “You understand the risks, and yet you’re still helping me,” he said. “Why?”

“It’s the right thing.”

“My father’s laws say otherwise.”

Her face heated. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

His hands ­were cool as he brushed her cheeks, his calluses scraping gently. “I just want to thank you,” he murmured, leaning in. “For seeing me and not running.”

“I—” She was burning up from the inside out, and she pulled back, hard enough that he let go. Amithy was right, even if she was vicious. There ­were plenty of beautiful women ­here, and anything more than a flirtation would end poorly. He was Crown Prince, and she was nobody. She gestured to the goblet. “If it’s not too much trouble, Your Highness”—­he cringed at the title—“send word about how this one works for you.”

She didn’t dare a by-­your-­leave or farewell or anything that would keep her in that room a moment longer. And he didn’t try to stop her as she walked out and shut the door behind her.

She leaned against the stone wall of the narrow landing, a hand on her thundering heart. It was the smart thing to do, the right thing to do. She had survived this long, and would only survive the road ahead if she continued to be unnoticed, reliable, quiet.

But she didn’t want to be unnoticed—­not with him, not forever.

He made her want to laugh and sing and shake the world with her voice.

The door swung open, and she found him standing in the doorway, solemn and wary.

Maybe there could be no future, no hope of anything more, but just looking at him standing there, in this moment, she wanted to be selfish and stupid and wild.

It could all go to hell tomorrow, but she had to know what it was like, just for a little while, to belong to someone, to be wanted and cherished.

He did not move, didn’t do anything but stare—­seeing her exactly how she saw him—­as she grabbed the lapels of his tunic, pulled his face down to hers, and kissed him fiercely.

•

Chaol had been barely able to concentrate for the past few days thanks to the meeting he was moments away from having. It had taken longer than he had anticipated before Ren and Murtaugh ­were finally ready to meet him—­their first encounter since that night in the slums. Chaol had to wait for his next night off, Aedion had to find a secure location, and then they had to coordinate with the two lords from Terrasen. He and the general had left the castle separately, and Chaol had hated himself when he lied to his men about where he was going—­hated that they wished him fun, hated that they trusted him, the man who was meeting with their mortal enemies.

Chaol shoved those thoughts aside as he approached the dim alley a few blocks from the decrepit boarding ­house where they ­were to meet. Under his heavy-­hooded cloak he was armed more heavily than he usually bothered. Every breath he took felt too shallow. A two-­note whistle sounded down the alley, and he echoed it. Aedion stalked through the low-­lying mist coming off the Avery, his face concealed in the cowl of his own cloak.

He ­wasn’t wearing the Sword of Orynth. Instead, an assortment of blades and fighting knives ­were strapped to the general—­a man able to walk into hell itself and come out grinning.

“Where are the others?” Chaol said softly. The slums ­were quiet tonight—­too quiet for his liking. Dressed as he was, few would dare approach him, but the walk through the crooked and dark streets had been harrowing. Such poverty and despair—­and desperation. It made people dangerous, willing to risk anything to scratch out another day of living.

Aedion leaned against the crumbling brick wall behind them. “Don’t get your undergarments in a twist. They’ll be ­here soon.”

“I’ve waited long enough for this information.”

“What’s the rush?” Aedion drawled, scanning the alley.

“I’m leaving Rifthold in a few weeks to return to Anielle.” Aedion didn’t look directly at him, but he could feel the general staring at him from beneath his dark hood.

“So get out of it—­tell them you’re busy.”

“I made a promise,” Chaol said. “I’ve already bargained for time, but I want to have . . . done something for the prince before I leave.”

The general turned to him then. “I’d heard you ­were estranged from your father; why the sudden change?”

It would have been easier to lie, but Chaol said, “My father is a powerful man—­he has the ear of many influential members at court and is on the king’s council.”

Aedion let out a low laugh. “I’ve butted heads with him in more than a few war councils.”

That Chaol would have paid good money to see, but he ­wasn’t smiling as he said, “It was the only way I could get her sent to Wendlyn.” He quickly explained the bargain he’d made, and when he was finished, Aedion loosed a long breath.

“Damn,” the general said, then shook his head. “I didn’t think that kind of honor still existed in Adarlan.”

He supposed it was a compliment—­and a high one, coming from Aedion. “And what of your father?” Chaol said, if only to shift conversation away from the hole in his chest. “I know your mother was kin to—­to her, but what of your father’s line?”

“My mother never admitted who my father was, even when she was wasting away on her sickbed,” Aedion said flatly. “I don’t know if it was from shame, or because she ­couldn’t even remember, or to protect me somehow. Once I was brought over ­here, I didn’t really care. But I’d rather have no father than your father.”

Chaol chuckled and might have asked another question had boots not scraped on stone at the other end of the alley, followed by a rasping breath.

That fast, Aedion had palmed two fighting knives, and Chaol drew his own sword—­a bland, nondescript blade he’d swiped from the barracks—­as a man staggered into view.

He had an arm wrapped around his middle, the other bracing himself against the brick wall of an abandoned building. Aedion was instantly moving, knives sheathed again. It ­wasn’t until Chaol heard him say, “Ren?” that he also hurried toward the young man.

In the moonlight, the blood on Ren’s tunic was a shining, deep stain.

“Where is Murtaugh?” Aedion demanded, slinging an arm under Ren’s shoulders.

“Safe.” Ren panted, his face dealthy pale. Chaol scanned either end of the alley. “We ­were—­followed. So we tried losing them.” He heard, more than saw, Ren’s wince. “They cornered me.”

“How many?” Aedion said softly, though Chaol could almost feel the violence simmering off the general.

“Eight,” Ren said, and hissed in pain. “Killed two, then got free. They’re following me.”

Leaving six. If they ­were unharmed, they ­were probably close behind. Chaol examined the stones beyond Ren. The wound to his abdomen ­couldn’t be deep, if he’d managed to keep the blood flow from leaving a trail. But it still had to be agonizing—­potentially fatal, if it had pierced the wrong spot.

Aedion went rigid, hearing something that Chaol ­couldn’t. He quietly, gently passed the sagging Ren into Chaol’s arms. “There are three barrels ten paces away,” the general said with lethal calm as he faced the alley entrance. “Hide behind them and keep your mouths shut.”

That was all Chaol needed to hear as he took Ren’s weight and hauled him to the large barrels, then eased him onto the ground. Ren stifled a groan of pain, but kept still. There was a small crack between two of the barrels where Chaol could see the alley, and the six men who stalked into it almost shoulder-­to-­shoulder. He ­couldn’t make out much more than dark tunics and cloaks.

The men paused when they beheld Aedion standing before them, still hooded. The general drew his fighting knives and purred, “None of you are leaving this alley alive.”

•

They didn’t.

Chaol marveled at Aedion’s skill—­the speed and swiftness and utter confidence that made it like watching a brutal, unforgiving dance.

It was over before it really started. The six assailants seemed at ease with weapons, but against a man with Fae blood surging in his veins, they ­were useless.

No wonder Aedion had risen to such high ranking so quickly. He’d never seen another man fight like that. Only—­only Celaena had come close. He ­couldn’t tell which of them would win if they ­were ever matched against each other, but together . . . Chaol’s heart went cold at the thought. Six men dead in a matter of moments—­six.

Aedion ­wasn’t smiling as he came back over to Chaol and dropped a scrap of fabric on the ground before them. Even Ren, panting through clenched teeth, looked.

It was a black, heavy material—­and emblazoned on it in dark thread, nearly invisible save for the glint of the moonlight, was a wyvern. The royal sigil.

“I don’t know these men,” Chaol said, more to himself than to protest his innocence. “I’ve never seen that uniform.”

“From the sound of it,” Aedion said, that rage still simmering in his voice as he cocked his head toward noises that Chaol could not hear with his human ears, “there are more of them out there, and they’re combing the slums door-to-door for Ren. We need a place to hide.”

Ren held on to consciousness long enough to say, “I know where.”

30

Chaol held his breath for the entire walk as he and Aedion gripped the half-­conscious Ren between them, the three of them swaying and staggering, looking for all the world like drunkards out for a night of thrills in the slums. The streets ­were still teeming despite the hour, and one of the women they passed slouched over and gripped Aedion’s tunic, spewing a slur of sultry words. But the general used a gentle hand to disengage her and said, “I don’t pay for what I can get for free.”

Somehow, it felt like a lie, since Chaol hadn’t seen or heard of Aedion sharing anyone’s bed all these weeks. But perhaps knowing that Aelin was alive changed his priorities.

They reached the opium den Ren had named in between spurts of unconsciousness just as the shouts of soldiers storming into boarding­houses, inns, and taverns echoed from down the street. Chaol didn’t wait to see who they ­were and shoved through the carved wooden door. The reek of unwashed bodies, waste, and sweet smoke clotted in Chaol’s nostrils. Even Aedion coughed and gave Ren, who was almost a dead weight in their arms, a disapproving stare.

But the aging madam swept forward to greet them, her long tunic and over-­robe flowing on some phantom wind, and ushered them down the wood-­paneled hallway, her feet soft on the worn, colorful rugs. She began prattling off prices and the night’s specials, but Chaol took one look in her green, cunning eyes and knew she was familiar with Ren—­someone who had probably built herself her own empire ­here in Rifthold.

She set them up in a veiled-­off alcove littered with worn silk cushions that stank of sweet smoke and sweat, and after she lifted her brows at Chaol, he handed over three gold pieces. Ren groaned from where he was sprawled on the cushions between Aedion and Chaol, but before Chaol could so much as say a word, the madam returned with a bundle in her arms. “They are next door,” she said, her accent lovely and strange. “Hurry.”

