Queen of Shadows

48

Manon beat Asterin in the breakfast hall the morning after her outburst regarding the Yellowlegs coven. No one asked why; no one dared.

Three unblocked blows.

Asterin didn’t so much as flinch.

When Manon was finished, the witch just stared her down, blue blood gushing from her broken nose. No smile. No wild grin.

Then Asterin walked away.

The rest of the Thirteen monitored them warily. Vesta, now Manon’s Third, looked half inclined to sprint after Asterin, but a shake of Sorrel’s head kept the red-haired witch still.

Manon was off-kilter all day afterward.

She’d told Sorrel to stay quiet about the Yellowlegs, but wondered if she should tell Asterin to do the same.

She hesitated, thinking about it.

You let them do this.

The words danced around and around in Manon’s head, along with that preachy little speech Elide had made the night before. Hope. What drivel.

The words were still dancing when Manon stalked into the duke’s council chamber twenty minutes later than his summons demanded.

“Do you delight in offending me with your tardiness, or are you incapable of telling time?” the duke said from his seat. Vernon and Kaltain were at the table, the former smirking, the latter staring blankly ahead. No sign of shadowfire.

“I’m an immortal,” Manon said, taking a seat across from them as Sorrel stood guard by the doors, Vesta in the hall outside. “Time means nothing to me.”

“A little sass from you today,” Vernon said. “I like it.”

Manon leveled a cold look at him. “I missed breakfast this morning, human. I’d be careful if I were you.”

The lord only smiled.

She leaned back in her chair. “Why did you summon me this time?”

“I need another coven.”

Manon kept her face blank. “What of the Yellowlegs you already have?”

“They are recovering well and will be ready for visitors soon.”

Liar.

“A Blackbeak coven this time,” the duke pressed.

“Why?”

“Because I want one, and you’ll provide one, and that’s all you need to know.”

You let them do this.

She could feel Sorrel’s gaze on the back of her head.

“We’re not whores for your men to use.”

“You are sacred vessels,” the duke said. “It is an honor to be chosen.”

“I find that a very male thing to assume.”

A flash of yellowing teeth. “Pick your strongest coven, and send them downstairs.”

“That will require some consideration.”

“Do it fast, or I will pick myself.”

You let them do this.

“And in the meantime,” the duke said as he rose from his seat in a swift, powerful movement, “prepare your Thirteen. I have a mission for you.”

Manon sailed on a hard, fast wind, pushing Abraxos even as clouds gathered, even as a storm broke around the Thirteen. Out. She had to get out, had to remember the bite of the wind on her face, what unchecked speed and unlimited strength were like.

Even if the rush of it was somewhat diminished by the rider she held in front of her, her frail body bundled up against the elements.

Lightning cleaved the air so close by that Manon could taste the tang of the ether, and Abraxos veered, plunging into rain and cloud and wind. Kaltain didn’t so much as flinch. Shouts burst from the men riding with the rest of the Thirteen.

Thunder cracked, and the world went numb with the sound. Even Abraxos’s roar was muted in her dulled ears. The perfect cover for their ambush.

You let them do this.

The rain soaking through her gloves turned to warm, sticky blood.

Abraxos caught an updraft and ascended so fast that Manon’s stomach dropped. She held Kaltain tightly, even though the woman was harnessed in. Not one reaction from her.

Duke Perrington, riding with Sorrel, was a cloud of darkness in Manon’s peripheral vision as they soared through the canyons of the White Fangs, which they had so carefully mapped all these weeks.

The wild tribes would have no idea what was upon them until it was too late.

She knew there was no way to outrun this—no way to avoid it.

Manon kept flying through the heart of the storm.

When they reached the village, blended into the snow and rock, Sorrel swooped in close enough for Kaltain to hear Perrington. “The houses. Burn them all.”

Manon glanced at the duke, then at her charge. “Should we land—”

“From here,” the duke ordered, and his face became grotesquely soft as he spoke to Kaltain. “Do it now, pet.”

Below, a small female figure slipped out of one of the heavy tents. She looked up, shouting.

Dark flames—shadowfire—engulfed her from head to toe. Her scream was carried to Manon on the wind.

Then there were others, pouring out as the unholy fire leaped upon their houses, their horses.

“All of them, Kaltain,” the duke said over the wind. “Keep circling, Wing Leader.”

Sorrel met Manon’s stare. Manon quickly looked away and reeled Abraxos back around the pass where the tribe had been camped. There were rebels among them; Manon knew because she’d tracked them herself.

Shadowfire ripped through the camp. People dropped to the ground, shrieking, pleading in tongues Manon didn’t understand. Some fainted from the pain; some died from it. The horses were bucking and screaming—such wretched sounds that even Manon’s spine stiffened.

Then it vanished.

Kaltain sagged in Manon’s arms, panting, gasping down raspy breaths.

“She’s done,” Manon said to the duke.

Irritation flickered on his granite-hewn face. He observed the people running about, trying to help those who were weeping or unconscious—or dead. Horses fled in every direction.

“Land, Wing Leader, and put an end to it.”

Any other day, a good bloodletting would have been enjoyable. But at his order …

She’d scouted this tribe for him.

You let them do this.

Manon barked the command to Abraxos, but his descent was slow—as if giving her time to reconsider. Kaltain was shuddering in Manon’s arms, nearly convulsing. “What’s wrong with you?” Manon said to the woman, half wondering if she should stage an accident that would end with the woman’s neck snapped on the rocks.

Kaltain said nothing, but the lines of her body were locked tight, as if frozen despite the fur she’d been wrapped in.

Too many eyes—there were too many eyes on them for Manon to kill her. And if she was so valuable to the duke, Manon had no doubt he’d take one—or all—of the Thirteen as retribution. “Hurry, Abraxos,” she said, and he picked up his pace with a snarl. She ignored the disobedience, the disapproval, in the sound.

They landed on a flattened bit of mountain ledge, and Manon left Kaltain in Abraxos’s care as she stomped through the sleet and snow toward the panicking village.

The Thirteen silently fell into rank behind her. She didn’t glance at them; part of her didn’t dare to see what might be on their faces.

The villagers halted as they beheld the coven standing atop the rock outcropping jutting over the hollow where they’d made their home.

Manon drew Wind-Cleaver. And then the screaming started anew.

49

By midafternoon, Aelin had signed all the documents the Master of the Bank brought over, abandoned the Keep to its horrible new owners, and Aedion still hadn’t wrapped his mind around everything that she had done.

Their carriage deposited them at the edge of the slums, and they kept to the shadows as they made their way home, silent and unseen. Yet when they reached the warehouse, Aelin kept walking toward the river several blocks away without so much as a word. Rowan took a step to follow, but Aedion cut him off.

He must have had a death wish, because Aedion even raised his brows a bit at the Fae Prince before he sauntered down the street after her. He’d heard their little fight on the roof last night thanks to his open bedroom window. Even now, he honestly couldn’t decide if he was amused or enraged by Rowan’s words—Don’t touch me like that—when it was obvious the warrior-prince felt quite the opposite. But Aelin—gods above, Aelin was still figuring it out.

She was stomping down the street with delightful temper as she said, “If you’ve come along to reprimand—oh.” She sighed. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to turn around.”

“Not a chance in hell, sweetheart.”

She rolled her eyes and continued on. They walked silently for block after block until they reached the glimmering brown river. A decrepit, filthy length of cobblestone walkway ran along the water’s edge. Below, abandoned and crumbling posts were all that was left of an ancient dock.

She stared out across the muddy water, crossing her arms. The afternoon light was nearly blinding as it reflected off the calm surface. “Out with it,” she said.

“Today—who you were today … that wasn’t entirely a mask.”

“That bothers you? You saw me cut down the king’s men.”

“It bothers me that the people we met today didn’t bat an eye at that person. It bothers me that you were that person for a time.”

“What do you want me to tell you? Do you want me to apologize for it?”

“No—gods, no. I just …” The words were coming out all wrong. “You know that when I went to those war camps, when I became general … I let the lines blur, too. But I was still in the North, still home, among our people. You came here instead, and had to grow up with those piece-of-shit men, and … I wish I’d been here. I wish Arobynn had somehow found me, too, and raised us together.”

“You were older. You never would have let Arobynn take us. The moment he looked away, you would have grabbed me and run.”

True—very true, but … “The person you were today, and a few years ago—that person had no joy, or love.”

“Gods, I had some, Aedion. I wasn’t a complete monster.”

“Still, I just wanted you to know all that.”

“That you feel guilty that I became an assassin while you endured the war camps and battlefields?”

“That I wasn’t there. That you had to face those people alone.” He added, “You came up with that whole plan by yourself and didn’t trust any of us with it. You took on the burden of getting that money. I could have found a way—gods, I would have married whatever wealthy princess or empress you asked me to, if they promised men and money.”

“I’m never going to sell you off like chattel,” she snapped. “And we have enough now to pay for an army, don’t we?”

“Yes.” And then some. “But that’s beside the point, Aelin.” He took a breath. “The point is—I should have been there then, but I am here now. I’m healed. Let me share this burden.”

She tipped her head back, savoring the breeze off the river. “And what could I ever ask of you that I couldn’t do myself?”

“That’s the problem. Yes, you can do most things on your own. That doesn’t mean you have to.”

“Why should I risk your life?” The words were clipped.

Ah. Ah. “Because I’m still more expendable than you are.”

“Not to me.” The words were barely more than a whisper.

Aedion put a hand on her back, his own reply clogged in his throat. Even with the world going to hell around them, just hearing her say that, standing here beside her—it was a dream.

She stayed silent, so he mastered himself enough to say, “What, exactly, are we going to do now?”

She glanced at him. “I’m going to free magic, take down the king, and kill Dorian. The order of the last two items on that list could be flipped, depending on how it all goes.”

His heart stopped. “What?”

“Was something about that not clear?”

All of it. Every damn part of it. He had no doubt she would do it—even the part about killing her friend. If Aedion objected, she’d only lie and cheat and trick him.

“What and when and how?” he asked.

“Rowan’s working on the first leg of it.”

“That sounds a lot like, ‘I have more secrets that I’m going to spring on you whenever I feel like stopping your heart dead in your chest.’”

But her answering smile told him he would get nowhere with her. He couldn’t decide if it charmed or disappointed him.

Rowan was half-asleep in bed by the time Aelin returned hours later, murmuring good night to Aedion before slipping into her room. She didn’t so much as glance in his direction as she began unbuckling her weapons and piling them on the table before the unlit hearth.

Efficient, quick, quiet. Not a sound from her.

“I went hunting for Lorcan,” he said. “I tracked his scent around the city, but didn’t see him.”

“Is he dead, then?” Another dagger clattered onto the table.

“The scent was fresh. Unless he died an hour ago, he’s still very much alive.”

“Good,” she said simply as she walked into the open closet to change. Or just to avoid looking at him some more.

She emerged moments later in one of those flimsy little nightgowns, and all the thoughts went right out of his damn head. Well, apparently she’d been mortified by their earlier encounter—but not enough to wear something more matronly to bed.

The pink silk clung to her waist and slid over her hips as she approached the bed, revealing the glorious length of her bare legs, still lean and tan from all the time they’d spent outdoors this spring. A strip of pale yellow lace graced the plunging neckline, and he tried—gods damn him, he honestly tried—not to look at the smooth curve of her breasts as she bent to climb into bed.

He supposed any lick of self-consciousness had been flayed from her under the whips of Endovier. Even though he’d tattooed over the bulk of the scars on her back, their ridges remained. The nightmares, too—when she’d still startle awake and light a candle to drive away the blackness they’d shoved her into, the memory of the lightless pits they’d used for punishment. His Fireheart, shut in the dark.

He owed the overseers of Endovier a visit.

Aelin might have an inclination to punish anyone who’d hurt him, but she didn’t seem to realize that he—and Aedion, too—might also have scores to settle on her behalf. And as an immortal, he had infinite patience where those monsters were concerned.

Her scent hit him as she unbound her hair and nestled into the pile of pillows. That scent had always struck him, had always been a call and a challenge. It had shaken him so thoroughly from centuries encased in ice that he’d hated her at first. And now … now that scent drove him out of his mind.

They were both really damn lucky that she currently couldn’t shift into her Fae form and smell what was pounding through his blood. It had been hard enough to conceal it from her until now. Aedion’s knowing looks told him enough about what her cousin had detected.

He’d seen her naked before—a few times. And gods, yes, there had been moments when he’d considered it, but he’d mastered himself. He’d learned to keep those useless thoughts on a short, short leash. Like that time she’d moaned at the breeze he sent her way on Beltane—the arch of her neck, the parting of that mouth of hers, the sound that came out of her—

She was now lying on her side, her back to him.

“About last night,” he said through his teeth.

“It’s fine. It was a mistake.”

Look at me. Turn over and look at me.

But she remained with her back to him, the moonlight caressing the silk bunched over the dip of her waist, the slope of her hip.

His blood heated. “I didn’t mean to—snap at you,” he tried.

“I know you didn’t.” She tugged the blanket up as if she could feel the weight of his gaze lingering on that soft, inviting place between her neck and shoulder—one of the few places on her body that wasn’t marked with scars or ink. “I don’t even know what happened, but it’s been a strange few days, so let’s just chalk it up to that, all right? I need to sleep.”

He debated telling her that it was not all right, but he said, “Fine.”

Moments later, she was indeed asleep.

He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, tucking a hand beneath his head.

He needed to sort this out—needed to get her to just look at him again, so he could try to explain that he hadn’t been prepared. Having her touch the tattoo that told the story of what he’d done and how he’d lost Lyria … He hadn’t been ready for what he felt in that moment. The desire hadn’t been what shook him at all. It was just … Aelin had driven him insane these past few weeks, and yet he hadn’t considered what it would be like to have her look at him with interest.

It wasn’t at all the way it had been with the lovers he’d taken in the past: even when he’d cared for them, he hadn’t really cared. Being with them had never made him think of that flower market. Never made him remember that he was alive and touching another woman while Lyria—Lyria was dead. Slaughtered.

And Aelin … If he went down that road, and if something happened to her … His chest seized at the thought.

So he needed to sort it out—needed to sort himself out, too, no matter what he wanted from her.

Even if it was agony.

“This wig is horrible,” Lysandra hissed, patting her head as she and Aelin elbowed their way into the packed bakery alongside a nicer stretch of the docks. “It won’t stop itching.”

“Quiet,” Aelin hissed back. “You only have to wear it for another few minutes, not your whole damn life.”

Lysandra opened her mouth to complain some more, but two gentlemen approached, boxes of baked goods in hand, and gave them appreciative nods. Both Lysandra and Aelin had dressed in their finest, frilliest dresses, no more than two wealthy women on an afternoon stroll through the city, monitored by two bodyguards each.

Rowan, Aedion, Nesryn, and Chaol were leaning against the wooden dock posts outside, discreetly watching them through the large glass window of the shop. They were clothed and hooded in black, wearing two separate coats of arms—both fake, acquired from Lysandra’s stash for when she met with secretive clients.

“That one,” Aelin said under her breath as they pushed through the lunchtime crowd, fixing her attention on the most harried-looking woman behind the counter. The best time to come here, Nesryn had said, was when the workers were too busy to really note their clientele and would want them out of the way as quickly as possible. A few gentlemen parted to let them pass, and Lysandra cooed her thanks.

Aelin caught the eye of the woman behind the counter.

“What can I get you, miss?” Polite, but already sizing up the customers clustering behind Lysandra.

“I want to talk to Nelly,” Aelin said. “She was to make me a brambleberry pie.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. Aelin flashed a winning smile.

The woman sighed and hustled through the wooden door, allowing a glimpse of the chaos of the bakery behind it. A moment later she came back out, giving Aelin a She’ll be out in a minute look and going right to another customer.

Fine.

Aelin leaned against one of the walls and crossed her arms. Then she lowered them. A lady didn’t loiter.

“So Clarisse has no idea?” Aelin said under her breath, watching the bakery door.

“None,” Lysandra said. “And any tears she shed were for her own losses. You should have seen her raging when we got into the carriage with those few coins. You’re not frightened of having a target on your back?”

“I’ve had a target on my back since the day I was born,” Aelin said. “But I’ll be gone soon enough, and I’ll never be Celaena again, anyway.”

Lysandra let out a little hum. “You know I could have done this for you on my own.”

“Yes, but two ladies asking questions are less suspicious than one.” Lysandra gave her a knowing look. Aelin sighed. “It’s hard,” she admitted. “To let go of the control.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, you’re close to paying off your debts, aren’t you? You’ll be free soon.”

A casual shrug. “Not likely. Clarisse increased all of our debts since she got shut out of Arobynn’s will. It seems she made some advance purchases and now has to pay for them.”

Gods—she hadn’t even considered that. Hadn’t even thought about what it might mean for Lysandra and the other girls. “I’m sorry for any extra burden it’s caused you.”

“To have seen the look on Clarisse’s face when the will was read, I’ll gladly endure another few years of this.”

A lie, and they both knew it. “I’m sorry,” Aelin said again. And because it was all she could offer, she added, “Evangeline looked well and happy just now. I could see if there was a way to take her when we go—”

“And drag an eleven-year-old girl across kingdoms and into a potential war? I think not. Evangeline will remain with me. You don’t need to make me promises.”

“How are you feeling?” Aelin asked. “After the other night.”

Lysandra watched three young women giggle to one another as they passed a handsome young man. “Fine. I can’t quite believe I got away with it, but … We both pulled it off, I suppose.”

“Do you regret doing it?”

“No. I regret … I regret that I didn’t get to tell him what I really thought of him. I regret that I didn’t tell him what I’d done with you—to see the betrayal and shock in his eyes. I did it so fast, and had to go for the throat, and after I did, I just rolled over and listened—until it was done, but …” Her green eyes were shadowed. “Do you wish you had been the one to do it?”

“No.”

And that was that.

She glanced at her friend’s saffron-and-emerald gown. “That dress suits you.” She jerked her chin toward Lysandra’s chest. “And does wonders for them, too. The poor men in here can’t stop looking.”

“Trust me, having larger ones isn’t a blessing. My back hurts all the time.” Lysandra frowned down at her full breasts. “As soon as I get my powers back, these things will be the first to go.”

Aelin chuckled. Lysandra would get her powers back—once that clock tower was gone. She tried not to let the thought sink in. “Really?”

“If it wasn’t for Evangeline, I think I’d just turn into something with claws and fangs and live in the wilderness forever.”

“No more luxury for you?”

Lysandra pulled a bit of lint off Aelin’s sleeve. “Of course I like luxury—you think I don’t love these gowns and jewels? But in the end … they’re replaceable. I’ve come to value the people in my life more.”

“Evangeline is lucky to have you.”

“I wasn’t just talking about her,” Lysandra said, and she chewed on her full lip. “You—I’m grateful for you.”

Aelin might have said something back, something to adequately convey the flicker of warmth in her heart, had a slim, brown-haired woman not emerged from the kitchen door. Nelly.

Aelin pushed off the wall and flounced up to the counter, Lysandra in tow. Nelly said, “You came to see me about a pie?”

Lysandra smiled prettily, leaning close. “Our supplier of pies, it seems, vanished with the Shadow Market.” She spoke so softly that even Aelin could barely hear. “Rumor has it you know where he is.”

Nelly’s blue eyes shuttered. “Don’t know anything about that.”

Aelin delicately placed her purse on the counter, leaning in so that the other customers and workers couldn’t see as she slid it toward Nelly, making sure the coins clinked. Heavy coins. “We are very, very hungry for … pie,” Aelin said, letting some desperation show. “Just tell us where he went.”

“No one escaped the Shadow Market alive.”

Good. Just as Nesryn had assured them, Nelly didn’t talk easily. It would be too suspicious for Nesryn to ask Nelly about the opium dealer, but two vapid, spoiled rich women? No one would think twice.

Lysandra set another coin purse on the counter. One of the other workers glanced their way, and the courtesan said, “We’d like to place an order.” The worker focused on her customer again, unfazed. Lysandra’s smile turned feline. “So tell us where to pick it up, Nelly.”

Someone barked Nelly’s name from the back, and Nelly glanced between them, sighing. She leaned forward and whispered, “They got out through the sewers.”

“We heard guards were down there, too,” Aelin said.

“Not down far enough. A few went to the catacombs beneath. Still hiding out down there. Bring your guards, but don’t let ’em wear their sigils. Not a place for rich folk.”

Catacombs. Aelin had never heard of catacombs beneath the sewers. Interesting.

Nelly withdrew, striding back into the bakery. Aelin looked down at the counter.

Both bags of coins were gone.

They slipped out of the bakery unnoticed and fell into step with their four bodyguards.

“Well?” Nesryn murmured. “Was I right?”

“Your father should fire Nelly,” Aelin said. “Opium addicts are piss-poor employees.”

“She makes good bread,” Nesryn said, and then fell back to where Chaol was walking behind them.

“What’d you learn?” Aedion demanded. “And do you care to explain why you needed to know about the Shadow Market?”

“Patience,” Aelin said. She turned to Lysandra. “You know, I bet the men around here would cut out their snarling if you turned into a ghost leopard and snarled back at them.”

Lysandra’s brows rose. “Ghost leopard?”

Aedion swore. “Do me a favor and never turn into one of those.”

“What are they?” Lysandra said. Rowan chuckled under his breath and stepped a bit closer to Aelin. She tried to ignore it. They’d barely spoken all morning.

Aedion shook his head. “Devils cloaked in fur. They live up in the Staghorns, and during the winter they creep down to prey on livestock. As big as bears, some of them. Meaner. And when the livestock runs out, they prey on us.”

Aelin patted Lysandra’s shoulder. “Sounds like your kind of creature.”

Aedion went on, “They’re white and gray, so you can barely make them out against the snow and rock. You can’t really tell they’re on you until you’re staring right into their pale green eyes …” His smile faltered as Lysandra fixed her green eyes on him and cocked her head.

Despite herself, Aelin laughed.

“Tell us why we’re here,” Chaol said as Aelin climbed over a fallen wooden beam in the abandoned Shadow Market. Beside her, Rowan held a torch high, illuminating the ruins—and the charred bodies. Lysandra had gone back to the brothel, escorted by Nesryn; Aelin had swiftly changed into her suit in an alley, and stashed her gown behind a discarded crate, praying no one snatched it before she could return.

“Just be quiet for a moment,” Aelin said, tracing the tunnels by memory.

Rowan shot her a glance, and she lifted a brow. What?

“You’ve come here before,” Rowan said. “You came to search the ruins.” That’s why you smelled of ash, too.

Aedion said, “Really, Aelin? Don’t you ever sleep?”

Chaol was watching her now, too, though maybe that was to avoid looking at the bodies littered around the halls. “What were you doing here the night you interrupted my meeting with Brullo and Ress?”

Aelin studied the cinders of the oldest stalls, the soot stains, the smells. She paused before one shop whose wares were now nothing but ash and twisted bits of metal. “Here we are,” she trilled, and strode into the hewn-rock stall, its stones burned black.

“It still smells like opium,” Rowan said, frowning. Aelin brushed her foot over the ashy ground, kicking away cinders and debris. It had to be somewhere—ah.

She swept away more and more, the ash staining her black boots and suit. At last a large, misshapen stone appeared beneath her feet, a worn hole near its edge.

She said casually, “Did you know that in addition to dealing opium, this man was rumored to sell hellfire?”

Rowan whipped his gaze to her.

Hellfire—nearly impossible to attain or make, mostly because it was so lethal. Just a vat of it could take out half of a castle’s retainer wall.

“He would never talk to me about it, of course,” Aelin went on, “no matter how many times I came here. He claimed he didn’t have it, yet he had some of the ingredients around the shop—all very rare—so … There must have been a supply of it here.”

She hauled open the stone trapdoor to reveal a ladder descending into the gloom. None of the males spoke as the reek of the sewers unfurled.

She crouched, sliding onto the first rung, and Aedion tensed, but he wisely said nothing about her going first.

Smoke-scented darkness enveloped her as she climbed down, down, down, until her feet hit smooth rock. The air was dry, despite their proximity to the river. Rowan came next, dropping his torch onto the ancient stones to reveal a cavernous tunnel—and bodies.

Several bodies, some of them nothing but dark mounds in the distance, cut down by the Valg. There were fewer to the right, toward the Avery. They’d probably anticipated an ambush at the river mouth and gone the other way—to their doom.

Not waiting for Aedion or Chaol to climb down, Aelin began following the tunnel, Rowan silent as a shadow at her side—looking, listening. After the stone door groaned closed above, she said into the darkness, “When the king’s men set this place alight, if the fire had hit that supply … Rifthold probably wouldn’t be here anymore. At least not the slums, and probably more.”

“Gods above,” Chaol murmured from a few paces behind.

Aelin paused at what looked like an ordinary grate in the sewer floor. But no water ran beneath, and only dusty air floated up to meet her.

“That’s how you’re planning to blow up the clock tower—with hellfire,” Rowan said, crouching at her side. He made to grab her elbow as she reached for the grate, but she sidled out of range. “Aelin—I’ve seen it used, seen it wreck cities. It can literally melt people.”

“Good. So we know it works, then.”

Aedion snorted, peering down into the gloom beyond the grate. “So what? You think he kept his supply down there?” If he had a professional opinion about hellfire, he kept it to himself.

“These sewers were too public, but he had to keep it near the market,” Aelin said, yanking on the grate. It gave a little, and Rowan’s scent caressed her as he leaned to help haul it off the opening.

“It smells like bones and dust down there,” Rowan said. His mouth quirked to the side. “But you suspected that already.”

Chaol said from a few feet behind, “That’s what you wanted to know from Nelly—where he was hiding. So he can sell it to you.”

Aelin lit a bit of wood from Rowan’s torch. She carefully poised it just beneath the lip of the hole before her, the flame lighting a drop of about ten feet, with cobblestones beneath.

A wind pushed from behind, toward the hole. Into it.

She set aside the flame and sat on the lip of the hole, her legs swinging in the dimness beneath. “What Nelly doesn’t know yet is that the opium monger was actually caught two days ago. Killed on sight by the king’s men. You know, I do think Arobynn sometimes had no idea whether he really wanted to help me or not.” It had been his casual mention of it at dinner that had set her thinking, planning.

Rowan murmured, “So his supply in the catacombs is now unguarded.”

She peered into the gloom below. “Finders keepers,” she said, and jumped.

50

“How did those lowlifes keep this place a secret?” Aelin breathed as she turned to Chaol.

The four of them stood atop a small staircase, the cavernous space beyond them illuminated in flickering gold by the torches Aedion and Rowan bore.

Chaol was shaking his head, surveying the space. Not a sign of scavengers, thank the gods. “Legend has it that the Shadow Market was built on the bones of the god of truth.”

“Well, they got the bones part right.”

In every wall, skulls and bones were artfully arranged—and every wall, even the ceiling, had been formed from them. Even the floor at the foot of the stairs was laid with bones of varying shapes and sizes.

“These aren’t ordinary catacombs,” Rowan said, setting down his torch. “This was a temple.”

Indeed, altars, benches, and even a dark reflection pool lay in the massive space. Still more sprawled away into shadow.

“There’s writing on the bones,” Aedion said, striding down the steps and onto the bone floor. Aelin grimaced.

“Careful,” Rowan said as Aedion went to the nearest wall. Her cousin lifted a hand in lazy dismissal.

“It’s in every language—all in different handwriting,” Aedion marveled, holding his torch aloft as he moved along the wall. “Listen to this one here: ‘I am a liar. I am a thief. I took my sister’s husband and laughed while I did it.’” A pause. He silently read another. “None of this writing … I don’t think these were good people.”

Aelin scanned the bone temple. “We should be quick,” she said. “Really damn quick. Aedion, you take that wall; Chaol, the center; Rowan, the right. I’ll grab the back. Careful of where you wave your fire.” Gods help them if they unwittingly placed a torch near the hellfire.

She took a step down, and then another. Then the last one, onto the bone floor.

A shudder crawled through her, and she glanced at Rowan out of instinct. His tight face told her all she needed to know. But he still said, “This is a bad place.”

Chaol strode past them, his sword out. “Then let’s find this hellfire supply and get out.”

Right.

All around them, the empty eyes of the skulls in the walls, in the structures, the pillars in the center of the room, seemed to watch.

“Seems like this god of truth,” Aedion called from his wall, “was more of a Sin-Eater than anything. You should read some of the things people wrote—the horrible things they did. I think this was a place for them to be buried, and to confess on the bones of other sinners.”

“No wonder no one wanted to come here,” Aelin muttered as she strode off into the dark.

The temple went on and on, and they found supplies—but no whisper of scavengers or other residents. Drugs, money, jewelry, all hidden inside skulls and within some of the bone crypts on the floor. But no hellfire.

Their cautious steps on the bone floor were the only sounds.

Aelin moved deeper and deeper into the gloom. Rowan soon cleared his side of the temple and joined her in the back, exploring the alcoves and little hallways that branched off into the slumbering dark. “The language,” Aelin said to him. “It gets older and older the farther back we go. The way they spell the words, I mean.”

Rowan twisted toward her from where he’d been carefully opening a sarcophagus. She doubted an ordinary man would be able to shift the stone lid. “Some of them even date their confessions. I just saw one from seven hundred years ago.”

“Makes you seem young, doesn’t it?”

He gave her a wry smile. She quickly looked away.

The bone floor clicked as he stepped toward her. “Aelin.”

She swallowed hard, staring at a carved bone near her head. I killed a man for sport when I was twenty and never told anyone where I buried him. I kept his finger bone in a drawer.

Dated nine hundred years ago.

Nine hundred—

Aelin studied the darkness beyond. If the Shadow Market dated back to Gavin, then this place had to have been built before it—or around the same time.

The god of truth …

She drew Damaris from across her back, and Rowan tensed. “What is it?”

She examined the flawless blade. “The Sword of Truth. That’s what they called Damaris. Legend said the bearer—Gavin—could see the truth when he wielded it.”

“And?”

“Mala blessed Brannon, and she blessed Goldryn.” She peered into the gloom. “What if there was a god of truth—a Sin-Eater? What if he blessed Gavin, and this sword?”

Rowan now stared toward the ancient blackness. “You think Gavin used this temple.”

Aelin weighed the mighty sword in her hands. “What sins did you confess to, Gavin?” she whispered into the dark.

Deep into the tunnels they went, so far that when Aedion’s triumphant cry of “Found it!” reached Aelin and Rowan, she could barely hear it. And barely cared.

Not when she stood before the back wall—the wall behind the altar of what had no doubt been the original temple. Here the bones were nearly crumbling with age, the writing almost impossible to read.

The wall behind the altar was of pure stone—white marble—and carved in Wyrdmarks.

And in the center was a giant rendering of the Eye of Elena.

Cold. It was so cold in here that their breath clouded in front of them, mingling.

“Whoever this god of truth was,” Rowan murmured, as if trying not to be overheard by the dead, “he was not a benevolent sort of deity.”

No; with a temple built from the bones of murderers and thieves and worse, she doubted this god had been a particular favorite. No wonder he’d been forgotten.

Aelin stepped up to the stone.

Damaris turned icy in her hand—so frigid her fingers splayed, and she dropped the sword on the altar floor and backed away. Its clang against the bones was like thunder.

Rowan was instantly at her side, his swords out.

The stone wall before them groaned.

It began shifting, the symbols rotating, altering themselves. From the flicker of her memory she heard the words: It is only with the Eye that one can see rightly.

“Honestly,” Aelin said as the wall at last stopped rearranging itself from the proximity of the sword. A new, intricate array of Wyrdmarks had formed. “I don’t know why these coincidences keep surprising me.”

“Can you read it?” Rowan asked. Aedion called their names, and Rowan called back, telling them both to come.

Aelin stared up at the carvings. “It might take me some time.”

“Do it. I don’t think it was chance that we found this place.”

Aelin shook off her shiver. No—nothing was ever chance. Not when it came to Elena and the Wyrdkeys. So she loosed a breath and began.

“It’s … it’s about Elena and Gavin,” she said. “The first panel here”—she pointed to a stretch of symbols—“describes them as the first King and Queen of Adarlan, how they were mated. Then … then it jumps back. To the war.”

Footsteps sounded and light flickered as Aedion and Chaol reached them. Chaol whistled.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Aedion said. He frowned at the giant rendering of the Eye, and then at the one around Aelin’s neck.

“Get comfortable,” she said.

Aelin read a few more lines, deciphering and decoding. So hard—the Wyrdmarks were so damn hard to read. “It describes the demon wars with the Valg that had been left here after the First War. And …” She read the line again. “And the Valg this time were led …” Her blood chilled. “By one of the three kings—the king who remained trapped here after the gate was sealed. It says that to look upon a king—to look upon a Valg king was to gaze into …” She shook her head. “Madness? Despair? I don’t know that symbol. He could take any form, but he appeared to them now as a handsome man with golden eyes. The eyes of the Valg kings.”

She scanned the next panel. “They did not know his true name, so they called him Erawan, the Dark King.”

Aedion said, “Then Elena and Gavin battled him, your magic necklace saved their asses, and Elena called him by his true name, distracting him enough for Gavin to slay him.”

“Yes, yes,” Aelin said, waving a hand. “But—no.”

“No?” Chaol said.

Aelin read further, and her heart skipped a beat. “What is it?” Rowan demanded, as if his Fae ears had noted her heart’s stutter.

She swallowed hard, running a shaking finger under a line of symbols. “This … this is Gavin’s confessional. From his deathbed.”

None of them spoke.

Her voice trembled as she said, “They did not slay him. Not by sword, or fire, or water, or might could Erawan be slain or his body be destroyed. The Eye …” Aelin touched her hand to the necklace; the metal was warm. “The Eye contained him. Only for a short time. No—not contained. But … put him to sleep?”

“I have a very, very bad feeling about this,” Aedion said.

“So they built him a sarcophagus of iron and some sort of indestructible stone. And they put it in a sealed tomb beneath a mountain—a crypt so dark … so dark that there was no air, no light. Upon the labyrinth of doors,” she read, “they put symbols, unbreakable by any thief or key or force.”

“You’re saying that they never killed Erawan,” Chaol said.

Gavin had been Dorian’s childhood hero, she recalled. And the story had been a lie. Elena had lied to her—

“Where did they bury him?” Rowan asked softly.

“They buried him …” Her hands shook so badly that she lowered them to her sides. “They buried him in the Black Mountains, and built a keep atop the tomb, so that the noble family who dwelled above might forever guard it.”

“There are no Black Mountains in Adarlan,” Chaol said.

Aelin’s mouth went dry. “Rowan,” she said quietly. “How do you say ‘Black Mountains’ in the Old Language?”

A pause, and then a loosened breath.

“Morath,” Rowan said.

She turned to them, her eyes wide. For a moment, they all just stared at one another.

“What are the odds,” she said, “that the king is sending his forces down to Morath by mere coincidence?”

“What are the odds,” Aedion countered, “that our illustrious king has acquired a key that can unlock any door—even a door between worlds—and his second in command happens to own the very place where Erawan is buried?”