She’d brought a tunic. Aedion made quick work of stripping Ren, whose face was deathly pale, lips bloodless. The general swore as they beheld the wound—­a slice low in his belly. “Any deeper and his damn intestines would be hanging out,” Aedion said. He took a strip of clean fabric from the madam and wrapped it around the young lord’s muscled abdomen. There ­were scars all over Ren already. If he survived, this probably would not be the worst of them.

The madam knelt before Chaol and opened the box in her hands. Three pipes now lay on the low-­lying table before them. “You need to play the part,” she breathed, glancing over her shoulder through the thick black veil, no doubt calculating how much time they had left.

Chaol didn’t even try to object as she used rouge to redden the skin around his eyes, applied some paste and powder to leech the color from his face, shook free a few buttons on his tunic, and mussed his hair. “Lay back, limp and loose, and keep the pipe in your hand. Smoke it if you need to take the edge off.” That was all she told him before she got to work on Aedion, who had finished stuffing Ren into his clean clothes. In moments, the three of them ­were reclined on the reeking cushions, and the madam had bustled off with Ren’s bloody tunic.

The lord’s breathing was labored and uneven, and Chaol fought the shaking in his own hands as the front door banged open. The soft feet of the madam hurried past to greet the men. Though Chaol strained to hear, Aedion seemed to be listening without a problem.

“Five of you, then?” the madam chirped loudly enough for them to hear.

“We’re looking for a fugitive,” was the growled response. “Clear out of the way.”

“Surely you would like to rest—­we have private rooms for groups, and you are all such big men.” Each word was purred, a sensual feast. “It is extra for bringing in swords and daggers—­a liability, you see, when the drug takes you—”

“Woman, enough,” the man barked. Fabric ripped as each veiled alcove was inspected. Chaol’s heart thundered, but he kept his body limp, even as he itched to reach for his blade.

“Then I shall leave you to your work,” she said demurely.

Between them, Ren was so dazed that he truly could have been drugged out of his mind. Chaol just hoped his own per­for­mance was convincing as the curtain ripped back.

“Is that the wine?” Aedion slurred, squinting at the men, his face wan and his lips set in a loose grin. He was hardly recognizable. “We’ve been waiting twenty minutes, you know.”

Chaol smiled blearily up at the six men peering into the room. All in those dark uniforms, all unfamiliar. Who the hell ­were they? Why had Ren been targeted?

“Wine,” Aedion snapped, a spoiled son of a merchant, perhaps. “Now.”

The men just swore at them and continued on. Five minutes later, they were gone.

•

The den must have been a meeting point, because Murtaugh found them there an hour later. The madam had brought them to her private office, and they’d been forced to pin Ren to the worn couch as she—­with surprising adeptness—­disinfected, stitched, and bound up his nasty wound. He would survive, she said, but the blood loss and injury would keep him incapacitated for a while. Murtaugh paced the entire time, until Ren collapsed into a deep sleep, courtesy of some tonic the woman made him choke down.

Chaol and Aedion sat at the small table crammed in amongst the crates upon crates of opium stacked against the walls. He didn’t want to know what was in the tonic Ren had ingested.

Aedion was watching the locked door, head cocked as if listening to the sounds of the den, as he said to Murtaugh, “Why ­were you being followed, and who ­were those men?”

The old man kept pacing. “I don’t know. But they knew where Ren and I would be. Ren has a network of in­for­mants throughout the city. Any one of them could have betrayed us.”

Aedion’s attention remained on the door, a hand on one of his fighting knives. “They wore uniforms with the royal sigil—­even the captain didn’t recognize them. You need to lay low for a while.”

Murtaugh’s silence was too heavy. Chaol asked quietly, “Where do we bring him when he can be moved?”

Murtaugh paused his pacing, his eyes full of grief. “There is no place. We have no home.”

Aedion looked sharply at him. “Where the hell have you been staying all this time?”

“Here and there, squatting in abandoned buildings. When we are able to take work, we stay in boarding­houses, but these days . . .”

They would not have access to the Allsbrook coffers, Chaol realized. Not if they had been in hiding for so many years. But to be homeless . . .

Aedion’s face was a mask of disinterest. “And you have no place in Rifthold safe enough to hold him—­to see to his mending.” Not a question, but Murtaugh nodded all the same. Aedion examined Ren, sprawled on the dark sofa against the far wall. His throat bobbed once, but then he said, “Tell the captain your theory about magic.”

•

In the long hours that passed as Ren regained his strength enough to be moved, Murtaugh explained everything he knew. His entire story came out, the old man almost whispering at times—­of the horrors they’d fled, and how Ren had gotten each and every scar. Chaol understood why the young man had been so close-­lipped until now. Secrecy had kept them alive.

All together, Murtaugh and Ren had learned, the various waves the day magic had vanished formed a rough triangle across the continent. The first line went right from Rifthold to the Frozen Wastes. The second went down from the Frozen Wastes to the edge of the Deserted Peninsula. The third line went from there back to Rifthold. A spell, they believed, had been the cause of it.

Standing around the map Aedion had produced, the general traced a finger over the lines again and again, as if sorting out a battle strategy. “A spell sent from specific points, like a beacon.”

Chaol thumped his knuckles on the table. “Is there some way of undoing it?”

Murtaugh sighed. “Our work was interrupted by the disturbance with Archer, and our sources vanished from the city for fear of their lives. But there has to be a way.”

“So where do we start looking?” Aedion asked. “There’s no chance in hell the king would leave clues lying around.”

Murtaugh nodded. “We need eyewitnesses to confirm what we suspect, but the places we think the spell originated are occupied by the king’s forces. ­We’ve been waiting for an in.”

Aedion gave him a lazy grin. “No wonder you kept telling Ren to be nice to me.”

As if in response, Ren groaned, struggling to rise to consciousness. Had the young lord ever felt safe or at peace at any point in the past ten years? It would explain that anger—­the reckless anger that coursed through all the young, shattered hearts of Terrasen, including Celaena’s.

Chaol said, “There is an apartment hidden in a ware­house in the slums. It’s secure, and has all the amenities you need. You’re welcome to stay there for however long you require.”

He felt Aedion watching him carefully. But Murtaugh frowned. “However generous, I cannot accept the offer to stay in your ­house.”

“It’s not my ­house,” Chaol said. “And believe me, the own­er won’t mind one bit.”

31

“Eat it,” Manon said, holding out the raw leg of mutton to Abraxos. The day was bright, but the wind off the snowy peaks of the Fangs still carried a brutal chill. They’d been going outside the mountain for little spurts to stretch his legs, using the back door that opened onto a narrow road leading into the mountains. She’d guided him by the giant chain—­as if it would do anything to stop him from taking off—­up a sharp incline, and then onto the meadow atop a plateau.

“Eat it,” she said, shaking the freezing meat at Abraxos, who was now lying on his belly in the meadow, huffing at the first grasses and flowers to poke through the melting ice. “It’s your reward,” she said through her teeth. “You earned it.”

Abraxos sniffed at a cluster of purple flowers, then flicked his eyes to her. No meat, he seemed to say.

“It’s good for you,” she said, and he went right back to sniffing the violets or what­ever they ­were. If a plant ­wasn’t good for poisoning or healing or keeping her alive if she ­were starving, she’d never bothered to learn its name—­especially not wildflowers.

She tossed the leg right in front of his massive mouth and tucked her hands into the folds of her red cloak. He snuffed at it, his new iron teeth glinting in the radiant light, then stretched out one massive, claw-­tipped wing and—

Shoved it aside.

Manon rubbed her eyes. “Is it not fresh enough?”

He moved to sniff some white-­and-­yellow flowers.

A nightmare. This was a nightmare. “You ­can’t really like flowers.”

Again those dark eyes shifted to her. Blinked once. I most certainly do, he seemed to say.

She splayed her arms. “You never even smelled a flower until yesterday. What’s wrong with the meat now?” He needed to eat tons and tons of meat to put on the muscle he was lacking.

When he went back to sniffing the flowers rather delicately—­the insufferable, useless worm—­she stalked to the leg of mutton and hauled it up. “If you won’t eat it,” she snarled at him, hoisting it up with both hands to her mouth and popping her iron teeth down, “then I will.”

Abraxos watched her with those bemused dark eyes as she bit into the icy, raw meat. And spat it everywhere.

“What in the Mother’s dark shadow—” She sniffed at the meat. It ­wasn’t rancid, but like the men ­here, it tasted off. The sheep ­were raised inside the mountain, so maybe it was something in the water. As soon as she got back, she’d give the Thirteen the order not to touch the men—­not until she knew what in hell was making them taste and smell that way.

Regardless, Abraxos had to eat, because he had to get strong—­so she could be Wing Leader, so she could see the look on Iskra’s face when she ripped her apart at the War Games. And if this was the only way to get the worm to eat . . .

“Fine,” she said, chucking the leg away. “You want fresh meat?” She scanned the mountains towering around them, eyeing the gray stones. “Then ­we’re going to have to hunt.”

•

“You smell like shit and blood.” Her grandmother didn’t turn from her desk, and Manon didn’t flinch at the insult. She was covered in both, actually.

It was thanks to Abraxos, the flower-­loving worm, who had just watched while she scaled one of the nearby cliffs and brought down a braying mountain goat for him. “Brought down” was a more elegant phrase than what had actually happened: she half froze to death as she waited for some goats to pass on their treacherous climb, and then, when she’d finally ambushed one, she’d not only rolled in its dung as she’d grappled with it but it had also dumped a fresh load on her, right before it went tumbling out of her arms and broke its skull on the rocks below.

It had nearly taken her with it, but she’d managed to grab on to a dead root. Abraxos was still lying on his belly, sniffing the wildflowers, when she returned with the dead goat in her arms, its blood now iced on her cloak and tunic.

He’d devoured the goat in two bites, then gone back to enjoying the wildflowers. At least he’d eaten. Getting him back to the Northern Fang, however, was a trial in itself. He hadn’t hurt her, hadn’t fled, but he’d pulled on the chains, shaking his head again and again as they neared the cavernous back door where the sounds of the wyverns and men reached them. But he’d gone in—­though he’d snapped and growled at the handlers who rushed out to retrieve him. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his reluctance—­the way he’d looked at her with a mute plea. She didn’t pity him, because she pitied nothing, but she ­couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“You summoned me,” said Manon, head high. “I did not want to keep you waiting.”

“You are keeping me waiting, Manon.” The witch turned, eyes full of death and promises of endless pain. “It has been weeks now, and you are not airborne with your Thirteen. The Yellowlegs have been flying as a host for three days. Three days, Manon. And you’re coddling your beast.”

Manon didn’t show one flicker of feeling. Apologizing would make it worse, as would excuses. “Give me orders, and they will be done.”

“I want you airborne by tomorrow eve­ning. Don’t bother coming back if you aren’t.”

•

“I hate you,” Manon panted through her iron teeth as she and Abraxos finished their grueling trek to the top of the mountain peak. It had taken half a day to get ­here—­and if this didn’t work, it would take until eve­ning to get back to the Omega. To pack her belongings.

Abraxos was curled up like a cat on the narrow stretch of flat rock atop the mountain. “Willful, lazy worm.” He didn’t even blink at her.

Take the eastern side, the overseer had said as he’d helped her saddle up and set out from the back door of the Northern Fang before dawn. They used this peak to train the hatchling wyverns—­and reluctant fliers. The eastern side, Manon saw as she peered over the lip she’d just climbed, was a smooth incline after a twenty-­foot drop. Abraxos could take a running start off the edge, try to glide, and if he fell . . . Well, it would only be twenty feet and then wind-­smooth rock to slide down for a ways. Slim possibility for death.

No, death lay on the western side. Frowning at Abraxos, who was licking his new iron claws, Manon crossed the plateau and, despite herself, winced at the blistering wind that shot up.

To the west was an endless plunge through nothing until the spiked, unforgiving rocks below. It would take a crew of men to scrape off her remains. Eastern side it was.

She checked her tight braid and flicked her clear inner lid into place. “Let’s go.”

Abraxos lifted his massive head as if to say, We just got ­here.

She pointed to the eastern edge. “Flying. Now.”

He huffed, curling his back to her, the leather saddle gleaming. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she snapped, stalking around to get in his face. She pointed to the edge again. “We’re flying, you rutting coward.”

He tucked his head toward his belly, his tail wrapping around him. He was pretending he ­couldn’t hear her.

She knew it might cost her life, but she gripped his nostrils—­hard enough to make his eyes fly open. “Your wings are functional. The humans said they ­were. So you can fly, and you are going to fly, because I say so. I’ve been fetching your useless carcass mountain goats by the herd, and if you humiliate me, I’ll use your hide for a new leather coat.” She rustled her torn and stained crimson cloak. “This is ruined, thanks to your goats.”

He shifted his head away, and she let go—­because it was either let go or be tossed into the air. He set down his head and closed his eyes.

This was punishment, somehow. For what, she didn’t know. Perhaps her own stupidity in picking a bait beast for a mount.

She hissed to herself, eyeing the saddle on his back. Even with a running jump she ­couldn’t make it. But she needed to be in that saddle and airborne, or ­else . . . Or ­else the Thirteen would be broken apart by her grandmother.

Abraxos continued to lie in the sun, vain and indulgent as a cat. “Warrior heart indeed.”

She eyed the eastern edge, the saddle, the dangling reins. He’d bucked and thrashed the first time they’d shoved the bit into his mouth, but he’d gotten used to it now—­at least, enough so that he’d tried to take off the head of only one handler today.

The sun was still rising high, but soon it would start its descent, and then she’d be completely and perfectly ruined. Like hell she would be.

“You had this coming” was all the warning she gave him before she took a running leap, landing on his haunch and then scrambling, so fast he had barely lifted his head by the time she scuttled across his scaly back and into the saddle.

He jerked upright, stiff as a board as she shoved her booted feet into the stirrups and gripped the reins. “We’re flying—now.” She dug her heels into his sides.

Perhaps the spurs hurt or surprised him, because Abraxos bucked—­bucked and roared. She yanked on the reins as hard as she could. “Enough,” she barked, hauling with one arm to guide him over the eastern edge. “Enough, Abraxos.”

He was still thrashing, and she clenched her thighs as hard as she could to stay in the saddle, leaning into each movement. When the bucking didn’t dislodge her, he lifted his wings, as if he would fling her off. “Don’t you dare,” she growled, but he was still twisting and bellowing.

“Stop it.” Her brain rattled in her skull and her teeth clacked together so hard she had to retract her fangs so they didn’t punch right through her skin.

But Abraxos kept bucking, wild and frantic. Not toward the eastern edge, but away—­toward the lip of the western plunge.

“Abraxos, stop.” He was going to go right over. And then they’d splatter on the stones.

He was so panicked, so enraged that her voice was no more than a crackling leaf on the wind. The western drop loomed to her right, then her left, flashing beneath the leathery, mottled wings as they flapped and snapped. Under Abraxos’s massive talons, stones hissed and crumbled as he neared the edge.

“Abraxos—” But then his leg slid off the cliff, and Manon’s world tilted down—­down, down, as he lost his grip and they plummeted into open air.

32

Manon didn’t have time to contemplate her oncoming death.

She was too busy holding on to the saddle, the world flipping and spinning, the wind shrieking, or perhaps that was Abraxos, as they plunged down the cliff face.

Her muscles locked and trembled, but she kept her arms laced through the straps, the only thing keeping her from death, even as it swiftly approached with every rotation of Abraxos’s ruined body.

The trees below took shape, as did the spiked, wind-­carved rocks between them. Faster and faster, the cliff wall a blur of gray and white.

Maybe his body would take the impact and she could walk away.

Maybe all those rocks would go right through them both.

Maybe he’d flip and she would land on the rocks first.

She hoped it would happen too quickly for her to recognize just how she was dying, to know what part of her broke first. They hurtled down. There was a little river running through the spiked rocks.

Wind slammed into them from below, a draft that rocked Abraxos upright, but they ­were still rotating, still plunging.

“Open your wings!” she screamed over the wind, over her thundering heart. They stayed shut.

“Open them and pull up!” she bellowed, just as the rapids on the stream began to appear, just as she understood that she hated the oncoming embrace of the Darkness, and that there was nothing to do to stop this splattering, this doom from—

She could see the pine cones on the trees. “Open them!” A last, rallying war cry against the Darkness.

A war cry that was answered with a piercing shriek as Abraxos flung open his wings, caught the updraft, and sent them soaring away from the ground.

Manon’s stomach went from her throat right out her ass, but they ­were swooping upward, and his wings ­were pumping, each boom the most beautiful sound she had ever heard in her long, miserable life.

Higher he flapped, legs tucked beneath him. Manon crouched in her saddle, clinging to his warm hide as he took them up the face of the neighboring mountain. Its peaks ­rose to meet them like lifted hands, but he wobbled past, beating hard. Manon lifted and fell with him, not taking one breath as they cleared the highest snow-­capped peak and Abraxos, in joy or rage or for the hell of it, gripped clawfuls of snow and ice and set them scattering behind, the sun lighting them up like a trail of stars.

The sun was blinding as they hit the open sky, and there was nothing around them but clouds as massive as the mountains far below, castles and temples of white and purple and blue.

And the cry that Abraxos let out as they entered that hall of clouds, as he leveled out and caught a lightning-­fast current carving a pathway through it . . .

She had not understood what it had been like for him to live his entire life underground, chained and beaten and crippled—­until then. Until she heard that noise of undiluted, unyielding joy.

Until she echoed it, tipping her head back to the clouds around them.

They sailed over a sea of clouds, and Abraxos dipped his claws in them before tilting to race up a wind-­carved column of cloud. Higher and higher, until they reached its peak and he flung out his wings in the freezing, thin sky, stopping the world entirely for a heartbeat.

And Manon, because no one was watching, because she did not care, flung out her arms as well and savored the freefall, the wind now a song in her ears, in her shriveled heart.

•

The gray skies ­were just filling with light as the sun slipped over the horizon at their backs. Bundled in her red cloak, Manon sat atop Abraxos, her vision slightly cloudy from the inner lid she’d already blinked into place. Still, she surveyed her Thirteen, astride their wyverns at the mouth of the canyon run.

They’d assembled in two rows of six, Asterin and her pale blue mount directly behind Manon, leading the first row, Sorrel claiming center in the second. They ­were all awake and alert—­and slightly befuddled. Abraxos’s damaged wings ­weren’t ready to make the narrow Crossing, not yet. So they’d met at the back door, where they’d walked their wyverns the two miles to the first canyon run—­walked like a proper unit, in rank and quietly.

The mouth of the canyon was wide enough for Abraxos to leap into an easy glide. Takeoffs ­were a problem thanks to the shredded muscle and weak spots in his wings—­areas that had taken too many beatings and might never be at their full strength.

But she did not explain that to her Thirteen, because it was none of their damn business and it did not impact them.

“Every morning, from today until the War Games,” Manon said, staring into the labyrinth of ravines and archways that made up the wind-­carved canyon, “we will meet ­here, and until breakfast, we are going to train. Then we’ll have our afternoon training with the other covens. Tell no one.” She’d just have to leave early so she could get Abraxos airborne while the others made the Crossing.

“I want us in close quarters. I don’t care what the men say about keeping the mounts separate. Let the wyverns sort out their dominance, let them squabble, but they are going to fly, tight as armor. There will be no gaps and no room for attitude or territorial ­horse­shit. We fly this canyon together, or we don’t fly at all.”