“The king is insane,” Chaol said. “If he plans to raise Erawan—”

“Who says he hasn’t already?” Aedion asked.

Aelin glanced at Rowan. His face was grim. If there is a Valg king in this world, we need to move fast. Get those Wyrdkeys and banish them all back to their hellhole.

She nodded. “Why now, though? He’s had the two keys for at least a decade. Why bring the Valg over now?”

“It would make sense,” Chaol said, “if he’s doing it in anticipation of raising Erawan again. To have an army ready for him to lead.”

Aelin’s breathing was shallow. “The summer solstice is in ten days. If we bring magic down on the solstice, when the sun is strongest, there’s a good chance my power will be greater then, too.” She turned to Aedion. “Tell me you found a lot of hellfire.”

His nod wasn’t as reassuring as she’d hoped.

51

Manon and her Thirteen stood around a table in a room deep within the witches’ barracks.

“You know why I called you here,” Manon said. None of them replied; none of them sat. They’d barely spoken to her since butchering that tribe in the White Fangs. And then today—more news. More requests.

“The duke asked me to pick another coven to use. A Blackbeak coven.”

Silence.

“I’d like your suggestions.”

They didn’t meet her eyes. Didn’t utter a word.

Manon snapped down her iron teeth. “You would dare defy me?”

Sorrel cleared her throat, attention on the table. “Never you, Manon. But we defy that human worm’s right to use our bodies as if they were his own.”

“Your High Witch has given orders that will be obeyed.”

“You might as well name the Thirteen,” Asterin said, the only one of them holding Manon’s gaze. Her nose was still swollen and bruised from the beating. “For we would sooner that be our fate than hand over our sisters.”

“And you all agree with this? That you wish to breed demon offspring until your bodies break apart?”

“We are Blackbeaks,” Asterin said, her chin high. “We are no one’s slaves, and will not be used as such. If the price for that is never returning to the Wastes, then so be it.”

None of the others so much as flinched. They’d all met—they’d discussed this beforehand. What to say to her.

As if she were in need of managing.

“Was there anything else you all decided in your little council meeting?”

“There are … things, Manon,” Sorrel said. “Things you need to hear.”

Betrayal—this was what mortals called betrayal.

“I don’t give a shit about what you fools dared believe I need to hear. The only thing I need to hear is the sound of you saying Yes, Wing Leader. And the name of a gods-damned coven.”

“Pick one yourself,” Asterin snapped.

The witches shifted. Not a part of the plan, was it?

Manon stalked around the table to Asterin, past the other witches who didn’t dare turn to face her. “You have been nothing but a waste from the minute you set foot in this Keep. I don’t care if you have flown at my side for a century—I am going to put you down like the yapping dog you are—”

“Do it,” Asterin hissed. “Rip my throat out. Your grandmother will be so proud that you finally did.”

Sorrel was at Manon’s back.

“Is that a challenge?” Manon said too quietly.

Asterin’s gold-flecked black eyes danced. “It’s a—”

But the door opened and shut.

A young man with golden hair now stood in the room, his black stone collar gleaming in the torchlight.

He shouldn’t have gotten in.

There had been witches everywhere, and she’d set sentinels from another coven to guard the halls so that none of the duke’s men could catch them unawares.

As one, the Thirteen turned toward the handsome young man.

And as one, they flinched as he smiled, and a wave of darkness crashed into them.

Darkness without end, darkness even Manon’s eyes couldn’t penetrate, and—

And Manon was again standing before that Crochan witch, a dagger in her hand.

“We pity you … for what you do to your children … You force them to kill and hurt and hate until there is nothing left inside of them—of you. That is why you are here,” the Crochan wept … “Because of the threat you posed to the monster you call grandmother when you chose mercy and you saved your rival’s life.”

Manon violently shook her head, blinking. Then it was gone. There was only darkness, and the Thirteen, shouting to one another, struggling, and—

A golden-haired young man had been in that room with the Yellowlegs, Elide had said.

Manon started prowling through the darkness, navigating the room by memory and smell. Some of her Thirteen were nearby; some had backed against the walls. And the otherworldly reek of the man, of the demon inside him—

The smell wrapped around her fully, and Manon drew Wind- Cleaver.

Then there he was, chuckling as someone—Ghislaine—started screaming. Manon had never heard that sound. She’d never heard any of them scream with … with fear. And pain.

Manon hurtled into a blind sprint and tackled him to the ground. No sword—she didn’t want a sword for this execution.

Light cracked around her, and there was his handsome face, and that collar. “Wing Leader,” he grinned, in a voice that was not from this world.

Manon’s hands were around his throat, squeezing, her nails ripping through his skin.

“Were you sent here?” she demanded.

Her eyes met his—and the ancient malice in them shrank back. “Get away,” he hissed.

Manon did no such thing. “Were you sent here?” she roared.

The young man surged up, but then Asterin was there, pinning his legs. “Make him bleed,” she said from behind Manon.

The creature continued thrashing. And in the darkness, some of the Thirteen were still shouting in agony and terror. “Who sent you?” Manon bellowed.

His eyes shifted—turning blue, turning clear. It was with a young man’s voice that he said, “Kill me. Please—please kill me. Roland—my name was Roland. Tell my—”

Then blackness spread across his eyes again, along with pure panic at whatever he beheld in Manon’s face, and in Asterin’s over her shoulder. The demon inside the man shrieked: “Get away!”

She’d heard and seen enough. Manon squeezed harder, her iron nails shredding through mortal flesh and muscle. Black, reeking blood coated her hand, and she ripped harder into him, until she got to the bone and slashed through it, and his head thumped against the floor.

Manon could have sworn he sighed.

The darkness vanished, and Manon was instantly on her feet, gore dripping from her hands as she surveyed the damage.

Ghislaine sobbed in the corner, all the color leeched from her rich, dark skin. Thea and Kaya were both tearstained and silent, the two lovers gaping at each other. And Edda and Briar, both of her Shadows, both born and raised in darkness … they were on their hands and knees, puking. Right alongside the green-eyed demon twins, Faline and Fallon.

The rest of the Thirteen were unharmed. Still flush with color, some panting from the momentary surge of rage and energy, but … Fine.

Had only some of them been targeted?

Manon looked at Asterin—at Sorrel, and Vesta, and Lin, and Imogen.

Then at the ones that had been drained.

They all met her gaze this time.

Get away, the demon had screamed—as if in surprise and terror.

After looking her in the eyes.

Those who had been affected … their eyes were ordinary colors. Brown and blue and green. But the ones who hadn’t …

Black eyes, flecked with gold.

And when he’d looked at Manon’s eyes …

Gold eyes had always been prized among Blackbeaks. She’d never wondered why.

But now wasn’t the time. Not with this reeking blood soaking into her skin.

“This was a reminder,” Manon said, her voice bouncing hollowly off the stones. She turned from the room. Leave them to each other. “Get rid of that body.”

Manon waited until Kaltain was alone, drifting up one of the forgotten spiraling staircases of Morath, before she pounced.

The woman didn’t flinch as Manon pinned her against the wall, her iron nails digging into Kaltain’s pale, bare shoulders. “Where does the shadowfire come from?”

Dark, empty eyes met hers. “From me.”

“Why you? What magic is it? Valg power?”

Manon studied the collar around the woman’s thin throat.

Kaltain gave a small, dead smile. “It was mine—to start. Then it was … melded with another source. And now it is the power of every world, every life.”

Nonsense. Manon pushed her harder into the dark stone. “How do you take that collar off?”

“It does not come off.”

Manon bared her teeth. “And what do you want with us? To put collars on us?”

“They want kings,” Kaltain breathed, her eyes flickering with some strange, sick delight. “Mighty kings. Not you.”

More drivel. Manon growled—but then there was a delicate hand on her wrist.

And it burned.

Oh, gods, it burned, and her bones were melting, her iron nails had become molten ore, her blood was boiling—

Manon leaped back from Kaltain, and only gripping her wrist told her that the injuries weren’t real. “I’m going to kill you,” Manon hissed.

But shadowfire danced on Kaltain’s fingertips even as the woman’s face went blank again. Without a word, as if she had done nothing, Kaltain walked up the stairs and vanished.

Alone in the stairwell, Manon cradled her arm, the echo of pain still reverberating through her bones. Slaughtering that tribe with Wind-Cleaver, she told herself, had been a mercy.

52

As they left the Sin-Eater’s temple, Chaol marveled at how strange it was to be working with Aelin and her court. How strange it was to not be fighting her for once.

He shouldn’t have even gone with them, given how much there was to do. Half the rebels had left Rifthold, more fleeing every day, and those who remained were pushing to relocate to another city. He’d kept them in line as much as he could, relying on Nesryn to back him up whenever they started to bring up his own past with the king. There were still people going missing, being executed—still people whom they rescued as often as they could from the butchering blocks. He would keep doing it until he was the last rebel left in this city; he would stay to help them, to protect them. But if what they’d learned about Erawan was true …

Gods help them all.

Back on the city street, he turned in time to see Rowan offer a helping hand to pull Aelin out of the sewers. She seemed to hesitate, but then gripped it, her hand swallowed by his.

A team, solid and unbreaking.

The Fae Prince hoisted her up and set her on her feet. Neither of them immediately let go of the other.

Chaol waited—waited for that twist and tug of jealousy, for the bile of it to sting him.

But there was nothing. Only a flickering relief, perhaps, that …

That Aelin had Rowan.

He must be feeling truly sorry for himself, he decided.

Footsteps sounded, and they all went still, weapons drawn, just as—

“I’ve been looking for you for an hour,” Nesryn said, hurrying out of the alley shadows. “What’s—” She noticed their grim faces. They’d left the hellfire down there, hidden in a sarcophagus, for safekeeping—and to keep themselves from being melted should things go very wrong.

He was surprised Aelin had let him know that much—though how she planned to get into the castle, she hadn’t told him.

Just tell Ress and Brullo and the others to stay the hell away from the clock tower was her only warning so far. He’d almost demanded to know what her plans were for the other innocents in the castle, but … It had been nice. To have one afternoon with no fighting, with no one hating him. To feel like he was part of their unit.

“I’ll fill you in later,” Chaol said to her. But Nesryn’s face was pale. “What is it?”

Aelin, Rowan, and Aedion stalked up to them with that unnatural, immortal silence.

Nesryn squared her shoulders. “I received word from Ren. He got into some minor trouble on the border, but he’s fine. He has a message for you—for us.” She brushed back a strand of her inky hair. Her hand trembled slightly.

Chaol braced himself, fought against the urge to put a hand on her arm. “The king,” Nesryn went on, “has been building an army down in Morath, under Duke Perrington’s supervision. The Valg guards around Rifthold are the first of them. More are coming up this way.”

Valg footsoldiers, then. Morath, it seemed, might very well be their first or last battleground.

Aedion cocked his head, the Wolf incarnate. “How many?”

“Too many,” Nesryn said. “We haven’t gotten a full count. Some are camped inside mountains surrounding the war camp—never out all at once, never in full sight. But it’s an army greater than any he’s assembled before.”

Chaol’s palms became slick with sweat.

“And more than that,” Nesryn said, her voice hoarse, “the king now has an aerial cavalry of Ironteeth witches—a host three thousand strong—who have been secretly training in the Ferian Gap to ride wyverns that the king has somehow managed to create and breed.”

Gods above.

Aelin lifted her head, gazing up at the brick wall as if she could see that aerial army there, the movement revealing the ring of scars around her neck.

Dorian—they needed Dorian on the throne. Needed this shut down.

“You are certain of this?” Aedion said.

Rowan was staring at Nesryn, his face the portrait of a cold, calculating warrior, and yet—yet he’d somehow moved closer to Aelin.

Nesryn said tightly, “We lost many spies to attain that information.”

Chaol wondered which of them had been her friends.

Aelin spoke, her voice flat and hard. “Just to make sure I have it right: we are now facing three thousand bloodthirsty Ironteeth witches on wyverns. And a host of deadly soldiers gathering in the south of Adarlan, likely to cut off any alliance between Terrasen and the southern kingdoms.”

Leaving Terrasen stranded. Say it, Chaol silently beseeched her. Say that you need Dorian—free and alive.

Aedion mused, “Melisande might be capable of uniting with us.” He pinned Chaol with an assessing stare—a general’s stare. “Do you think your father knows about the wyverns and witches? Anielle is the closest city to the Ferian Gap.”

His blood chilled. Was that why his father had been so keen to get him home? He sensed Aedion’s next question before the general spoke. “He doesn’t wear a black ring,” Chaol said. “But I doubt you’d find him a pleasant ally—if he bothered to ally with you at all.”

“Things to consider,” Rowan said, “should we need an ally to punch through the southern lines.” Gods, they were actually talking about this. War—war was coming. And they might not all survive it.

“So what are they waiting for?” Aedion said, pacing. “Why not attack now?”

Aelin’s voice was soft—cold. “Me. They’re waiting for me to make my move.”

None of them contradicted her.

Chaol’s voice was strained as he shoved aside his swarming thoughts. “Anything else?”

Nesryn reached into her tunic and pulled out a letter. She handed it to Aedion. “From your second in command. They all worry for you.”

“There’s a tavern down the block. Give me five minutes, and I’ll have a reply for you,” Aedion said, already striding away. Nesryn followed him, giving Chaol a silent nod. The general said over his shoulder to Rowan and Aelin, his heavy hood concealing any telltale features, “I’ll see you at home.”

Meeting over.

But Aelin suddenly said, “Thank you.”

Nesryn paused, somehow knowing the queen had spoken to her.

Aelin put a hand on her heart. “For all that you’re risking—thank you.”

Nesryn’s eyes flickered as she said, “Long live the queen.”

But Aelin had already turned away.

Nesryn met Chaol’s gaze, and he followed after her and Aedion.

An indestructible army, possibly led by Erawan, if the King of Adarlan were insane enough to raise him.

An army that could crush any human resistance.

But … but maybe not if they allied with magic-wielders.

That is, if the magic-wielders, after all that had been done to them, even wanted to bother saving their world.

“Talk to me,” Rowan said from behind her as Aelin stormed down street after street.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t form the thoughts, let alone the words.

How many spies and rebels had lost their lives to get that information? And how much worse would it feel when she sent people to their deaths—when she had to watch her soldiers butchered by those monsters? If Elena had thrown her a bone tonight, somehow leading that opium monger to the Sin-Eater’s temple so that they might find it, she wasn’t feeling particularly grateful.

“Aelin,” Rowan said, quietly enough for only her and the alley rats to hear.

She’d barely survived Baba Yellowlegs. How would anyone survive an army of witches trained in combat?

He gripped her elbow, forcing her to stop. “We’ll face this together,” he breathed, his eyes shining bright and canines gleaming. “As we have in the past. To whatever end.”

She trembled—trembled like a gods-damned coward—and yanked free, stalking away. She didn’t even know where she was going—only that she had to walk, had to find a way to sort herself out, sort the world out, before she stopped moving, or else she would never move again.

Wyverns. Witches. A new, even bigger army. The alley pressed in on her, sealing as tightly as one of those flooded sewer tunnels.

“Talk to me,” Rowan said again, keeping a respectful distance behind.

She knew these streets. A few blocks down, she would find one of the Valg sewer entrances. Maybe she’d jump right in and hack a few of them to pieces. See what they knew about the Dark King Erawan, and whether he was still slumbering under that mountain.

Maybe she wouldn’t bother with questions at all.

There was a strong, broad hand at her elbow, yanking her back against a hard male body.

But the scent wasn’t Rowan’s.

And the knife at her throat, the blade pressing so hard that her skin stung and split …

“Going somewhere, Princess?” Lorcan breathed into her ear.

Rowan had thought he knew fear. He had thought he could face any danger with a clear head and ice in his veins.

Until Lorcan appeared from the shadows, so fast that Rowan hadn’t even scented him, and put that knife against Aelin’s throat.

“You move,” Lorcan snarled in Aelin’s ear, “and you die. You speak, and you die. Understand?”

Aelin said nothing. If she nodded, she’d slice her throat open on the blade. Blood was shining there already, just above her collarbone, filling the alley with its scent.

The smell of it alone sent Rowan sliding into a frozen, murderous calm.

“Understand?” Lorcan hissed, jostling her enough that her blood flowed a bit faster. Still she said nothing, obeying his order. Lorcan chuckled. “Good. I thought so.”

The world slowed and spread around Rowan with sharp clarity, revealing every stone of the buildings and the street, and the refuse and rubbish around them. Anything to give him an advantage, to use as a weapon.

If he’d had his magic, he would have choked the air from Lorcan’s lungs by now, would have shattered through Lorcan’s own dark shields with half a thought. If he’d had his magic, he would have had a shield of their own around them from the start, so this ambush could never happen.

Aelin’s eyes met his.

And fear—that was genuine fear shining there.

She knew she was in a compromised position. They both knew that no matter how fast he was, she was, Lorcan’s slice would be faster.

Lorcan smiled at Rowan, his dark hood off for once. No doubt so that Rowan could see every bit of triumph in Lorcan’s black eyes. “No words, Prince?”

“Why?” was all Rowan could ask. Every action, every possible plan still left him too far away. He wondered whether Lorcan realized that if he killed her, Lorcan himself would be next. Then Maeve. And maybe the world, for spite.

Lorcan craned his head to look at Aelin’s face. Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Where is the Wyrdkey?”

Aelin tensed, and Rowan willed her not to speak, not to taunt Lorcan. “We don’t have it,” Rowan said. Rage—unending, cataclysmic rage—pounded through him.

Exactly what Lorcan wanted. Exactly how Rowan had witnessed the demi-Fae warrior manipulate their enemies for centuries. So Rowan locked that rage down. Tried to, at least.

“I could snap this neck of yours so easily,” Lorcan said, grazing his nose against the side of her throat. Aelin went rigid. The possessiveness in that touch alone half blinded him with feral wrath. It was an effort to stifle it again as Lorcan murmured onto her skin, “You’re so much better when you don’t open that hideous mouth.”

“We don’t have the key,” Rowan said again. He’d slaughter Lorcan in the way only immortals learned and liked to kill: slowly, viciously, creatively. Lorcan’s suffering would be thorough.

“What if I told you we were working for the same side?” Lorcan said.

“I’d tell you that Maeve works for only one side: her own.”

“Maeve didn’t send me here.”

Rowan could almost hear the words Aelin was struggling to keep in. Liar. Piece-of-shit liar.

“Then who did?” Rowan demanded.

“I left.”

“If we’re on the same side, then put your rutting knife down,” Rowan growled.

Lorcan chuckled. “I don’t want to hear the princess yapping. What I have to say applies to both of you.” Rowan waited, taking every second to assess and reassess their surroundings, the odds. At last, Lorcan loosened the blade slightly. Blood slid down Aelin’s neck, onto her suit. “You made the mistake of your short, pathetic mortal life when you gave Maeve that ring.”

Through the lethal calm, Rowan felt the blood drain from his face.

“You should have known better,” Lorcan said, still gripping Aelin around the waist. “You should have known she wasn’t some sentimental fool, pining after her lost love. She had plenty of things from Athril—why would she want his ring? His ring, and not Goldryn?”

“Stop dancing around it and tell us what it is.”

“But I’m having so much fun.”

Rowan leashed his temper so hard that he choked on it.

“The ring,” Lorcan said, “wasn’t some family heirloom from Athril. She killed Athril. She wanted the keys, and the ring, and he refused, and she killed him. While they fought, Brannon stole them away, hiding the ring with Goldryn and bringing the keys here. Didn’t you ever wonder why the ring was in that scabbard? A demon-hunting sword—and a ring to match.”

“If Maeve wants to kill demons,” Rowan said, “we won’t complain.”

“The ring doesn’t kill them. It grants immunity from their power. A ring forged by Mala herself. The Valg could not harm Athril when he wore it.”

Aelin’s eyes widened even more, the scent of her fear shifting to something far deeper than dread of bodily harm.

“The bearer of that ring,” Lorcan went on, smiling at the terror coating her smell, “need never fear being enslaved by Wyrdstone. You handed her your own immunity.”

“That doesn’t explain why you left.”

Lorcan’s face tightened. “She slaughtered her lover for the ring, for the keys. She will do far worse to attain them now that they are on the playing board again. And once she has them … My queen will make herself a god.”

“So?” The knife remained too close to Aelin’s neck to risk attacking.

“It will destroy her.”

Rowan’s rage stumbled. “You plan to get the keys—to keep them from her.”

“I plan to destroy the keys. You give me your Wyrdkey,” Lorcan said, opening the fist he’d held against Aelin’s abdomen, “and I’ll give you the ring.”

Sure enough, in his hand shone a familiar gold ring.

“You shouldn’t be alive,” Rowan said. “If you had stolen the ring and fled, she would have killed you already.” It was a trap. A pretty, clever trap.

“I move quickly.”

Lorcan had been hauling ass out of Wendlyn. It didn’t prove anything, though.

“The others—”

“None of them know. You think I trust them not to say anything?”

“The blood oath makes betrayal impossible.”

“I’m doing this for her sake,” Lorcan said. “I’m doing this because I do not wish to see my queen become a demon herself. I am obeying the oath in that regard.”

Aelin was bristling now, and Lorcan closed his fingers around the ring again. “You’re a fool, Rowan. You think only of the next few years, decades. What I am doing is for the sake of the centuries. For eternity. Maeve will send the others, you know. To hunt you. To kill you both. Let tonight be a reminder of your vulnerability. You will never know peace for a single moment. Not one. And even if we don’t kill Aelin of the Wildfire … time will.”

Rowan shut out the words.

Lorcan peered at Aelin, his black hair shifting with the movement. “Think it over, Princess. What is immunity worth in a world where your enemies are waiting to shackle you, where one slip could mean becoming their eternal slave?”

Aelin just bared her teeth.

Lorcan shoved her away, and Rowan was already moving, lunging for her.

She whirled, the built-in blades in her suit flashing free.

But Lorcan was gone.

After deciding that the slices on her neck were shallow and that she was in no danger of dying from them, Rowan didn’t talk to her for the rest of the journey home.

If Lorcan was right … No, he wasn’t right. He was a liar, and his bargain reeked of Maeve’s tricks.

Aelin pressed a handkerchief to her neck as they walked, and by the time they reached the apartment, the wounds had clotted. Aedion, mercifully, was already in bed.

Rowan strode right into their bedroom.

She followed him in, but he reached the bathroom and quietly shut the door behind him.

Running water gurgled a heartbeat later. A bath.

He’d done a good job concealing it, and his rage had been … she’d never seen someone that wrathful. But she’d still seen the terror on his face. It had been enough to make her master her own fear as fire started crackling in her veins. And she’d tried—gods damn it, she’d tried—to find a way out of that hold, but Lorcan … Rowan had been right. Without her magic, she was no match for him.

He could have killed her.

All she had been able to think about, in spite of her kingdom, in spite of all she still had to do, was the fear in Rowan’s eyes.

And that it would be a shame if he never knew … if she never told him …

Aelin cleaned her neck in the kitchen, washed the little bit of blood from her suit and hung it in the living room to dry, then pulled on one of Rowan’s shirts and climbed into bed.

She barely heard any splashing. Maybe he was just lying in the tub, staring at nothing with that hollow expression he’d worn since Lorcan had removed the knife from her throat.

Minutes passed, and she shouted good night to Aedion, whose echoing good night rumbled through the walls.

Then the bathroom door opened, a veil of steam rippled out, and Rowan appeared, a towel slung low across his hips. She took in the muscled abdomen, the powerful shoulders, but—

But the emptiness in those eyes.

She patted the bed. “Come here.”

He stood there, his eyes lingering on her scabbed neck.

“We both are experts at clamming up, so let’s make an agreement to talk right now like even-tempered, reasonable people.”

He didn’t meet her gaze as he padded toward the bed and slumped down beside her, stretching out over the blankets. She didn’t even reprimand him for getting the sheets wet—or mention that he could have taken half a minute to put on some clothes.

“Looks like our days of fun are over,” she said, propping her head with a fist and staring down at him. He gazed blankly at the ceiling. “Witches, dark lords, Fae Queens … If we make it through this alive, I’m going to take a nice, long vacation.”

His eyes were cold.

“Don’t shut me out,” she breathed.

“Never,” he murmured. “That’s not—” He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I failed you tonight.” His words were a whisper in the darkness.

“Rowan—”

“He got close enough to kill you. If it had been another enemy, they might have.” The bed rumbled as he took a shuddering sigh and lowered his hand from his eyes. The raw emotion there made her bite her lip. Never—never did he let her see those things. “I failed you. I swore to protect you, and I failed tonight.”

“Rowan, it’s fine—”

“It’s not fine.” His hand was warm as it clamped on her shoulder. She let him turn her onto her back, and found him half on top of her as he peered into her face.

His body was a massive, solid force of nature above hers, but his eyes—the panic lingered. “I broke your trust.”

“You did no such thing. Rowan, you told him you wouldn’t hand over the key.”

He sucked in a breath, his broad chest expanding. “I would have. Gods, Aelin—he had me, and he didn’t even know it. He could have waited another minute and I would have told him, ring or no ring. Erawan, witches, the king, Maeve … I would face all of them. But losing you …” He bowed his head, his breath warming her mouth as he closed his eyes. “I failed you tonight,” he murmured, his voice hoarse. “I’m sorry.”

His pine-and-snow scent wrapped around her. She should move away, roll out of reach. Don’t touch me like that.

Yet there he was, his hand a brand on her bare shoulder, his body nearly covering hers. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” she whispered. “I trust you, Rowan.”

He gave her a barely perceptible nod.

“I missed you,” he said quietly, his gaze darting between her mouth and eyes. “When I was in Wendlyn. I lied when I said I didn’t. From the moment you left, I missed you so much I went out of my mind. I was glad for the excuse to track Lorcan here, just to see you again. And tonight, when he had that knife at your throat …” The warmth of his callused finger bloomed through her as he traced a path over the cut on her neck. “I kept thinking about how you might never know that I missed you with only an ocean between us. But if it was death separating us … I would find you. I don’t care how many rules it would break. Even if I had to get all three keys myself and open a gate, I would find you again. Always.”

She blinked back the burning in her eyes as he reached between their bodies and took her hand, guiding it up to lay against his tattooed cheek.

It was an effort to remember how to breathe, to focus on anything but that smooth, warm skin. He didn’t tear his eyes away from hers as she grazed her thumb along his sharp cheekbone. Savoring each stroke, she caressed his face, that tattoo, never breaking his stare, even as it stripped her naked.

I’m sorry, he still seemed to say.

She kept her stare locked on his as she let go of his face and slowly, making sure he understood every step of the way, tilted her head back until her throat was arched and bared before him.

“Aelin,” he breathed. Not in reprimand or warning, but … a plea. It sounded like a plea. He lowered his head to her exposed neck and hovered a hair’s breadth away.

She arched her neck farther, a silent invitation.

Rowan let out a soft groan and grazed his teeth against her skin.

One bite, one movement, was all it would take for him to rip out her throat.

His elongated canines slid along her flesh—gently, precisely. She clenched the sheets to keep from running her fingers down his bare back and drawing him closer.

He braced one hand beside her head, his fingers twining in her hair.

“No one else,” she whispered. “I would never allow anyone else at my throat.” Showing him was the only way he’d understand that trust, in a manner that only the predatory, Fae side of him would comprehend. “No one else,” she said again.

He let out another low groan, answer and confirmation and request, and the rumble echoed inside her. Carefully, he closed his teeth over the spot where her lifeblood thrummed and pounded, his breath hot on her skin.

She shut her eyes, every sense narrowing on that sensation, on the teeth and mouth at her throat, on the powerful body trembling with restraint above hers. His tongue flicked against her skin.

She made a small noise that might have been a moan, or a word, or his name. He shuddered and pulled back, the cool air kissing her neck. Wildness—pure wildness sparked in those eyes.

Then he thoroughly, brazenly surveyed her body, his nostrils flaring delicately as he scented exactly what she wanted.

Her breathing turned ragged as he dragged his stare to hers—hungry, feral, unyielding.

“Not yet,” he said roughly, his own breathing uneven. “Not now.”

“Why?” It was an effort to remember speech with him looking at her like that. Like he might eat her alive. Heat pounded through her core.

“I want to take my time with you—to learn … every inch of you. And this apartment has very, very thin walls. I don’t want to have an audience,” he added as he leaned down again, brushing his mouth over the cut at the base of her throat, “when I make you moan, Aelin.”

Oh, by the Wyrd. She was in trouble. So much rutting trouble. And when he said her name like that …

“This changes things,” she said, hardly able to get the words out.

“Things have been changing for a while already. We’ll deal with it.” She wondered how long his resolve to wait would last if she lifted her face to claim his mouth with her own, if she ran her fingers down the groove of his spine. If she touched him lower than that. But—

Wyverns. Witches. Army. Erawan.

She loosed a heavy breath. “Sleep,” she mumbled. “We should sleep.”

He swallowed again, slowly peeling himself away from her and strode to the closet to dress. Honestly, it was an effort not to leap after him and rip that damn towel away.

Maybe she should make Aedion go stay somewhere else. Just for a night.

And then she would burn in hell for all eternity for being the most selfish, awful person to ever grace the earth.

She forced herself to put her back to the closet, not trusting herself to so much as look at Rowan without doing something infinitely stupid.

Oh, she was in so much gods-damned trouble.

53

Drink, the demon prince coaxed in a lover’s croon. Savor it.

The prisoner was sobbing on the floor of the dungeon cell, his fear and pain and memories leaking from him. The demon prince inhaled them as though they were opium.

Delicious.

It was.

He hated himself, cursed himself.

But the despair coming from the man as his worst memories ripped him to shreds … it was intoxicating. It was strength; it was life.

He had nothing and no one, anyway. If he got the chance, he would find a way to end it. For now, this was eternity, this was birth and death and rebirth.

So he drank the man’s pain, his fear, his sorrow.

And he learned to like it.

54

Manon stared at the letter that the trembling messenger had just delivered. Elide was trying her best to look as though she wasn’t observing every flick of Manon’s eyes across the page, but it was hard not to stare when the witch snarled with every word she read.

Elide lay on her pallet of hay, the fire already dying down to embers, and groaned as she sat up, her sore body aching. She’d found a water skein in the larder, and had even asked the cook if she could take it for the Wing Leader. He didn’t dare object. Or begrudge her the two little bags of nuts she had also nabbed “for the Wing Leader.” Better than nothing.

She’d stored it all under her pallet, and Manon hadn’t noticed. Any day now, the wagon would be arriving with supplies. When it left, Elide would be on it. And never have to deal with any of this darkness again.

Elide reached for the pile of logs and added two to the fire, sending sparks shooting up in a wave. She was about to lie down again when Manon said from the desk, “In three days, I’ll be heading out with my Thirteen.”

“To where?” Elide dared ask. From the violence with which the Wing Leader had read the letter, it couldn’t be anywhere pleasant.

“To a forest in the North. To—” Manon caught herself and moved across the floor, her steps light but powerful as she came to the hearth and chucked the letter in. “I’ll be gone for at least two days. If I were you, I’d suggest using that time to lie low.”

Elide’s stomach twisted at the thought of what, exactly, it might mean for the Wing Leader’s protection to be thousands of miles away. But there was no point in telling Manon that. She wouldn’t care, even if she’d claimed Elide as one of her kind.

It meant nothing, anyway. She wasn’t a witch. She’d be escaping soon. She doubted anyone here would really think twice about her disappearance.

“I’ll lie low,” Elide said.

Perhaps in the back of a wagon, as it made its way out of Morath and to freedom beyond.

It took three whole days to prepare for the meeting.

The Matron’s letter had contained no mention of the breeding and slaughter of witches. In fact, it was as if her grandmother hadn’t received any of Manon’s messages. As soon as Manon got back from this little mission, she’d start questioning the Keep’s messengers. Slowly. Painfully.

The Thirteen were to fly to coordinates in Adarlan—smack in the middle of the kingdom, just inside the tangle of Oakwald Forest—and arrive a day before the arranged meeting to establish a safe perimeter.

For the King of Adarlan was to at last see the weapon her grandmother had been building, and apparently wanted to inspect Manon as well. He was bringing his son, though Manon doubted it was for guarding his back in the way that the heirs protected their Matrons. She didn’t particularly care—about any of it.

A stupid, useless meeting, she’d almost wanted to tell her grandmother. A waste of her time.

At least seeing the king would provide an opportunity to meet the man who was sending out these orders to destroy witches and make monstrosities of their witchlings. At least she would be able to tell her grandmother in person about it—maybe even witness the Matron make mincemeat of the king once she learned the truth about what he’d done.

Manon climbed into the saddle, and Abraxos walked out onto the post, adjusting to the latest armor the aerial blacksmith had crafted—finally light enough for the wyverns to manage, and now to be tested on this trip. Wind bit at her, but she ignored it. Just as she’d ignored her Thirteen.

Asterin wouldn’t speak to her—and none of them had spoken about the Valg prince that the duke had sent to them.

It had been a test, to see who would survive, and to remind her what was at stake.

Just as unleashing shadowfire on that tribe had been a test.

She still couldn’t pick a coven. And she wouldn’t, until she’d spoken to her grandmother.

But she doubted that the duke would wait much longer.

Manon gazed into the plunge, at the ever-growing army sweeping across the mountains and valleys like a carpet of darkness and fire—so many more soldiers hidden beneath it. Her Shadows had reported that very morning about spotting lean, winged creatures with twisted human forms soaring through the night skies—too swift and agile to track before they vanished into the heavy clouds and did not return. The majority of Morath’s horrors, Manon suspected, had yet to be revealed. She wondered if she’d command them, too.

She felt the eyes of her Thirteen on her, waiting for the signal.

Manon dug her heels into Abraxos’s side, and they free-fell into the air.

The scar on her arm ached.

It always ached—more than the collar, more than the cold, more than the duke’s hands on her, more than anything that had been done to her. Only the shadowfire was a comfort.

She had once believed that she’d been born to be queen.

She had since learned that she’d been born to be a wolf.

The duke had even put a collar on her like a dog, and had shoved a demon prince inside her.

She’d let it win for a time, curling up so tightly inside herself that the prince forgot she was there.

And she waited.

In that cocoon of darkness, she bided her time, letting him think her gone, letting them do what they wanted to the mortal shell around her. It was in that cocoon where the shadowfire began to flicker, fueling her, feeding her. Long ago, when she was small and clean, flames of gold had crackled at her fingers, secret and hidden. Then they had vanished, as all good things had vanished.

And now they had returned—reborn within that dark shell as phantom fire.

The prince inside her did not notice when she began to nibble at him.

Bit by bit, she stole morsels of the otherworldly creature that had taken her body for its skin, who did such despicable things with it.

The creature noticed the day she took a bigger bite—big enough that it screamed in agony.

Before it could tell anyone, she leaped upon it, tearing and ripping with her shadowfire until only ashes of malice remained, until it was no more than a whisper of thought. Fire—it did not like fire of any kind.

For weeks now, she had been here. Waiting again. Learning about the flame in her veins—how it bled into the thing in her arm and reemerged as shadowfire. The thing spoke to her sometimes, in languages she had never heard, that had maybe never existed.