She looked each of the witches and their mounts in the eye. Abraxos, to her surprise, did the same. What he lacked in size he made up for in sheer will, speed, and dexterity. He sensed currents even before Manon did. “When we are done, if we survive, we’ll meet on the other side and do it again. Until it’s perfect. Your beasts will learn to trust each other and follow orders.” The wind kissed her cheeks. “Don’t fall behind,” she said, and Abraxos plunged into the canyon.

33

In the week that followed, there ­were no more bodies, and certainly no hint of the creature that had drained those people, though Celaena often found herself thinking over the details as Rowan made her light candle after candle at the ruins of the Sun Goddess’s temple. Now that she could shift on command, this was her new task: to light a candle without destroying everything in sight. She failed every time, singeing her cloak, cracking the ruins, incinerating trees as her magic tore out of her. But Rowan had a bottomless supply of candles, so she spent her days staring at them until her eyes crossed. She could sweat for hours and focus on honing her anger and all that nonsense but not get as much as a tendril of smoke. The only thing that came of it was an unending appetite: Celaena ate what­ever and whenever she could, thanks to her magic gobbling so much of her energy.

The rain returned, and with it, the crowd for Emrys’s stories. Celaena always listened while she washed the night’s dishes, to tales of shield maidens and enchanted animals and cunning sorcerers, all the legends of Wendlyn. Rowan still appeared in his hawk form—­and there ­were some nights when she even sat beside the back door, and Rowan sidled a bit closer, too.

Celaena was standing at the sink, back throbbing and hunger gnawing at her belly as she scrubbed the last of the copper pots while Emrys finished narrating the story of a clever wolf and a magical fire-­bird. There was a pause, and then came the usual requests for the same old stories. Celaena didn’t acknowledge the heads that turned in her direction as she asked from the sink, “Do you know any stories about Queen Maeve?”

Dead. Silence. Emrys’s eyes widened before he smiled faintly and said, “Lots. Which one would you like to hear?”

“The earliest ones that you know. All of them.” If she was going to face her aunt again, perhaps she should start learning as much as she could. Emrys might know stories that hadn’t reached the shores of her own lands. If the stories about the skinwalkers had been true, if the immortal stags ­were real . . . perhaps she could glean something vital ­here.

There ­were some ner­vous glances, but at last Emrys said, “Then I shall start at the beginning.”

Celaena nodded and moved to sit in her usual chair, propped against the back door near the sharp-­eyed hawk. Rowan clicked his beak, but she didn’t dare look over her shoulder at him. Instead, she dug into an entire loaf of bread.

“Long ago, when there was no mortal king on Wendlyn’s throne, the faeries still walked among us. Some ­were good and fair, some ­were prone to little mischiefs, and some ­were fouler and darker than the blackest night. But they ­were all of them ruled by Maeve and her two sisters, whom they called Mora and Mab. Cunning Mora, who bore the shape of a great hawk”—that was Rowan’s mighty bloodline—“Fair Mab, who bore the shape of a swan. And the dark Maeve, whose wildness could not be contained by any single form.”

Emrys recited the history, much of which Celaena knew: Mora and Mab had fallen in love with human men, and yielded their immortality. Some said Maeve forced them to give up their gift of eternal life as punishment. Some said they wanted to, if only to escape their sister.

And when Celaena asked, the room falling deathly silent again, if Maeve herself had ever mated, Emrys told her no—­though she had come close, at the dawn of time. A warrior, rumor claimed, had stolen her heart with his clever mind and pure soul. But he had died in some long-­ago war and lost the ring he’d intended for her, and since then, Maeve had cherished her warriors above all others. They loved her for it—­made her a mighty queen whom no one dared challenge. Celaena expected Rowan to puff his feathers at that, but he remained still and quiet on his perch.

Emrys told stories about the Fae Queen well into the night, painting a portrait of a ruthless, cunning ruler who could conquer the world if she wished, but instead kept to her forest realm of Doranelle, planting her stone city in the heart of a massive river basin.

Celaena picked through the details and committed them to memory, trying not to think about the prince perched a few feet above her who had willingly sworn a blood oath to the immortal monster who dwelled beyond the mountains. She was about to ask for another story when she caught the motion in the trees.

She choked on the piece of blackberry pie she was in the middle of devouring as the massive mountain cat trotted from the forest and across the rain-­drenched grass, heading right for their door. The rain had darkened its golden fur, and its eyes gleamed in the torches. Did the guards not see it? Malakai was listening to his mate with rapt attention. She opened her mouth to shout a warning when she paused.

The guards saw everything. And ­weren’t shooting. Because it ­wasn’t a mountain cat, but—

In a flash that could have been distant lightning, the mountain cat became a tall, broad-­shouldered male walking toward the open door. Rowan surged into flight, then shifted, seamlessly landing midstride as he walked into the rain.

The two males clasped forearms and clapped each other on the back—­a quick, efficient greeting. With the rain and Emrys’s narrating it was hard to hear, and she silently cursed her mortal ears as she strained to listen.

“I’ve been looking for you for six weeks,” the golden-­haired stranger said, his voice sharp but hollow. Not urgent, but tired and frustrated. “Vaughan said you ­were at the eastern border, but Lorcan said you ­were on the coast, inspecting the fleet. Then the twins told me that the queen had been all the way out ­here with you and returned alone, so I came on a hunch . . .” He was babbling, his lack of control at odds with his hard muscles and the weapons strapped to him. A warrior, like Rowan—­though his surprisingly lovely face had none of the prince’s severity.

Rowan put a hand on the male’s shoulder. “I heard what happened, Gavriel.” Was this one of Rowan’s mysterious friends? She wished Emrys ­were free to identify him. Rowan had told her so little about his five companions, but it was clear that Rowan and Gavriel ­were more than acquaintances. She sometimes forgot that Rowan had a life beyond this fortress. It hadn’t bothered her before, and she ­wasn’t sure why remembering it now suddenly settled in her stomach like a dead weight, or why it suddenly mattered that Rowan at least acknowledge that she was there. That she existed.

Gavriel scrubbed at his face, his heavily muscled back expanding as he took a breath. “I know you probably don’t want to—”

“Just tell me what you want and it will be done.”

Gavriel seemed to deflate, and Rowan guided him toward another door. They both moved with unearthly, powerful grace—­as if the rain itself parted to let them through. Rowan didn’t even look back at her before he disappeared.

•

Rowan didn’t come back for the rest of the night, and curiosity, not kindness, made her realize his friend probably hadn’t had dinner. At least, no one had brought anything out of the kitchen, and Rowan hadn’t called for food. So why not bring up a tray of stew and bread?

Balancing the heavy tray on her hip, she knocked on his door. The murmuring within went silent, and for a second, she had the mortifying thought that perhaps the male was ­here for a far more intimate reason. Then someone snapped, “What?” and she eased open the door wide enough to glance in. “I thought you might want some stew and—”

Well, the stranger was half-­naked. And lying on his back atop Rowan’s worktable. But Rowan was fully clothed, seated before him, and looking pissed as hell. Yes, she had certainly walked in on something private.

It took a heartbeat to note the flattened needles, the small cauldron-­shaped vat of dark pigment, the rag soaked with ink and blood, and the tracings of a tattoo snaking from the stranger’s left pectoral down his ribs and right to his hip bone.

“Get out,” Rowan said flatly, lowering the needle. Gavriel lifted his head, the bright candles showing tawny eyes glazed with pain—­and not necessarily from the markings being ­etched over his heart and rib cage. Words in the Old Language, just like Rowan’s. There ­were already so many—­most of them aged and interrupted by various scars.

“Do you want the stew?” she asked, still staring at the tattoo, the blood, the little iron pot of ink, and the way Rowan seemed as much at ease with the tools in his hands as he did with his weapons. Had he made his own tattoo?

“Leave it,” he said, and she knew—­just knew—­that he would bite her head off later. Schooling her features into neutrality, she set the tray on the bed and walked back to the door.

“Sorry to interrupt.” What­ever the tattoos ­were for, however they knew each other, she had no right to be in ­here. The pain in the stranger’s eyes told her enough. She’d seen it in her own reflection plenty. Gavriel’s attention darted between her and Rowan, his nostrils flaring—­he was smelling her.

It was definitely time to get the hell out. “Sorry,” she said again, and shut the door behind her.

She made it two steps down the hall before she had to stop and lean against the stone wall, rubbing at her face. Stupid. Stupid to even care what he did outside of training, to think he might consider sharing personal information with her, even if it was only that he was retiring to his rooms early. It hurt, though—­more than she wanted to admit.

She was about to drag herself to her room when the door flung open down the hall and Rowan stormed out, practically glowing with ire. But just seeing the lividness written all over him had her riding that reckless, stupid edge again, and clinging to the anger was easier than embracing the quiet darkness that wanted to pull her down, down, down. Before he could start shouting, she asked, “Do you do it for money?”

A flicker of teeth. “One, it’s none of your business. And two, I would never stoop so low.” The look he gave her told her exactly what he thought of her profession.

“You know, it might be better if you just slapped me instead.”

“Instead of what?”

“Instead of reminding me again and again how rutting worthless and awful and cowardly I am. Believe me, I can do the job well enough on my own. So just hit me, because I’m damned tired of trading insults. And you know what? You didn’t even bother to tell me you’d be unavailable. If you’d said something, I never would have come. I’m sorry I did. But you just left me downstairs.”

Saying those last words made a sharp, quick panic rise up in her, an aching pain that had her throat closing. “You left me,” she repeated. Maybe it was only out of blind terror at the abyss opening up again around her, but she whispered, “I have no one left. No one.”

She hadn’t realized how much she meant it, how much she needed it not to be true, until now.

His features remained impassive, turning vicious, even, as he said, “There is nothing that I can give you. Nothing I want to give you. You are not owed an explanation for what I do outside of training. I don’t care what you have been through or what you want to do with your life. The sooner you can sort out your whining and self-­pity, the sooner I can be rid of you. You are nothing to me, and I do not care.”

There was a faint ringing in her ears that turned into a roar. And beneath it, a sudden wave of numbness, a too-­familiar lack of sight or sound or feeling. She didn’t know why it happened, because she had been so dead set on hating him, but . . . it would have been nice, she supposed. It would have been nice to have one person who knew the absolute truth about her—­and didn’t hate her for it.

It would have been really, really nice.

She walked away without another word. With each step she took back to her room, that flickering light inside of her guttered.

And went out.

34

Celaena did not remember curling up in her bed, boots still on. She did not remember her dreams, or feel the pangs of hunger or thirst when she awoke, and she could barely respond to anyone as she trudged down to the kitchen and set about helping with breakfast. Everything swirled past in dull colors and whispers of sound. But she was still. A bit of rock in a stream.

Breakfast passed, and when it was done, in the quiet of the kitchen, the sounds sorted out into voices. A murmur—­Malakai. A laugh—­Emrys.

“Look,” Emrys said, coming up to where Celaena stood at the kitchen sink, still staring out at the field. “Look what Malakai bought me.”

She caught the flash of the golden hilt before she understood Emrys was holding out a new knife. It was a joke. The gods had to be playing a joke. Or they just truly, truly hated her.

The hilt was engraved with lotus blossoms, a ripple of lapis lazuli edging the bottom like a river wave. Emrys was smiling, eyes bright. But that knife, the gold polished and bright . . .

“I got it from a merchant from the southern continent,” Malakai said from the table, his satisfied tone enough to tell her that he was beaming. “It came all the way from Eyllwe.”

The numbness snapped.

Snapped with such a violent crack that she was surprised they didn’t hear it.

And in its place was a screaming, high-­pitched and keening, loud as a teakettle, loud as a storm wind, loud as the sound the maid had emitted the morning she’d walked into Celaena’s parents’ bedroom and seen the child lying between their corpses.

It was so loud that she could hardly hear herself as she said, “I do not care.” She ­couldn’t hear anything over that silent screaming, so she raised her own voice, breath coming fast, too fast, as she repeated, “I. Do. Not. Care.”

Silence. Then Luca warily said from across the room, “Elentiya, don’t be rude.”

Elentiya. Elentiya. Spirit that cannot be broken.

Lies, lies, lies. Nehemia had lied about everything. About her stupid name, about her plans, about every damn thing. And she was gone. All that Celaena would have left of her ­were reminders like this—­weapons similar to the ones the princess had worn with such pride. Nehemia was gone, and she had nothing left.

Trembling so hard she thought her body would fall apart at the seams, she turned. “I do not care about you,” she hissed to Emrys and Malakai and Luca. “I do not care about your knife. I do not care about your stories or your little kingdom.” She pinned Emrys with a stare. Luca and Malakai ­were across the room in an instant, stepping in front of the old man—­teeth bared. Good. They should feel threatened. “So leave me alone. Keep your gods-­damned lives to yourselves and leave me alone.”

She was shouting now, but she ­couldn’t stop hearing the screaming, ­couldn’t hone the anger into anything, ­couldn’t tell which way was up or down, only that Nehemia had lied about everything, and her friend once had sworn an oath not to—­sworn an oath and broken it, just as she’d broken Celaena’s own heart the day she let herself die.

She saw the tears in Emrys’s eyes then. Sorrow or pity or anger, she didn’t care. Luca and Malakai ­were still between them, growling softly. A family—­they ­were a family, and they stuck together. They would rip her apart if she hurt one of them.

Celaena let out a low, joyless laugh as she took in the three of them. Emrys opened his mouth to say what­ever it was he thought would help.

But Celaena let out another dead laugh and walked out the door.

•

After an entire night of tattooing the names of the fallen onto Gavriel’s flesh and listening to the warrior talk about the men he’d lost, Rowan sent him on his way and headed for the kitchen. He found it empty save for the ancient male, who sat at the empty worktable, hands wrapped around a mug. Emrys looked up, his eyes bright and . . . grieving.

The girl was nowhere to be seen, and for a heartbeat, he hoped she’d left again, if only so he didn’t have to face what he’d said yesterday. The door to the outside was open—­as if someone had thrown it wide. She’d probably gone that way.

Rowan took a step toward it, nodding his greeting, but the old male looked him up and down and quietly said, “What are you doing?”

“What?”

Emrys didn’t raise his voice as he said, “To that girl. What are you doing that makes her come in ­here with such emptiness in her eyes?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

Emrys pressed his lips into a tight line. “What do you see when you look at her, Prince?”

He didn’t know. These days, he didn’t know a damn thing. “That’s none of your concern, either.”

Emrys ran a hand over his weathered face. “I see her slipping away, bit by bit, because you shove her down when she so desperately needs someone to help her back up.”

“I don’t see why I would be of any use to—”

“Did you know that Evalin Ashryver was my friend? She spent almost a year working in this kitchen—­living ­here with us, fighting to convince your queen that demi-­Fae have a place in your realm. She fought for our rights until the very day she departed this kingdom—­and the many years after, until she was murdered by those monsters across the sea. So I knew. I knew who her daughter was the moment you brought her into this kitchen. All of us who ­were ­here twenty-­five years ago recognized her for what she is.”

It ­wasn’t often that he was surprised, but . . . Rowan just stared.

“She has no hope, Prince. She has no hope left in her heart. Help her. If not for her sake, then at least for what she represents—­what she could offer all of us, you included.”

“And what is that?” he dared ask.

Emrys met his gaze unflinchingly as he whispered, “A better world.”

•

Celaena walked and walked, until she found herself by the tree-­lined shore of a lake, glaringly bright in the midday sun. She figured it was as good a spot as any as she crumpled to the mossy bank, as her arms wrapped tight around herself and she bowed over her knees.

There was nothing that could be done to fix her. And she was . . . she was . . .

A whimpering noise came out of her, lips trembling so hard she had to clamp down to keep the sound inside.

But the sound was in her throat and her lungs and her mouth, and when she took a breath, it cracked out. Once she heard it, everything came spilling into the world, until her body ached with the force of it.

She vaguely felt the light shifting on the lake. Vaguely felt the sighing wind, warm as it brushed against her damp cheeks. And heard, so soft it was as if she dreamed it, a woman’s voice whispering, Why are you crying, Fireheart?

It had been ten years—­ten long years since she had heard her mother’s voice. But she heard it then over the force of her weeping, as clear as if she knelt beside her. Fireheart—­why do you cry?

“Because I am lost,” she whispered onto the earth. “And I do not know the way.”

It was what she had never been able to tell Nehemia—­that for ten years, she had been unsure how to find the way home, because there was no home left.

Storm winds and ice crackled against her skin before she registered Rowan sitting down beside her, legs out, palms braced behind him in the moss. She raised her head, but didn’t bother to wipe her face as she stared across the glittering lake.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked.

“No.” Swallowing a few times, she yanked a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose, her head clearing with each breath.

They sat in silence, no sound but the quiet lapping of the lake on the mossy bank and the wind in the leaves. Then— “Good. Because ­we’re going.”

Bastard. She called him as much, and then asked, “Going where?”

He smiled grimly. “I think I’ve started to figure you out, Aelin Galathynius.”

•

“What in every burning ring of hell,” Celaena panted, gazing at the cave mouth nestled into the base of the craggy mountain, “are we doing ­here?”

It had been a five-­mile hike. Uphill. With hardly anything in her stomach.

The trees butted against the gray stones, flowing up the slope for a ways and then fading into lichen-­covered rock that eventually turned into the snow-­capped peak that marked the barrier between Wendlyn and Doranelle beyond. For some reason, this hulking giant made the hair on her neck stand up. And it had nothing to do with the frozen wind.

Rowan strode into the gaping maw of the cave mouth, his pale-gray cloak flapping behind him. “Hurry up.”

Pulling her own cloak tighter around her, she staggered after him. This was a bad sign. A horrible sign, actually, because what­ever was in that cave . . .

She walked into the dark, following Rowan by the light on his hair, letting her eyes adjust. The ground was rocky, the stones small and worn smooth. And littered with rusted weapons, armor, and—­clothes. No skeletons. Gods, it was so cold that she could see her breath, see—

“Tell me I’m hallucinating.”

Rowan had stopped at the edge of an enormous frozen lake, stretching into the gloom. Sitting on a blanket in its center, the chains around his wrists anchored under the ice, was Luca.

Luca’s chains clanked as he raised a hand in greeting. “I thought you’d never show. I’m freezing,” he called, and tucked his hands back under his arms. The sound echoed throughout the chamber.

The thick sheet of ice covering the lake was so clear that she could see the water beneath—­pale stones on the bottom, what looked to be old roots from trees long dead, and no sign of life whatsoever. An occasional sword or dagger or lance poked up from the stones. “What is this place?”

“Go get him,” was Rowan’s answer.

“Are you out of your mind?”

Rowan gave her a smile that suggested he was, in fact, insane. She stepped toward the ice, but he blocked her path with a muscled arm. “In your other form.”

Luca’s head was angled, as if trying to hear. “He ­doesn’t know what I am,” she murmured.

“You’ve been living in a fortress of demi-­Fae, you know. He won’t care.”

That was the least of her concerns, anyway. “How dare you drag him into this?”

“You dragged him in yourself when you insulted him—­and Emrys. The least you can do is retrieve him.” He blew out a breath toward the lake, and the ice thawed by the shore, then hardened. Holy gods. He’d frozen the ­whole damn lake. He was that powerful?