The collar remained around her neck, and she let them order her around, let them touch her, hurt her. Soon enough—soon enough she would find true purpose, and then she would howl her wrath at the moon.

She’d forgotten the name she’d been given, but it made no difference. She had only one name now:

Death, devourer of worlds.

55

Aelin fully believed in ghosts.

She just didn’t think they usually came out during the day.

Rowan’s hand clamped onto her shoulder right before sunrise. She took one look at his tight face and braced herself. “Someone’s broken into the warehouse.”

Rowan was out of the room, armed and fully ready to shed blood before Aelin could grab her own weapons. Gods above—he moved like the wind, too. She could still feel his canines at her throat, rasping against her skin, pressing down lightly—

On near-silent feet, she went after him, finding him and Aedion standing before the apartment door, blades in hand, their muscled, scarred backs rigid. The windows—they were their best options for escape if it was an ambush. She reached the two males just as Rowan eased open the door to reveal the gloom of the stairwell.

Collapsed in a heap, Evangeline was sobbing on the stair landing, her scarred face deathly pale and those citrine eyes wide with terror as she peered up at Rowan and Aedion. Hundreds of pounds of lethal muscle and bared teeth—

Aelin shoved past them, taking the stairs by twos and threes until she reached the girl. She was clean—not a scratch on her. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, her red-gold hair catching the light of the candle that Rowan brought down. The staircase shuddered with every step he and Aedion took.

“Tell me,” Aelin panted, silently praying it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. “Tell me everything.”

“They took her, they took her, they took her.”

“Who?” Aelin said, brushing back the girl’s hair, wondering whether she would panic if she held her.

“The king’s men,” Evangeline whispered. “They came with a letter from Arobynn. Said it was in Arobynn’s will that they be told about Lysandra’s b-b-bloodline.”

Aelin’s heart stopped dead. Worse—far worse than what she’d braced for—

“They said she was a shape-shifter. They took her, and they were going to take me, too, but she fought them, and she made me run, and Clarisse wouldn’t help—”

“Where did they take her?”

Evangeline sobbed. “I don’t know. Lysandra said I was to come here if anything ever happened; she told me to tell you to run—”

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Rowan knelt down beside them and slid his arms around the girl, scooping her up, his hand so big that it nearly enveloped the entire back of her head. Evangeline buried her face in his tattooed chest, and Rowan murmured wordless sounds of comfort.

He met Aelin’s eyes over the girl’s head. We need to be out of this house in ten minutes—until we figure out if he betrayed you, too.

As if he’d heard it, Aedion edged past them, going to the warehouse window that Evangeline had somehow slipped in through. Lysandra, it seemed, had taught her charge a few things.

Aelin scrubbed at her face and braced a hand on Rowan’s shoulder as she stood, his skin warm and soft beneath her callused fingers. “Nesryn’s father. We’ll ask him to look after her today.”

Arobynn had done this. A final card up his sleeve.

He’d known. About Lysandra—about their friendship.

He didn’t like to share his belongings.

Chaol and Nesryn burst into the warehouse a level below, and Aedion was halfway to them before they even realized he was there.

They had more news. One of Ren’s men had contacted them moments ago: a meeting was to take place tomorrow in Oakwald, between the king, Dorian, and the Wing Leader of his aerial cavalry.

With a delivery of one new prisoner headed for Morath.

“You have to get her out of the tunnels,” Aelin said to Chaol and Nesryn, as she stormed down the stairs. “Right now. You’re human; they won’t notice you at first. You’re the only ones who can go into that darkness.”

Chaol and Nesryn exchanged glances.

Aelin stalked up to them. “You have to get her out right now.”

For a heartbeat, she wasn’t in the warehouse. For a heartbeat, she was standing in a beautiful bedroom, before a bloody bed and the wrecked body splayed upon it.

Chaol held out his hands. “We’re better off spending the time setting up an ambush.”

The sound of his voice … The scar on his face was stark in the dim light. Aelin clenched her fingers into a fist, her nails—the nails that had shredded his face—digging in. “They could be feeding on her,” she managed to say.

Behind her, Evangeline let out a sob. If they made Lysandra endure what Aelin had endured when she fought the Valg prince … “Please,” Aelin said, her voice breaking on the word.

Chaol noticed, then, where her eyes had focused on his face. He paled, his mouth opening.

But Nesryn reached for her hand, her slim, tan fingers cool against Aelin’s clammy palms. “We will get her back. We will save her. Together.”

Chaol just held Aelin’s gaze, his shoulders squaring as he said, “Never again.”

She wanted to believe him.

56

A few hours later, seated on the floor of a ramshackle inn on the opposite side of Rifthold, Aelin peered at a map they’d marked with the meeting’s location spot—about half a mile from the temple of Temis. The tiny temple was just inside the cover of Oakwald, perched atop a towering slice of rock in the middle of a deep ravine. It was accessible only via two dangling footbridges attached to either side of the ravine, which had spared it from invading armies over the years. The surrounding forest would likely be empty, and if wyverns were flying in, they would no doubt arrive under cover of darkness the night before. Tonight.

Aelin, Rowan, Aedion, Nesryn, and Chaol sat around the map, sharpening and polishing their blades as they talked over their plan. They’d given Evangeline to Nesryn’s father, along with more letters for Terrasen and the Bane—and the baker hadn’t asked any questions. He’d only kissed his youngest daughter on the cheek and announced that he and Evangeline would bake special pies for their return.

If they returned.

“What if she has a collar or a ring on?” Chaol asked from across their little circle.

“Then she loses a head or a finger,” Aedion said baldly.

Aelin shot him a look. “You don’t make that call without me.”

“And Dorian?” Aedion asked.

Chaol was staring at the map as if he would burn a hole through it. “Not my call,” Aelin said tightly.

Chaol’s eyes flashed to hers. “You don’t touch him.”

It was a terrible risk, to bring them all within range of a Valg prince, but … “We paint ourselves in Wyrdmarks,” Aelin said. “All of us. To ward against the prince.”

In the ten minutes it had taken them to grab their weapons, clothes, and supplies from the warehouse apartment, she’d remembered to get her books on Wyrdmarks, which now sat on the little table before the sole window in the room. They’d rented three for the night: one for Aelin and Rowan, one for Aedion, and the other for Chaol and Nesryn. The gold coin she’d slapped onto the innkeeper’s counter had been enough to pay for at least a month. And his silence.

“Do we take out the king?” Aedion said.

“We don’t engage,” Rowan replied, “until we know for sure we can kill the king and neutralize the prince with minimal risk. Getting Lysandra out of that wagon comes first.”

“Agreed,” Aelin said.

Aedion’s gaze settled on Rowan. “When do we leave?”

Aelin wondered at his yielding to the Fae Prince.

“I don’t want those wyverns or witches sniffing us out,” Rowan said, the commander bracing for the battlefield. “We arrive just before the meeting takes place—long enough to find advantageous spots and to locate their scouts and sentries. The witches’ sense of smell is too keen to risk discovery. We move in fast.”

She couldn’t decide whether or not she was relieved.

The clock chimed noon. Nesryn rose to her feet. “I’ll order lunch.”

Chaol got up, stretching. “I’ll help you bring it up.” Indeed, in a place like this, they would get no kitchen-to-room service. Though in a place like this, Aelin supposed, Chaol might very well be going to keep an eye on Faliq’s back. Good.

Once they left, Aelin picked up one of Nesryn’s blades and began polishing it: a decent dagger, but not great. If they lived past tomorrow, maybe she would buy her a better one as a thank-you.

“Too bad Lorcan’s a psychotic bastard,” she said. “We could use him tomorrow.” Rowan’s mouth tightened. “What will he do when he finds out about Aedion’s heritage?”

Aedion set down the dagger he’d been honing. “Will he even care?”

Halfway through polishing a short sword, Rowan paused. “Lorcan might not give a shit—or he might find Aedion intriguing. But he would more likely be interested in how Aedion’s existence can be used against Gavriel.”

She eyed her cousin, his golden hair now seeming more proof of his ties to Gavriel than to her. “Do you want to meet him?” Perhaps she’d brought this up only to keep from thinking about tomorrow.

A shrug. “I’d be curious, but I’m not in any rush. Not unless he’s going to drag his cadre over here to help with the fighting.”

“Such a pragmatist.” She faced Rowan, who was back at work on the sword. “Would they ever be convinced to help, despite what Lorcan said?” They had provided aid once—during the attack on Mistward.

“Unlikely,” Rowan said, not looking up from the blade. “Unless Maeve decides that sending you succor is the next move in whatever game she’s playing. Maybe she’ll want to ally with you to kill Lorcan for his betrayal.” He mused, “Some of the Fae who used to dwell here might still be alive and in hiding. Perhaps they could be trained—or already have training.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Aedion said. “The Little Folk I’ve seen and felt in Oakwald. But the Fae … Not a whisper of them there.” He didn’t meet Rowan’s eyes, and instead started cleaning Chaol’s final unsharpened blade. “The king wiped them out too thoroughly. I would bet any survivors are stuck in their animal forms.”

Aelin’s body became heavy with a familiar grief. “We’ll figure all that out later.”

If they lived long enough to do so.

For the rest of the day and well into the evening, Rowan planned their course of action with the same efficiency she’d come to expect and cherish. But it didn’t feel comforting now—not when the danger was so great, and everything could change in a matter of minutes. Not when Lysandra might already be beyond saving.

“You should be sleeping,” Rowan said, his deep voice rumbling across the bed and along her skin.

“The bed’s lumpy,” Aelin said. “I hate cheap inns.”

His low laugh echoed in the near-dark of the room. She’d rigged the door and window to alert them to any intruder, but with the ruckus coming from the seedy tavern downstairs, they would have a hard time hearing anyone in the hall. Especially when some of the rooms were rented by the hour.

“We’ll get her back, Aelin.”

The bed was much smaller than hers—small enough that her shoulder brushed his as she turned over. She found him already facing her, his eyes gleaming in the dark. “I can’t bury another friend.”

“You won’t.”

“If anything ever happened to you, Rowan—”

“Don’t,” he breathed. “Don’t even say it. We dealt with that enough the other night.”

He lifted a hand—hesitated, and then brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen across her face. His callused fingers scraped against her cheekbone, then caressed the shell of her ear.

It was foolish to even start down this road, when every other man she’d let in had left some wound, in one way or another, accidentally or not.

There was nothing soft or tender on his face. Only a predator’s glittering gaze. “When we get back,” he said, “remind me to prove you wrong about every thought that just went through your head.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Oh?”

He gave her a sly smile that made thinking impossible. Exactly what he wanted—to distract her from the horrors of tomorrow. “I’ll even let you decide how I tell you: with words”—his eyes flicked once to her mouth—“or with my teeth and tongue.”

A thrill went through her blood, pooling in her core. Not fair—not fair at all to tease her like that. “This miserable inn is rather loud,” she said, daring to slide a hand over his bare pectoral, then up to his shoulder. She marveled at the strength beneath her palm. He shuddered, but his hands remained at his sides, clenched and white knuckled. “It’s too bad Aedion could still probably hear through the wall.”

She gently scraped her nails across his collarbone, marking him, claiming him, before leaning in to press her mouth to the hollow of his throat. His skin was so smooth, so invitingly warm.

“Aelin,” he groaned.

Her toes curled at the roughness in his voice. “Too bad,” she murmured against his neck. He growled, and she chuckled quietly as she rolled back over and closed her eyes, her breathing easier than it had been moments before. She’d get through tomorrow, regardless of what happened. She wasn’t alone—not with him, and not with Aedion also beside her.

She was smiling when the mattress shifted, steady footsteps padded toward the dresser, and the sounds of splashing filled the room as Rowan dunked the pitcher of cold water over himself.

57

“I can smell them all right,” Aedion said, his whisper barely audible as they crept through the underbrush, each of them clothed in green and brown to remain concealed in the dense forest. He and Rowan walked several paces ahead of Aelin, arrows loosely nocked in their bows as they picked out the way with their keen hearing and smell.

If she had her damn Fae form, she could be helping instead of lingering behind with Chaol and Nesryn, but—

Not a useful thought, she told herself. She would make do with what she had.

Chaol knew the forest best, having come hunting this way with Dorian countless times. He’d laid out a path for them the night before, but had yielded leading to the two Fae warriors and their impeccable senses. His steps were unfaltering on the leaves and moss beneath their boots, his face drawn but steady. Focused.

Good.

They passed through the trees of Oakwald so silently that the birds didn’t stop their chirping.

Brannon’s forest. Her forest.

She wondered if its denizens knew what blood flowed in her veins, and hid their little party from the horrors waiting ahead. She wondered if they’d somehow help Lysandra when it came time.

Rowan paused ten feet ahead and pointed to three towering oaks. She halted, her ears straining as she scanned the forest.

Growls and roars of beasts that sounded far too large rumbled toward them, along with the scrape of leathery wings on stone.

Bracing herself, she hurried to where Rowan and Aedion were waiting by the oak trees, her cousin pointing skyward to indicate their next movement.

Aelin took the center tree, hardly disturbing a leaf or twig as she climbed. Rowan waited until she’d reached a high branch before coming up after her—in about the same amount of time she had done it, she noted a bit smugly. Aedion took the tree to the right, with Chaol and Nesryn scaling the left. They all kept climbing, as smoothly as snakes, until the foliage blocked their view of the ground below and they could see into a little meadow up ahead.

Holy gods.

The wyverns were enormous. Enormous, vicious, and … and those were indeed saddles on their backs. “Poisoned barbs on the tail,” Rowan mouthed in her ear. “With that wingspan, they can probably fly hundreds of miles a day.”

He would know, she supposed.

Only thirteen wyverns were grounded in the meadow. The smallest of them was sprawled on his belly, face buried in a mound of wildflowers. Iron spikes gleamed on his tail in lieu of bone, scars covered his body like a cat’s stripes, and his wings … she knew the material grafted there. Spidersilk. That much of it must have cost a fortune.

The other wyverns were all normal, and all capable of ripping a man in half in one bite.

They would be dead within moments against one of these things. But an army three thousand strong? Panic pushed in.

I am Aelin Ashryver Galathynius—

“That one—I bet she’s the Wing Leader,” Rowan said, pointing now to the women gathered at the edge of the meadow.

Not women. Witches.

They were all young and beautiful, with hair and skin of every shade and color. But even from the distance, she picked out the one Rowan had pointed to. Her hair was like living moonlight, her eyes like burnished gold.

She was the most beautiful person Aelin had ever seen.

And the most horrifying.

She moved with a swagger that Aelin supposed only an immortal could achieve, her red cloak snapping behind her, the riding leathers clinging to her lithe body. A living weapon—that’s what the Wing Leader was.

The Wing Leader prowled through the camp, inspecting the wyverns and giving orders Aelin’s human ears couldn’t hear. The other twelve witches seemed to track her every movement, as if she were the axis of their world, and two of them followed behind her especially closely. Lieutenants.

Aelin fought to keep her balance on the wide bough.

Any army that Terrasen might raise would be annihilated. Along with the friends around her.

They were all so, so dead.

Rowan put a hand on her waist, as if he could hear the refrain pounding through her with every heartbeat. “You took down one of their Matrons,” he said in her ear, barely more than a rustling leaf. “You can take down her inferiors.”

Maybe. Maybe not, given the way the thirteen witches in the clearing moved and interacted. They were a tight-knit, brutal unit. They did not look like the sort that took prisoners.

If they did, they likely ate them.

Would they fly Lysandra to Morath once the prison wagon arrived? If so … “Lysandra doesn’t get within thirty feet of the wyverns.” If she got hauled onto one of them, then it would already be too late.

“Agreed,” Rowan murmured. “Horses approaching from the north. And more wings from the west. Let’s go.”

The Matron, then. The horses would be the king and the prison wagon. And Dorian.

Aedion looked ready to start ripping out witch throats as they reached the ground and slunk through the forest again, heading for the clearing. Nesryn had an arrow nocked in her bow as she slipped into the brush to provide cover, her face grave—ready for anything. At least that made one of them.

Aelin fell into step beside Chaol. “No matter what you see or hear, do not move. We need to assess Dorian before we act. Just one of those Valg princes is lethal.”

“I know,” he said, refusing to meet her stare. “You can trust me.”

“I need you to make sure Lysandra gets out. You know this forest better than any of us. Get her somewhere safe.”

Chaol nodded. “I promise.” She didn’t doubt it. Not after this winter.

She reached out, paused—and then put a hand on his shoulder. “I won’t touch Dorian,” she said. “I swear it.”

His bronze eyes flickered. “Thank you.”

They kept moving.

Aedion and Rowan had them all doubling back to the area they’d scouted earlier, a little outcropping of boulders with enough brush for them to crouch unseen and observe everything that was happening in the clearing.

Slowly, like lovely wraiths from a hell-realm, the witches appeared.

The white-haired witch strode to greet an older, black-haired female who could only be the Matron of the Blackbeak Clan. Behind the Matron, a cluster of witches hauled a large covered wagon, much like the one the Yellowlegs had once parked before the glass palace. The wyverns must have carried it between them. It looked ordinary—painted black and blue and yellow—but Aelin had a feeling that she didn’t want to know what was inside.

Then the royal party arrived.

She didn’t know where to look: at the King of Adarlan, at the small, too-familiar prison wagon in the center of the riders …

Or at Dorian, riding at his father’s side, that black collar around his neck and nothing human in his face.

58

Manon Blackbeak hated this forest.

The trees were unnaturally close—so close that they’d had to leave the wyverns behind in order to make their way to the clearing a half mile from the crumbling temple. At least the humans hadn’t been stupid enough to pick the temple itself as a meeting site. It was too precariously perched, the ravine too open to spying eyes. Yesterday, Manon and the Thirteen had scouted all the clearings within a mile radius, weighing them for their visibility, accessibility, and cover, and finally settled on this one. Near enough to where the king had originally demanded they meet—but a far more protected spot. Rule one of dealing with mortals: never let them pick the exact location.

First, her grandmother and her escort coven strode through the trees from wherever they’d landed, a covered wagon in tow, no doubt carrying the weapon she’d created. She assessed Manon with a slashing glance and merely said, “Keep silent and out of our way. Speak only when spoken to. Don’t cause trouble, or I’ll rip out your throat.”

Later, then. She would talk to her grandmother about the Valg later.

The king was late, and his party made enough gods-damned noise as they traipsed through the woods that Manon heard them a good five minutes before the king’s massive black warhorse appeared around the bend in the path. The other riders flowed behind him like a dark shadow.

The scent of the Valg slithered along her body.

They’d brought a prison wagon with them, containing a prisoner to be transferred to Morath. Female, from the smell of her—and strange. She’d never come across that scent before: not Valg, not Fae, not entirely human. Interesting.

But the Thirteen were warriors, not couriers.

Her hands behind her back, Manon waited as her grandmother glided toward the king, monitoring his human-Valg entourage while they surveyed the clearing. The man closest to the king didn’t bother glancing around. His sapphire eyes went right to Manon, and stayed there.

He would have been beautiful were it not for the dark collar around his throat and the utter coldness in his perfect face.

He smiled at Manon as though he knew the taste of her blood.

She stifled the urge to bare her teeth and shifted her focus to the Matron, who had now stopped before the mortal king. Such a reek from these people. How was her grandmother not grimacing as she stood before them?

“Your Majesty,” her grandmother said, her black robes like liquid night as she gave the slightest of bobs. Manon shut down the bark of protest in her throat. Never—never had her grandmother bowed or curtsied or so much as nodded for another ruler, not even the other Matrons.

Manon shoved the outrage down deep as the king dismounted in one powerful movement. “High Witch,” he said, angling his head in not quite a bow, but enough to show some kernel of acknowledgment. A massive sword hung at his side. His clothes were dark and rich, and his face …

Cruelty incarnate.

Not the cold, cunning cruelty that Manon had honed and delighted in, but base, brute cruelty, the kind that sent all those men to break into her cottages, thinking her in need of a lesson.

This was the man to whom they were to bow. To whom her grandmother had lowered her head a fraction of an inch.

Her grandmother gestured behind her with an iron-tipped hand, and Manon lifted her chin. “I present to you my granddaughter, Manon, heir of the Blackbeak Clan and Wing Leader of your aerial cavalry.”

Manon stepped forward, enduring the raking gaze of the king. The dark-haired young man who had ridden at his side dismounted with fluid grace, still smirking at her. She ignored him.

“You do your people a great service, Wing Leader,” the king said, his voice like granite.

Manon just stared at him, keenly aware of the Matron judging her every move.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” the king demanded, his thick brows—one scarred—high.

“I was told to keep my mouth shut,” Manon said. Her grandmother’s eyes flashed. “Unless you’d prefer I get on my knees and grovel.”

Oh, there would certainly be hell to pay for that remark. Her grandmother turned to the king. “She’s an arrogant thing, but you’ll find no deadlier warrior.”

But the king was smiling—though it didn’t reach his dark eyes. “I don’t think you’ve ever groveled for anything in your life, Wing Leader.”

Manon gave him a half smile in return, her iron teeth out. Let his young companion wet himself at the sight. “We witches aren’t born to grovel before humans.”

The king chuckled mirthlessly and faced her grandmother, whose iron-tipped fingers had curved as if she were imagining them around Manon’s throat. “You chose our Wing Leader well, Matron,” he said, and then gestured to the wagon painted with the Ironteeth banner. “Let us see what you’ve brought for me. I hope it will be equally impressive—and worth the wait.”

Her grandmother grinned, revealing iron teeth that had begun to rust in some spots, and ice licked up Manon’s spine. “This way.”

Shoulders back, head high, Manon waited at the bottom of the wagon steps to follow the Matron and the king inside, but the man—so much taller and wider than she up close—frowned at the sight of her. “My son can entertain the Wing Leader.”

And that was it—she was shut out as he and her grandmother vanished within. Apparently, she wasn’t to see this weapon. At least, not as one of the first, Wing Leader or not. Manon took a breath and checked her temper.

Half of the Thirteen encircled the wagon for the Matron’s safety, while the others dispersed to monitor the royal party around them. Knowing their place, their inadequacy in the face of the Thirteen, the escort coven faded back into the tree line. Black-uniformed guards watched them all, some armed with spears, some with crossbows, some with vicious swords.

The prince was now leaning against a gnarled oak. Noticing her attention, he gave her a lazy grin.

It was enough. King’s son or not, she didn’t give a damn.

Manon crossed the clearing, Sorrel behind her. On edge, but keeping her distance.

There was no one in earshot as Manon stopped a few feet away from the Crown Prince. “Hello, princeling,” she purred.

The world kept slipping out from underneath Chaol’s feet, so much so that he grabbed a handful of dirt just to remember where he was and that this was real, not some nightmare.

Dorian.

His friend; unharmed, but—but not Dorian.

Not even close to Dorian, as the prince smirked at that beautiful, white-haired witch.

The face was the same, but the soul gazing out of those sapphire eyes had not been created in this world.

Chaol squeezed the dirt harder.

He had run. He had run from Dorian, and let this happen.

It hadn’t been hope that he carried when he fled, but stupidity.

Aelin had been right. It would be a mercy to kill him.

With the king and Matron occupied … Chaol glanced toward the wagon and then at Aelin, lying on her stomach in the brush, a dagger out. She gave him a quick nod, her mouth a tight line. Now. If they were going to make their move to free Lysandra, it would have to be now.

And for Nehemia, for the friend vanished beneath a Wyrdstone collar, he would not falter.

The ancient, cruel demon squatting inside him began thrashing as the white-haired witch sauntered up to him.

It had been content to sneer from afar. One of us, one of ours, it hissed to him. We made it, so we’ll take it.

Every step closer made her unbound hair shimmer like moonlight on water. But the demon began scrambling away as the sun lit up her eyes.

Not too close, it said. Do not let the witchling too close. The eyes of the Valg kings—

“Hello, princeling,” she said, her voice bedroom-soft and full of glorious death.

“Hello, witchling,” he said.

And the words were his own.

For a moment he was so stunned that he blinked. He blinked. The demon inside of him recoiled, clawing at the walls of his mind. Eyes of the Valg kings, eyes of our masters, it shrieked. Do not touch that one!

“Is there a reason you’re smiling at me,” she said, “or shall I interpret it as a death wish?”

Do not speak to it.

He didn’t care. Let this be another dream, another nightmare. Let this new, lovely monster devour him whole. He had nothing beyond the here and now.

“Do I need a reason to smile at a beautiful woman?”

“I’m not a woman.” Her iron nails glinted as she crossed her arms. “And you …” She sniffed. “Man or demon?”

“Prince,” he said. That’s what the thing inside him was; he had never learned its name.

Do not speak to it!

He cocked his head. “I’ve never been with a witch.”

Let her rip out his throat for that. End it.

A row of iron fangs snapped down over her teeth as her smile grew. “I’ve been with plenty of men. You’re all the same. Taste the same.” She looked him over as if he were her next meal.

“I dare you,” he managed to say.

Her eyes narrowed, the gold like living embers. He’d never seen anyone so beautiful.

This witch had been crafted from the darkness between the stars.

“I think not, Prince,” she said in her midnight voice. She sniffed again, her nose crinkling slightly. “But would you bleed red, or black?”

“I’ll bleed whatever color you tell me to.”

Step away, get away. The demon prince inside him yanked so hard he took a step. But not away. Toward the white-haired witch.

She let out a low, vicious laugh. “What is your name, Prince?”

His name.

He didn’t know what that was.

She reached out, her iron nails glimmering in the dappled sunlight. The demon’s screaming was so loud in his head that he wondered if his ears would bleed.

Iron clinked against stone as she grazed the collar around his neck. Higher—if she just slashed higher—

“Like a dog,” she murmured. “Leashed to your master.”

She ran a finger along the curve of the collar, and he shuddered—in fear, in pleasure, in anticipation of the nails tearing into his throat.

“What is your name.” A command, not a question, as eyes of pure gold met his.

“Dorian,” he breathed.

Your name is nothing, your name is mine, the demon hissed, and a wave of that human woman’s screaming swept him away.

Crouched in the brush just twenty feet from the prison wagon, Aelin froze.

Dorian.

It couldn’t have been. There wasn’t a chance of it, not when the voice that Dorian had spoken with was so empty, so hollow, but—

Beside her, Chaol’s eyes were wide. Had he heard the slight shift?

The Wing Leader cocked her head, her iron-tipped hand still touching the Wyrdstone collar. “Do you want me to kill you, Dorian?”

Aelin’s blood went cold.

Chaol tensed, his hand going to his sword. Aelin gripped the back of his tunic in silent reminder. She had no doubt that across the clearing, Nesryn’s arrow was already pointed with lethal accuracy at the Wing Leader’s throat.

“I want you to do lots of things to me,” the prince said, raking his eyes along the witch’s body.

The humanity was gone again. She’d imagined it. The way the king had acted … That was a man who held pure control over his son, confident that there was no struggle inside.

A soft, joyless laugh, and then the Wing Leader released Dorian’s collar. Her red cloak flowed around her on a phantom wind as she stepped back. “Come find me again, Prince, and we’ll see about that.”

A Valg prince inhabited Dorian—but Aelin’s nose did not bleed in its presence, and there was no creeping fog of darkness. Had the king muted its powers so his son could deceive the world around him? Or was that battle still being waged inside the prince’s mind?

Now—they had to move now, while the Matron and the king remained in that painted wagon.

Rowan cupped his hands to his mouth and signaled with a bird’s call, so lifelike that none of the guards shifted. But across the clearing, Aedion and Nesryn heard, and understood.

She didn’t know how they managed to accomplish it, but a minute later, the wyverns of the High Witch’s coven were roaring with alarm, the trees shuddering with the sound. Every guard and sentinel turned toward the racket, away from the prison wagon.

It was all the distraction Aelin needed.

She’d spent two weeks in one of those wagons. She knew the bars of the little window, knew the hinges and the locks. And Rowan, fortunately, knew exactly how to dispatch the three guards stationed at the back door without making a sound.

She didn’t dare breathe too loudly as she climbed the few steps to the back of the wagon, pulled out her lock-picking kit, and set to work. One look over here, one shift of the wind—

There—the lock sprang open, and she eased back the door, bracing for squeaky hinges. By some god’s mercy, it made no sound, and the wyverns went on bellowing.

Lysandra was curled against the far corner, bloody and dirty, her short nightgown torn and her bare legs bruised.

No collar. No ring on either hand.

Aelin bit back her cry of relief and flicked her fingers to tell the courtesan to hurry—

On near-silent feet, Lysandra hurtled past her, right into the speckled brown-and-green cloak Rowan was holding out. Two heartbeats later she was down the steps and into the brush. Another beat, and the dead guards were inside the wagon with the door locked. Aelin and Rowan slipped back into the forest amid the roars of the wyverns.

Lysandra was shivering where she knelt in the thicket, Chaol before her, inspecting her wounds. He mouthed to Aelin that she was fine and helped the courtesan rise to her feet before hauling her deeper into the woods.

It had taken less than two minutes—and thank the gods, because a moment later the painted wagon’s door was flung open and the Matron and king stormed out to see what the noise was about.

A few paces from Aelin, Rowan monitored every step, every breath their enemy took. There was a flash of movement beside her, and then Aedion and Nesryn were there, dirty and panting, but alive. The grin on Aedion’s face faltered as he peered back at the clearing behind them.

The king stalked to the heart of the clearing, demanding answers.

Butchering bastard.

And for a moment, they were again in Terrasen, at that dinner table in her family’s castle, where the king had eaten her family’s food, drunk their finest wine, and then he’d tried to shatter her mind.

Aedion’s eyes met hers, his body trembling with restraint—waiting for her order.

She knew she might live to regret it, but Aelin shook her head. Not here—not now. There were too many variables, and too many players on the board. They had Lysandra. It was time to go.

The king told his son to get onto his horse and barked orders to the others as the Wing Leader backed away from the prince with a casual, lethal grace. The Matron waited across the clearing, her voluminous black robes billowing despite her stillness.

Aelin prayed that she and her companions would never run into the Matron—at least not without an army behind them.

Whatever the king had seen inside the painted wagon had been important enough that they hadn’t risked letters about its specific details.

Dorian mounted his horse, his face cold and empty.

I’ll come back for you, she’d promised him. She had not thought it would be in this way.

The king’s party departed with eerie silence and efficiency, seemingly unaware that they were now missing three of their own. The stench of the Valg faded as they vanished, cleared away by a brisk wind as if Oakwald itself wanted to wipe away any trace.

Headed in the opposite direction, the witches prowled into the trees, lugging the wagon behind them with inhuman strength, until only the Wing Leader and her horrifying grandmother remained in the clearing.

The blow happened so fast that Aelin couldn’t detect it. Even Aedion flinched.

The smack reverberated through the forest, and the Wing Leader’s face snapped to the side to reveal four lines of blue blood now running down her cheek.

“Insolent fool,” the Matron hissed. Lingering near the trees, the beautiful, golden-haired lieutenant observed every movement the Matron made—so intensely that Aelin wondered if she would go for the Matron’s throat. “Do you wish to cost me everything?”

“Grandmother, I sent you letters—”

“I received your whining, sniveling letters. And I burned them. You are under orders to obey. Did you think my silence was not intentional? Do as the duke says.”

“How can you allow these—”

Another strike—four more lines bleeding down the witch’s face. “You dare question me? Do you think yourself as good as a High Witch, now that you’re Wing Leader?”

“No, Matron.” There was no sign of that cocky, taunting tone of minutes before; only cool, lethal rage. A killer by birth and training. But the golden eyes turned toward the painted wagon—a silent question.

The Matron leaned in, her rusted iron teeth within shredding distance of her granddaughter’s throat. “Ask it, Manon. Ask what’s inside that wagon.”

The golden-haired witch by the trees was ramrod straight.

But the Wing Leader—Manon—bowed her head. “You’ll tell me when it’s necessary.”

“Go look. Let’s see if it meets my granddaughter’s standards.”

With that, the Matron strode into the trees, the second coven of witches now waiting for her.

Manon Blackbeak didn’t wipe away the blue blood sliding down her face as she walked up the steps of the wagon, pausing on the landing for only a heartbeat before entering the gloom beyond.

It was as good a sign as any to get the hell out. With Aedion and Nesryn guarding their backs, Aelin and Rowan hurried for the spot where Chaol and Lysandra would be waiting. Not without magic would she take on the king and Dorian. She didn’t have a death wish—either for herself or her friends.

She found Lysandra standing with a hand braced against a tree, wide-eyed, breathing hard.

Chaol was gone.

59

The demon seized control the moment the man who wielded the collar returned. It shoved him back into that pit of memory until he was the one screaming again, until he was small and broken and fragmented.

But those golden eyes lingered.

Come find me again, Prince.

A promise—a promise of death, of release.

Come find me again.

The words soon faded, swallowed up by screaming and blood and the demon’s cold fingers running over his mind. But the eyes lingered—and that name.

Manon.

Manon.

Chaol couldn’t let the king take Dorian back to the castle. He might never get this chance again.

He had to do it now. Had to kill him.

Chaol hurtled through the brush as quietly as he could, sword out, bracing himself.

A dagger through the eye—a dagger, and then—

Talking from ahead, along with the rustling of leaves and wood.

Chaol neared the party, beginning to pray, beginning to beg for forgiveness—for what he was about to do and for how he had run. He’d kill the king later; let that kill be his last. But this would be the kill that broke him.

He drew his dagger, cocking his arm. Dorian had been directly behind the king. One throw, to knock the prince off the horse, then a sweep of his sword, and it could be over. Aelin and the others could deal with the aftermath; he’d already be dead.

Chaol broke through the trees into a field, the dagger a burning weight in his hand.

It was not the king’s party that stood there in the tall grass and sunlight.

Thirteen witches and their wyverns turned to him.

And smiled.

Aelin ran through the trees as Rowan tracked Chaol by scent alone.

If he got them killed, if he got them hurt—

They’d left Nesryn to guard Lysandra, ordering them to head for the forest across the nearby temple ravine and to wait under an outcropping of stones. Before herding Lysandra between the trees, Nesryn had tightly grabbed Aelin’s arm and said, “Bring him back.”

Aelin had only nodded before bolting.

Rowan was a streak of lightning through the trees, so much faster than her when she was stuck in this body. Aedion sprinted close behind him. She ran as quickly as she could, but—

The path veered away, and Chaol had taken the wrong fork. Where the hell had Chaol even been going?

She could scarcely draw breath fast enough. Then light flooded in through a break in the trees—the other side of the wide meadow.

Rowan and Aedion stood a few feet into the swaying grass, their swords out—but downcast.

She saw why a heartbeat later.

Not thirty feet from them, Chaol’s lip bled down his chin as the white-haired witch held him against her, iron nails digging into his throat. The prison wagon was open beyond them to reveal the three dead soldiers inside.

The twelve witches behind the Wing Leader were all grinning with anticipatory delight as they took in Rowan and Aedion, then her.

“What’s this?” the Wing Leader said, a killing light in her golden eyes. “Spies? Rescuers? Where did you take our prisoner?”

Chaol struggled, and she dug her nails in farther. He stiffened. A trickle of blood leaked down his neck and onto his tunic.

Oh, gods. Think—think, think, think.

The Wing Leader shifted those burnt-gold eyes to Rowan.

“Your kind,” the Wing Leader mused, “I have not seen for a time.”

“Let the man go,” Rowan said.

Manon’s smile revealed a row of flesh-shredding iron teeth, far, far too close to Chaol’s neck. “I don’t take orders from Fae bastards.”

“Let him go,” Rowan said too softly. “Or it will be the last mistake you make, Wing Leader.”

In the field behind them, the wyverns were stirring, their tails lashing, wings shifting.

The white-haired witch peered at Chaol, whose breathing had turned ragged. “The king is not too far down the road. Perhaps I should hand you over to him.” The cuts on her cheeks, scabbed in blue, were like brutal war paint. “He’ll be furious to learn you stole his prisoner from me. Maybe you’ll appease him, boy.”

Aelin and Rowan shared all of one look before she stepped up to his side, drawing Goldryn. “If you want a prize to give to the king,” Aelin said, “then take me.”

“Don’t,” Chaol gasped out.

The witch and all twelve of her sentinels now fixed their immortal, deadly attention on Aelin.

Aelin dropped Goldryn into the grass and lifted her hands. Aedion snarled in warning.

“Why should I bother?” the Wing Leader said. “Perhaps we’ll take you all to the king.”

Aedion’s sword lifted slightly. “You can try.”

Aelin carefully approached the witch, her hands still up. “You enter into a fight with us, and you and your companions will die.”

The Wing Leader looked her up and down. “Who are you.” An order—not a question.

“Aelin Galathynius.”

Surprise—and perhaps something else, something Aelin couldn’t identify—sparked in the Wing Leader’s golden eyes. “The Queen of Terrasen.”

Aelin bowed, not daring to take her attention off the witch. “At your service.”

Only three feet separated her from the Blackbeak heir.

The witch sliced a glance at Chaol, and then at Aedion and Rowan. “Your court?”

“What’s it to you?”

The Wing Leader studied Aedion again. “Your brother?”

“My cousin, Aedion. Almost as pretty as me, wouldn’t you say?”

The witch didn’t smile.

But Aelin was now near enough, so close that the spatters of Chaol’s blood lay in the grass before the tip of her boots.

The Queen of Terrasen.

Elide’s hope had not been misplaced.

Even if the young queen was now toeing the dirt and grass, unable to keep still while she bargained for the man’s life.

Behind her, the Fae warrior observed every flicker of movement.

He’d be the deadly one—the one to look out for.

It had been fifty years since she’d fought a Fae warrior. Bedded him, then fought him. He’d left the bones of her arm in pieces.

She’d just left him in pieces.

But he had been young, and arrogant, and barely trained.

This male … He might very well be capable of killing at least a few of her Thirteen if she so much as harmed a hair on the queen’s head. And then there was the golden-haired one—as large as the Fae male, but possessing his cousin’s bright arrogance and honed wildness. He might be problematic, if left alive too long.

The queen kept fidgeting her foot in the grass. She couldn’t be more than twenty. And yet, she moved like a warrior, too—or she had, until the incessant shifting around. But she halted the movement, as if realizing that it gave away her nerves, her inexperience. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction for Manon to detect the queen’s true level of fear. “Well, Wing Leader?”

Would the king put a collar around her fair neck, as he had the prince’s? Or would he kill her? It made no difference. She would be a prize the king would welcome.

Manon shoved away the captain, sending him stumbling toward the queen. Aelin reached out with an arm, nudging him to the side—behind her. Manon and the queen stared at each other.

No fear in her eyes—in her pretty, mortal face.

None.

It’d be more trouble than it was worth.

Manon had bigger things to consider, anyway. Her grandmother approved. Approved of the breeding, the breaking of the witches.

Manon needed to get into the sky, needed to lose herself in cloud and wind for a few hours. Days. Weeks.

“I have no interest in prisoners or battling today,” Manon said.

The Queen of Terrasen gave her a grin. “Good.”

Manon turned away, barking at her Thirteen to get to their mounts.

“I suppose,” the queen went on, “that makes you smarter than Baba Yellowlegs.”

Manon stopped, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing of the grass or sky or trees.

Asterin whirled. “What do you know of Baba Yellowlegs?”

The queen gave a low chuckle, despite the warning growl from the Fae warrior.

Slowly, Manon looked over her shoulder.

The queen tugged apart the lapels of her tunic, revealing a necklace of thin scars as the wind shifted.

The scent—iron and stone and pure hatred—hit Manon like a rock to the face. Every Ironteeth witch knew the scent that forever lingered on those scars: Witch Killer.

Perhaps Manon would lose herself in blood and gore instead.

“You’re carrion,” Manon said, and lunged.

Only to slam face-first into an invisible wall.

And then freeze entirely.

“Run,” Aelin breathed, snatching up Goldryn and bolting for the trees. The Wing Leader was frozen in place, her sentinels wide-eyed as they rushed to her.

Chaol’s human blood wouldn’t hold the spell for long.

“The ravine,” Aedion said, not looking back from where he sprinted ahead with Chaol toward the temple.

They hurtled through the trees, the witches still in the meadow, still trying to break the spell that had trapped their Wing Leader.

“You,” Rowan said as he ran beside her, “are one very lucky woman.”

“Tell me that again when we’re out of here,” she panted, leaping over a fallen tree.

A roar of fury set the birds scattering from the trees, and Aelin ran faster. Oh, the Wing Leader was pissed. Really, really pissed.

Aelin hadn’t believed for one moment that the witch would have let them walk away without a fight. She had needed to buy whatever time they could get.

The trees cleared, revealing a barren stretch of land jutting toward the deep ravine and the temple perched on the spit of rock in the center. On the other side, Oakwald sprawled onward.

Connected only by two chain-and-wood bridges, it was the sole way across the ravine for miles. And with the dense foliage of Oakwald blocking the wyverns, it was the only way to escape the witches, who would no doubt pursue on foot.

“Hurry,” Rowan shouted as they made for the crumbling temple ruins.

The temple was small enough that not even the priestesses had dwelled here. The only decorations on the stone island were five weather-stained pillars and a crumbling, domed roof. Not even an altar—or at least one that had survived the centuries.

Apparently, people had given up on Temis long before the King of Adarlan came along.

She just prayed that the bridges on either side—

Aedion hurled himself to a stop before the first footbridge, Chaol thirty paces behind, Aelin and Rowan following. “Secure,” Aedion said. Before she could bark a warning, he thundered across.

The bridge bounced and swayed, but held—held even as her damn heart stopped. Then Aedion was at the temple island, the single, thin pillar of rock carved out by the rushing river flowing far, far below. He waved Chaol on. “One at a time,” he ordered. Beyond him the second bridge waited.

Chaol hurried through the stone pillars that flanked the entrance to the first bridge, the thin iron chains on the sides writhing as the bridge bounced. He kept upright, flying toward the temple, faster than she’d ever seen him run during all those morning exercises through the castle grounds.

Then Aelin and Rowan were at the columns, and— “Don’t even try to argue,” Rowan hissed, shoving her ahead of him.

Gods above, that was a wicked drop beneath them. The roar of the river was barely a whisper.

But she ran—ran because Rowan was waiting, and there were the witches breaking through the trees with Fae swiftness. The bridge bucked and swayed as she shot over the aging wooden planks. Ahead, Aedion had cleared the second bridge to the other side, and Chaol was now sprinting across it. Faster—she had to go faster. She leaped the final few feet onto the temple rock.

Ahead, Chaol exited the second bridge and drew his blade as he joined Aedion on the grassy cliff beyond, an arrow nocked in her cousin’s bow—aimed at the trees behind her. Aelin lunged up the few stairs onto the bald temple platform. The entire circular space was barely more than thirty feet across, bordered on all sides by a sheer plunge—and death.

Temis, apparently, was not the forgiving sort.

She twisted to look behind. Rowan was running across the bridge, so fast that the bridge hardly moved, but—

Aelin swore. The Wing Leader had reached the posts, flinging herself over and jumping through the air to land a third of the way down the bridge. Even Aedion’s warning shot went long, the arrow imbedding where any mortal should have landed. But not a witch. Holy burning hell.

“Go,” Rowan roared at Aelin, but she palmed her fighting knives, bending her knees as—

As an arrow fired by the golden-haired lieutenant shot for Aelin from the other side of the ravine.

Aelin twisted to avoid it, only to find a second arrow from the witch already there, anticipating her maneuver.

A wall of muscle slammed into her, shielding her and shoving her to the stones.

And the witch’s arrow went clean through Rowan’s shoulder.

60

For a moment, the world stopped.

Rowan slammed onto the temple stones, his blood spraying on the aging rock.

Aelin’s scream echoed down the ravine.

But then he was up again, running and bellowing at her to go. Beneath the dark arrow protruding through his shoulder, blood already soaked his tunic, his skin.

If he had been one inch farther behind, it would have hit his heart.

Not forty paces down the bridge, the Wing Leader closed in on them. Aedion rained arrows on her sentinels with preternatural precision, keeping them at bay by the tree line.

Aelin wrapped an arm around Rowan and they raced across the temple stones, his face paling as the wound gushed blood. She might have still been screaming, or sobbing—there was such a roaring silence in her.

Her heart—it had been meant for her heart.

And he had taken that arrow for her.

The killing calm spread through her like hoarfrost. She’d kill them all. Slowly.

They reached the second bridge just as Aedion’s barrage of arrows halted, his quiver no doubt emptied. She shoved Rowan onto the planks. “Run,” she said.

“No—”

“Run.”

It was a voice that she’d never heard herself use—a queen’s voice—that came out, along with the blind yank she made on the blood oath that bound them together.

His eyes flashed with fury, but his body moved as though she’d compelled him. He staggered across the bridge, just as—

Aelin whirled, drawing Goldryn and ducking just as the Wing Leader’s sword swiped for her head.

It hit stone, the pillar groaning, but Aelin was already moving—not toward the second bridge but back toward the first one, on the witches’ side.

Where the other witches, without Aedion’s arrows to block them, were now racing from the cover of the woods.

“You,” the Wing Leader growled, attacking again. Aelin rolled—right through Rowan’s blood—again dodging the fatal blow. She uncurled to her feet right in front of the first bridge, and two swings of Goldryn had the chains snapping.

The witches skidded to a stop at the lip of the ravine as the bridge collapsed, cutting them off.

The air behind her shifted, and Aelin moved—but not fast enough.

Cloth and flesh tore in her upper arm, and she barked out a cry as the witch’s blade sliced her.

She whirled, bringing Goldryn up for the second blow.

Steel met steel and sparked.

Rowan’s blood was at her feet, smeared across the temple stones.

Aelin Galathynius looked at Manon Blackbeak over their crossed swords and let out a low, vicious snarl.

Queen, savior, enemy, Manon didn’t give a shit.

She was going to kill the woman.

Their laws demanded it; honor demanded it.

Even if she hadn’t slaughtered Baba Yellowlegs, Manon would have killed her just for that spell she’d used to freeze her in place.

That was what she’d been doing with her feet. Etching some foul spell with the man’s blood.

And now she was going to die.

Wind-Cleaver pressed against the queen’s blade. But Aelin held her ground and hissed, “I’m going to rip you to shreds.”

Behind them, the Thirteen gathered on the ravine’s edge, cut off. One whistle from Manon had half of them scrambling for the wyverns. She didn’t get to sound the second whistle.

Faster than a human had a right to be, the queen swept out a leg, sending Manon tripping back. Aelin didn’t hesitate; she flipped the sword in her hand and lunged.

Manon deflected the blow, but Aelin got past her guard and pinned her, slamming her head against stones that were damp with the Fae warrior’s blood. Splotches of dark bloomed in her vision.

Manon drew in breath for the second whistle—the one to call off Asterin and her arrows.

She was interrupted by the queen slamming her fist into Manon’s face.

Black splintered further across her vision—but she twisted, twisted with every bit of her immortal strength, and they went flipping across the temple floor. The drop loomed, and then—

An arrow whizzed right for the queen’s exposed back as she landed atop Manon.

Manon twisted again, and the arrow bounced off the pillar instead. She threw Aelin from her, but the queen was instantly on her feet again, nimble as a cat.

“She’s mine,” Manon barked across the ravine to Asterin.

The queen laughed, hoarse and cold, circling as Manon got to her feet.

Across the other side of the ravine, the two males were helping the wounded Fae warrior off the bridge, and the golden-haired warrior charged—

“Don’t you dare, Aedion,” Aelin said, throwing out a hand in the male’s direction.

He froze halfway across the bridge. Impressive, Manon admitted, to have them under her command so thoroughly.

“Chaol, keep an eye on him,” the queen barked.

Then, holding Manon’s gaze, Aelin sheathed her mighty blade across her back, the giant ruby in the pommel catching in the midday light.

“Swords are boring,” the queen said, and palmed two fighting knives.

Manon sheathed Wind-Cleaver along her own back. She flicked her wrists, the iron nails shooting out. She cracked her jaw, and her fangs descended. “Indeed.”

The queen looked at the nails, the teeth, and grinned.

Honestly—it was a shame that Manon had to kill her.

Manon Blackbeak lunged, as swift and deadly as an adder.

Aelin darted back, dodging each swipe of those lethal iron nails. For her throat, for her face, for her guts. Back, and back, circling around the pillars.

It was only a matter of minutes before the wyverns arrived.

Aelin jabbed with her daggers, and the witch sidestepped her, only to slash with her nails, right at Aelin’s neck.

Aelin spun aside, but the nails grazed her skin. Blood warmed her neck and shoulders.

The witch was so damn fast. And one hell of a fighter.

But Rowan and the others were across the second bridge.

Now she just had to get there, too.

Manon Blackbeak feinted left and slashed right.

Aelin ducked and rolled aside.

The pillar shuddered as those iron claws gouged four lines deep into the stone.

Manon hissed. Aelin made to drive her dagger into her spine; the witch lashed out with a hand and wrapped it clean around the blade.

Blue blood welled, but the witch bore down on the blade until it snapped into three pieces in her hand.

Gods above.

Aelin had the sense to go in low with her other dagger, but the witch was already there—and Aedion’s shout rang in her ears as Manon’s knee drove up into her gut.

The air knocked from her in a whoosh, but Aelin kept her grip on the dagger, even as the witch threw her into another pillar.

The stone column rocked against the blow, and Aelin’s head cracked, agony arcing through her, but—

A slash, directly for her face.

Aelin ducked.

Again, the stone shuddered beneath the impact.

Aelin squeezed air into her body. Move—she had to keep moving, smooth as a stream, smooth as the wind of her carranam, bleeding and hurt across the way.

Pillar to pillar, she retreated, rolling and ducking and dodging.

Manon swiped and slashed, slamming into every column, a force of nature in her own right.

And then back around, again and again, pillar after pillar absorbing the blows that should have shredded her face, her neck. Aelin slowed her steps, let Manon think she was tiring, growing clumsy—

“Enough, coward,” Manon hissed, making to tackle Aelin to the ground.

But Aelin swung around a pillar and onto the thin lip of bare rock beyond the temple platform, the drop looming, just as Manon collided with the column.

The pillar groaned, swayed—and toppled to the side, hitting the pillar beside it, sending them both cracking to the ground.

Along with the domed roof.

Manon didn’t even have time to lunge out of the way as the marble crashed down on her.

One of the few remaining witches on the other side of the ravine screamed.

Aelin was already running, even as the rock island itself began trembling, as if whatever ancient force held this temple together had died the moment the roof crumbled.

Shit.

Aelin sprinted for the second bridge, dust and debris burning her eyes and lungs.

The island jolted with a thunderous crack, so violent that Aelin stumbled. But there were the posts and the bridge beyond, Aedion waiting on the other side—an arm held out, beckoning.

The island swayed again—wider and longer this time.

It was going to collapse beneath them.

There was a flicker of blue and white, a flash of red cloth, a glimmer of iron—

A hand and a shoulder, grappling with a fallen column.

Slowly, painfully, Manon heaved herself onto a slab of marble, her face coated in pale dust, blue blood leaking down her temple.

Across the ravine, cut off entirely, the golden-haired witch was on her knees. “Manon!”

I don’t think you’ve ever groveled for anything in your life, Wing Leader, the king had said.

But there was a Blackbeak witch on her knees, begging whatever gods they worshipped; and there was Manon Blackbeak, struggling to rise as the temple island crumbled away.

Aelin took a step onto the bridge.

Asterin—that was the golden-haired witch’s name. She screamed for Manon again, a plea to rise, to survive.

The island jolted.

The remaining bridge—the bridge to her friends, to Rowan, to safety—still held.

Aelin had felt it before: a thread in the world, a current running between her and someone else. She’d felt it one night, years ago, and had given a young healer the money to get the hell out of this continent. She’d felt the tug—and had decided to tug back.

Here it was again, that tug—toward Manon, whose arms buckled as she collapsed to the stone.

Her enemy—her new enemy, who would have killed her and Rowan if given the chance. A monster incarnate.

But perhaps the monsters needed to look out for each other every now and then.

“Run!” Aedion roared from across the ravine.

So she did.

Aelin ran for Manon, leaping over the fallen stones, her ankle wrenching on loose debris.

The island rocked with her every step, and the sunlight was scalding, as if Mala were holding that island aloft with every last bit of strength the goddess could summon in this land.

Then Aelin was upon Manon Blackbeak, and the witch lifted hate-filled eyes to her. Aelin hauled off stone after stone from her body, the island beneath them buckling.

“You’re too good a fighter to kill,” Aelin breathed, hooking an arm under Manon’s shoulders and hauling her up. The rock swayed to the left—but held. Oh, gods. “If I die because of you, I’ll beat the shit out of you in hell.”

She could have sworn the witch let out a broken laugh as she got to her feet, nearly a dead weight in Aelin’s arms.

“You—should let me die,” Manon rasped as they limped over the rubble.

“I know, I know,” Aelin panted, her sliced arm aching with the weight of the witch it supported. They hurried over the second bridge, the temple rock swaying to the right—stretching the bridge behind them tightly over the drop and the shining river far, far below.

Aelin tugged at the witch, gritting her teeth, and Manon stumbled into a staggering run. Aedion remained between the posts across the ravine, an arm still extended toward her—while his other lifted his sword high, ready for the Wing Leader’s arrival. The rock behind them groaned.

Halfway—nothing but a death-plunge waiting for them. Manon coughed blue blood onto the wooden slats. Aelin snapped, “What the hell good are your beasts if they can’t save you from this kind of thing?”

The island veered back in the other direction, and the bridge went taut—oh, shit—shit, it was going to snap. Faster they ran, until she could see Aedion’s straining fingers and the whites of his eyes.

The rock cracked, so loudly it deafened her. Then came the tug and stretch of the bridge as the island began to crumble into dust, sliding to the side—

Aelin lunged the last few steps, gripping Manon’s red cloak as the chains of the bridge snapped. The wooden slats dropped out from beneath them, but they were already leaping.

Aelin let out a grunt as she slammed into Aedion. She whirled to see Chaol grabbing Manon and hauling her over the lip of the ravine, her cloak torn and covered in dust, fluttering in the wind.

When Aelin looked past the witch, the temple was gone.

Manon gasped for air, concentrating on her breathing, on the cloudless sky above her.

The humans left her lying between the stone bridge posts. The queen hadn’t even bothered to say good-bye. She’d just dashed for the injured Fae warrior, his name like a prayer on her lips.

Rowan.

Manon had looked up in time to see the queen fall to her knees before the injured warrior in the grass, demanding answers from the brown-haired man—Chaol—who pressed a hand to the arrow wound in Rowan’s shoulder to stanch the bleeding. The queen’s shoulders were shaking.

Fireheart, the Fae warrior murmured. Manon would have watched—would have, had she not coughed blood onto the bright grass and blacked out.

When she awoke, they were gone.

Only minutes had passed—because then there were booming wings, and Abraxos’s roar. And there were Asterin and Sorrel, rushing for her before their wyverns had fully landed.

The Queen of Terrasen had saved her life. Manon didn’t know what to make of it.

For she now owed her enemy a life debt.

And she had just learned how thoroughly her grandmother and the King of Adarlan intended to destroy them.

61

The trek back through Oakwald was the longest journey of Aelin’s miserable life. Nesryn had removed the arrow from Rowan’s shoulder, and Aedion had found some herbs to chew and shove into the open wound to stanch the bleeding.

But Rowan still sagged against Chaol and Aedion as they hurried through the forest.

Nowhere to go. She had nowhere to take an injured Fae male in the capital city, in this entire shit-hole kingdom.

Lysandra was pale and shaking, but she’d squared her shoulders and offered to help carry Rowan when one of them tired. None of them accepted. When Chaol at last asked Nesryn to take over, Aelin glimpsed the blood soaking his tunic and hands—Rowan’s blood—and nearly vomited.

Slower—every step was slower as Rowan’s strength flagged.

“He needs to rest,” Lysandra said gently. Aelin paused, the towering oaks pressing in around her.

Rowan’s eyes were half-closed, his face drained of all color. He couldn’t even lift his head.

She should have let the witch die.

“We can’t just camp out in the middle of the woods,” Aelin said. “He needs a healer.”

“I know where we can take him,” Chaol said. She dragged her eyes to the captain.

She should have let the witch kill him, too.

Chaol wisely averted his gaze and faced Nesryn. “Your father’s country house—the man who runs it is married to a midwife.”

Nesryn’s mouth tightened. “She’s not a healer, but—yes. She might have something.”

“Do you understand,” Aelin said very quietly to them, “that if I suspect they’re going to betray us, they will die?”

It was true, and maybe it made her a monster to Chaol, but she didn’t care.

“I know,” Chaol said. Nesryn merely nodded, still calm, still solid.

“Then lead the way,” Aelin said, her voice hollow. “And pray they can keep their mouths shut.”

Joyous, frenzied barking greeted them, rousing Rowan from the half consciousness he’d fallen into during the last few miles to the little stone farmhouse. Aelin had barely breathed the entire time.

But despite herself, despite Rowan’s injuries, as Fleetfoot raced across the high grass toward them, Aelin smiled a little.

The dog leaped upon her, licking and whining and wagging her feathery, golden tail.

She hadn’t realized how filthy and bloody her hands were until she put them on Fleetfoot’s shining coat.

Aedion grunted as he took all of Rowan’s weight while Chaol and Nesryn jogged for the large, brightly lit stone house, dusk having fallen fully around them. Good. Fewer eyes to see as they exited Oakwald and crossed the freshly tilled fields. Lysandra tried to help Aedion, but he refused her again. She hissed at him and helped anyway.

Fleetfoot danced around Aelin, then noticed Aedion, Lysandra, and Rowan, and that tail became a bit more tentative. “Friends,” she told her dog. She’d become huge since Aelin had last seen her. She wasn’t sure why it surprised her, when everything else in her life had changed as well.

Aelin’s assurance seemed good enough for Fleetfoot, who trotted ahead, escorting them to the wooden door that had opened to reveal a tall midwife with a no-nonsense face that took one look at Rowan and tightened.

One word. One damn word that suggested she might turn them in, and she was dead.

But the woman said, “Whoever put that bloodmoss on the wound saved his life. Get him inside—we need to clean it before anything else can be done.”

It took a few hours for Marta, the housekeeper’s wife, to clean, disinfect, and patch up Rowan’s wounds. Lucky, she kept saying—so lucky it didn’t hit anything vital.

Chaol didn’t know what to do with himself other than carry away the bowls of bloodied water.

Aelin just sat on a stool beside the cot in the spare room of the elegant, comfortable house, and monitored every move Marta made.

Chaol wondered if Aelin knew that she was a bloodied mess. That she looked even worse than Rowan.

Her neck was brutalized, blood had dried on her face, her cheek was bruised, and the left sleeve of her tunic was torn open to reveal a vicious slice. And then there were the dust, dirt, and blue blood of the Wing Leader coating her.

But Aelin perched on the stool, never moving, only drinking water, snarling if Marta so much as looked at Rowan funny.

Marta, somehow, endured it.

And when the midwife was done, she faced the queen. With no clue at all who sat in her house, Marta said, “You have two choices: you can either go wash up in the spigot outside, or you can sit with the pigs all night. You’re dirty enough that one touch could infect his wounds.”

Aelin glanced over her shoulder at Aedion, who was leaning against the wall behind her. He nodded silently. He’d look after him.

Aelin rose and stalked out.

“I’ll inspect your other friend now,” Marta said, and hurried to where Lysandra had fallen asleep in the adjoining room, curled up on a narrow bed cot. Upstairs, Nesryn was busy dealing with the staff—ensuring their silence. But he’d seen the tentative joy on their faces when they’d arrived: Nesryn and the Faliq family had earned their loyalty long ago.

Chaol gave Aelin two minutes, and then followed her outside.

The stars were bright overhead, the full moon nearly blinding. The night wind whispered through the grass, barely audible over the clunk and sputter of the spigot.

He found the queen crouched before it, her face in the stream of water.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She rubbed at her face and heaved the lever until more water poured over her.

Chaol went on, “I just wanted to end it for him. You were right—all this time, you were right. But I wanted to do it myself. I didn’t know it would … I’m sorry.”

She released the lever and pivoted to look up at him.

“I saved my enemy’s life today,” she said flatly. She uncoiled to her feet, wiping the water from her face. And though he stood taller than her, he felt smaller as Aelin stared at him. No, not just Aelin. Queen Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, he realized, was staring at him. “They tried to shoot my … Rowan through the heart. And I saved her anyway.”

“I know,” he said. Her scream when that arrow had gone through Rowan …

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

She gazed up at the stars—toward the North. Her face was so cold. “Would you truly have killed him if you’d had the chance?”

“Yes,” Chaol breathed. “I was ready for that.”

She slowly turned to him. “We’ll do it—together. We’ll free magic, then you and I will go in there and end it together.”

“You’re not going to insist I stay back?”

“How can I deny you that last gift to him?”

“Aelin—”

Her shoulders sagged slightly. “I don’t blame you. If it had been Rowan with that collar around his neck, I would have done the same thing.”

The words hit him in the gut as she walked away.

A monster, he’d called her weeks ago. He had believed it, and allowed it to be a shield against the bitter tang of disappointment and sorrow.

He was a fool.

They moved Rowan before dawn. By whatever immortal grace lingering in his veins, he’d healed enough to walk on his own, and so they slipped out of the lovely country house before any of the staff awoke. Aelin said good-bye only to Fleetfoot, who had slept curled by her side during the long night that she’d watched over Rowan.

Then they were off, Aelin and Aedion flanking Rowan, his arms slung over their shoulders as they hurried across the foothills.

The early-morning mist cloaked them as they made their way into Rifthold one last time.

62

Manon didn’t bother looking pleasant as she sent Abraxos slamming into the ground in front of the king’s party. The horses whinnied and bucked while the Thirteen circled above the clearing in which they’d spotted the party.

“Wing Leader,” the king said from astride his warhorse, not at all perturbed. Beside him, his son—Dorian—cringed.

Cringed the way that blond thing in Morath had when it attacked them.

“Was there something you wanted?” the king asked coolly. “Or a reason you look halfway to Hellas’s realm?”

Manon dismounted Abraxos and walked toward the king and his son. The prince focused on his saddle, careful not to meet her eyes. “There are rebels in your woods,” she said. “They took your little prisoner out of the wagon, and then tried to attack me and my Thirteen. I slaughtered them all. I hope you don’t mind. They left three of your men dead in the wagon—though it seems their loss wasn’t noticed.”

The king merely said, “You came all this way to tell me that?”

“I came all this way to tell you that when I face your rebels, your enemies, I shall have no interest in prisoners. And the Thirteen are not a caravan to transport them as you will.”

She stepped closer to the prince’s horse. “Dorian,” she said. A command and a challenge.

Sapphire eyes snapped to hers. No trace of otherworldly darkness.

Just a man trapped inside.

She faced the king. “You should send your son to Morath. It’d be his sort of place.” Before the king could reply, Manon walked back to Abraxos.

She’d planned on telling the king about Aelin. About the rebels who called themselves Aedion and Rowan and Chaol.

But … they were human and could not travel swiftly—not if they were injured.

She owed her enemy a life debt.

Manon climbed into Abraxos’s saddle. “My grandmother might be High Witch,” she said to the king, “but I ride at the head of the armies.”

The king chuckled. “Ruthless. I think I rather like you, Wing Leader.”

“That weapon my grandmother made—the mirrors. You truly plan to use shadowfire with it?”

The king’s ruddy face tightened with warning. The replica inside the wagon had been a fraction of the size of what was depicted in the plans nailed to the wall: giant, transportable battle towers, a hundred feet high, their insides lined with the sacred mirrors of the Ancients. Mirrors that were once used to build and break and mend. Now they would be amplifiers, reflecting and multiplying any power the king chose to unleash, until it became a weapon that could be aimed at any target. If the power were Kaltain’s shadowfire …

“You ask too many questions, Wing Leader,” the king said.

“I don’t like surprises,” was her only reply. Except this—this had been a surprise.

The weapon wasn’t for winning glory or triumph or the love of battle. It was for extermination. A full-scale slaughter that would involve little fighting at all. Any opposing army—even Aelin and her warriors—would be defenseless.

The king’s face was turning purple with impatience.

But Manon was already taking to the skies, Abraxos beating his wings hard. She watched the prince until he was a speck of black hair.

And wondered what it was like to be trapped within that body.

Elide Lochan waited for the supply wagon. It didn’t come.

A day late; two days late. She hardly slept for fear it would arrive when she was dozing. When she awoke on the third day, her mouth dry, it was already habit to hurry down to help in the kitchen. She worked until her leg nearly gave out.

Then, just before sunset, the whinny of horses and the clatter of wheels and the shouts of men bounced off the dark stones of the long Keep bridge.

Elide slipped from the kitchen before they could notice her, before the cook could conscript her into performing some new task. She hurried up the steps as best she could with her chain, her heart in her throat. She should have kept her things downstairs, should have found some hiding spot.

Up and up, into Manon’s tower. She’d refilled the water skein each morning, and had amassed a little supply of food in a pouch. Elide threw open the door to Manon’s room, surging for the pallet where she kept her supplies.

But Vernon was inside.

He sat on the edge of Manon’s bed as if it were his own.

“Going somewhere, Elide?”

63

“Where on earth could you be headed?” Vernon said as he stood, smug as a cat.

Panic bleated in her veins. The wagon—the wagon—

“Was that the plan all along? To hide among those witches, and then run?”

Elide backed toward the door. Vernon clicked his tongue.

“We both know there’s no point in running. And the Wing Leader isn’t going to be here anytime soon.”

Elide’s knees wobbled. Oh, gods.

“But is my beautiful, clever niece human—or witch-kind? Such an important question.” He grabbed her by the elbow, a small knife in his hand. She could do nothing against the stinging slice in her arm, the red blood that welled. “Not a witch at all, it seems.”

“I am a Blackbeak,” Elide breathed. She would not bow to him, would not cower.

Vernon circled her. “Too bad they’re all up north and can’t verify it.”

Fight, fight, fight, her blood sang—do not let him cage you. Your mother went down fighting. She was a witch, and you are a witch, and you do not yield—you do not yield—

Vernon lunged, faster than she could avoid in her chains, one hand gripping her under the arm while the other slammed her head into the wood so hard that her body just—stopped.

That was all he needed—that stupid pause—to pin her other arm, gripping both in his hand while the other now clenched on her neck hard enough to hurt, to make her realize that her uncle had once trained as her father had. “You’re coming with me.”

“No.” The word was a whisper of breath.

His grip tightened, twisting her arms until they barked in pain. “Don’t you know what a prize you are? What you might be able to do?”

He yanked her back, opening the door. No—no, she wouldn’t let him take her, wouldn’t—

But screaming would do her no good. Not in a Keep full of monsters. Not in a world where no one remembered she existed, or bothered to care. She stilled, and he took that as acquiescence. She could feel his smile at the back of her head as he nudged her into the stairwell.

“Blackbeak blood is in your veins—along with our family’s generous line of magic.” He hauled her down the stairs, and bile burned her throat. There was no one coming for her—because she had belonged to no one. “The witches don’t have magic, not like us. But you, a hybrid of both lines …” Vernon gripped her arm harder, right over the cut he’d made, and she cried out. The sound echoed, hollow and small, down the stone stairwell. “You do your house a great honor, Elide.”

Vernon left her in a freezing dungeon cell.

No light.

No sound, save for the dripping of water somewhere.

Shaking, Elide didn’t even have the words to beg as Vernon tossed her inside. “You brought this upon yourself, you know,” he said, “when you allied with that witch and confirmed my suspicions that their blood flows through your veins.” He studied her, but she was gobbling down the details of the cell—anything, anything to get her out. She found nothing. “I’ll leave you here until you’re ready. I doubt anyone will notice your absence, anyway.”

He slammed the door, and darkness swallowed her entirely.

She didn’t bother trying the handle.

Manon was summoned by the duke the moment she set foot in Morath.

The messenger was cowering in the archway to the aerie, and could barely get the words out as he took in the blood and dirt and dust that still covered Manon.

She’d contemplated snapping her teeth at him just for trembling like a spineless fool, but she was drained, her head was pounding, and anything more than basic movement required far too much thought.

None of the Thirteen had dared say anything about her grandmother—that she had approved of the breeding.

Sorrel and Vesta trailing mere steps behind her, Manon flung open the doors to the duke’s council chamber, letting the slamming wood say enough about what she thought of being summoned immediately.

The duke—only Kaltain beside him—flicked his eyes over her. “Explain your … appearance.”

Manon opened her mouth.

If Vernon heard that Aelin Galathynius was alive—if he suspected for one heartbeat the debt that Aelin might feel toward Elide’s mother for saving her life, he might very well decide to end his niece’s life. “Rebels attacked us. I killed them all.”

The duke chucked a file of papers onto the table. They hit the glass and slid, spreading out in a fan. “For months now, you’ve wanted explanations. Well, here they are. Status reports on our enemies, larger targets for us to strike … His Majesty sends his best wishes.”

Manon approached. “Did he also send that demon prince into my barracks to attack us?” She stared at the duke’s thick neck, wondering how easily the rough skin would tear.

Perrington’s mouth twisted to the side. “Roland had outlived his usefulness. Who better to take care of him than your Thirteen?”

“I hadn’t realized we were to be your executioners.” She should indeed rip out his throat for what he’d tried to do. Beside him, Kaltain was wholly blank, a shell. But that shadowfire … Would she summon it if the duke were attacked?

“Sit and read the files, Wing Leader.”

She didn’t appreciate the command, and let out a snarl to tell him so, but she sat.

And read.

Reports on Eyllwe, on Melisande, on Fenharrow, on the Red Desert, and Wendlyn.

And on Terrasen.

According to the report, Aelin Galathynius—long believed to be dead—had appeared in Wendlyn and bested four of the Valg princes, including a lethal general in the king’s army. Using fire.