“I hope you brought snacks!” Luca said. “I’m starving. Hurry up, Elentiya. Rowan said you had to do this as part of your training, and . . .” He prattled on and on.

“What is the gods-­damned point of this? Just punishment for acting like an ass?”

“You can control your power in human form—­keep it dormant. But the moment you switch, the moment you get agitated or angry or afraid, the moment you remember how much your power scares you, your magic rises up to protect you. It ­doesn’t understand that you are the source of those feelings, not some external threat. When there is an outside threat, when you forget to fear your power long enough, you have control. Or some control.” He pointed again to the sheet of ice between her and Luca. “So free him.”

If she lost control, if her fire got out of her . . . well, fire and ice certainly went well together, didn’t they? “What happens to Luca if I fail?”

“He’ll be very cold and very wet. And possibly die.” From the smile on his face, she knew he was enough of a sadist to let the boy go under with her.

“Were the chains really necessary? He’ll go right to the bottom.” A stupid, bleating kind of panic was starting to fill her veins.

When she held out her hand for the key to Luca’s chains, Rowan shook his head. “Control is your key. And focus. Cross the lake, then figure out how to free him without drowning the both of you.”

“Don’t give me a lesson like you’re some mystical-­nonsense master! This is the stupidest thing I have ever had to—”

“Hurry,” Rowan said with a wolfish grin, and the ice gave a collective groan. As if it was melting. Though some small voice in her head told her he ­wouldn’t let the boy drown, she ­couldn’t trust him, not after last night.

She took one step closer to the ice. “You are a bastard.” When Luca was safely home, she would start finding ways to make Rowan’s life a living hell. She punched through her inner veil, the pain barely registering as her features shifted.

“I was waiting to see your Fae form!” Luca said. “We ­were all taking bets on when—” And on and on.

She scowled at Rowan, his tattoo even more detailed now that she was seeing it with Fae eyes. “It gives me comfort to know that people like you have a special place in hell waiting for them.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know.”

She gave him a particularly vulgar gesture as she stepped onto the ice.

As she took each tentative step—­small ones at first—­she could see the lake bottom sloping away into darkness, swallowing the spread of lost weapons. Luca had finally shut up.

It was only when she stepped past the visible edge of the rocky shelf and hovered over the dark depths that her breath hitched. She slid her foot, and the ice groaned.

Groaned, and cracked, spiderwebbing under her foot. She froze, gaping like a fool as the cracks spread wider and wider, and then—­she kept moving. There was another crack beneath her boots. Did the ice move? “Stop it,” she hissed at Rowan, but didn’t dare look behind her.

Her magic shuddered awake, and she went still as death. No.

But there it was, filling up the spaces in her.

The ice emitted a deep groan that could only mean something cold and wet was coming her way really damn soon, and she took another step, if only because the way back seemed like it would shatter. She was sweating now—­the magic, the fire was warming her from the inside out.

“Elentiya?” Luca asked, and she held out a hand toward him—­a silent gesture to shut his stupid mouth as she closed her eyes and breathed, imagining the cold air around them filling her lungs, freezing over the well of power. Magic—­it was magic. In Adarlan it was a death trap.

She clenched her hands into fists. ­Here it was not a death trap. In this land, she could have it, could wear what­ever form she wished.

The ice stopped groaning, but it had clouded and thinned around her. She started sliding her feet, keeping as balanced and fluid as she could, humming a melody—­a bit of a symphony that used to calm her. She let the beat anchor her, dull the edge of her panic.

The magic simmered to embers, pulsing with each breath. I am safe, she told it. Relatively safe. If Rowan was right, and it was just a reaction to protect her from some enemy . . .

Fire was the reason she’d been banned from the Library of Orynth when she was eight, after accidentally incinerating an entire bookcase of ancient manuscripts when she grew irritated with the Master Scholar lecturing her about decorum. It had been a beautiful, horrible relief to wake up one day not too many months after that and know magic was gone. That she could hold a book—­hold what she adored most—­and not worry about turning it to ash if she became upset or tired or excited.

Celaena Sardothien, gloriously mortal Celaena, never had to worry about accidentally scorching a playmate, or having a nightmare that might incinerate her bedroom. Or burning all of Orynth to the ground. Celaena had been everything Aelin ­wasn’t. She had embraced that life, even if Celaena’s accomplishments ­were death and torture and pain.

“Elentiya?” She’d been staring at the ice. Her magic flickered again.

Burning a city to the ground. That was the fear she overheard Melisande’s emissary hiss at her parents and uncle. She’d been told he had come to see about an alliance, but she later understood he’d really come to gather information on her. Melisande had a young queen on its throne, and she wanted to assess the threat she might face from the heir of Terrasen one day. Wanted to know if Aelin Galathynius would become a weapon of war.

The ice fogged over, and a crack splintered through the air. The magic was pulsing its way out of her, snapping its jaws at every breath she took.

“You are in control now,” Rowan said from the shore. “You are its master.”

She was halfway there. She took one more step toward Luca, and the ice cracked further. His chains rustled—­impatience, or fear?

She had never been in control. Even as Celaena, control had been an illusion. Other masters had held her reins.

“You are the keeper of your own fate,” Rowan said softly from the shore, as if he knew exactly what was flowing through her head.

She hummed some more, the music wending its way from her memory. And somehow . . . somehow the flame grew quiet. Celaena took a step forward, then another. The power smoldering in her veins would never go away; she was far more likely to hurt someone if she didn’t master it.

She scowled over her shoulder at Rowan, who was now striding along the shore, examining some of the fallen blades. There was a hint of triumph in his usually hollow eyes, but he turned away and approached a small crevice in the cave wall, feeling for something inside. She kept walking, the watery abyss deepening. She had mastered her mortal body as an assassin. Mastering her immortal power was just another task.

Luca’s eyes ­were wide as she came at last within touching distance. “You have nothing to hide, you know. We all knew you could shift, anyway,” he said. “And if it makes you feel any better, Sten’s animal form is a pig. He won’t even shift for shame.”

She would have laughed—­actually felt her insides tighten to bark out the sound that had been buried for months, but then she remembered the chains around his wrists. The magic had quieted down, but now . . . melt through them, or melt the ice where they ­were anchored and let him drag the chains back? If she went for the ice, she could easily send them right to the bottom of this ancient lake. And if she went for the chains . . . Well, she could lose control and send them to the bottom, but she could also wind up burning him. At best, branding him where the manacles ­were. At worst, melting his bones. Better to risk the ice.

“Erm,” Luca said. “I’ll forgive every awful thing you said earlier if we can go eat something right now. It smells awful in ­here.” His senses had to be sharper than hers—­the cave had only a faint hint of rust, mold, and rotting things.

“Just hold still and stop talking,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended. But he shut up as she eased to the spot where Rowan had frozen the chains. As carefully as she could, she knelt, spreading her weight out evenly.

She slid one palm against the ice, eyeing the chain’s path to the hanging length swaying in the water beneath.

Swaying—there must be a current. Which meant Rowan had to be constantly sealing the ice . . . The cold bit into her palm, and she eyed Luca on the fur blanket before she turned back to the anchor. If the ice broke, she’d have to grab him. Rowan was out of his damned mind.

She took several long breaths, letting the magic calm and cool and gutter. Then, hand pressed flat against the ice, she crooked an inner finger at her power and pulled out a tiny, burning thread. It flowed down her arm, snaked around her wrist, and then settled in her palm, her skin warming, the ice . . . glowing a bright red. Luca yelped as the ice splintered around them.

“Control,” Rowan barked from the shore, pulling free a discarded sword from where it had been knocked into the little crevice in the wall, its golden hilt glinting. Celaena clamped on the magic so hard it suffocated. A small hole had melted where her palm had been—­but not all the way through. Not big enough to free the chain.

She could master this. She could master herself again. The well inside of her filled up and she pushed back, willing only that thread to squeeze free and into the ice, burrowing like a worm, gnawing away at the cold . . . There was a clank of metal, and a hiss, and then— “Oh, thank the gods,” Luca moaned, hauling the length of chain out of the hole.

She spooled the thread of power back into herself, into that well, and was suddenly cold.

“Please tell me you brought food,” Luca said again.

“Is that why you came? Rowan promised you snacks?”

“I’m a growing boy.” He winced when he looked at Rowan. “And you don’t say no to him.”

No, indeed, no one ever said no to him, and that was probably why Rowan thought a scheme like this was acceptable. Celaena sighed through her nose and looked at the small hole she’d made. A feat—­a miracle. As she was about to stand and help Luca navigate the way back to shore, she glanced at the ice once more. No, not the ice—­the water beneath.

Where a giant red eye was staring right at her.

35

The next four words that came out of Celaena’s mouth ­were so vulgar that Luca choked. But Celaena didn’t move as a massive, jagged, white line gleamed unnervingly far from that red eye.

“Get off the ice now,” she breathed to Luca.

Because that jagged white line—­those ­were teeth. Big, rip-­your-­arm-­off-­in-­one-­bite teeth. And they ­were floating up from the depths, toward the hole she’d made. That was why there ­were no skeletons—­only the weapons that had failed the fools who’d wandered into this cave.

“Holy gods,” Luca said, peering from behind her. “What is that?”

“Shut up and go,” she hissed. On the shore, Rowan’s eyes ­were wide, his face strained beneath his tattoo. He hadn’t realized this lake ­wasn’t empty.

“Now, Luca,” Rowan growled, his sword out, the blade he’d swiped from the ground still sheathed in his other hand.

It was swimming toward them, lazily. Curious. As it neared, she could make out a snaking body as pale as the stones on the bottom of the lake. She’d never seen anything so huge, so ancient, and—­and there was only a thin layer of ice keeping her separated from it.