Aelin had fire magic, Elide had said. She could have survived the cold.

But—but that meant that magic … Magic still worked in Wendlyn. And not here.

Manon would bet a great deal of the gold hoarded at Blackbeak Keep that the man in front of her—and the king in Rifthold—was the reason why.

Then a report of Prince Aedion Ashryver, former general of Adarlan, kin to the Ashryvers of Wendlyn, being arrested for treason. For associating with rebels. He had been rescued from his execution mere weeks ago by unknown forces.

Possible suspects: Lord Ren Allsbrook of Terrasen …

And Lord Chaol Westfall of Adarlan, who had loyally served the king as his Captain of the Guard until he’d joined forces with Aedion this past spring and fled the castle the day of Aedion’s capture. They suspected the captain hadn’t gone far—and that he would try to free his lifelong friend, the Crown Prince.

Free him.

The prince had taunted her, provoked her—as if trying to get her to kill him. And Roland had begged for death.

If Chaol and Aedion were both now with Aelin Galathynius, all working together …

They hadn’t been in the forest to spy.

But to save the prince. And whoever that female prisoner had been. They’d rescued one friend, at least.

The duke and the king didn’t know. They didn’t know how close they’d been to all their targets, or how close their enemies had come to seizing their prince.

That was why the captain had come running.

He had come to kill the prince—the only mercy he believed he could offer him.

The rebels didn’t know that the man was still inside.

“Well?” the duke demanded. “Any questions?”

“You have yet to explain the necessity of the weapon my grandmother is building. A tool like that could be catastrophic. If there’s no magic, then surely obliterating the Queen of Terrasen can’t be worth the risk of using those towers.”

“Better to be overprepared than surprised. We have full control of the towers.”

Manon tapped an iron nail on the glass table.

“This is a base of information, Wing Leader. Continue to prove yourself, and you will receive more.”

Prove herself? She hadn’t done anything lately to prove herself, except—except shred one of his demon princes and butcher that mountain tribe for no good reason. A shiver of rage went through her. Unleashing the prince in the barracks hadn’t been a message, then, but a test. To see if she could hold up against his worst, and still obey.

“Have you picked a coven for me?”

Manon forced herself to give a dismissive shrug. “I was waiting to see who behaved themselves the best while I was away. It’ll be their reward.”

“You have until tomorrow.”

Manon stared him down. “The moment I leave this room, I’m going to bathe and sleep for a day. If you or your little demon cronies bother me before then, you’ll learn just how much I enjoy playing executioner. The day after that, I’ll make my decision.”

“You wouldn’t be avoiding it, would you, Wing Leader?”

“Why should I bother handing out favors to covens that don’t deserve them?” Manon didn’t give herself one heartbeat to contemplate what the Matron was letting these men do as she gathered up the files, shoved them into Sorrel’s arms, and strode out.

She had just reached the stairs to her tower when she spotted Asterin leaning against the archway, picking at her iron nails.

Sorrel and Vesta sucked in their breath.

“What is it?” Manon demanded, flicking out her own nails.

Asterin’s face was a mask of immortal boredom. “We need to talk.”

She and Asterin flew into the mountains, and she let her cousin lead—let Abraxos follow Asterin’s sky-blue female until they were far from Morath. They alighted on a little plateau covered in purple and orange wildflowers, its grasses hissing in the wind. Abraxos was practically grunting with joy, and Manon, her exhaustion as heavy as the red cloak she wore, didn’t bother to reprimand him.

They left their wyverns in the field. The mountain wind was surprisingly warm, the day clear and the sky full of fat, puffy clouds. She’d ordered Sorrel and Vesta to remain behind, despite their protests. If things had gotten to the point where Asterin could not be trusted to be alone with her … Manon did not want to consider it.

Perhaps that was why she had agreed to come.

Perhaps it was because of the scream Asterin had issued from the other side of the ravine.

It had been so like the scream of the Blueblood heir, Petrah, when her wyvern had been ripped to shreds. Like the scream of Petrah’s mother when Petrah and her wyvern, Keelie, had tumbled into thin air.

Asterin walked to the edge of the plateau, the wildflowers swaying about her calves, her riding leathers shining in the bright sun. She unbraided her hair, shaking out the golden waves, then unbuckled her sword and daggers and let them thud to the ground. “I need you to listen, and not talk,” she said as Manon came to stand beside her.

A high demand to make of her heir, but there was no challenge, no threat in it. And Asterin had never spoken to her like that. So Manon nodded.

Asterin stared out across the mountains—so vibrant here, now that they were far from the darkness of Morath. A balmy breeze flitted between them, ruffling Asterin’s curls until they looked like sunshine given form.

“When I was twenty-eight, I was off hunting Crochans in a valley just west of the Fangs. I had a hundred miles to go before the next village, and when a storm rolled in, I didn’t feel like landing. So I tried to outrace the storm on my broom, tried to fly over it. But the storm went on and on, up and up. I don’t know if it was the lightning or the wind, but suddenly I was falling. I managed to get control of my broom long enough to land, but the impact was brutal. Before I blacked out, I knew my arm was broken in two different places, my ankle twisted beyond use, and my broom shattered.”

Over eighty years ago—this had been over eighty years ago, and Manon had never heard of it. She’d been off on her own mission—where, she couldn’t remember now. All those years she’d spent hunting Crochans had blurred together.

“When I awoke, I was in a human cabin, my broom in pieces beside the bed. The man who had found me said he’d been riding home through the storm and saw me fall from the sky. He was a young hunter—mostly of exotic game, which was why he had a cabin out in the deep wild. I think I would have killed him if I’d had any strength, if only because I wanted his resources. But I faded in and out of consciousness for a few days while my bones knitted together, and when I awoke again … he fed me enough that he stopped looking like food. Or a threat.”

A long silence.

“I stayed there for five months. I didn’t hunt a single Crochan. I helped him stalk game, found ironwood and began carving a new broom, and … And we both knew what I was, what he was. That I was long-lived and he was human. But we were the same age at that moment, and we didn’t care. So I stayed with him until my orders bade me report back to Blackbeak Keep. And I told him … I said I’d come back when I could.”

Manon could hardly think, hardly breathe over the silence in her head. She’d never heard of this. Not a whisper. For Asterin to have ignored her sacred duties … For her to have taken up with this human man …

“I was a month pregnant when I arrived back at Blackbeak Keep.”

Manon’s knees wobbled.

“You were already gone—off on your next mission. I told no one, not until I knew that the pregnancy would actually survive those first few months.”

Not unexpected, as most witches lost their offspring during that time. For the witchling to grow past that threshold was a miracle in itself.

“But I made it to three months, then four. And when I couldn’t hide it anymore, I told your grandmother. She was pleased, and ordered me on bed rest in the Keep, so nothing disturbed me or the witchling in my womb. I told her I wanted to go back out, but she refused. I knew better than to tell her I wanted to return to that cabin in the forest. I knew she’d kill him. So I remained in the tower for months, a pampered prisoner. You even visited, twice, and she didn’t tell you I was there. Not until the witchling was born, she said.”

A long, uneven breath.

It wasn’t uncommon for witches to be overprotective of those carrying witchlings. And Asterin, bearing the Matron’s bloodline, would have been a valued commodity.

“I made a plan. The moment I recovered from the birth, the moment they looked away, I’d take the witchling to her father and present her to him. I thought maybe a life in the forest, quiet and peaceful, would be better for my witchling than the bloodshed we had. I thought maybe it would be better … for me.”

Asterin’s voice broke on the last two words. Manon couldn’t bring herself to look at her cousin.

“I gave birth. The witchling almost ripped me in two coming out. I thought it was because she was a fighter, because she was a true Blackbeak. And I was proud. Even as I was screaming, even as I was bleeding, I was so proud of her.”

Asterin fell silent, and Manon looked at her at last.

Tears were rolling down her cousin’s face, gleaming in the sunshine. Asterin closed her eyes and whispered into the wind. “She was stillborn. I waited to hear that cry of triumph, but there was only silence. Silence, and then your grandmother …” She opened her eyes. “Your grandmother struck me. She beat me. Again and again. All I wanted was to see my witchling, and she ordered them to have her burned instead. She refused to let me see her. I was a disgrace to every witch who had come before me; I was to blame for a defective witchling; I had dishonored the Blackbeaks; I had disappointed her. She screamed it at me again and again, and when I sobbed, she … she …”

Manon didn’t know where to stare, what to do with her arms.

A stillborn was a witch’s greatest sorrow—and shame. But for her grandmother …

Asterin unbuttoned her jacket and shrugged it off into the flowers. She removed her shirt, and the one beneath, until her golden skin glowed in the sunlight, her breasts full and heavy. Asterin turned, and Manon fell to her knees in the grass.

There, branded on Asterin’s abdomen in vicious, crude letters was one word:

UNCLEAN

“She branded me. Had them heat up the iron in the same flame where my witchling burned and stamped each letter herself. She said I had no business ever trying to conceive a Blackbeak again. That most men would take one look at the word and run.”

Eighty years. For eighty years she had hidden this. But Manon had seen her naked, had—

No. No, she hadn’t. Not for decades and decades. When they were witchlings, yes, but …

“In my shame, I told no one. Sorrel and Vesta … Sorrel knew because she was in that room. Sorrel fought for me. Begged your grandmother. Your grandmother snapped her arm and sent her out. But after the Matron chucked me into the snow and told me to crawl somewhere and die, Sorrel found me. She got Vesta, and they brought me to Vesta’s aerie deep in the mountains, and they secretly took care of me for the months that I … that I couldn’t get out of bed. Then one day, I just woke up and decided to fight.

“I trained. I healed my body. I grew strong—stronger than I’d been before. And I stopped thinking about it. A month later I went hunting for Crochans, and walked back into the Keep with three of their hearts in a box. If your grandmother was surprised I hadn’t died, she didn’t show it. You were there that night I came back. You toasted in my honor, and said you were proud to have such a fine Second.”

Still on her knees, the damp earth soaking into her pants, Manon stared at that hideous brand.

“I never went back to the hunter. I didn’t know how to explain the brand. How to explain your grandmother, or apologize. I was afraid he’d treat me as your grandmother had. So I never went back.” Her mouth wobbled. “I’d fly overhead every few years, just … just to see.” She wiped at her face. “He never married. And even when he was an old man, I’d sometimes see him sitting on that front porch. As if he were waiting for someone.”

Something … something was cracking and aching in Manon’s chest, caving in on itself.

Asterin sat among the flowers and began pulling on her clothes. She was weeping silently, but Manon didn’t know if she should reach out. She didn’t know how to comfort, how to soothe.

“I stopped caring,” Asterin said at last. “About anything and everything. After that, it was all a joke, and a thrill, and nothing scared me.”

That wildness, that untamed fierceness … They weren’t born of a free heart, but of one that had known despair so complete that living brightly, living violently, was the only way to outrun it.

“But I told myself”—Asterin finished buttoning her jacket—“I would dedicate my life wholly to being your Second. To serving you. Not your grandmother. Because I knew your grandmother had hidden me from you for a reason. I think she knew you would have fought for me. And whatever your grandmother saw in you that made her afraid … It was worth waiting for. Worth serving. So I have.”

That day Abraxos had made the Crossing, when her Thirteen had looked ready to fight their way out should her grandmother give the order to kill her …

Asterin met her stare. “Sorrel, Vesta, and I have known for a very long time what your grandmother is capable of. We never said anything because we feared that if you knew, it could jeopardize you. The day you saved Petrah instead of letting her fall … You weren’t the only one who understood why your grandmother made you slaughter that Crochan.” Asterin shook her head. “I am begging you, Manon. Do not let your grandmother and these men take our witches and use them like this. Do not let them turn our witchlings into monsters. What they’ve already done … I am begging you to help me undo it.”

Manon swallowed hard, her throat achingly tight. “If we defy them, they will come after us, and they will kill us.”

“I know. We all know. That’s what we wanted to tell you the other night.”

Manon looked at her cousin’s shirt, as if she could see through to the brand beneath. “That is why you’ve been behaving this way.”

“I am not foolish enough to pretend that I don’t have a weak spot where witchlings are concerned.”

This was why her grandmother had pushed for decades to have Asterin demoted.

“I don’t think it’s a weak spot,” Manon admitted, and glanced over her shoulder to where Abraxos was sniffing at the wildflowers. “You’re to be reinstated as Second.”

Asterin bowed her head. “I am sorry, Manon.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” She dared add, “Are there others whom my grandmother treated this way?”

“Not in the Thirteen. But in other covens. Most let themselves die when your grandmother cast them out.” And Manon had never been told. She had been lied to.

Manon gazed westward across the mountains. Hope, Elide had said—hope for a better future. For a home.

Not obedience, brutality, discipline. But hope.

“We need to proceed carefully.”

Asterin blinked, the gold flecks in her black eyes glittering. “What are you planning?”

“Something very stupid, I think.”

64

Rowan barely remembered anything of the agonizing trip back to Rifthold. By the time they had snuck across the city walls and through the alleys to reach the warehouse, he was so exhausted that he’d hardly hit the mattress before unconsciousness dragged him under.

He awoke that night—or was it the next?—with Aelin and Aedion sitting on the side of the bed, talking.

“Solstice is in six days; we need to have everything lined up by then,” she was saying to her cousin.

“So you’re going to ask Ress and Brullo to just leave a back door open so you can sneak in?”

“Don’t be so simpleminded. I’m going to walk in through the front door.”

Of course she was. Rowan let out a groan, his tongue dry and heavy in his mouth.

She whirled to him, half lunging across the bed. “How are you feeling?” She brushed a hand over his forehead, testing for fever. “You seem all right.”

“Fine,” he grunted. His arm and shoulder ached. But he’d endured worse. The blood loss had been what knocked his feet out from under him—more blood than he’d ever lost at once, at least so quickly, thanks to his magic being stifled. He ran an eye over Aelin. Her face was drawn and pale, a bruise kissed her cheekbone, and four scratches marred her neck.

He was going to slaughter that witch.

He said as much, and Aelin smiled. “If you’re in the mood for violence, then I suppose you’re just fine.” But the words were thick, and her eyes gleamed. He reached out with his good arm to grip one of her hands and squeezed tightly. “Please don’t ever do that again,” she breathed.

“Next time, I’ll ask them not to fire arrows at you—or me.”

Her mouth tightened and wobbled, and she rested her brow on his good arm. He lifted the other arm, sending burning pain shooting through him as he stroked her hair. It was still matted in a few spots with blood and dirt. She must not have even bothered with a full bath.

Aedion cleared his throat. “We’ve been thinking up a plan for freeing magic—and taking out the king and Dorian.”

“Just—tell me tomorrow,” Rowan said, a headache already blooming. The mere thought of explaining to them again that every time he’d seen hellfire used it had been more destructive than anyone could anticipate made him want to go back to sleep. Gods, without his magic … Humans were remarkable. To be able to survive without leaning on magic … He had to give them credit.

Aedion yawned—the lousiest attempt at one Rowan had ever seen—and excused himself.

“Aedion,” Rowan said, and the general paused in the doorway. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, brother.” He walked out.

Aelin was looking between them, her lips pursed again.

“What?” he said.

She shook her head. “You’re too nice when you’re wounded. It’s unsettling.”

Seeing the tears shine in her eyes just now had nearly unsettled him. If magic had already been freed, those witches would have been ashes the moment that arrow hit him. “Go take a bath,” he growled. “I’m not sleeping next to you while you’re covered in that witch’s blood.”

She examined her nails, still slightly lined with dirt and blue blood. “Ugh. I’ve washed them ten times already.” She rose from her seat on the side of the bed.

“Why,” he asked. “Why did you save her?”

She dragged a hand through her hair. A white bandage around her upper arm peeked through her shirt with the movement. He hadn’t even been conscious for that wound. He stifled the urge to demand to see it, assess the injury himself—and tug her close against him.

“Because that golden-haired witch, Asterin … ,” Aelin said. “She screamed Manon’s name the way I screamed yours.”

Rowan stilled. His queen gazed at the floor, as if recalling the moment.

“How can I take away somebody who means the world to someone else? Even if she’s my enemy.” A little shrug. “I thought you were dying. It seemed like bad luck to let her die out of spite. And …” she snorted. “Falling into a ravine seemed like a pretty shitty way to die for someone who fights that spectacularly.”

Rowan smiled, drinking in the sight of her: the pale, grave face; the dirty clothes; the injuries. Yet her shoulders were back, chin high. “You make me proud to serve you.”

A jaunty slant to her lips, but silver lined her eyes. “I know.”

“You look like shit,” Lysandra said to Aelin. Then she remembered Evangeline, who stared at her wide-eyed, and winced. “Sorry.”

Evangeline refolded her napkin in her lap, every inch the dainty little queen. “You said I’m not to use such language—and yet you do.”

“I can curse,” Lysandra said as Aelin suppressed a smile, “because I’m older, and I know when it’s most effective. And right now, our friend looks like absolute shit.”

Evangeline lifted her eyes to Aelin, her red-gold hair bright in the morning sun through the kitchen window. “You look even worse in the morning, Lysandra.”

Aelin choked out a laugh. “Careful, Lysandra. You’ve got a hellion on your hands.”

Lysandra gave her young ward a long look. “If you’ve finished eating the tarts clean off our plates, Evangeline, go onto the roof and raise hell for Aedion and Rowan.”

“Take care with Rowan,” Aelin added. “He’s still on the mend. But pretend that he isn’t. Men get pissy if you fuss.”

A wicked gleam in her eye, Evangeline bounded for the front door. Aelin listened to make sure the girl did indeed go upstairs, and then turned to her friend. “She’s going to be a handful when she’s older.”

Lysandra groaned. “You think I don’t know that? Eleven years old, and she’s already a tyrant. It’s an endless stream of Why? and I would prefer not to and why, why, why and no, I should not like to listen to your good advice, Lysandra.” She rubbed her temples.

“A tyrant, but a brave one,” Aelin said. “I don’t think there are many eleven-year-olds who would do what she did to save you.” The swelling had gone down, but bruises still marred Lysandra’s face, and the small, scabbed cut near her lip remained an angry red. “And I don’t think there are many nineteen-year-olds who would fight tooth and nail to save a child.” Lysandra stared down at the table. “I’m sorry,” Aelin said. “Even though Arobynn orchestrated it—I’m sorry.”

“You came for me,” Lysandra said so quietly that it was hardly a breath. “All of you—you came for me.” She had told Nesryn and Chaol in detail of her overnight stay in a hidden dungeon beneath the city streets; already, the rebels were combing the sewers for it. She remembered little of the rest, having been blindfolded and gagged. Wondering if they would put a Wyrdstone ring on her finger had been the worst of it, she said. That dread would haunt her for a while.

“You thought we wouldn’t come for you?”

“I’ve never had friends who cared what happened to me, other than Sam and Wesley. Most people would have let me be taken—dismissed me as just another whore.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Oh?”

Aelin reached into her pocket and pushed a folded piece of paper across the table. “It’s for you. And her.”

“We don’t need—” Lysandra’s eyes fell upon the wax seal. A snake in midnight ink: Clarisse’s sigil. “What is this?”

“Open it.”

Glancing between her and the paper, Lysandra cracked the seal and read the text.

“I, Clarisse DuVency, hereby declare that any debts owed to me by—”

The paper began shaking.

“Any debts owed to me by Lysandra and Evangeline are now paid in full. At their earliest convenience, they may receive the Mark of their freedom.”

The paper fluttered to the table as Lysandra’s hands slackened. She raised her head to look at Aelin.

“Och,” Aelin said, even as her own eyes filled. “I hate you for being so beautiful, even when you cry.”

“Do you know how much money—”

“Did you think I’d leave you enslaved to her?”

“I don’t … I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know how to thank you—”

“You don’t need to.”

Lysandra put her face in her hands and sobbed.

“I’m sorry if you wanted to do the proud and noble thing and stick it out for another decade,” Aelin began.

Lysandra only wept harder.

“But you have to understand that there was no rutting way I was going to leave without—”

“Shut up, Aelin,” Lysandra said through her hands. “Just—shut up.” She lowered her hands, her face now puffy and splotchy.

Aelin sighed. “Oh, thank the gods. You can look hideous when you cry.”

Lysandra burst out laughing.

Manon and Asterin stayed in the mountains all day and night after her Second revealed her invisible wound. They caught mountain goats for themselves and their wyverns and roasted them over a fire that night as they carefully considered what they might do.

When Manon eventually dozed off, curled against Abraxos with a blanket of stars overhead, her head felt clearer than it had in months. And yet something nagged at her, even in sleep.

She knew what it was when she awoke. A loose thread in the loom of the Three-Faced Goddess.

“You ready?” Asterin said, mounting her pale-blue wyvern and smiling—a real smile.

Manon had never seen that smile. She wondered how many people had. Wondered if she herself had ever smiled that way.

Manon gazed northward. “There’s something I need to do.” When she explained it to her Second, Asterin didn’t hesitate to declare that she would go with her.

So they stopped by Morath long enough to get supplies. They let Sorrel and Vesta know the bare details, and instructed them to tell the duke she’d been called away.

They were airborne within an hour, flying hard and fast above the clouds to keep hidden.

Mile after mile they flew. Manon couldn’t tell why that thread kept yanking, why it felt so urgent, but she pushed them hard, all the way to Rifthold.

Four days. Elide had been in this freezing, festering dungeon for four days.

It was so cold that she could hardly sleep, and the food they chucked in was barely edible. Fear kept her alert, prompting her to test the door, to watch the guards whenever they opened it, to study the halls behind them. She learned nothing useful.

Four days—and Manon had not come for her. None of the Blackbeaks had.

She didn’t know why she expected it. Manon had forced her to spy on that chamber, after all.

She tried not to think about what might await her now.

Tried, and failed. She wondered if anyone would even remember her name when she was dead. If it would ever be carved anywhere.

She knew the answer. And knew there was no one coming for her.

65

Rowan was more tired than he’d admit to Aelin or Aedion, and in the flurry of planning, he hardly had a moment alone with the queen. It had taken him two days of rest and sleeping like the dead before he was back on his feet and able to go through his training exercises without being winded.

After finishing his evening routine, he was so exhausted by the time he staggered into bed that he was asleep before Aelin had finished washing up. No, he hadn’t given humans nearly enough credit all these years.

It would be such a damn relief to have his magic back—if their plan worked. Considering the fact that they were using hellfire, things could go very, very wrong. Chaol hadn’t been able to meet with Ress or Brullo yet, but tried every day to get messages to them. The real difficulty, it seemed, was that over half the rebels had fled as more Valg soldiers poured in. Three executions a day was the new rule: sunrise, noon, and sunset. Former magic-wielders, rebels, suspected rebel sympathizers—Chaol and Nesryn managed to save some, but not all. The cawing of crows could now be heard on every street.

A male scent in the room snapped Rowan from sleep. He slid his knife out from under his pillow and sat up slowly.

Aelin slumbered beside him, her breathing deep and even, yet again wearing one of his shirts. Some primal part of him snarled in satisfaction at the sight, at knowing she was covered in his scent.

Rowan rolled to his feet, his steps silent as he scanned the room, knife at the ready.

But the scent wasn’t inside. It was drifting in from beyond.

Rowan edged to the window and peered out. No one on the street below; no one on the neighboring rooftops.

Which meant Lorcan had to be on the roof.

His old commander was waiting, arms crossed over his broad chest. He surveyed Rowan with a frown, noting the bandages and his bare torso. “Should I thank you for putting on pants?” Lorcan said, his voice barely more than a midnight wind.

“I didn’t want you to feel inadequate,” Rowan replied, leaning against the roof door.

Lorcan huffed a laugh. “Did your queen claw you up, or are the wounds from one of those beasts she sent after me?”

“I was wondering who would ultimately win—you or the Wyrdhounds.”

A flash of teeth. “I slaughtered them all.”

“Why’d you come here, Lorcan?”

“You think I don’t know that the heir of Mala Fire-Bringer is planning something for the summer solstice in two days? Have you fools considered my offer?”

A carefully worded question, to bait him into revealing what Lorcan had only guessed at. “Aside from drinking the first of the summer wine and being a pain in my ass, I don’t think she’s planning anything at all.”

“So that’s why the captain is trying to set up a meeting with guards at the palace?”

“How am I supposed to keep up with what he does? The boy used to serve the king.”

“Assassins, whores, traitors—what fine company you keep these days, Rowan.”

“Better than being a dog leashed by a psychotic master.”

“Is that what you thought of us? All those years that we worked together, killed men and bedded females together? I never heard you complain.”

“I didn’t realize there was anything to complain about. I was as blind as you.”

“And then a fiery princess flounced into your life, and you decided to change for her, right?” A cruel smile. “Did you tell her about Sollemere?”

“She knows everything.”

“Does she now. I suppose her own history makes her even more understanding of the horrors you committed on our queen’s behalf.”

“Your queen’s behalf. What is it, exactly, about Aelin that gets under your skin, Lorcan? Is it that she’s not afraid of you, or is it that I walked away from you for her?”

Lorcan snorted. “Whatever you’re planning, it won’t work. You’ll all die in the process.”

That was highly likely, but Rowan said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You owe me more than that horseshit.”

“Careful, Lorcan, or you’ll sound like you care about someone other than yourself.” As a discarded bastard child growing up on the back streets of Doranelle, Lorcan had lost that ability centuries before Rowan had even been born. He’d never pitied him for it, though. Not when Lorcan had been blessed in every other regard by Hellas himself.

Lorcan spat on the roof. “I was going to offer to bring your body back to your beloved mountain to be buried alongside Lyria once I finish with the keys. Now I’ll just let you rot here. Alongside your pretty little princess.”

He tried to ignore the blow, the thought of that grave atop his mountain. “Is that a threat?”

“Why would I bother? If you’re truly planning something, I won’t need to kill her—she can do that all on her own. Maybe the king will put her in one of those collars. Just like his son.”

A chord of horror struck so deep in Rowan that his stomach turned. “Mind what you say, Lorcan.”

“I bet Maeve would offer good coin for her. And if she gets her hands on that Wyrdkey … You can imagine just as well as I what sort of power Maeve would wield then.”

Worse—so much worse than he could imagine if Maeve wanted Aelin not dead but enslaved. A weapon without limit in one hand, and the heir of Mala Fire-Bringer in her other. There would be no stopping her.

Lorcan read the hesitation, the doubt. Gold gleamed in his hand. “You know me, Prince. You know I’m the only one qualified to hunt down and destroy those keys. Let your queen take on the army gathering in the south—leave this task to me.” The ring seemed to glow in the moonlight as Lorcan extended it. “Whatever she’s planning, she’ll need this. Or else you can say good-bye.” Lorcan’s eyes were chips of black ice. “We all know how well you handled saying it to Lyria.”

Rowan leashed his rage. “Swear it.”

Lorcan smiled, knowing he’d won.

“Swear that this ring grants immunity to the Valg, and I’ll give it to you,” Rowan said, and he pulled the Amulet of Orynth from his pocket.

Lorcan’s focus snapped to the amulet, to the otherworldly strangeness it radiated, and swore.

A blade flashed, and then the scent of Lorcan’s blood filled the air. He clenched his fist, lifting it. “I swear on my blood and honor that I have not deceived you in any of this. The ring’s power is genuine.”

Rowan watched the blood drip onto the roof. One drop; two; three.

Lorcan might have been a prick, but Rowan had never seen him break an oath before. His word was his bond; it had always been the one currency he valued.

They both moved at once, chucking the amulet and the ring into the space between them. Rowan caught the ring and swiftly pocketed it, but Lorcan just stared at the amulet in his hands, his eyes shadowed.

Rowan avoided the urge to hold his breath and stayed silent.

Lorcan slid the chain around his neck and tucked the amulet into his shirt. “You’re all going to die. Carrying out this plan, or in the war that follows.”

“You destroy those keys,” Rowan said, “and there might not be a war.” A fool’s hope.

“There will be a war. It’s too late to stop it now. Too bad that ring won’t keep any of you from being spiked on the castle walls.”

The image flashed through his head—made all the worse, perhaps, because of the times he’d seen it himself, done it himself. “What happened to you, Lorcan? What happened in your miserable existence to make you this way?” He’d never asked for the full story, had never cared to. It hadn’t bothered him until now. Before, he would have stood beside Lorcan and taunted the poor fool who dared defy their queen. “You’re a better male than this.”

“Am I? I still serve my queen, even if she cannot see it. Who was the one who abandoned her the first time a pretty human thing opened her legs—”

“That is enough.”

But Lorcan was gone.

Rowan waited a few minutes before going back downstairs, turning the ring over and over in his pocket.

Aelin was awake in the bed when he entered, the windows shut and curtained, the hearth dark. “Well?” she said, the word barely audible above the rustling of the blankets as he climbed in beside her.

His night-keen eyes allowed him to see the scarred palm she held out as he dropped the ring into it. She slid it onto her thumb, wriggled her fingers, and frowned when nothing particularly exciting happened. A laugh caught in his throat.

“How mad is Lorcan going to be,” Aelin murmured as they lay down face-to-face, “when he eventually opens up that amulet, finds the Valg commander’s ring inside, and realizes we gave him a fake?”

The demon ripped down the remaining barriers between their souls as though they were paper, until only one remained, a tiny shell of self.

He did not remember waking, or sleeping, or eating. Indeed, there were very few moments when he was even there, looking out through his eyes. Only when the demon prince fed on the prisoners in the dungeons—when he allowed him to feed, to drink alongside him—that was the only time he now surfaced.

Whatever control he’d had that day—

What day?

He could not remember a time when the demon had not been there inside of him.

And yet—

Manon.

A name.

Do not think of that one—do not think of her. The demon hated that name.

Manon.

Enough. We do not speak of them, the descendants of our kings.

Speak of whom?

Good.

“You’re ready for tomorrow?” Aelin said to Chaol as they stood on the roof of her apartment, gazing toward the glass castle. In the setting sun, it was awash in gold and orange and ruby—as if it were already aflame.

Chaol prayed it wouldn’t come to that, but … “As ready as I can be.”

He’d tried not to look too hesitant, too wary, when he’d arrived minutes ago to run through tomorrow’s plan one last time and Aelin had instead asked him to join her up here. Alone.

She was wearing a loose white shirt tucked into tight brown pants, her hair unbound, and hadn’t even bothered to put on shoes. He wondered what her people would think of a barefoot queen.

Aelin braced her forearms on the roof rail, hooking one ankle over the other as she said, “You know that I won’t unnecessarily endanger any lives.”

“I know. I trust you.”

She blinked, and shame washed through him at the shock on her face. “Do you regret,” she said, “sacrificing your freedom to get me to Wendlyn?”

“No,” he said, surprising himself to find it true. “Regardless of what happened between us, I was a fool to serve the king. I like to think I would have left someday.”

He needed to say that to her—had needed to say it from the moment she’d returned.

“With me,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You would have left with me—when I was just Celaena.”

“But you were never just Celaena, and I think you knew that, deep down, even before everything happened. I understand now.”

She studied him with eyes that were far older than nineteen. “You’re still the same person, Chaol, that you were before you broke the oath to your father.”

He wasn’t sure whether or not that was an insult. He supposed he deserved it, after all he’d said and done.

“Maybe I don’t want to be that person anymore,” he said. That person—that stupidly loyal, useless person—had lost everything. His friend, the woman he loved, his position, his honor. Lost everything, with only himself to blame.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “About Nehemia—about everything.” It wasn’t enough. It never would be.

But she gave him a grim smile, eyes darting to the faint scar on his cheek. “I’m sorry I mauled your face, then tried to kill you.” She turned to the glass castle again. “It’s still hard for me, to think about what happened this winter. But in the end I’m grateful you sent me to Wendlyn, and made that bargain with your father.” She closed her eyes and took a shallow breath. When she opened her eyes, the setting sun filled them with liquid gold. Chaol braced himself. “It meant something to me. What you and I had. More than that, your friendship meant something to me. I never told you the truth about who I was because I couldn’t face that truth. I’m sorry if what I said to you on the docks that day—that I’d pick you—made you think I’d come back, and it would all be fixed. Things changed. I changed.”

He’d waited for this conversation for weeks now, months now—and he’d expected himself to yell, or pace, or just shut her out entirely. But there was nothing but calm in his veins, a steady, peaceful calm. “You deserve to be happy,” he said. And meant it. She deserved the joy he so often glimpsed on her face when Rowan was near—deserved the wicked laughter she shared with Aedion, the comfort and teasing with Lysandra. She deserved happiness, perhaps more than anyone.

She flicked her gaze over his shoulder—to where Nesryn’s slim silhouette filled the doorway onto the roof, where she’d been waiting for the past few minutes. “So do you, Chaol.”

“You know she and I haven’t—”

“I know. But you should. Faliq—Nesryn is a good woman. You deserve each other.”

“This is assuming she has any interest in me.”

A knowing gleam in those eyes. “She does.”

Chaol again glanced toward Nesryn, who gazed at the river. He smiled a bit.

But then Aelin said, “I promise I’ll make it quick and painless. For Dorian.”

His breathing locked up. “Thank you. But—if I ask …” He couldn’t say it.

“Then the blow is yours. Just say the word.” She ran her fingers over the Eye of Elena, its blue stone gleaming in the sunset. “We do not look back, Chaol. It helps no one and nothing to look back. We can only go on.”

There she was, that queen looking out at him, a hint of the ruler she was becoming. And it knocked the breath out of him, because it made him feel so strangely young—when she now seemed so old. “What if we go on,” he said, “only to more pain and despair? What if we go on, only to find a horrible end waiting for us?”

Aelin looked northward, as if she could see all the way to Terrasen. “Then it is not the end.”

“Only twenty of them left. I hope to hell they’re ready tomorrow,” Chaol said under his breath as he and Nesryn left a covert gathering of rebels at a run-down inn beside the fishing docks. Even inside the inn, the cheap ale hadn’t been able to cover the reek of fish coming from both the guts still splattered on the wooden planks outside and the hands of the fishmongers who shared the tavern room.

“Better than only two—and they will be,” Nesryn said, her steps light on the dock as they strode down the riverfront. Lanterns on the boats docked alongside the walkway bobbed and swayed with the current; from far across the Avery, the faint sound of music trickled from one of the pretty country estates on its banks. A party on the eve of the summer solstice.

Once, a lifetime ago, he and Dorian had gone to those parties, dropping by several in one night. He’d never enjoyed it, had only gone to keep Dorian safe, but …

He should have enjoyed it. He should have savored every second with his friend.

He’d never realized how precious the calm moments were.

But—but he wouldn’t think about it, what he had to do tomorrow. What he’d say good-bye to.

They walked in silence, until Nesryn turned down a side street and walked up to a small stone temple wedged between two market warehouses. The gray rock was worn, the columns flanking the entrance imbedded with various shells and bits of coral. Golden light spilled from the inside, revealing a round, open space with a simple fountain in its center.

Nesryn climbed the few steps and dropped a coin into the sealed bin beside a pillar. “Come with me.”

And maybe it was because he didn’t want to sit alone in his apartment and brood over what was to come tomorrow; maybe it was because visiting a temple, however useless, couldn’t hurt.

Chaol followed her inside.

At this hour, the Sea God’s temple was empty. A small door at the back of the space was padlocked. Even the priest and priestess had gone to sleep for a few hours before they had to awake ahead of the dawn, when the sailors and fishermen would make their offerings, reflect, or ask for blessings before setting off with the sun.

Two lanterns, crafted from sun-bleached coral, hung from the domed ceiling, setting the mother-of-pearl tiles above them glimmering like the surface of the sea. Nesryn took a seat on one of four benches set along the curved walls—a bench for each direction a sailor might journey in.

She picked south.

“For the Southern Continent?” Chaol asked, sitting beside her on the smooth wood.

Nesryn stared at the little fountain, the bubbling water the only sound. “We went to the Southern Continent a few times. Twice when I was a child, to visit family; once to bury my mother. Her whole life, I’d always catch her gazing south. As if she could see it.”

“I thought only your father came from there.”

“Yes. But she fell in love with it, and said it felt more like home than this place. My father never agreed with her, no matter how many times she begged him to move back.”

“Do you wish he had?”

Her night-dark eyes shifted toward him. “I’ve never felt as though I had a home. Either here, or in the Milas Agia.”

“The … god-city,” he said, recalling the history and geography lessons that had been drilled into him. It was more frequently called by its other name—Antica—and was the largest city on the Southern Continent, home to a mighty empire in its own right, which claimed it had been built by the hands of gods. Also home to the Torre Cesme, the best mortal healers in the world. He’d never known Nesryn’s family had been from the city itself.

“Where do you think home might be?” he asked.

Nesryn braced her forearms on her knees. “I don’t know,” she admitted, twisting her head to look back at him. “Any ideas?”

You deserve to be happy, Aelin had said earlier that night. An apology and a shove out the door, he supposed.

He didn’t want to waste the calm moments.

So he reached for her hand, sliding closer as he interlaced their fingers. Nesryn stared at their hands for a heartbeat, then sat up. “Maybe once all this … once everything is over,” Chaol said hoarsely, “we could figure that out. Together.”

“Promise me,” she breathed, her mouth shaking. Indeed, that was silver lining her eyes, which she closed long enough to master herself. Nesryn Faliq, moved to tears. “Promise me,” she repeated, looking at their hands again, “that you will walk out of that castle tomorrow.”

He’d wondered why she’d brought him in here. The Sea God—and the God of Oaths.

He squeezed her hand. She squeezed back.

Gold light rippled on the surface of the Sea God’s fountain, and Chaol offered up a silent prayer. “I promise.”

Rowan was in bed, casually testing his left shoulder with careful rotations. He’d pushed himself hard today while training, and soreness now throbbed in his muscles. Aelin was in her closet, preparing for bed—quiet, as she’d been all day and evening.

With two urns of hellfire now hidden a block away in an abandoned building, everyone should be tiptoeing around. One small accident, and they would be incinerated so thoroughly that no ash would remain.

But he’d made sure that wasn’t her concern. Tomorrow, he and Aedion would be the ones bearing the urns through the network of sewer tunnels and into the castle itself.

Aelin had tracked the Wyrdhounds to their secret entrance—the one that fed right to the clock tower—and now that she’d tricked Lorcan into killing them all for her, the way would be clear for him and Aedion to plant the vats, set the fuses, and use their Fae swiftness to get the hell out before the tower exploded.

Then Aelin … Aelin and the captain would play their part, the most dangerous of all. Especially since they hadn’t been able to get a message in to the palace beforehand.

And Rowan wouldn’t be there to help her.

He’d gone over the plan with her again and again. Things could go wrong so easily, and yet she hadn’t looked nervous as she downed her dinner. But he knew her well enough to see the storm brewing beneath the surface, to feel its charge even from across the room.

Rowan rotated his shoulder again, and soft footsteps sounded on the carpet. “I’ve been thinking,” Rowan started, and then forgot everything he was going to say as he bolted upright in bed.

Aelin leaned against the closet doorway, clad in a nightgown of gold.

Metallic gold—as he’d requested.

It could have been painted on her for how closely it hugged every curve and dip, for all that it concealed.

A living flame, that’s what she looked like. He didn’t know where to look, where he wanted to touch first.

“If I recall correctly,” she drawled, “someone said to remind him to prove me wrong about my hesitations. I think I had two options: words, or tongue and teeth.”

A low growl rumbled in his chest. “Did I now.”

She took a step, and the full scent of her desire hit him like a brick to the face.

He was going to rip that nightgown to shreds.

He didn’t care how spectacular it looked; he wanted bare skin.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said, taking another step, as fluid as molten metal. “Lysandra lent it to me.”

His heartbeat thundered in his ears. If he moved an inch, he’d be on her, would take her in his arms and begin learning just what made the Heir of Fire really burn.

But he got out of bed, risking all of one step, drinking down the sight of the long, bare legs; the curve of her breasts, peaked despite the balmy summer night; the bob of her throat as she swallowed.

“You said that things had changed—that we’d deal with it.” Her turn to dare another step. Another. “I’m not going to ask you for anything you’re not ready or willing to give.”

He froze as she stopped directly before him, tipping back her head to study his face as her scent twined around him, awakening him.

Gods, that scent. From the moment he’d bitten her neck in Wendlyn, the moment he’d tasted her blood and loathed the beckoning wildfire that crackled in it, he’d been unable to get it out of his system. “Aelin, you deserve better than this—than me.” He’d wanted to say it for a while now.

She didn’t so much as flinch. “Don’t tell me what I do and don’t deserve. Don’t tell me about tomorrow, or the future, or any of it.”

He took her hand; her fingers were cold—shaking slightly. What do you want me to tell you, Fireheart?

She studied their joined hands, and the gold ring encircling her thumb. He squeezed her fingers gently. When she lifted her head, her eyes were blazing bright. “Tell me that we’ll get through tomorrow. Tell me that we’ll survive the war. Tell me—” She swallowed hard. “Tell me that even if I lead us all to ruin, we’ll burn in hell together.”

“We’re not going to hell, Aelin,” he said. “But wherever we go, we’ll go together.”

Her mouth wobbled slightly, and she released his hand only to brace her own on his chest. “Just once,” she said. “I want to kiss you just once.”

Every thought went out of his head. “That sounds like you’re expecting not to do it again.”

The flicker of fear in her eyes told him enough—told him that her behavior at dinner might have been mostly bravado to keep Aedion calm. “I know the odds.”

“You and I have always relished damning the odds.”

She tried and failed to smile. He leaned in, sliding a hand around her waist, the lace and silk smooth against his fingers, her body warm and firm beneath it, and whispered in her ear, “Even when we’re apart tomorrow, I’ll be with you every step of the way. And every step after—wherever that may be.”

She sucked in a shuddering breath, and he pulled back far enough for them to share breath. Her fingers shook as she brushed them against his mouth, and his control nearly shredded apart right there.

“What are you waiting for?” he said, the words near guttural.

“Bastard,” she murmured, and kissed him.

Her mouth was soft and warm, and he bit back a groan. His body went still—his entire world went still—at that whisper of a kiss, the answer to a question he’d asked for centuries. He realized he was staring only when she withdrew slightly. His fingers tightened at her waist.

“Again,” he breathed.

She slid out of his grip. “If we live through tomorrow, you’ll get the rest.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or roar. “Are you trying to bribe me into surviving?”

She smiled at last. And damn if it didn’t kill him, the quiet joy in her face.

They had walked out of darkness and pain and despair together. They were still walking out of it. So that smile … It struck him stupid every time he saw it and realized it was for him.

Rowan remained rooted to the center of the room as Aelin climbed into bed and blew out the candles. He stared at her through the darkness.

She said softly, “You make me want to live, Rowan. Not survive; not exist. Live.”

He didn’t have the words. Not when what she said hit him harder and deeper than any kiss.

So he climbed into bed and held her tightly all through the night.

66

Aelin ventured out at dawn to snag breakfast from the vendors in the main market of the slums. The sun was already warming the quiet streets, and her cloak and hood quickly turned stuffy. At least it was a clear day; at least that bit had gone right. Despite the crows cackling over the corpses in the execution squares.

The sword at her side was a dead weight. Too soon she’d be swinging it.

Too soon she’d face the man who had murdered her family and enslaved her kingdom. Too soon she would put an end to her friend’s life.

Maybe she wouldn’t even walk out of the castle alive.

Or perhaps she would walk out wearing a black collar of her own, if Lorcan had betrayed them.

Everything was prepared; every possible pitfall had been considered; every weapon had been sharpened.

Lysandra had taken Evangeline to have their tattoos formally stamped off yesterday, and then collected her belongings from the brothel. Now they were staying in an upscale inn across the city, paid for with the small savings Lysandra had squirreled away for years. The courtesan had offered her help again and again, but Aelin ordered her to get the hell out of the city and to head for Nesryn’s country home. The courtesan warned her to be careful, kissed both her cheeks, and set off with her ward—both of them beaming, both of them free. Hopefully they were on their way out now.

Aelin bought a bag of pastries and some meat pies, barely listening to the market around her, already abuzz with early revelers out to celebrate the solstice. They were more subdued than most years, but given the executions, she didn’t blame them.

“Miss?”

She stiffened, going for her sword—and realized that the pie vendor was still waiting for his coppers.

He flinched and retreated a few steps behind his wooden cart.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, dumping the coins into his outstretched hand.

The man gave her a wary smile. “Everyone’s a bit jumpy this morning, it seems.”

She half turned. “More executions?”

The vendor jerked his round chin toward a street leading off the market. “You didn’t see the message on your way in?” She gave a sharp shake of the head. He pointed. She’d thought the crowd by the corner was watching some street performer. “Oddest thing. No one can make any sense of it. They say it’s written in what looks like blood, but it’s darker—”

Aelin was already heading toward the street the man had indicated, following the throng of people pressing to see it.

She trailed the crowd, weaving around curious revelers and vendors and common market guards until they all flowed around a corner into a brightly lit dead-end alley.

The crowd had gathered at the pale stone wall at its end, murmuring and milling about.

“What does it mean?” “Who wrote it?” “Sounds like bad news, especially on the solstice.” “There are more, all saying the same thing, right near every major market in the city.”

Aelin pushed through the crowd, an eye on her weapons and purse lest a pickpocket get any bad ideas, and then—

The message had been written in giant black letters, the reek coming off them sure enough that of Valg blood, as if someone with very, very sharp nails had ripped open one of the guards and used him as a paint bucket.

Aelin turned on her heel and ran.

She hurtled through the bustling city streets and the slums, alley after alley, until she reached Chaol’s decrepit house and flung open the door, shouting for him.

The message on the wall had only been one sentence.

Payment for a life debt.

One sentence just for Aelin Galathynius; one sentence that changed everything:

WITCH KILLER—

THE HUMAN IS STILL INSIDE HIM

67

Aelin and Chaol helped Rowan and Aedion carry the two urns of hellfire into the sewers, all of them barely breathing, none of them talking.

Now they stood in the cool, reeking dark, not daring a flame with the two vats sitting next to them on the stone walkway. Aedion and Rowan, with their Fae eyesight, wouldn’t need a torch, anyway.

Rowan shook Chaol’s hand, wishing him luck. When the Fae Prince turned to Aelin, she focused instead on a torn corner of his cloak—as if it had snagged on some long-ago obstacle and been ripped off. She kept staring at that ripped-off bit of cloak as she embraced him—quickly, tightly, breathing in his scent perhaps for the last time. His hands lingered on her as if he’d hold her a moment longer, but she turned to Aedion.

Ashryver eyes met her own, and she touched the face that was the other side of her fair coin.

“For Terrasen,” she said to him.

“For our family.”

“For Marion.”

“For us.”

Slowly, Aedion drew his blade and knelt, his head bowed as he lifted the Sword of Orynth. “Ten years of shadows, but no longer. Light up the darkness, Majesty.”

She did not have room in her heart for tears, would not allow or yield to them.

Aelin took her father’s sword from him, its weight a steady, solid reassurance.

Aedion rose, returning to his place beside Rowan.

She looked at them, at the three males who meant everything—more than everything.

Then she smiled with every last shred of courage, of desperation, of hope for the glimmer of that glorious future. “Let’s go rattle the stars.”

68

Lysandra’s carriage meandered through the packed city streets. Every block took thrice as long as usual, thanks to the streaming crowds headed to the markets and squares to celebrate the solstice. None of them were aware of what was to occur, or who was making her way across the city.

Lysandra’s palms turned sweaty within her silk gloves. Evangeline, drowsy with the morning heat, dozed lightly, her head resting on Lysandra’s shoulder.

They should have left last night, but … But she’d had to say good-bye.

Brightly dressed revelers pushed past the carriage, and the driver shouted to clear out of the street. Everyone ignored him.

Gods, if Aelin wanted an audience, she’d picked the perfect day for it.

Lysandra peered out the window as they halted in an intersection. The street offered a clear view of the glass palace, blinding in the midmorning sun, its upper spires like lances piercing the cloudless sky.

“Are we there yet?” Evangeline mumbled.

Lysandra stroked her arm. “A while yet, pet.”

And she began praying—praying to Mala Fire-Bringer, whose holiday had dawned so bright and clear, and to Temis, who never forgot the caged things of this world.

But she was no longer in a cage. For Evangeline, she could stay in this carriage, and she could leave this city. Even if it meant leaving her friends behind.

Aedion gritted his teeth against the weight he held so delicately between his hands. It was going to be a damn long trek to the castle. Especially when they had to ease across waterways and over crumbling bits of stone that made even their Fae balance unsteady.

But this was the way the Wyrdhounds had come. Even if Aelin and Nesryn hadn’t provided a detailed path, the lingering stench would have led the way.

“Careful,” Rowan said over his shoulder as he hoisted the vat he carried higher and edged around a loose bit of rock. Aedion bit back his retort at the obvious order. But he couldn’t blame the prince. One tumble, and they’d risk the various substances mixing inside.

A few days ago, not trusting Shadow Market quality, Chaol and Aedion had found an abandoned barn outside the city to test an urn barely a tenth the size of the ones they carried.

It had worked too well. As they’d hurried back to Rifthold before curious eyes could see them, the smoke could be seen for miles.

Aedion shuddered to think about what a vat this size—let alone two of them—might do if they weren’t careful.

But by the time they rigged up the triggering mechanisms and ignited the wicks they would trail a long, long distance away … Well, Aedion just prayed he and Rowan were swift enough.

They entered a sewer tunnel so dark that it took even his eyes a moment to adjust. Rowan just continued ahead. They were damn lucky that Lorcan had killed those Wyrdhounds and cleared the way. Damn lucky that Aelin had been ruthless and clever enough to trick Lorcan into doing it for them.

He didn’t stop to consider what might happen if that ruthlessness and cleverness failed her today.

They turned down another pathway, the reek now smothering. Rowan’s sharp sniff was the only sign of his mutual disgust. The gateway.

The iron gates were in shambles, but Aedion could still make out the markings etched in them.

Wyrdmarks. Ancient, too. Perhaps this had once been a path Gavin had used to visit the Sin-Eater’s temple unseen.

The otherworldly stench of the creatures pushed and pulled at Aedion’s senses, and he paused, scanning the darkness of the looming tunnel.

Here the water ended. Past the gates, a broken, rocky path that looked more ancient than any they’d yet seen sloped up into the impenetrable gloom.

“Watch where you step,” Rowan said, scanning the tunnel. “It’s all loose stone and debris.”

“I can see just as well as you,” Aedion said, unable to stop the retort this time. He rotated his shoulder, the cuff of his tunic slipping up to reveal the Wyrdmarks Aelin had instructed them to paint in their own blood all over their torsos, arms, and legs.

“Let’s go,” was Rowan’s only reply as he hauled his vat along as if it weighed nothing.

Aedion debated snapping a response, but … perhaps that was why the warrior-prince kept giving him stupid warnings. To piss him off enough to distract him—and maybe Rowan himself—from what was happening above them. What they carried between them.

The Old Ways—to look out for their queen and their kingdom—but also for each other.

Damn, it was almost enough to make him want to embrace the bastard.

So Aedion followed Rowan through the iron gates.

And into the castle catacombs.

Chaol’s chains clanked, the manacles already rubbing his skin raw as Aelin tugged him down the crowded street, a dagger poised to sink into his side. One block remained until they reached the iron fence that surrounded the sloping hill on which the castle perched.

Crowds streamed past, not noticing the chained man in their midst or the black-cloaked woman who hauled him closer and closer to the glass castle.

“You remember the plan?” Aelin murmured, keeping her head down and her dagger pressed against his side.

“Yes,” he breathed. It was the only word he could manage.

Dorian was still in there—still holding on. It changed everything. And nothing.

The crowds quieted near the fence, as if wary of the black-uniformed guards that surely monitored the entrance. The first obstacle they’d encounter.

Aelin stiffened almost imperceptibly and paused so suddenly that Chaol almost slammed into her. “Chaol—”

The crowd shifted, and he beheld the castle fence.

There were corpses hanging from the towering wrought-iron bars.

Corpses in red and gold uniforms.

“Chaol—”

He was already moving, and she swore and walked with him, pretending to lead him by the chains, keeping the dagger tight to his ribs.

He didn’t know how he hadn’t heard the crows jabbering as they picked at the dead flesh tied along each iron post. With the crowd, he hadn’t thought to notice. Or maybe he’d just gotten used to the cawing in every corner of the city.

His men.

Sixteen of them. His closest companions, his most loyal guards.

The first one had the collar of his uniform unbuttoned, revealing a chest crisscrossed with welts and cuts and brands.

Ress.

How long had they tortured him—tortured all the men? Since Aedion’s rescue?

He racked his mind to think of the last time they’d had contact. He’d assumed the difficulty was because they were lying low. Not because—because they were being—

Chaol noticed the man strung up beside Ress.

Brullo’s eyes were gone, either from torture or the crows. His hands were swollen and twisted—part of his ear was missing.

Chaol had no sounds in his head, no feeling in his body.

It was a message, but not to Aelin Galathynius or Aedion Ashryver.

His fault. His.

He and Aelin didn’t speak as they neared the iron gates, the death of those men lingering over them. Every step was an effort. Every step was too fast.

His fault.

“I’m sorry,” Aelin murmured, nudging him closer to the gates, where black-uniformed guards were indeed monitoring every face that passed on the street. “I’m so sorry—”

“The plan,” he said, his voice shaking. “We change it. Now.”

“Chaol—”

He told her what he needed to do. When he finished, she wiped away her tears as she gripped his hand and said, “I’ll make it count.”

The tears were gone by the time they broke from the crowd, nothing between them and those familiar gates but open cobblestones.

Home—this had once been his home.

He did not recognize the guards standing watch at the gates he had once protected so proudly, the gates he had ridden through not even a year ago with an assassin newly freed from Endovier, her chains tied to his saddle.

Now she led him in chains through those gates, an assassin one last time.

Her walk became a swagger, and she moved with fluid ease toward the guards who drew their swords, their black rings gobbling up the sunlight.

Celaena Sardothien halted a healthy distance away and lifted her chin. “Tell His Majesty that his Champion has returned—and she’s brought him one hell of a prize.”

69

Aelin’s black cloak flowed behind her as she led the fallen Captain of the Guard through the shining halls of the palace. Hidden at her back was her father’s sword, its pommel wrapped in black cloth. None of their ten-guard escort bothered to take her weapons.

Why would they, when Celaena Sardothien was weeks early for her expected return, and still loyal to king and crown?

The halls were so quiet. Even the queen’s court was sealed and silent. Rumor had it the queen had been cloistered in the mountains since Aedion’s rescue and had taken half her court with her. The rest had vanished as well, to escape either the rising summer heat—or the horrors that had come to rule their kingdom.

Chaol said nothing, though he put on a good show of looking furious, like a pursued man desperate to find a way back to freedom. No sign of the devastation that had been on his face upon finding his men hanging from the gates.

He jerked against the chains, and she leaned in close. “I don’t think so, Captain,” she purred. Chaol didn’t deign a response.

The guards glanced at her. Wyrdmarks written in Chaol’s blood covered her beneath her clothes, its human scent hopefully masking any hints of her heritage that the Valg might otherwise pick up. There were only two demons in this group—a small mercy.

So they went, up and up, into the glass castle itself.

The halls seemed too bright to contain such evil. The few servants they passed averted their eyes and scurried along. Had everyone fled since Aedion’s rescue?

It was an effort to not look too long at Chaol as they neared the massive red-and-gold glass doors, already open to reveal the crimson-marbled floor of the king’s council room.

Already open to reveal the king, seated on his glass throne.

And Dorian standing beside him.

Their faces.

They were faces that tugged at him.

Human filth, the demon hissed.

The woman—he recognized that face as she yanked back her dark hood and knelt before the dais on which he stood.

“Majesty,” she said. Her hair was shorter than he remembered.

No—he did not remember. He did not know her.

And the man in chains beside her, bloodied and filthy …

Screaming, wind, and—

Enough, the demon snapped.

But their faces—

He did not know those faces.

He did not care.

The King of Adarlan, the murderer of her family, the destroyer of her kingdom, lounged in his glass throne. “Isn’t this an interesting turn of events, Champion.”

She smiled, hoping the cosmetics she’d dabbed around her eyes would mute the turquoise and gold of her irises, and that the drab shade of blond she’d dyed her hair would disguise its near-identical hue with Aedion’s. “Do you want to hear an interesting story, Your Majesty?”

“Does it involve my enemies in Wendlyn being dead?”

“Oh, that, and much, much more.”

“Why has word not arrived, then?”

The ring on his finger seemed to suck in the light. But she could spy no sign of the Wyrdkeys, couldn’t feel them here, as she’d felt the presence of the one in the amulet.

Chaol was pale, and kept glancing at the floor of the room.

This was where everything had happened. Where they’d murdered Sorscha. Where Dorian had been enslaved. Where, once upon a time, she’d signed her soul away to the king under a fake name, a coward’s name.

“Don’t blame me for the piss-poor messengers,” she said. “I sent word the day before I left.” She pulled out two objects from her cloak and looked over her shoulder at the guards, jerking her chin at Chaol. “Watch him.”

She strode to the throne and extended her hand to the king. He reached forward, the reek of him—

Valg. Human. Iron. Blood.

She dropped two rings into his palm. The clink of metal on metal was the only sound.

“The seal rings of the King and Crown Prince of Wendlyn. I’d have brought their heads, but … Immigration officials can get so pissy.”

The king plucked up one of the rings, his face stony. Lysandra’s jeweler had yet again done a stunning job of re-creating the royal crest of Wendlyn and then wearing down the rings until they looked ancient, like heirlooms. “And where were you during Narrok’s attack on Wendlyn?”

“Was I supposed to be anywhere but hunting my prey?”

The king’s black eyes bored into hers.

“I killed them when I could,” she went on, crossing her arms, careful of the hidden blades in the suit. “Apologies for not making it the grand statement you wanted. Next time, perhaps.”

Dorian hadn’t moved a muscle, his features stone-cold above the collar around his neck.

“And how did you wind up with my Captain of the Guard in chains?”

Chaol was only gazing at Dorian, and she didn’t think his distraught, pleading face was an act.

“He was waiting for me at the docks, like a good dog. When I saw that he was without his uniform, I got him to confess to everything. Every last little conspiratorial thing he’s done.”

The king eyed the captain. “Did he, now.”

Aelin avoided the urge to check the grandfather clock ticking in the far corner of the room, or the position of the sun beyond the floor-to-ceiling window. Time. They needed to bide their time a bit longer. But so far, so good.

“I do wonder,” the king mused, leaning back on his throne, “who has been conspiring more: the captain, or you, Champion. Or should I call you Aelin?”

70

This place smelled like death, like hell, like the dark spaces between the stars.

Centuries of training kept Rowan’s steps light, kept him focused on the lethal weight he carried as he and the general crept through the dry, ancient passageway.

The ascending stone path had been gouged by brutal claws, the space so dark that even Rowan’s eyes were failing him. The general trailed close behind, making no sound save for the occasional pebble skittering from beneath his boots.

Aelin would be in the castle by now, the captain in tow as her ticket into the throne room.

Only a few minutes more, if they’d calculated right, and then they could ignite their deadly burden and get the hell out.

Minutes after, he’d be at her side, rife with magic that he’d use to choke the air clean out of the king’s lungs. And then he’d enjoy watching as she burned him alive. Slowly.

Though he knew his satisfaction would pale in comparison to what the general would feel. What every child of Terrasen would feel.

They passed through a door of solid iron that had been peeled back as if massive, clawed hands had ripped it off its hinges. The walkway beyond was smooth stone.

Aedion sucked in a breath at the same moment the pounding struck Rowan’s brain, right between his eyes.

Wyrdstone.

Aelin had warned him of the tower—that the stone had given her a headache, but this …

She had been in her human body then.

It was unbearable, as if his very blood recoiled at the wrongness of the stone.

Aedion cursed, and Rowan echoed it.

But there was a wide sliver in the stone wall ahead, and open air beyond it.

Not daring to breathe too loudly, Rowan and Aedion eased through the crack.

A large, round chamber greeted them, flanked by eight open iron doors. The bottom of the clock tower, if their calculations were correct.

The darkness of the chamber was nearly impenetrable, but Rowan didn’t dare light the torch he’d brought with them. Aedion sniffed, a wet sound. Wet, because—

Blood dribbled down Rowan’s lip and chin. A nosebleed.

“Hurry,” he whispered, setting down his vat at the opposite end of the chamber.

Just a few more minutes.

Aedion stationed his vat of hellfire across from Rowan’s at the chamber entrance. Rowan knelt, his head pounding, worse and worse with each throb.

He kept moving, shoving the pain down as he set the fuse wire and led it over to where Aedion crouched. The dripping of their nosebleeds on the black stone floor was the only sound.

“Faster,” Rowan ordered, and Aedion snarled softly—no longer willing to be annoyed with warnings as a distraction. He didn’t feel like telling the general he’d stopped doing it minutes ago.

Rowan drew his sword, making for the doorway through which they’d entered. Aedion backed toward him, unspooling the joined fuses as he went. They had to be far enough away before they could light it, or else they’d be turned to ash.

He sent up a silent prayer to Mala that Aelin was biding her time—and that the king was too focused on the assassin and the captain to consider sending anyone below.

Aedion reached him, unrolling inch after inch of fuse, the line a white streak through the dark. Rowan’s other nostril began bleeding.

Gods, the smell of this place. The death and reek and misery of it. He could hardly think. It was like having his head in a vise.

They retreated into the tunnel, that fuse their only hope and salvation.

Something dripped onto his shoulder. An ear bleed.

He wiped it away with his free hand.

But it was not blood on his cloak.

Rowan and Aedion went rigid as a low growling filled the passage.

Something on the ceiling moved, then.

Seven somethings.

Aedion dropped the spool and drew his sword.

A piece of fabric—gray, small, worn—dropped from the maw of the creature clinging to the stone ceiling. His cloak—the missing corner of his cloak.

Lorcan had lied.

He hadn’t killed the remaining Wyrdhounds.

He’d just given them Rowan’s scent.

Aelin Ashryver Galathynius faced the King of Adarlan.

“Celaena, Lillian, Aelin,” she drawled, “I don’t particularly care what you call me.”

None of the guards behind them stirred.

She could feel Chaol’s eyes on her, feel the relentless attention of the Valg prince inside Dorian.

“Did you think,” the king said, grinning like a wolf, “that I could not peer inside my son’s mind and ask what he knows, what he saw the day of your cousin’s rescue?”

She hadn’t known, and she certainly hadn’t planned on revealing herself this way. “I’m surprised it took you this long to notice who you’d let in by the front door. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed.”

“So your people might say of you. What was it like, Princess, to climb into bed with my son? Your mortal enemy?” Dorian didn’t so much as blink. “Did you end it with him because of the guilt—or because you’d gained a foothold in my castle and no longer needed him?”

“Is that fatherly concern I detect?”

A low laugh. “Why doesn’t the captain stop pretending that he’s stuck in those manacles and come a bit closer.”

Chaol stiffened. But Aelin gave him a subtle nod.

The king didn’t bother glancing at his guards as he said, “Get out.”

As one, the guards left, sealing the door behind them. The heavy glass groaned shut, the floor shuddering. Chaol’s shackles clattered to the ground, and he flexed his wrists.

“Such traitorous filth, dwelling in my own home. And to think I once had you in chains—once had you so close to execution, and had no idea what prize I instead sentenced to Endovier. The Queen of Terrasen—slave and my Champion.” The king unfurled his fist to look at the two rings in his palm. He chucked them aside. They bounced on the red marble, pinging faintly. “Too bad you don’t have your flames now, Aelin Galathynius.”

Aelin tugged the cloth from the pommel of her father’s blade and drew the Sword of Orynth.

“Where are the Wyrdkeys?”

“At least you’re direct. But what shall you do to me, heir of Terrasen, if I do not tell you?” He gestured to Dorian, and the prince descended the steps of the dais, stopping at the bottom.

Time—she needed time. The tower wasn’t down yet. “Dorian,” Chaol said softly.

The prince didn’t respond.

The king chuckled. “No running today, Captain?”

Chaol leveled his stare at the king, and drew Damaris—Aelin’s gift to him.

The king tapped a finger on the arm of his throne. “What would the noble people of Terrasen say if they knew Aelin of the Wildfire had such a bloody history? If they knew that she had signed her services over to me? What hope would it give them to know that even their long-lost princess was corrupted?”

“You certainly like to hear yourself speak, don’t you?”

The king’s finger stilled on the throne. “I’ll admit that I don’t know how I didn’t see it. You’re the same spoiled child who strutted about her castle. And here I was, thinking I’d helped you. I saw into your mind that day, Aelin Galathynius. You loved your home and your kingdom, but you had such a wish to be ordinary, such a wish for freedom from your crown, even then. Have you changed your mind? I offered you freedom on a platter ten years ago, and yet you wound up a slave anyway. Funny.”

Time, time, time. Let him talk …

“You had the element of surprise then,” Aelin said. “But now we know what power you wield.”

“Do you? Do you understand the cost of the keys? What you must become to use one?”

She tightened her grip on the Sword of Orynth.

“Would you like to go head-to-head with me, then, Aelin Galathynius? To see if the spells you learned, the books you stole from me, will hold out? Little tricks, Princess, compared to the raw power of the keys.”

“Dorian,” Chaol said again. The prince remained fixated on her, a hungry smile now on those sensuous lips.

“Let me demonstrate,” the king said. Aelin braced herself, her gut clenching.

He pointed at Dorian. “Kneel.”

The prince dropped to his knees. She hid her wince at the impact of bone on marble. The king’s brows knotted. A darkness began to build, cracking from the king like forks of lightning.

“No,” Chaol breathed, stepping forward. Aelin grabbed the captain by the arm before he could do something incredibly stupid.

A tendril of night slammed into Dorian’s back and he arched, groaning.

“I think there is more that you know, Aelin Galathynius,” the king said, that too-familiar blackness growing. “Things that perhaps only the heir of Brannon Galathynius might have learned.”

The third Wyrdkey.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Aelin said. The prince’s neck was taut as he panted, as the darkness whipped him.

Once—twice. Lashings.

She knew that pain. “He’s your son—your heir.”

“You forget, Princess,” the king said, “that I have two sons.”

Dorian screamed as another whip of darkness slashed his back. Black lightning flitted across his exposed teeth.

She lunged—and was thrown back by the very wards she’d drawn on her body. An invisible wall of that black pain lay around Dorian now, and his screams became unending.

Like a beast snapped from its leash, Chaol flung himself against it, roaring Dorian’s name, the blood crumbling from the cuff of his jacket with each attempt.

Again. Again. Again.

Dorian was sobbing, darkness pouring out of his mouth, shackling his hands, branding his back, his neck—

Then it vanished.

The prince sagged to the floor, chest heaving. Chaol halted midstrike, his breathing ragged, face drawn.

“Rise,” the king said.

Dorian got to his feet, his black collar gleaming as his chest heaved. “Delicious,” the thing inside the prince said. Bile burned Aelin’s throat.

“Please,” Chaol said hoarsely to the king, and her heart cracked at the word, at the agony and desperation. “Free him. Name your price. I’ll give you anything.”

“Would you hand over your former lover, Captain? I see no use in losing a weapon if I don’t gain one in return.” The king waved a hand toward her. “You destroyed my general and three of my princes. I can think of a few other Valg who are aching to get their claws into you for that—who would very much enjoy the chance to slip into your body. It’s only fair.”

Aelin dared a glance toward the window. The sun climbed higher.

“You came into my family’s home and murdered them in their sleep,” Aelin said. The grandfather clock began chiming twelve. A heartbeat later, the miserable, off-kilter clanging of the clock tower sounded. “It’s only fair,” she said to the king as she backed a step toward the doors, “that I destroy you in return.”

She tugged the Eye of Elena from under her suit. The blue stone glowed like a small star.

Not just a ward against evil.

But a key in its own right, that could be used to unlock Erawan’s tomb.

The king’s eyes went wide and he rose from his throne. “You’ve just made the mistake of your life, girl.”

He might have a point.

The noontime bells were ringing.

Yet the clock tower still stood.

71

Rowan swung his sword and the Wyrdhound fell back, howling as his blade pierced through stone and into the tender flesh beneath. But not enough to keep it down, to kill it. Another Wyrdhound leaped. Where they lunged, Rowan struck.

Side by side, he and Aedion had been pushed against a wall, conceding foot after foot of the passage—driven farther and farther from the spool of fuse Aedion had been forced to drop.

A clanging, miserable noise rang out.

In the span between clangs, Rowan slashed for two different Wyrdhounds, blows that would have disemboweled most creatures.

The clock tower. Noon.

The Wyrdhounds were herding them back, dodging sure-kill blows, keeping out of their reach.

To keep them from getting to the fuse.

Rowan swore and launched into an assault that engaged three of them at once, Aedion flanking him. The Wyrdhounds held their line.

Noon, he had promised Aelin. As the sun began to reach its apex on the solstice, they’d bring the tower crashing down.

The final clang of the clock tower sounded.

Noon had come and gone.

And his Fireheart, his queen, was in that castle above them—left with only her mortal training and wits to keep her alive. Perhaps not for much longer.

The thought was so abhorrent, so outrageous, that Rowan roared his fury, louder than the shrieks of the beasts.

The bellow cost his brother. One creature shot past Rowan’s guard, leaping, and Aedion barked out a curse and staggered back. Rowan smelled Aedion’s blood before he saw it.

It must have been a dinner bell to the Wyrdhounds, that demi-Fae blood. Four of them leaped for the general as one, their maws revealing flesh-shredding stone teeth.

The three others whirled for Rowan, and there was nothing he could do to get to that fuse.

To save the queen who held his heart in her scarred hands.

A few steps ahead of him, Chaol watched Aelin back toward the glass doors, just as they’d planned after seeing his men dead.

The king’s attention was fixed on the Eye of Elena around her neck. She removed it, holding it in a steady hand. “Been looking for this, have you? Poor Erawan, locked in his little tomb for so long.”