When Luca started trembling, his tan skin going pale, Celaena surged to her feet, the ice groaning. “Don’t look down,” she said, gripping his elbow. A patch of thicker ice hardened under their feet and spread—­a path for the shore. “Go,” she told the boy, giving him a light shove. He started into a swift shuffle-­slide. She let him get ahead, giving him time so she could guard his back, and glanced down again.

She swallowed her shout as a scaled, massive head stared up at her. Not a dragon or a wyvern, not a serpent or a fish, but something in between. It was missing an eye, the flesh scarred around the empty socket. What in hell had done that? Was there something worse down there, swimming at the belly of the mountain? Of course—­of course she’d be left unarmed in the center of a lake lined with weapons.

“Faster,” Rowan barked. Luca was already halfway to the shore.

Celaena broke into Luca’s same shuffle-­slide, not trusting herself to stay upright if she ran. Just as she took her third step, a flash of bone-­white snapped up through the depths, twisting like a striking asp.

The long tail whipped against the ice and the world bounced.

She went up, legs buckling as the ice lifted from the blow, and then slammed onto her hands and knees. Celaena shoved down the magic that arose to protect and burn and maim. She scrambled and veered aside as the scaly, horned head hurtled toward the ice near her feet.

The surface jolted. Farther out, but getting closer, the ice was breaking. As if all of Rowan’s concentration was now spent on keeping a thin bridge of ice frozen between her and the shore. “Weapon,” she gasped out, not daring to take her attention off the creature.

“Hurry,” Rowan barked, and Celaena lifted her head long enough to see him slide the blade he’d found across the ice, a brisk wind spinning it toward her. Luca abandoned the blanket, shuffle-­running, and Celaena scooped up the golden-­hilted sword as she followed him. A ruby the size of a chicken egg was embedded in the hilt, and despite the age of the scabbard, the blade shone when she whipped it free, as if it had been freshly polished. Something clattered from the scabbard onto the ice—­a plain golden ring. She grabbed it, shoving it into her pocket, and ran faster, as—

The ice lifted again, the boom of that mighty tail as horrific as the moving surface beneath her. Celaena stayed up this time, sinking onto her haunches as she clutched the sword, part of her marveling at the balance and beauty if it; but Luca, slipping and sliding, went down. She reached him in a few heartbeats, hauling him up by the back of his tunic and gripping him tight as the ice lifted again and again and again.

They got past the drop-­off, and she almost groaned with relief at the sight of the pale stone shelf beneath their feet. The ice behind them exploded up, freezing water showering them, and then—

She didn’t stop as those nostrils huffed. Didn’t stop hauling Luca toward Rowan, whose brow gleamed with sweat as massive talons scraped over the ice, gouging four deep lines.

She dragged the boy the last ten yards, then five, then they ­were on the shore and to Rowan, who let out a shuddering breath. Celaena turned in time to see something out of a nightmare trying to crawl onto the ice, its one red eye wild with hunger, its massive teeth promising a brutal and cold kind of death. As Rowan’s sigh finished sounding, the ice melted, and the creature plunged below.

Back on solid ground, suddenly aware that the ice had also been a barrier, Celaena again grabbed Luca, who was looking ready to vomit, and bolted from the cave. There was nothing keeping that creature from climbing out of the water, and the sword was about as useful as a toothpick against it. Who knew how fast it could move on land?

Luca was chanting a steady stream of prayers to various gods as Celaena yanked him down the rocky path and into the glaring afternoon sun, stumbling near-­blind until they hit the murky woods, dodging trees mostly by luck, faster and faster downhill, and then—

A roar that shook the stones and sent the birds scattering into the air, the leaves rustling. But a roar of rage and hunger—­not of triumph. As if the creature had reached the edge of the cave and, after millennia in the watery dark, could not withstand the sunshine. She didn’t want to consider, as they kept running from the echoing roar, what might have happened if it had been night. What still might happen at nightfall.

After a while, she sensed Rowan behind them. Yet she cared only for her young charge, who panted and cursed all the way back to the fortress.

•

When Mistward was in sight, she told Luca only one thing before she sent him ahead: keep his mouth shut about what had happened in the cave. The moment the sounds of him crashing through the brush had faded, she turned.

Rowan was standing there, panting as well, his sword now sheathed. She plunged her new blade into the earth, the ruby in the hilt glowing in a patch of sunlight.

“I will kill you,” she snarled. And launched herself at him.

Even in her Fae form, he still was faster than her, stronger, and dodged her with fluid ease. Slamming face-­first into the tree was better than colliding with the stone walls of the fortress, though not by much. Her teeth sang, but she whirled and lunged for Rowan again, now standing so close, his teeth bared. He ­couldn’t dodge her as she grabbed him by the front of his jacket and connected.

Oh, hitting him in the face felt good, even as her knuckles split and throbbed.

He snarled and threw her to the ground. The air whooshed out of her chest, and the blood trickling out of her nose shot back down her throat. Before he could sit on her, she got her legs around him and shoved with every ounce of that immortal strength. And just like that, he was pinned, his eyes wide with what could only be fury and surprise.

She hit him again, her knuckles barking in agony. “If you ever again bring someone ­else into this,” she panted, hitting him on his tattoo—­on that gods-­damned tattoo. “If you ever endanger anyone ­else the way you did today . . .” The blood on her nose splattered on his face, mingling, she noted with some satisfaction, with blood from the blows she’d given him. “I will kill you.” Another strike, a backhanded blow, and it vaguely occurred to her that he had gone still and was taking it. “I will rip out your rutting throat.” She bared her canines. “You understand?”

He turned his head to the side to spit blood.

Her blood was pounding, so wild that every little restraint she’d locked into place shattered. She shoved back against it, and the distraction cost her. Rowan moved, and then she was under him again. She’d mangled his face, but he didn’t seem to care as he growled, “I will do what­ever I please.”

“You will keep other people out of it!” she screamed, so loudly that the birds stopped chattering. She thrashed against him, gripping his wrists. “No one ­else!”

“Tell me why, Aelin.”

That gods-­damned name . . . She dug her nails into his wrists. “Because I am sick of it!” She was gulping down air, each breath shuddering as the horrific realization she’d been holding at bay since Nehemia’s death came loose. “I told her I would not help, so she orchestrated her own death. Because she thought . . .” She laughed—­a horrible, wild sound. “She thought that her death would spur me into action. She thought I could somehow do more than her—­that she was worth more dead. And she lied—­about everything. She lied to me because I was a coward, and I hate her for it. I hate her for leaving me.”

Rowan still pinned her, his warm blood dripping onto her face.

She had said it. Said the words she’d been choking on for weeks and weeks. The rage seeped from her like a wave pulling away from shore, and she let go of his wrists. “Please,” she panted, not caring that she was begging, “please don’t bring anyone ­else into it. I will do anything you ask of me. But that is my line. Anything ­else but that.”

His eyes ­were veiled as he finally let go of her arms. She gazed up at the canopy. She would not cry in front of him, not again.

He peeled back, the space between them now a tangible thing. “How did she die?”

She let the moisture against her back seep into her, cool her bones. “She manipulated a mutual acquaintance into thinking he needed to kill her in order to further his agenda. He hired an assassin, made sure I ­wasn’t around, and had her murdered.”

Oh, Nehemia. She had done it all out of a fool’s hope, not realizing what a waste it was. She could have allied with flawless Galan Ashryver and saved the world—­found a truly useful heir to the throne.

“What happened to the two men?” A cold question.

“The assassin I hunted down and left in pieces in an alleyway. And the man who hired him . . .” Blood on her hands, on her clothes, in her hair, Chaol’s horrified stare. “I gutted him and dumped his body in a sewer.”

They ­were two of the worst things she’d done, out of pure hatred and vengeance and rage. She waited for the lecture. But Rowan merely said, “Good.”

She was so surprised that she looked at him—and saw what she had done. Not his already bruised and bleeding face, or his ripped jacket and shirt, now muddy. But right where she’d gripped his forearms, the clothes ­were burned through, the skin beneath covered in angry red welts.

Handprints. She’d burned right through the tattoo on his left arm. She was on her feet in an instant, wondering if she should be on her knees begging for forgiveness instead.

It must have hurt like hell. Yet he had taken it—­the beating, the burning—­while she let out those words that had clouded her senses for so many weeks now. “I am . . . so sorry,” she started, but he held up a hand.

“You do not apologize,” he said, “for defending the people you care about.”

She supposed it was as much of an apology as she would ever get from him. She nodded, and he took that as answer enough. “I’m keeping the sword,” she said, yanking it free of the earth. She’d be hard-­pressed to find a better one anywhere in the world.

“You ­haven’t earned it.” He fell silent, then added, “But consider this a favor. Leave it in your rooms when ­we’re training.”

She would have debated, but this was a compromise, too. She wondered if he’d made a compromise any time in the last century. “What if that thing tracks us to the fortress once darkness falls?”

“Even if it does, it ­can’t get past the wards.” When she raised her brows, he said, “The stones around the fortress have a spell woven between them to keep out enemies. Even magic bounces off it.”

“Oh.” Well, that explained why they called it Mistward. A calm, if not pleasant, silence fell between them while they walked. “You know,” she said slyly, “that’s twice now you’ve made a mess of my training with your tasks. I’m fairly sure that makes you the worst instructor I’ve ever had.”

He gave her a sidelong look. “I’m surprised it took you this long to call attention to it.”

She snorted, and as they approached the fortress, the torches and candles ignited as if to welcome them home.

•

“I’ve never seen such a sorry sight,” Emrys hissed as Rowan and Celaena trudged into the kitchen. “Blood and dirt and leaves over every inch of you both.”

Indeed, they ­were something to behold, both of their faces swollen and lacerated, covered in each other’s blood, hair a mess, and Celaena limping slightly. The knuckles of two of her fingers ­were split, and her knee throbbed from an injury she did not recall getting.