It was an effort to hold his position as Aelin kept retreating.

“Where did you find that?” the king seethed.

Aelin reached Chaol, brushing against him, a comfort and a thank-you and a good-bye as she continued past. “Turns out your ancestor didn’t approve of your hobbies. We Galathynius women stick together, you know.”

For the first time in his life, Chaol saw the king’s face go slack. But then the man said, “And did that ancient fool tell you what will happen if you wield the other key you already possess?”

She was so close to the doors. “Let the prince go, or I’ll destroy this right here, and Erawan can stay locked up.” She slid the chain into her pocket.

“Very well,” the king said. He looked at Dorian, who showed no sign of even remembering his own name, despite what the witch had written on the walls of their city. “Go. Retrieve her.”

Darkness surged from Dorian, leaking like blood in water, and Chaol’s head gave a burst of pain as—

Aelin ran, exploding through the glass doors.

Faster than he should be, Dorian raced after her, ice coating the floor, the room. The cold of it knocked the breath from him. But Dorian didn’t glance once in his direction before he was gone.

The king took a step down the dais, his breath clouding in front of him.

Chaol lifted his sword, holding his position between the open doors and the conqueror of their continent.

The king took another step. “More heroic antics? Don’t you ever get bored of them, Captain?”

Chaol did not yield. “You murdered my men. And Sorscha.”

“And a good many more.”

Another step. The king stared over Chaol’s shoulder to the hallway where Aelin and Dorian had vanished.

“It ends now,” Chaol said.

The Valg princes had been lethal in Wendlyn. But when inhabiting Dorian’s body, with Dorian’s magic …

Aelin hurtled down the hallway, glass windows flanking her, marble beneath—nothing but open sky around her.

And behind, charging after her like a black storm, was Dorian.

Ice spread from him, hoarfrost splintering along the windows.

The moment that ice hit her, Aelin knew she would not run another step.

She’d memorized every hallway and stairwell thanks to Chaol’s maps. She pushed herself harder, praying that Chaol bought her time as she neared a narrow flight of stairs and hurled herself up, taking the steps by twos and threes.

Ice cracked along the glass right behind her, and cold bit at her heels.

Faster—faster.

Around and around, up and up she flew. It was past noon. If something had gone wrong with Rowan and Aedion …

She hit the top of the stairs, and ice made the landing so slick that she skidded, going sideways, going down—

She caught herself with a hand against the floor, her skin ripping open on the ice. She slammed into a glass wall and rebounded, then she was running again as the ice closed in around her.

Higher—she had to get higher.

And Chaol, facing the king—

She didn’t let herself think about that. Spears of ice shot out from the walls, narrowly missing her sides.

Her breath was a flame in her throat.

“I told you,” a cold male voice said from behind, not at all winded. Ice spiderwebbed across the windows on either side. “I told you that you would regret sparing me. That I would destroy everything you love.”

She reached a glass-covered bridge that stretched between two of the highest spires. The floor was utterly transparent, so clear that she could see every inch of the plunge to the ground far, far below.

Hoarfrost coated the windows, groaning—

Glass exploded, and a cry shattered from her throat as it sliced into her back.

Aelin veered to the side, for the now-broken window, its too-small iron frame, and the drop beyond.

She flung herself through it.

72

Bright, open air, the wind roaring in her ears, then—

Aelin landed on the open glass bridge a level below, her knees popping as she absorbed the impact and rolled. Her body shrieked in agony at the slices in her arms and back where bits of glass stuck clean through her suit, but she was already sprinting for the tower door at the other end of the bridge.

She looked in time to see Dorian hurtle right through the space she’d cleared, his eyes fixed on her.

Aelin flung open the door as the boom of Dorian hitting the bridge sounded.

She slammed the door behind her, but even that couldn’t seal out the growing cold.

Just a little farther.

Aelin raced up the spiraling tower stairs, half sobbing through her gritted teeth.

Rowan. Aedion. Chaol.

Chaol—

The door shattered off its hinges at the base of the spire and cold exploded through, stealing her breath.

But Aelin had reached the top of the tower. Beyond it, another glass footbridge, thin and bare, stretched far across to one of the other spires.

It was still shaded as the sun crept across the other side of the building, the uppermost turrets of the glass castle surrounding and smothering her like a cage of darkness.

Aelin had gotten out, and taken Dorian with her.

Chaol had bought her that time, in one final attempt to save his friend and his king.

When she had burst into his house this morning, sobbing and laughing, she’d explained what the Wing Leader had written, the payment the witch had given in exchange for saving her life. Dorian was still in there, still fighting.

She had planned to take them both on at once, the king and the prince, and he had agreed to help her, to try to talk Dorian back into humanity, to try to convince the prince to fight. Until that moment he’d seen his men hanging from the gates.

Now he had no interest in talking.

If Aelin were to stand a chance—any chance—of freeing Dorian from that collar, she needed the king out of the picture. Even if it cost her the vengeance for her family and kingdom.

Chaol was glad to settle that score on her behalf—and on the behalf of many more.

The king looked at Chaol’s sword, then at his face, and laughed.

“You’ll kill me, Captain? Such dramatics.”

They’d gotten away. Aelin had gotten Dorian out, her bluff so flawless even Chaol had believed the Eye in her hands was the real thing, with the way she’d angled it into the sun so the blue stone glowed. He had no idea where she’d put the real one. If she was even wearing it.

All of it—all that they had done, and lost, and fought for. All of it for this moment.

The king kept approaching, and Chaol held his sword before him, not yielding one step.

For Ress. For Brullo. For Sorscha. For Dorian. For Aelin, and Aedion, and their family, for the thousands massacred in those labor camps. And for Nesryn—who he’d lied to, who would wait for a return that wouldn’t come, for time they wouldn’t have together.

He had no regrets but that one.

A wave of black slammed into him, and Chaol staggered back a step, the marks of protection tingling on his skin.

“You lost,” Chaol panted. The blood was flaking away beneath his clothes, itching.

Another wave of black, identical to the one that had struck Dorian—which Dorian hadn’t been able to stand against.

Chaol felt it that time: the throb of unending agony, the whisper of pain to come.

The king approached. Chaol lifted his sword higher.

“Your wards are failing, boy.”

Chaol smiled, tasting blood in his mouth. “Good thing steel lasts longer.”

The sun through the windows warmed Chaol’s back—as if in an embrace, as if in comfort. As if it to tell him it was time.

I’ll make it count, Aelin had promised him.

He had bought her time.

A wave of black reared up behind the king, sucking the light out of the room.

Chaol spread his arms wide as the darkness hit him, shattered him, obliterated him until there was nothing but light—burning blue light, warm and welcoming.

Aelin and Dorian had gotten away. It was enough.

When the pain came, he was not afraid.

73

It was going to kill her.

He wanted it to.

Her face—that face—

He neared the woman, step by step across the narrow, shaded bridge, the turrets high above them gleaming with blinding light.

Blood covered her arms, and she panted as she backed away from him, her hands out before her, a gold ring shining on her finger. He could smell her now—the immortal, mighty blood in her veins.

“Dorian,” she said.

He did not know that name.

And he was going to kill her.

74

Time. She needed to buy more time, or steal it, while the bridge still lay in shadow, while the sun slowly, slowly moved.

“Dorian,” Aelin pleaded again.

“I’m going to rip you apart from the inside out,” the demon said.

Ice spread across the bridge. The glass in her back shifted and ripped into her with each step she retreated toward the tower door.

Still the clock tower had not come down.

But the king had not yet arrived.

“Your father is currently in his council room,” she said, fighting the pain splintering through her. “He is in there with Chaol—with your friend—and your father has likely already killed him.”

“Good.”

“Chaol,” Aelin said, her voice breaking. Her foot slid against a patch of ice, and the world tilted as she steadied her balance. The drop to the ground hundreds of feet below hit her in the gut, but she kept her eyes on the prince even as agony rippled down her body again. “Chaol. You sacrificed yourself. You let them put that collar on you—so he could get out.”

“I’m going to let him put a collar on you, and then we can play.”

She hit the tower door, fumbling for the latch.

But it was iced over.

She clawed at the ice, glancing between the prince and the sun that had begun to peek around the corner of the tower.

Dorian was ten steps away.

She whirled back around. “Sorscha—her name was Sorscha, and she loved you. You loved her. And they took her away from you.”

Five steps.

There was nothing human in that face, no flicker of memory in those sapphire eyes.

Aelin began weeping, even as blood leaked down her nose from his nearness. “I came back for you. Just like I promised.”

A dagger of ice appeared in his hand, its lethal tip glinting like a star in the sunlight. “I don’t care,” Dorian said.

She shoved a hand between them as if she could push him away, grabbing one of his own hands tight. His skin was so cold as he used the other to plunge the knife into her side.

Rowan’s blood sprayed from his mouth as the creature slammed into him, knocking him to the ground.

Four were dead, but three remained between him and the fuse.

Aedion bellowed in pain and fury, holding the line, keeping the other three at bay as Rowan drove his blade home—

The creature flipped back, away out of reach.

The three beasts converged again, wild with the Fae blood now covering the passage. His blood. Aedion’s. The general’s face was already pale from the loss of it. They couldn’t stand this much longer.

But he had to get that tower down.

As though they were of one mind, one body, the three Wyrdhounds lunged, driving him and Aedion apart, one leaping for the general, two snapping for him—

Rowan went down as stone jaws clamped onto his leg.

Bone snapped, and black crushed in—

He roared against the darkness that meant death.

Rowan slammed his fighting knife into the creature’s eye, driving up and deep, just as the second beast lunged for his outstretched arm.

But something massive slammed into the creature, and it yelped as it was thrown against the wall. The dead one was hurled away a heartbeat later, and then—

And then there was Lorcan, swords out and swinging, a battle cry on his lips as he tore into the remaining creatures.

Rowan bellowed against the agony in his lower leg as he got to his feet, balancing his weight. Aedion was already up, his face a bloody mess but his eyes clear.

One of the creatures lunged for Aedion, and Rowan hurled his fighting knife—hurled it hard and true, right into its gaping mouth. The Wyrdhound hit the ground not six inches from the general’s feet.

Lorcan was a whirlwind of steel, his fury unmatched. Rowan drew his other knife, readying to throw it—

Just as Lorcan drove his sword clean down into the creature’s skull.

Silence—utter silence in the bloodied tunnel.

Aedion scrambled, limping and swaying, for the fuse twenty paces away. It was still attached to the spool.

“Now,” Rowan barked. He didn’t care if they didn’t make it out. For all he knew—

A phantom pain lanced through his ribs, brutally violent and nauseating.

His knees buckled. Not pain from a wound of his—but another’s.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

He might have been screaming it, might have been roaring it, as he surged for the passage exit—as he felt that agony, that lick of cold.

Things had gone very, very wrong.

He made it another step before his leg gave out, and it was only that invisible bond, straining and fraying, that kept him conscious. A hard, blood-soaked body slammed into his, an arm wrapping around his waist, hauling him up. “Run, you stupid fool,” Lorcan hissed, hauling him from the fuse.

Aedion was crouched over it, his bloody hands steady as he grasped the flint and struck.

Once. Twice.

Then a spark, and a flame that went roaring off into the darkness.

They ran like hell.

“Faster,” Lorcan said, and Aedion caught up to them, taking Rowan’s other arm and adding his strength and speed.

Down the passage. Past the broken iron gates, into the sewers.

There was not enough time and space between them and the tower.

And Aelin—

The bond stretched tighter, splintering. No.

Aelin—

They heard it before they felt it.

The utter lack of sound, like the world had paused. Followed by a cracking boom.

“Move,” Lorcan said, a barked order that had Rowan blindly obeying just as he had for centuries.

Then the wind—the dry, burning wind that flayed his skin.

Then a flash of blinding light.

Then heat—such heat that Lorcan swore, shoving them into an alcove.

The tunnels shook; the world shook.

The ceilings came crashing down.

When the dust and debris cleared, when Rowan’s body was singing with pain and joy and power, the way into the castle was blocked. And behind them, stretching into the gloom of the sewers, were a hundred Valg commanders and foot soldiers, armed and smiling.

Reeking to Hellas’s realm with Valg blood, Manon and Asterin were soaring down the continent, back to Morath, when—

A soft wind, a shudder in the world, a silence.

Asterin barked a cry, her wyvern banking right as if the reins had been yanked. Abraxos loosed a yelp of his own, but Manon just peered down at the land, where birds were taking flight at the shimmer that seemed to rush past …

At the magic that now rippled through the world, free.

Darkness embrace her.

Magic.

Whatever had happened, however it had been freed, Manon didn’t care.

That mortal, human weight vanished. Strength coursed through her, coating her bones like armor. Invincible, immortal, unstoppable.

Manon tipped her head back to the sky, spread her arms wide, and roared.

The Keep was in chaos. Witches and humans were running around, shouting.

Magic.

Magic was free.

Not possible.

But she could feel it, even with the collar around her neck and that scar on her arm.

The loosing of some great beast inside her.

A beast who purred at the shadowfire.

Aelin crawled away from the door stained with her blood, away from the Valg prince who laughed as she clutched at her side and inched across the bridge, her blood a smear behind her.

The sun was still creeping around that tower.

“Dorian,” she said, her legs pushing against the glass, her blood dribbling out from between her freezing fingers, warming them. “Remember.”

The Valg prince stalked her, smiling faintly as she collapsed onto her front in the center of the bridge. The shadowed spires of the glass castle loomed around her—a tomb. Her tomb.

“Dorian, remember,” she gasped out. He’d missed her heart—barely.

“He said to retrieve you, but perhaps I’ll have my fun first.”

Two knives appeared in his hands, curved and vicious.

The sun began glinting just above the tower overhead.

“Remember Chaol,” she begged. “Remember Sorscha. Remember me.”

A boom shook the castle from somewhere on the other side of the building.

And then a great wind, a soft wind, a lovely wind, as if the heart-song of the world were carried on it.

She closed her eyes for a moment and pressed her hand against her side, drawing in a breath.

“We get to come back,” Aelin said, pushing her hand harder and harder into her wound until the blood stopped, until it was only her tears that flowed. “Dorian, we get to come back from this loss—from this darkness. We get to come back, and I came back for you.”

She was weeping now, weeping as that wind faded away and her wound knitted closed.

The prince’s daggers had gone slack in his hands.

And on his finger, Athril’s golden ring glowed.

“Fight it,” she panted. The sun angled closer. “Fight it. We get to come back.”

Brighter and brighter, the golden ring pulsed at his finger.

The prince staggered back a step, his face twisting. “You human worm.”

He had been too busy stabbing her to notice the ring she’d slipped onto his finger when she’d grabbed his hand as if to shove him away.

“Take it off,” he growled, trying to touch it—and hissing as though it burned. “Take it off!”

Ice grew, spreading toward her, fast as the rays of sunlight that now shot between the towers, refracting across every glass parapet and bridge, filling the castle with Mala Fire-Bringer’s glorious light.

The bridge—this bridge that she and Chaol had selected for this purpose, for this one moment at the apex of the solstice—was smack in the middle of it.

The light hit her, and it filled her heart with the force of an exploding star.

With a roar, the Valg prince sent a wave of ice for her, spears and lances aimed at her chest.

So Aelin flung her hands out toward the prince, toward her friend, and hurled her magic at him with everything she had.

75

There was fire, and light, and darkness, and ice.

But the woman—the woman was there, halfway across the bridge, her hands out before her as she got to her feet.

No blood leaked from where the ice had stabbed her. Only clean, polished skin peeked through the black material of her suit.

Healed—with magic.

All around him there was so much fire and light, tugging at him.

We get to come back, she said. As if she knew what this darkness was, what horrors existed. Fight it.

A light was burning at his finger—a light that cracked inside him.

A light that cracked a sliver into the darkness.

Remember, she said.

Her flames tore at him, and the demon was screaming. But it did not hurt him. Her flames only kept the demon at bay.

Remember.

A sliver of light in the blackness.

A cracked doorway.

Remember.

Over the demon’s screaming, he pushed—pushed, and looked out through its eyes. His eyes.

And saw Celaena Sardothien standing before him.

Aedion spat blood onto the debris. Rowan was barely remaining conscious as he leaned against the cave-in behind them, while Lorcan tried to cut a path through the onslaught of Valg fighters.

More and more poured in from the tunnels, armed and bloodthirsty, alerted by the blast.

Drained and unable to summon the full depths of their magic so soon, even Rowan and Lorcan wouldn’t be able to keep the Valg occupied for long.

Aedion had two knives left. He knew they weren’t getting out of these tunnels alive.

The soldiers came in like an unending wave, their hollow eyes lit with bloodlust.

Even down here, Aedion could hear the people screaming in the streets, either from the explosion or the magic returning to flood their land. That wind … he’d never smelled anything like it, never would again.

They’d taken out the tower. They’d done it.

Now his queen would have her magic. Maybe now she’d stand a chance.

Aedion gutted the Valg commander nearest him, black blood splattering on his hands, and engaged the two that stepped in to replace him. Behind him, Rowan’s breaths were rasping. Too labored.

The prince’s magic, draining with his blood loss, had begun faltering moments ago, no longer able to choke the air out of the soldiers’ lungs. Now it was no more than a cold wind shoving against them, keeping the bulk at bay.

Aedion hadn’t recognized Lorcan’s magic as it had blasted from him in near-invisible dark winds. But where it struck, soldiers went down. And did not rise.

It, too, had now failed him.

Aedion could scarcely lift his sword arm. Just a little longer; just a few more minutes of keeping these soldiers engaged so that his queen could remain distraction-free.

With a grunt of pain, Lorcan was engulfed by half a dozen soldiers and shoved out of sight into the blackness.

Aedion kept swinging and swinging until there were no Valg before him, until he realized that the soldiers had pulled back twenty feet and regrouped.

A solid line of Valg foot soldiers, their numbers stretching away into the gloom, stood watching him, holding their swords. Waiting for the order to strike. Too many. Too many to escape.

“It’s been an honor, Prince,” Aedion said to Rowan.

Rowan’s only reply was a rasping breath.

The Valg commander stalked to the front of the line, his own sword out. Somewhere back in the sewer, soldiers began screaming. Lorcan—that selfish prick—must have cut a path through them after all. And run.

“Charge on my mark,” the commander said, his black ring glinting as he lifted a hand.

Aedion stepped in front of Rowan, useless as it would be. They’d kill Rowan once he was dead, anyway. But at least he’d go down fighting, defending his brother. At least he would have that.

People were still screaming on the street above—shrieking with blind terror, the sounds of their panic growing closer, louder.

“Steady,” the commander said to the swordsmen.

Aedion took a breath—one of his last, he realized. Rowan straightened as best he could, stalwart against the death that now beckoned, and Aedion could have sworn the prince whispered Aelin’s name. More shouting from the soldiers in the back; some in the front turning to see what the panic was about behind them.

Aedion didn’t care. Not with a row of swords before them, gleaming like the teeth of some mighty beast.

The commander’s hand came down.

And was ripped clean off by a ghost leopard.

For Evangeline, for her freedom, for her future.

Where Lysandra lunged, slashing with claws and fangs, soldiers died.

She’d made it halfway across the city before she got out of that carriage. She told Evangeline to take it all the way to the Faliqs’ country house, to be a good girl and stay safe. Lysandra had sprinted two blocks toward the castle, not caring if she had little to offer them in their fight, when the wind slammed into her and a wild song sparkled in her blood.

Then she shed her human skin, that mortal cage, and ran, tracking the scents of her friends.

The soldiers in the sewer were screaming as she tore into them— a death for every day in hell, a death for the childhood taken from her and from Evangeline. She was fury, she was wrath, she was vengeance.

Aedion and Rowan were backed up against the cave-in, their faces bloody and gaping as she leaped upon the back of a sentry and shredded his spine clean out of his skin.

Oh, she liked this body.

More soldiers rushed into the sewers and Lysandra whirled toward them, giving herself wholly to the beast whose form she wore. She became death incarnate.

When there were none left, when blood soaked her pale fur—blood that tasted vile—she paused at last.

“The palace,” Rowan gasped from where he’d slumped against the stones, Aedion pressing a hand to a wound in the Fae warrior’s leg. Rowan pointed to the open sewer behind them, littered with gore. “To the queen.”

An order and a plea.

Lysandra nodded her furry head, that disgusting blood leaking from her maw, black gore in her fangs, and bolted back the way she’d come.

People screamed at the ghost leopard that shot down the street, sleek as an arrow, dodging whinnying horses and carriages.

The glass castle loomed, half shrouded by the smoking ruins of the clock tower, and light—fire—exploded between its turrets. Aelin.

Aelin was still alive, and fighting like hell.

The iron gates of the castle appeared ahead, strung with reeking corpses.

Fire and darkness slammed into each other atop the castle, and people fell silent as they pointed. Lysandra raced for the gates, and the crowd spied her at last, scrambling and bleating to get out of her way. They cleared a path right to the open entrance.

Revealing thirty Valg guards armed with crossbows lined up in front of it, ready to fire.

They all trained their weapons on her.

Thirty guards with bolts—and beyond them, an open path to the castle. To Aelin.

Lysandra leaped. The closest guard fired a clean, spiraling shot right for her chest.

She knew, with that leopard’s senses, that it would hit home.

Yet Lysandra did not slow. She did not stop.

For Evangeline. For her future. For her freedom. For the friends who had come for her.

The bolt neared her heart.

And was knocked from the air by an arrow.

Lysandra landed on the guard’s face and shredded it with her claws.

There was only one sharpshooter with that sort of aim.

Lysandra loosed a roar, and became a storm of death upon the guards nearest her while arrows rained on the rest.

When Lysandra dared look, it was in time to see Nesryn Faliq draw another arrow atop the neighboring rooftop, flanked by her rebels, and fire it clean through the eye of the final guard between Lysandra and the castle.

“Go!” Nesryn shouted over the panicking crowd.

Flame and night warred in the highest spires, and the earth shuddered.

Lysandra was already running up the sloped, curving path between the trees.

Nothing but the grass and the trees and the wind.

Nothing but this sleek, powerful body, her shape-shifter’s heart burning, glowing, singing with each step, each curve she took, fluid and swift and free.

Faster and faster, every movement of that leopard’s body a joy, even as her queen battled for her kingdom and their world high, high above.

76

Aelin panted, fighting against the throbbing in her head.

Too soon; too much power too soon. She hadn’t had time to draw it up the safe way, spiraling slowly to its depths.

Shifting into her Fae form hadn’t helped—it had only made the Valg smell worse.

Dorian was on his knees, clawing at his hand, where the ring kept glowing, branding his flesh.

He sent darkness snapping for her again and again—and each time, she slammed it away with a wall of flame.

But her blood was heating.

“Try, Dorian,” she begged, her tongue like paper in her parched mouth.

“I will kill you, you Fae bitch.”

A low laugh sounded behind her.

Aelin half turned—not daring to put her back to either of them, even if it meant exposing herself to the open fall.

The King of Adarlan stood in the open doorway at the other end of the bridge.

Chaol—

“Such a noble effort from the captain. To try to buy you time so you might save my son.”

She’d tried—tried, but—

“Punish her,” the demon hissed from the other end of the bridge.

“Patience.” But the king stiffened as he took in the gold ring burning on Dorian’s hand. That harsh, brutal face tightened. “What have you done?”

Dorian thrashed, shuddering, and let out a scream that set her Fae ears ringing.

Aelin drew her father’s sword. “You killed Chaol,” she said, the words hollow.

“The boy didn’t even land a single blow.” He smirked at the Sword of Orynth. “I doubt you will, either.”

Dorian went silent.

Aelin snarled, “You killed him.”

The king approached, his footfalls thudding on the glass bridge.

“My one regret,” the king said to her, “is that I did not get to take my time.”

She backed up a step—just one.

The king drew Nothung. “I’ll take my time with you, though.”

Aelin lifted her sword in both hands.

Then—

“What did you say?”

Dorian.

The voice was hoarse, broken.

The king and Aelin both turned toward the prince.

But Dorian’s eyes were on his father, and they were burning like stars. “What did you say. About Chaol.”

The king snapped. “Silence.”

“Did you kill him.” Not a question.

Aelin’s lips began trembling, and she tunneled down, down, down inside herself.

“And if I did?” the king said, brows high.

“Did you kill Chaol?”

The light at Dorian’s hand burned and burned—

But the collar remained around his neck.

“You,” the king snapped—and Aelin realized he meant her just as a spear of darkness shot for her so fast, too fast—

The darkness shattered against a wall of ice.

Dorian.

His name was Dorian.

Dorian Havilliard, and he was the Crown Prince of Adarlan.

And Celaena Sardothien—Aelin Galathynius, his friend … she had come back for him.

She faced him, an ancient sword in her hands.

“Dorian?” she breathed.

The demon inside him was screaming and pleading, ripping at him, trying to bargain.

A wave of black slammed into the shield of ice he’d thrown up between the princess and his father. Soon—soon the king would break through it.

Dorian lifted his hands to the Wyrdstone collar—cold, smooth, thrumming.

Don’t, the demon shrieked. Don’t!

There were tears running down Aelin’s face as Dorian gripped the black stone encircling his throat.

And, bellowing his grief, his rage, his pain, he snapped the collar from his neck.

77

The Wyrdstone collar broke in two—severing along a hairline fracture where the ring’s power had sliced through.

Dorian was panting, and blood was running from his nose, but—

“Aelin,” he gasped out, and the voice was his. It was him.

She ran, sheathing the Sword of Orynth, reaching his side as the wall of ice exploded beneath a hammer of darkness.

The king’s power surged for them, and Aelin flung out a single hand. A shield of fire blasted into existence, and the darkness was shoved back.

“Neither of you are leaving here alive,” the king said, his rough voice slithering through the fire.

Dorian sagged against her, and Aelin slipped a hand around his waist to hold him up.

Pain flickered in her gut, and a throbbing began in her blood. She couldn’t hold out, not so unprepared, even as the sun held at its peak, as if Mala herself willed it to linger just a little longer to amplify the gifts she’d already showered on a Princess of Terrasen.

“Dorian,” Aelin said, pain lancing down her spine as burnout neared.

He turned his head, an eye still on the wall of flickering flames. Such pain, and grief, and rage in those eyes. Yet, somehow, beneath it all—a spark of spirit. Of hope.

Aelin extended her hand—a question and an offer and a promise.

“To a better future,” she said.

“You came back,” he said, as if that were an answer.

They joined hands.

So the world ended.

And the next one began.

They were infinite.

They were the beginning and the ending; they were eternity.

The king standing before them gaped as the shield of flame died out to reveal Aelin and Dorian, hand in hand, glowing like newborn gods as their magic entwined.

“You’re mine,” the man raged. He became darkness; folded himself into the power he carried, as if he were nothing but malice on a dark wind.

He struck them, swallowed them.

But they held tighter to each other, past and present and future; flickering between an ancient hall in a mountain castle perched above Orynth, a bridge suspended between glass towers, and another place, perfect and strange, where they had been crafted from stardust and light.

A wall of night knocked them back. But they could not be contained.

The darkness paused for breath.

They erupted.

Rowan blinked against the sunlight as it poured from beyond Aedion.

Soldiers had infiltrated the sewers again, even after Lysandra had saved their sorry asses. Lorcan had rushed back, bloodied, and told them the way out was barred, and whatever way Lysandra had gotten in was now overrun.

With battlefield efficiency, Rowan had healed his leg as best he could with his remaining power. While he’d patched himself up, bone and skin knitting together hastily enough to make him bark in pain, Aedion and Lorcan clawed a path through the cave-in, just as the sewer had filled with the sounds of the soldiers rushing in. They’d hauled ass back to the castle grounds, where they hit another cave-in. Aedion had started ripping at the top of it, shouting and roaring at the earth as if his will alone could move it.

But now there was a hole. It was all Rowan needed.

Rowan shifted, his leg flashing in agony as he exchanged his limbs for wings and talons. He loosed a cry, shrill and raging. A white-tailed hawk soared out of the small opening, past Aedion.

Rowan did not linger as he took in his surroundings. They were somewhere in the castle gardens, the glass castle looming beyond. The reek of the smoke from the ruin of the clock tower clogged his senses.

Light exploded from the uppermost castle spires, so bright that he was blinded for a moment.

Aelin.

Alive. Alive. He flapped, bending the wind to his will with the dregs of his magic, soaring faster and faster. He sent another wind toward the clock tower, rerouting the smoke toward the river, away from them.

Rowan rounded the corner of the castle.

He had no words for what he saw.

The King of Adarlan bellowed as Aelin and Dorian fractured his power. Together they broke down every spell, every ounce of evil that he’d bent and shackled to his command.

Infinite—Dorian’s power was infinite.

They were full of light, of fire and starlight and sunshine. They overflowed with it as they snapped the final tether on the king’s power and cleaved his darkness away, burning it up until it was nothing.

The king fell to his knees, the glass bridge thudding with the impact.

Aelin released Dorian’s hand. Cold emptiness flooded her so violently that she, too, fell to the glass floor, gulping down air, reeling herself back in, remembering who she was.

Dorian was staring at his father: the man who had broken him, enslaved him.

In a voice she had never heard, the king whispered, “My boy.”

Dorian didn’t react.

The king gazed up at his son, his eyes wide—bright—and said again, “My boy.”

Then the king looked to where she was on her knees, gaping at him. “Have you come to save me at last, Aelin Galathynius?”

78

Aelin Galathynius stared at the butcher of her family, her people, her continent.

“Don’t listen to his lies,” Dorian said, flat and hollow.

Aelin studied the king’s hand, where the dark ring had been shattered away. Only a pale band of skin remained. “Who are you?” she said quietly.

Human—more and more, the king looked … human. Softer.

The king turned to Dorian, exposing his broad palms. “Everything I did—it was all to keep you safe. From him.”

Aelin went still.

“I found the key,” the king went on, the words tumbling out. “I found the key and brought it to Morath. And he … Perrington. We were young, and he took me under the Keep to show me the crypt, even though it was forbidden. But I opened it with the key …” Tears, real and clear, flowed down his ruddy face. “I opened it, and he came; he took Perrington’s body—and …” He gazed at his bare hand. Watched it shake. “He let his minion take me.”

“That’s enough,” Dorian said.

Aelin’s heart stumbled. “Erawan is free,” she breathed. And not only free—Erawan was Perrington. The Dark King himself had manhandled her, lived in this castle with her—and had never known, by luck or Fate or Elena’s own protection, that she was here. She had never known, either—never detected it on him. Gods above, Erawan had forced her to bow that day in Endovier and neither of them had scented or marked what the other was.

The king nodded, setting his tears splattering on his tunic. “The Eye—you could have sealed him back in with the Eye …”

The look on the king’s face when she’d revealed the necklace … He’d been seeing a tool not of destruction, but of salvation.

Aelin said, “How is it possible he’s been inside Perrington all this time and no one noticed?”

“He can hide inside a body like a snail in its shell. But cloaking his presence also stifles his own abilities to scent others—like you. And now you are back—all the players in the unfinished game. The Galathynius line—and the Havilliard, which he has hated so fiercely all this time. Why he targeted my family, and yours.”

“You butchered my kingdom,” she managed to say. That night her parents died, there had been that smell in the room … The scent of the Valg. “You slaughtered millions.”

“I tried to stop it.” The king braced a hand on the bridge, as if to keep from collapsing under the weight of the shame now coating his words. “They could find you based on your magic alone, and wanted the strongest of you for themselves. And when you were born …” His craggy features crumpled as he again addressed Dorian. “You were so strong—so precious. I couldn’t let them take you. I wrested control away for just long enough.”

“To do what,” Dorian said hoarsely.

Aelin glanced at the smoke wafting toward the river far beyond. “To order the towers built,” she said, “and use that spell to banish magic.” And now that they had freed magic … the magic-wielders would be sniffed out by every Valg demon in Erilea.

The king gasped a shuddering breath. “But he didn’t know how I’d done it. He thought the magic vanished as punishment from our gods and knew nothing of why the towers were built. All this time I used my strength to keep the knowledge of it away from him—from them. All my strength—so I could not fight the demon, stop it when … when it did those things. I kept that knowledge safe.”

“He’s a liar,” Dorian said, turning on his heel. There was no mercy in his voice. “I still wound up able to use my magic—it didn’t protect me at all. He’ll say anything.”

The wicked will tell us anything to haunt our thoughts long after, Nehemia had warned her.

“I didn’t know,” the king pleaded. “Using my blood in the spell must have made my line immune. It was a mistake. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. My boy—Dorian—”

“You don’t get to call him that,” Aelin snapped. “You came to my home and murdered my family.”

“I came to find you. I came to have you burn it out of me!” the king sobbed. “Aelin of the Wildfire. I tried to get you to do it. But your mother knocked you unconscious before you could kill me, and the demon … The demon became devoted to wiping out your line after that, so no fire could ever cleanse him from me.”

Aelin’s blood turned to ice. No—no, it couldn’t be true, couldn’t be right.

“All of it was to find you,” the king said to her. “So you could save me—so you could end me at last. Please. Do it.” The king was weeping now, and his body seemed to waste away bit by bit, his cheeks hollowing out, his hands thinning.

As if his life force and the demon prince inside him had indeed been bonded—and one could not exist without the other.

“Chaol is alive,” the king murmured through his emaciated hands, lowering them to reveal red-rimmed eyes, already milky with age. “Broken, but I didn’t make the kill. There was—a light around him. I left him alive.”

A sob ripped from her throat. She had hoped, had tried to give him a shot at survival—

“You are a liar,” Dorian said again, his voice cold. So cold. “And you deserve this.” Light sparked at Dorian’s fingertips.

Aelin mouthed his name, trying to reel herself back in, gather her wits. The demon inside the king had hunted her not because of the threat Terrasen posed—but for the fire in her veins. The fire that could end them both.

She lifted a hand as Dorian stepped toward his father. They had to ask more, learn more—

The Crown Prince tipped his head back to the sky and roared, and it was the battle cry of a god.

Then the glass castle shattered.

79

The bridge exploded from beneath her, and the world turned into shards of flying glass.

Aelin plummeted into open air, towers crashing down around her.

She flung out her magic in a cocoon, burning through the glass as she fell and fell and fell.

People were screaming—screaming as Dorian brought the castle down for Chaol, for Sorscha, and sent a tidal wave of glass rushing toward the city lying below.

Down and down Aelin went, the ground surging up, the buildings around her rupturing, the light so bright on all the fragments—

Aelin pulled out every last drop of her magic as the castle collapsed, the lethal wave of glass cascading toward Rifthold.

Wildfire raced for the gates, raced against the wind, against death.

And as the wave of glass crested the iron gates, shredding through the corpses tied there as if they were paper, a wall of fire erupted before it, shooting sky-high, spreading wide. Halting it.

A wind shoved against her, brutal and unforgiving, her bones groaning as it pushed her up, not down. She didn’t care—not when she yielded the entirety of her magic, the entirety of her being, to holding the barrier of flame now shielding Rifthold. A few more seconds, then she could die.

The wind tore at her, and it sounded like it was roaring her name.