“No better than alley cats, brawling at all hours of the day and night,” Emrys said, slamming two bowls of stew onto the worktable. “Eat, both of you. And then get cleaned up. Elentiya, you’re off kitchen duty to­night and tomorrow.” Celaena opened her mouth to object, but the old man held up a hand. “I don’t want you bleeding on everything. You’ll be more trouble than you’re worth.” Wincing, Celaena slumped next to Rowan on the bench, and swore viciously at the pain in her leg, her face, her arms. Swore at the pain in the ass sitting right next to her. “Clean out your mouth, too, while you’re at it,” Emrys snapped.

Luca was huddled by the fire, wide-­eyed and making a sharp, cutting gesture across his neck, as if to warn Celaena about something. Even Malakai, seated at the other end of the table with two weathered sentries, was watching her with raised brows.

Rowan was already hunched over the table, digging into his stew. She glanced again at Luca, who frantically tapped his ears.

She hadn’t shifted back. And—­well, now they’d all noticed, even with the blood and dirt and leaves. Malakai met her stare, and she dared him—­just dared the old man to say anything. But he shrugged and went back to his meal. So it really ­wasn’t a surprise after all. She took a bite of her stew and had to bite back her moan. Was it her Fae senses, or was it even more delicious to­night?

Emrys was watching from the hearth, and Celaena gave him that challenging look, too. She punched back through the veil, aching as she shifted into her mortal form. But the old man brought her and Rowan a loaf of bread and said, “Makes no difference to me whether your ears are pointy or round, or what your teeth look like. But,” he added, looking at Rowan, “I ­can’t deny I’m glad to see you got in a few punches this time.”

Rowan’s head snapped up from his bowl, and Emrys pointed a spoon at him. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough of beating each other into a pulp?” Malakai stiffened, but Emrys went on, “What good does it accomplish, other than providing me with a scullery maid whose face scares the wits out of our sentries? You think any of us like to hear you two cursing and screaming every afternoon? The language you use is enough to curdle all the milk in Wendlyn.”

Rowan lowered his head and mumbled something into his stew.

For the first time in a long, long while, Celaena felt the corners of her lips tug up.

And that was when Celaena walked to the old man—­and got onto her knees. She apologized, profusely. To Emrys, to Luca, to Malakai. Apologized because they deserved it. They accepted, but Emrys still looked wary. Hurt, even. The shame of what she’d said to that man, to all of them, would cling to her for a while.

Though it made her stomach twist and palms sweat, though they didn’t mention names, she ­wasn’t all that surprised when Emrys told her that he and the other old Fae knew who she was, and that her mother had worked to help them. But she was surprised when Rowan took a spot at the sink and helped clean up after the eve­ning meal.

They worked in an easy silence. There ­were still truths she hadn’t confessed to, stains on her soul she ­couldn’t yet explore or express. But maybe—­maybe he ­wouldn’t walk away whenever she did find the courage to tell him.

At the table, Luca was grinning with delight. Just seeing that smile—­that bit of proof that today’s events hadn’t scarred him completely—­made Celaena look at Emrys and say, “We had an adventure today.”

Malakai set down his spoon and said, “Let me guess: it had something to do with that roar that sent the livestock into pandemonium.”

Though Celaena didn’t smile, her eyes crinkled. “What do you know of a creature that dwells in the lake under . . .” She glanced at Rowan to finish.

“Bald Mountain. And he ­can’t know that story,” Rowan said. “No one does.”

“I am a Story Keeper,” Emrys said, staring down at him with all the wrath of one of the iron figurines on the mantel. “And that means that the tales I collect might not come from Fae or human mouths, but I hear them anyway.” He sat down at the table, folding his hands in front of him. “I heard one story, years ago, from a fool who thought he could cross the Cambrian Mountains and enter Maeve’s realm without invitation. He was on his way back, barely clinging to life thanks to Maeve’s wild wolves in the passes, so we brought him ­here while we sent for the healers.”

Malakai murmured, “So that’s why you ­wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace.” A twinkle in those old eyes, and Emrys gave his mate a wry smile.

“He had a fierce infection, so at the time I thought it might have been a fever dream, but he told me he found a cave at the base of the Bald Mountain. He camped there, because it was raining and cold and he planned to be off at first light. Still, he felt like something was watching him from the lake. He drifted off, and awoke only because the ripples ­were lapping against the shore—­ripples from the center of the lake. And just beyond the light of his fire, out in the deep, he spied something swimming. Bigger than a tree or any beast he’d ever seen.”

“Oh, it was horrific,” Luca cut in.

“You said you ­were out with Bas and the other scouts on border patrol today!” Emrys barked, then gave Rowan a look that suggested he’d better test his next meal for poison.

Emrys cleared his throat and was soon staring at the table again, lost in thought. “What the fool learned that night was this: the creature was almost as old as the mountain itself. It claimed to have been born in another world, but had slipped into this one when the gods ­were looking elsewhere. It had preyed upon Fae and humans until a mighty Fae warrior challenged it. And before the warrior was through, he carved one of the creature’s eyes out—­for spite or sport—­and cursed the beast, so that as long as that mountain stood, the creature would be forced to live beneath it.”

A monster from another realm. Had it been let in during the Valg wars, when demons had opened and closed portals to another world at will? How many of the horrific creatures that dwelled in this land ­were only ­here because of those long-­ago battles over the Wyrdkeys?

“So it has dwelled in the labyrinth of underwater caves under the mountain. It has no name—­for it forgot what it was called long ago, and those who meet it do not return home.”

Celaena rubbed her arms, wincing as the split skin of her knuckles stretched with the movement. Rowan was staring directly at Emrys, his head cocked ever so slightly to the side. Rowan glanced at her, as if to make sure she was listening, and asked, “Who was the warrior who carved out its eye?”

“The fool didn’t know, and neither did the beast. But the language it spoke was Fae—­an archaic form of the Old Language, almost indecipherable. It could remember the gold ring he bore, but not what he looked like.”

It took every ounce of effort not to grab for her pocket and the ring she’d put in there, or to examine the sword she’d left by the door, and the ruby that might not be a ruby after all. But it was impossible—­too much of a coincidence.

She might have given in to the urge to look had Rowan not reached for his glass of water. He hid it well, and she didn’t think anyone ­else noticed, but as the sleeve of his jacket shifted, he winced, ever so slightly. From the burns she’d given him. They’d been blistering earlier—­they must be screaming in agony now.

Emrys pinned the prince with a stare. “No more adventures.”

Rowan glanced at Luca, who seemed about to explode with indignation. “Agreed.”

Emrys didn’t back down. “And no more brawling.”

Rowan met Celaena’s stare over the table. His expression yielded nothing. “We’ll try.”

Even Emrys deemed that an acceptable answer.

•

Despite the exhaustion that slammed into her like a wall, Celaena ­couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking of the creature, of the sword and the ring she’d examined for an hour without learning anything, and the control, however shaky, she’d managed to have on the ice. Yet she kept circling back to what she’d done to Rowan—­how badly she’d burned him.

His pain tolerance must be tremendous, she thought as she twisted on her cot, huddled against the cold in the room. She eyed her tin of salve. He should have gone to a healer for those burns. She tossed and turned for another five minutes before she yanked on her boots, grabbed the tin, and left. She’d probably get her head bitten off again, but she ­wouldn’t get a wink of sleep if she ­were too busy feeling guilty. Gods, she felt guilty.

She knocked softly on his door, half hoping he ­wasn’t there. But he snapped “What?” and she winced and went in.

His room was toasty and warm, if not a little old and shabby, especially the worn rugs thrown over much of the gray stone floor. A large four-­poster bed occupied much of the space, a bed that was still made—­and empty. Rowan was seated at the worktable in front of the carved fireplace, shirtless and examining what looked to be a map marked with the locations of those bodies.

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?”

His face was stark and his eyes focused on some far-­off sight. “For ten years, I did nothing. I vanished. I went mad. Beyond mad. I felt nothing at all. I just . . . left. I wandered the world, in and out of my forms, hardly marking the seasons, eating only when my hawk told me it needed to feed or it would die. I would have let myself die—­except I . . . ­couldn’t bring myself . . .” He trailed off and cleared his throat. “I might have stayed that way forever, but Maeve tracked me down. She said it was enough time spent in mourning, and that I was to serve her as prince and commander—­to work with a handful of other warriors to protect the realm. It was the first time I had spoken to anyone since that day I found Lyria. The first time I’d heard my name—­or remembered it.”

“So you went with her?”

“I had nothing. No one. At that point, I hoped serving her might get me killed, and then I could see Lyria again. So when I returned to Doranelle, I wrote the story of my shame on my flesh. And then I bound myself to Maeve with the blood oath, and have served her since.”

“How—how did you come back from that kind of loss?”

“I didn’t. For a long while I ­couldn’t. I think I’m still . . . not back. I might never be.”

She nodded, lips pressed tight, and glanced toward the window.

“But maybe,” he said, quietly enough that she looked at him again. He didn’t smile, but his eyes ­were inquisitive. “Maybe we could find the way back together.”

He would not apologize for today, or yesterday, or for any of it. And she would not ask him to, not now that she understood that in the weeks she had been looking at him it had been like gazing at a reflection. No wonder she had loathed him.

“I think,” she said, barely more than a whisper, “I would like that very much.”

He held out a hand. “Together, then.”

She studied the scarred, callused palm, then the tattooed face, full of a grim sort of hope. Someone who might—­who did understand what it was like to be crippled at your very core, someone who was still climbing inch by inch out of that abyss.

Perhaps they would never get out of it, perhaps they would never be ­whole again, but . . . “Together,” she said, and took his outstretched hand.

And somewhere far and deep inside her, an ember began to glow.