Wave after wave of glass and debris slammed into her wildfire.

But she kept that wall of flame burning—for the Royal Theater. And the flower girls at the market. For the slaves and the courtesans and the Faliq family. For the city that had offered her joy and pain, death and rebirth, for the city that had given her music, Aelin kept that wall of fire burning bright.

There was blood raining down among the glass—blood that sizzled on her little cocoon of flame, reeking of darkness and pain.

The wind kept blowing until it swept that dark blood away.

Still Aelin held the shield around the city, held on to the final promise she’d made to Chaol.

I’ll make it count.

She held on until the ground rose up to meet her—

And she landed softly in the grass.

Then darkness slammed into the back of her head.

The world was so bright.

Aelin Galathynius groaned as she pushed herself onto her elbows, the small hill of grass beneath her untouched and vibrant. Only a moment—she’d been out for only a moment.

She raised her head, her skull throbbing as she shoved her unbound hair from her eyes and looked at what she had done.

What Dorian had done.

The glass castle was gone.

Only the stone castle remained, its gray stones warming under the midday sun.

And where a cascade of glass and debris should have destroyed a city, a massive, opaque wall glittered.

A wall of glass, its upper lip curved as if it indeed had been a cresting wave.

The glass castle was gone. The king was dead. And Dorian—

Aelin scrambled up, her arms buckling under her. There, not three feet away, was Dorian, sprawled on the grass, eyes closed.

But his chest was rising and falling.

Beside him, as if some benevolent god had indeed been looking after them, lay Chaol.

His face was bloody, but he breathed. No other wounds that she could detect.

She began shaking. She wondered if he had noticed when she’d slipped the real Eye of Elena into his pocket as she’d fled the throne room.

The scent of pine and snow hit her, and she realized how they had survived the fall.

Aelin got to her feet, swaying.

The sloping hill down to the city had been demolished, its trees and lampposts and greenery shredded by the glass.

She didn’t want to know about the people who had been on the grounds—or in the castle.

She forced herself to walk.

Toward the wall. Toward the panicked city beyond. Toward the new world that beckoned.

Two scents converged, then a third. A strange, wild scent that belonged to everything and nothing.

But Aelin did not look at Aedion, or Rowan, or Lysandra as she descended the hill to the city.

Every step was an effort, every breath a trial to pull herself back from the brink, to hold on to the here and now, and what had to be done.

Aelin approached the towering glass wall that now separated the castle from the city, that separated death from life.

She punched a battering ram of blue flame through it.

More yelling arose as the flame ate away at the glass, forming an archway.

The people beyond, crying and holding one another or gripping their heads or covering their mouths, went quiet as she strode through the door she’d made.

The gallows still stood just beyond the wall. It was the only raised surface that she could see.

Better than nothing.

Aelin ascended the butchering block, her court falling into rank behind her. Rowan was limping, but she didn’t allow herself to examine him, to even ask if he was all right. Not yet.

Aelin kept her shoulders back, her face grave and unyielding as she stopped at the edge of the platform.

“Your king is dead,” she said. The crowd stirred. “Your prince lives.”

“All hail Dorian Havilliard,” someone shouted down the street. No one else echoed it.

“My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius,” she said. “And I am the Queen of Terrasen.”

The crowd murmured; some onlookers stepped away from the platform.

“Your prince is in mourning. Until he is ready, this city is mine.”

Absolute silence.

“If you loot, if you riot, if you cause one lick of trouble,” she said, looking a few in the eye, “I will find you, and I will burn you to ash.” She lifted a hand, and flames danced at her fingertips. “If you revolt against your new king, if you try to take his castle, then this wall”—she gestured with her burning hand—“will turn to molten glass and flood your streets, your homes, your throats.”

Aelin lifted her chin, her mouth cutting a hard, unforgiving line as she surveyed the crowd filling the streets, people craning to see her, see the Fae ears and elongated canines, see the flames flickering around her fingers.

“I killed your king. His empire is over. Your slaves are now free people. If I catch you holding on to your slaves, if I hear of any household keeping them captive, you are dead. If I hear of you whipping a slave, or trying to sell one, you are dead. So I suggest that you tell your friends, and families, and neighbors. I suggest that you act like reasonable, intelligent people. And I suggest that you stay on your best behavior until your king is ready to greet you, at which time I swear on my crown that I will yield control of this city to him. If anyone has a problem with it, you can take it up with my court.” She motioned behind her. Rowan, Aedion, and Lysandra—bloodied, battered, filthy—grinned like hellions. “Or,” Aelin said, the flames winking out on her hand, “you can take it up with me.”

Not a word. She wondered whether they were breathing.

But Aelin didn’t care as she strode off the platform, back through the gate she’d made, and all the way up the barren hillside to the stone castle.

She was barely inside the oak doors before she collapsed to her knees and wept.

80

Elide had been in the dungeon so long that she’d lost track of time.

But she’d felt that ripple in the world, could have sworn she heard the wind singing her name, heard panicked shouts—and then nothing.

No one explained what it was, and no one came. No one was coming for her.

She wondered how long Vernon would wait before he gave her to one of those things. She tried counting meals to track time, but the food they gave her was the same for breakfast and dinner, and her meal times changed around … As if they wanted her to lose track. As if they wanted her to fold herself into the darkness of the dungeon so that when they came for her, she’d be willing, desperate just to see the sun again.

The door to her cell clicked open, and she staggered to her feet as Vernon slipped inside. He left the door ajar behind him, and she blinked at the torchlight as it stung her eyes. The stone hallway beyond was empty. He probably hadn’t brought guards with him. He knew how futile running would be for her.

“I’m glad to see they’ve been feeding you. A shame about the smell, though.”

She refused to be embarrassed by it. Smell was the least of her concerns.

Elide pressed herself against the slick, freezing stone wall. Maybe if she got lucky, she’d find a way to get the chain around his throat.

“I’ll send someone to clean you up tomorrow.” Vernon began to turn, as if his inspection were done.

“For what?” she managed to ask. Her voice was already hoarse with disuse.

He looked over his thin shoulder. “Now that magic has returned …”

Magic. That was what the ripple had been.

“I want to learn what lies dormant in your bloodline—our bloodline. The duke is even more curious what will come of it.”

“Please,” she said. “I’ll disappear. I’ll never bother you. Perranth is yours—it’s all yours. You’ve won. Just let me go.”

Vernon clicked his tongue. “I do like it when you beg.” He glanced into the hall beyond and snapped his fingers. “Cormac.”

A young man stepped into view.

He was a man of unearthly beauty, with a flawless face beneath his red hair, but his green eyes were cold and distant. Horrific.

There was a black collar around his throat.

Darkness leaked from him in tendrils. And as his eyes met with hers …

Memories tugged at her, horrible memories, of a leg that had slowly broken, of years of terror, of—

“Leash it,” Vernon snapped. “Or she’ll be no fun for you tomorrow.”

The red-haired young man sucked the darkness back into himself, and the memories stopped.

Elide vomited her last meal onto the stones.

Vernon chuckled. “Don’t be so dramatic, Elide. A little incision, a few stitches, and you’ll be perfect.”

The demon prince smiled at her.

“You’ll be given into his care afterward, to make sure that everything takes as it should. But with magic so strong in your bloodline, how could it not? Perhaps you’ll outshine those Yellowlegs. After the first time,” Vernon mused, “maybe His Highness will even perform his own experiments with you. The acquaintance that sold him out mentioned in his letter that Cormac enjoyed … playing with young women, when he lived in Rifthold.”

Oh, gods. Oh, gods. “Why?” she begged. “Why?”

Vernon shrugged. “Because I can.”

He walked out of the cell, taking the demon prince—her betrothed—with him.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Elide bolted for it, yanking on the handle, tugging until the metal bit into her hands and rubbed them raw, begging Vernon, begging anyone, to hear her, remember her.

But there was no one.

Manon was more than ready to fall into bed at last. After all that had happened … She hoped that the young queen was lingering around Rifthold, and had understood the message.

The halls of the Keep were in an uproar, bustling with messengers who avoided looking at her. Whatever it was, she didn’t care. She wanted to bathe, and then sleep. For days.

When she awoke, she’d tell Elide what she’d learned about her queen. The final piece of the life debt she owed.

Manon shouldered into her room. Elide’s pallet of hay was tidy, the room spotless. The girl was probably skulking about somewhere, spying on whoever seemed most useful to her.

Manon was halfway to the bathing room when she noticed the smell.

Or lack of it.

Elide’s scent was worn—stale. As if she hadn’t been here for days.

Manon looked toward the fire. No embers. She reached a hand over it. Not a hint of warmth.

Manon scanned the room.

No signs of a struggle. But …

Manon was out the door the next moment, headed back downstairs.

She made it three steps before her prowl turned into a full-on sprint. She took the stairs two and three at a time and leaped the last ten feet onto the landing, the impact shuddering through her legs, now strong, so wickedly strong, with magic returned.

If there had been a time for Vernon to get back at her for taking Elide from him, it would have been while she was away. And if magic ran in Elide’s family along with the Ironteeth blood in her veins … Its return might have awakened something.

They want kings, Kaltain had said that day.

Hall after hall, stairwell after stairwell, Manon ran, her iron nails sparking as she gripped corners to swing herself around. Servants and guards darted out of her way.

She reached the kitchens moments later, iron teeth out. Everyone went dead silent as she leaped down the stairs, heading right for the head cook. “Where is she?”

The man’s ruddy face went pale. “W-who?”

“The girl—Elide. Where is she?”

The cook’s spoon clattered to the floor. “I don’t know; I haven’t seen her in days, Wing Leader. She sometimes volunteers at the laundry, so maybe—”

Manon was already sprinting out.

The head laundress, a haughty bull, snorted and said she hadn’t seen Elide, and perhaps the cripple had gotten what was coming to her. Manon left her screaming on the floor, four lines gouged across her face.

Manon hurtled up the stairs and across an open stone bridge between two towers, the black rock smooth against her boots.

She had just reached the other side when a woman shouted from the opposite end of the bridge, “Wing Leader!”

Manon slammed to a stop so hard she almost collided with the tower wall. When she whirled, a human woman in a homespun gown was running for her, reeking of whatever soaps and detergents they used in the laundry.

The woman gulped down great breaths of air, her dark skin flushed. She had to brace her hands on her knees to catch her breath, but then she lifted her head and said, “One of the laundresses sees a guard who works in the Keep dungeons. She said that Elide’s locked up down there. No one’s allowed in but her uncle. Don’t know what they’re planning to do, but it can’t be good.”

“What dungeons?” There were three different ones here—along with the catacombs in which they kept the Yellowlegs coven.

“She didn’t know. He’ll only tell her so much. Some of us girls were trying to—to see if there was anything to be done, but—”

“Tell no one that you spoke to me.” Manon turned. Three dungeons, three possibilities.

“Wing Leader,” the young woman said. Manon looked over her shoulder. The woman put a hand on her heart. “Thank you.”

Manon didn’t let herself think about the laundress’s gratitude, or what it meant for those weak, helpless humans to have even considered trying to rescue Elide on their own.

She did not think that woman’s blood would be watery or taste of fear.

Manon launched into a sprint—not to the dungeon, but to the witches’ barracks.

To the Thirteen.

81

Elide’s uncle sent two stone-faced female servants down to scrub her, both bearing buckets of water. She tried to fight when they stripped her, but the women were walls of iron. Any sort of Blackbeak blood in Elide’s veins, she realized, had to be the diluted kind. When she was naked before them, they dumped the water on her and attacked her with their brushes and soaps, not even hesitating as they washed her everywhere, even when she shrieked at them to stop.

A sacrificial offering; a lamb to the slaughter.

Shaking, weak from the effort of fighting them, Elide had hardly any strength to retaliate as they dragged combs through her hair, yanking hard enough that her eyes watered. They left it unbound, and dressed her in a plain green robe. With nothing beneath.

Elide begged them, over and over. They might as well have been deaf.

When they left, she tried to squeeze out the cell door after them. The guards shoved her back in with a laugh.

Elide backed up until she was pressed against the wall of her cell.

Every minute was closer to her last.

A stand. She’d make a stand. She was a Blackbeak, and her mother had secretly been one, and they would both go down swinging. Force them to gut her, to kill her before they could touch her, before they could implant that stone inside her, before she could birth those monsters—

The door clicked open. Four guards appeared.

“The prince is waiting in the catacombs.”

Elide dropped to her knees, shackles clanking. “Please. Please—”

“Now.”

Two of them shoved into the cell, and she couldn’t fight back against the hands that grabbed under her arms and dragged her toward that door. Her bare feet tore on the stones as she kicked and thrashed, despite the chain, trying to claw free.

Closer and closer, they hauled her like a bucking horse toward the open cell door.

The two waiting guards sniggered, eyes on the flap of the robe that fell open as she kicked, revealing her thighs, her stomach, everything to them. Elide sobbed, even as she knew the tears would do her no good. They just laughed, devouring her with their eyes—

Until a hand with glittering iron nails shoved through the throat of one of them, puncturing it wholly. The guards froze, the one at the door whirling at the spray of blood—

He screamed as his eyes were slashed into ribbons by one hand, his throat shredded by another.

Both guards collapsed to the ground, revealing Manon Blackbeak standing behind them.

Blood ran down her hands, her forearms.

And Manon’s golden eyes glowed as if they were living embers as she looked at the two guards gripping Elide. As she beheld the disheveled robe.

They released Elide to grab their weapons, and she sagged to the floor.

Manon just said, “You’re already dead men.”

And then she moved.

Elide didn’t know if it was magic, but she’d never seen anyone in her life move like that, as if she were a phantom wind.

Manon snapped the neck of the first guard with a brutal crunch. As the second lunged for her, Elide scrambling out of the way, Manon only laughed—laughed and twirled away, moving behind him to plunge her hand into his back, into his body.

His shriek blasted through the cell. Flesh tore, revealing a white column of bone—his spine—which she gripped, her nails shredding deep, and broke in two.

Elide trembled—at the man who fell to the ground, bleeding and broken, and at the witch standing over him, bloodied and panting. The witch who had come for her.

“We need to run,” Manon said.

Manon knew rescuing Elide would be a statement—and knew there were others who would want to make it with her.

But chaos had broken out in the Keep as she had raced to summon her Thirteen. News had come.

The King of Adarlan was dead. Destroyed by Aelin Galathynius.

She had shattered his glass castle, used her fire to spare the city from a deadly wave of glass, and declared Dorian Havilliard King of Adarlan.

The Witch Killer had done it.

People were in a panic; even the witches were looking to her for answers. What would they do now that the mortal king was dead? Where would they go? Were they free of their bargain?

Later—Manon would think of those things later. Now she had to act.

So she had found her Thirteen and ordered them to get the wyverns saddled and ready.

Three dungeons.

Hurry, Blackbeak, whispered a strange, soft female voice in her head that was at once old and young and wise. You race against doom.

Manon had hit the nearest dungeon, Asterin, Sorrel, and Vesta at her back, the green-eyed demon twins behind them. Men began dying—fast and bloody.

No use arguing—not when the men took one look at them and drew their weapons.

The dungeon held rebels of all kingdoms, who pleaded for death when they saw them, in such states of unspeakable torment that even Manon’s stomach turned. But no sign of Elide.

They had swept the dungeon, Faline and Fallon lingering to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.

The second dungeon held more of the same. Vesta stayed this time to sweep it again.

Faster, Blackbeak, that wise female voice begged her, as if there were only so much she might interfere. Faster—

Manon ran like hell.

The third dungeon was above the catacombs, and so heavily guarded that black blood became a mist around them as they launched themselves into tier after tier of soldiers.

Not one more. Not one more female would she allow them to take.

Sorrel and Asterin plunged into the soldiers, plowing a path for her. Asterin ripped out the throat of one man with her teeth while she gutted another with her nails. Black blood sprayed from Asterin’s mouth as she pointed to the stairs ahead and roared, “Go!”

So Manon had left her Second and Third behind, leaping down the stairs, around and around. There had to be a secret entrance from these dungeons into the catacombs, some quiet way to transport Elide—

Faster, Blackbeak! that sage voice barked.

And as a little wind pushed at Manon’s feet as if it could hurry her along, she knew that it was a goddess peering over her shoulder, a lady of wise things. Who perhaps had watched over Elide her entire life, muted without magic, but now that it was free …

Manon hit the lowest level of the dungeon, a mere floor above the catacombs. Sure enough, at the end of the hall, a door opened onto a descending staircase.

Between her and that staircase were two guards sniggering at an open cell door as a young woman begged for their mercy.

It was the sound of Elide’s weeping—that girl of quiet steel and quicksilver wit who had not wept for herself or her sorry life, only faced it with grim determination—that made Manon snap entirely.

She killed those guards in the hall.

She saw what they had been laughing at: the girl gripped between two other guards, her robe tugged open to reveal her nakedness, the full extent of that ruined leg—

Her grandmother had sold them to these people.

She was a Blackbeak; she was no one’s slave. No one’s prize horse to breed.

Neither was Elide.

Her wrath was a song in her blood, and Manon had merely said, “You’re already dead men,” before she unleashed herself on them.

When she’d chucked the last guard’s body onto the ground, when she was covered in black and blue blood, Manon looked at the girl on the floor.

Elide tugged her green robe shut, shaking so badly Manon thought she’d puke. She could smell vomit already in the cell. They had kept her here, in this rotting place.

“We need to run,” Manon said.

Elide tried to rise, but couldn’t so much as get to her knees.

Manon stalked to her, helping the girl to her feet, leaving a smear of blood on her forearm. Elide swayed, but Manon was looking at the old chain around her ankles.

With a swipe of her iron nails, she snapped through it.

She’d unlock the shackles later. “Now,” Manon said, tugging Elide into the hall.

There were more soldiers shouting from the way she’d come, and Asterin and Sorrel’s battle cries rang out down the stairs. But behind them, from the catacombs below …

More men—Valg—curious about the clamor leaking in from above.

Bringing Elide into the melee might very well kill her, but if the soldiers from the catacombs attacked from behind … Worse, if they brought one of their princes …

Regret. It had been regret she’d felt that night she’d killed the Crochan. Regret and guilt and shame, for acting on blind obedience, for being a coward when the Crochan had held her head high and spoken truth.

They have made you into monsters. Made, Manon. And we feel sorry for you.

It was regret that she’d felt when she heard Asterin’s tale. For not being worthy of trust.

And for what she had allowed to happen to those Yellowlegs.

She did not want to imagine what she might feel should she bring Elide to her death. Or worse.

Brutality. Discipline. Obedience.

It did not seem like a weakness to fight for those who could not defend themselves. Even if they weren’t true witches. Even if they meant nothing to her.

“We’re going to have to battle our way out,” Manon said to Elide.

But the girl was wide-eyed, gaping at the cell doorway.

Standing there, her dress flowing around her like liquid night, was Kaltain.

82

Elide stared at the dark-haired young woman.

And Kaltain stared back.

Manon let out a warning snarl. “Unless you want to die, get the rutting hell out of the way.”

Kaltain, her hair unbound, her face pale and gaunt, said, “They are coming now. To find out why she has not yet arrived.”

Manon’s bloodied hand was sticky and damp as it clamped around Elide’s arm and tugged her toward the door. The single step, the freedom of movement without that chain … Elide almost sobbed.

Until she heard the fighting ahead. Behind them, from the dark stairwell at the other end of the hall, the rushing feet of more men approached from far below.

Kaltain stepped aside as Manon pushed past.

“Wait,” Kaltain said. “They will turn this Keep upside down looking for you. Even if you get airborne, they will send out riders after you and use your own people against you, Blackbeak.”

Manon dropped Elide’s arm. Elide hardly dared to breathe as the witch said, “How long has it been since you destroyed the demon inside that collar, Kaltain?”

A low, broken laugh. “A while.”

“Does the duke know?”

“My dark liege sees what he wants to see.” She shifted her eyes to Elide. Exhaustion, emptiness, sorrow, and rage danced there together. “Remove your robe and give it to me.”

Elide backed up a step. “What?”

Manon looked between them. “You can’t trick them.”

“They see what they want to see,” Kaltain said again.

The men closing in on either side grew nearer with every uneven heartbeat. “This is insane,” Elide breathed. “It’ll never work.”

“Take off your robe and give it to the lady,” Manon ordered. “Do it now.”

No room for disobedience. So Elide listened, blushing at her own nakedness, trying to cover herself.

Kaltain merely let her black dress slip from her shoulders. It rippled on the ground.

Her body—what they had done to her body, the bruises on her, the thinness …

Kaltain wrapped herself in the robe, her face empty again.

Elide slid on the gown, its fabric horribly cold when it should have been warm.

Kaltain knelt before one of the dead guards—oh, gods, those were corpses lying there—and ran her hand over the hole in the guard’s neck. She smeared and flicked blood over her face, her neck, her arms, the robe. She ran it through her hair, tugging it forward, hiding her face until bits of blood were all that could be seen, folding her shoulders inward, until—

Until Kaltain looked like Elide.

You could be sisters, Vernon had said. Now they could be twins.

“Please—come with us,” Elide whispered.

Kaltain laughed quietly. “Dagger, Blackbeak.”

Manon pulled out a dagger.

Kaltain sliced it deep into the hideous scarred lump in her arm. “In your pocket, girl,” Kaltain said to her. Elide reached into the dress and pulled out a scrap of dark fabric, frayed and ripped at the edges, as if it had been torn from something.

Elide held it toward the lady as Kaltain reached into her arm, no expression of pain on that beautiful, bloodied face, and pulled out a glimmering sliver of dark stone.

Kaltain’s red blood dripped off it. Carefully, the lady set it onto the scrap of fabric Elide held out, and folded Elide’s fingers around it.

A dull, strange thudding pounded through Elide as she grasped the shard.

“What is that?” Manon asked, sniffing subtly.

Kaltain just squeezed Elide’s fingers. “You find Celaena Sardothien. Give her this. No one else. No one else. Tell her that you can open any door, if you have the key. And tell her to remember her promise to me—to punish them all. When she asks why, tell her I said that they would not let me bring the cloak she gave me, but I kept a piece of it. To remember that promise she made. To remember to repay her for a warm cloak in a cold dungeon.”

Kaltain stepped away.

“We can take you with us,” Elide tried again.

A small, hateful smile. “I have no interest in living. Not after what they did. I don’t think my body could survive without their power.” Kaltain huffed a laugh. “I shall enjoy this, I think.”

Manon tugged Elide to her side. “They’ll notice you without the chains—”

“They’ll be dead before they do,” Kaltain said. “I suggest you run.”

Manon didn’t ask questions, and Elide didn’t have time to say thank you before the witch grabbed her and they ran.

She was a wolf.

She was death, devourer of worlds.

The guards found her curled up in the cell, shuddering at the carnage. They didn’t ask questions, didn’t look twice at her face before they hauled her down the hall and into the catacombs.

Such screaming here. Such terror and despair. But the horrors under the other mountains were worse. So much worse. Too bad she would not have the opportunity to also spare them, slaughter them.

She was a void, empty without that sliver of power that built and ate and tore apart worlds inside of her.

His precious gift, his key, he had called her. A living gate, he promised. Soon, he had said he would add the other. And then find the third.

So that the king inside him might rule again.

They led her into a chamber with a table in the center. A white sheet covered it, and men watched as they shoved her onto the table—the altar. They chained her down.

With the blood on her, they did not notice the cut on her arm, or whose face she wore.

One of the men came forward with a knife, clean and sharp and gleaming. “This won’t take but a few minutes.”

Kaltain smiled up at him. Smiled broadly, now that they had brought her into the bowels of this hellhole.

The man paused.

A red-haired young man walked into the room, reeking of the cruelty born in his human heart and amplified by the demon inside him. He froze as he saw her.

He opened his mouth.

Kaltain Rompier unleashed her shadowfire upon them all.

This was not the ghost of shadowfire they had made her kill with—the reason why they had first approached her, lied to her when they invited her to that glass castle—but the real thing. The fire she had harbored since magic had returned—golden flame now turned to black.

The room became cinders.

Kaltain pushed the chains off her as though they were cobwebs and arose.

She disrobed as she walked out of the room. Let them see what had been done to her, the body they’d wasted.

She made it two steps into the hall before they noticed her, and beheld the black flames rippling off her.

Death, devourer of worlds.

The hallway turned to black dust.

She strode toward the chamber where the screaming was loudest, where female cries leaked through the iron door.

The iron did not heat, did not bend to her magic. So she melted an archway through the stones.

Monsters and witches and men and demons whirled.

Kaltain flowed into the room, spreading her arms wide, and became shadowfire, became freedom and triumph, became a promise hissed in a dungeon beneath a glass castle:

Punish them all.

She burned the cradles. She burned the monsters within. She burned the men and their demon princes. And then she burned the witches, who looked at her with gratitude in their eyes and embraced the dark flame.

Kaltain unleashed the last of her shadowfire, tipping her face to the ceiling, toward a sky she’d never see again.

She took out every wall and every column. As she brought it all crashing and crumbling around them, Kaltain smiled, and at last burned herself into ash on a phantom wind.

Manon ran. But Elide was so slow—so painfully slow with that leg.

If Kaltain unleashed her shadowfire before they got out …

Manon grabbed Elide and hauled her over a shoulder, the beaded dress cutting into Manon’s hand as she sprinted up the stairs.

Elide didn’t say a word as Manon reached the dungeon landing and beheld Asterin and Sorrel finishing off the last of the soldiers. “Run!” she barked.

They were coated in that black blood, but they’d live.

Up and up, they hurtled out of the dungeons, even as Elide became a weight borne on pure defiance of the death surely racing toward them from levels below.

There was a shudder—

“Faster!”

Her Second made it to the giant dungeon doors and hurled herself against them, heaving them open. Manon and Sorrel dashed through; Asterin shoved them sealed with a bang. It would only delay the flame a second, if that.

Up and up, toward the aerie.

Another shudder and a boom—

Screaming, and heat—

Down the halls they flew, as if the god of wind were pushing at their heels.

They hit the base of the aerie tower. The rest of the Thirteen were gathered in the stairwell, waiting.

“Into the skies,” Manon ordered as they took the stairs, one after one, Elide so heavy now that she thought she’d drop her. Only a few more feet to the top of the tower, where the wyverns were hopefully saddled and prepared. They were.

Manon hurtled for Abraxos and shoved the shuddering girl into the saddle. She climbed up behind her as the Thirteen scrambled onto their mounts. Wrapping her arms around Elide, Manon dug her heels into Abraxos’s side. “Fly now!” she roared.

Abraxos leaped through the opening, soaring up and out, the Thirteen leaping with them, wings beating hard, beating wildly—

Morath exploded.

Black flame erupted, taking out stone and metal, racing higher and higher. People shouted and then were silenced, as even rock melted.

The air hollowed out and ruptured in Manon’s ears, and she curled her body around Elide’s, twisting them so the heat of the blast singed her own back.

The aerie tower was incinerated, and crumbled away behind them.

The blast sent them tumbling, but Manon gripped the girl tight, clenching the saddle with her thighs as hot, dry wind blasted past them. Abraxos screeched, shifting and soaring into the gust.

When Manon dared to look, a third of Morath was a smoldering ruin.

Where those catacombs had once been—where those Yellowlegs had been tortured and broken, where they had bred monsters—there was nothing left.

83

Aelin slept for three days.

Three days, while Rowan sat by her bed, healing his leg as best he could while the abyss of his power refilled.

Aedion assumed control of the castle, imprisoning any surviving guards. Most, Rowan had been viciously pleased to learn, had been killed in the storm of glass the prince had called down. Chaol had survived, by some miracle—probably the Eye of Elena, which they’d found tucked into his pocket. It was an easy guess who had put it there. Though Rowan honestly wondered if, when the captain woke up, he might wish he hadn’t made it after all. He’d encountered enough soldiers who felt that way.

After Aelin had so spectacularly leashed the people of Rifthold, they found Lorcan waiting by the doors to the stone castle. The queen hadn’t even noticed him as she sank to her knees and cried and cried, until Rowan scooped her into his arms and, limping slightly, carried her through the frenzied halls, servants dodging them as Aedion led the way to her old rooms.

It was the only place to go. Better to establish themselves in their enemy’s former stronghold than retreat to the warehouse apartment.

A servant named Philippa was asked to look after the prince, who had been unconscious the last time Rowan had seen him—when he plummeted to earth and Rowan’s wind stopped his fall.

He didn’t know what had happened in the castle. Through her weeping, Aelin hadn’t said anything.

She had been unconscious by the time Rowan reached her lavish suite of rooms, not even stirring as he kicked open the locked door. His leg had burned in pain, the rough healing he’d done barely holding the wound together, but he didn’t care. He’d barely set Aelin on the bed before Lorcan’s scent hit him again, and he whirled, snarling.

But there was already someone in Lorcan’s face, blocking the warrior’s path into the queen’s bedchamber. Lysandra.

“May I help you?” the courtesan had said sweetly. Her dress was in shreds, and blood both black and red coated most of her, but she held her head high and her back straight. She’d made it as far as the upper levels of the stone castle before the glass one above it had exploded. And showed no plans of leaving anytime soon.

Rowan had thrown a shield of hard air around Aelin’s room as Lorcan stared down at Lysandra, his blood-splattered face impassive. “Out of my way, shifter.”

Lysandra had held up a slender hand—and Lorcan paused. The shape-shifter pressed her other hand against her stomach, her face blanching. But then she smiled and said, “You forgot to say ‘please.’”

Lorcan’s dark brows flattened. “I don’t have time for this.” He made to step around her, shove her aside.

Lysandra vomited black blood all over him.

Rowan didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe as Lysandra, panting, gaped at Lorcan, and at the blood on his neck and chest. Slowly, too slowly, Lorcan looked down at himself.

She pressed a hand over her mouth. “I am—so sorry—”

Lorcan didn’t even step out of the way as Lysandra vomited on him again, black blood and bits of gore now on the warrior and on the marble floor.

Lorcan’s dark eyes flickered.

Rowan decided to do them both a favor and joined them in the antechamber, shutting the queen’s bedroom door behind him as he stepped around the puddle of blood, bile, and gore.

Lysandra gagged again, and wisely darted to what looked to be a bathing room off the foyer.

All of the men and demons she’d wasted, it seemed, did not sit well in her human stomach. The sounds of her purging leaked out from beneath the bathing room door.

“You deserved that,” Rowan said.

Lorcan didn’t so much as blink. “That’s the thanks I get?”

Rowan leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and keeping the weight off his now-healing leg. “You knew we’d try to use those tunnels,” Rowan said, “and yet you lied about the Wyrdhounds being dead. I should rip out your gods-damned throat.”

“Go ahead. Try.”

Rowan remained against the door, calculating every move of his former commander. A fight right here, right now would be too destructive, and too dangerous with his queen unconscious in the room behind him. “I wouldn’t have given a shit about it if it had just been me. But when you let me walk into that trap, you endangered my queen’s life—”

“Looks like she did just fine—”

“—and the life of a brother in my court.”

Lorcan’s mouth tightened—barely.

“That’s why you came to help, isn’t it?” Rowan said. “You saw Aedion when we left the apartment.”

“I did not know Gavriel’s son would be in that tunnel with you. Until it was too late.”

Of course, Lorcan would never have warned them about the trap after learning Aedion would be there. Not in a thousand years would Lorcan ever admit to a mistake.

“I wasn’t aware that you even cared.”

“Gavriel is still my brother,” Lorcan said, his eyes flashing. “I would have faced him with dishonor if I had let his son die.”

Only for honor, for the blood bond between them—not for saving this continent. The same twisted bond was leading him now to destroy the keys before Maeve could acquire them. Rowan had no doubt that Lorcan meant to do it, even if Maeve killed him for it later.

“What are you doing here, Lorcan? Didn’t you get what you wanted?”

A fair question—and a warning. The male was now inside his queen’s suite, closer than most people in her court would ever get. Rowan began a silent countdown in his head. Thirty seconds seemed generous. Then he would throw Lorcan out on his ass.

“It’s not over,” the warrior said. “Not even close.”

Rowan lifted his brows. “Idle threats?” But Lorcan had only shrugged and walked out, covered in Lysandra’s vomit, and did not look back before disappearing down the hall.

That had been three days ago. Rowan hadn’t seen or scented Lorcan since. Lysandra, mercifully, had stopped hurling her guts up—or someone else’s guts, he supposed. The shape-shifter had claimed a room across the hall, between the two chambers in which the Crown Prince and Chaol still slept.

After what Aelin and the Crown Prince had done, the magic they’d wielded together and alone, three days of sleep was hardly surprising.

Yet it drove Rowan out of his mind.

There were so many things he needed to say to her—though perhaps he would just ask how the hell she’d gotten stabbed in the side. She’d healed herself, and he wouldn’t have even known were it not for the rips in the ribs, back, and arms of that black assassin’s suit.

When the healer had inspected the sleeping queen, she’d found that Aelin had healed herself too quickly, too desperately—and had sealed her flesh around some shards of glass in her back. Watching as the healer stripped her naked, then began carefully opening the dozens of little wounds to dig out the glass almost made him tear down the walls.

Aelin slept through it, which he supposed was a mercy, given how deep the healer had to dig to get the glass out.

She’s lucky it didn’t hit anything permanent, the healer had said.

Once every shard was gone, Rowan had used his strained magic to slowly—so slowly, damn him—heal the wounds again. It left the tattoo on her back in ribbons.

He’d have to fill it in when she recovered. And teach her more about battlefield healing.

If she ever woke up.

Sitting in a chair beside her bed, Rowan toed off his boots and rubbed at the faint, lingering soreness in his leg. Aedion had just finished giving a report about the current status of the castle. Three days later, the general still hadn’t spoken about what had happened—that he’d been willing to lay down his life to protect Rowan from the Valg foot soldiers, or that the King of Adarlan was dead. As far as the former, Rowan had thanked him for that in the only way he knew how: offering Aedion one of his own daggers, forged by the greatest of Doranelle’s blacksmiths. Aedion had initially refused, insisting he needed no thanks, but had worn the blade at his side ever since.

But in regard to the latter … Rowan had asked, just once, what the general felt about the king being dead. Aedion had merely said he wished the bastard had suffered longer, but dead was dead, so it was fine by him. Rowan wondered if he truly meant it, but Aedion would tell him when he was good and ready. Not all wounds could be healed with magic. Rowan knew that too well. But they did heal. Eventually.

And the wounds on this castle, on the city—those would heal, too. He’d stood on battlefields after the killing had stopped, the earth still wet with blood, and lived to see the scars slowly heal, decade after decade, on the land, the people. So, too, would Rifthold heal.

Even if Aedion’s latest report on the castle was grim. Most of the staff had survived, along with a few courtiers, but it seemed that a good number of those who had remained at court—courtiers Aedion had known to be worthless, scheming devils—hadn’t made it. As if the prince had wiped clean the stain from his castle.

Rowan shuddered at the thought, gazing at the doors Aedion had vacated. The Crown Prince had such tremendous power. Rowan had never seen its like. He’d need to find a way to train it—hone it—or risk it destroying him.

And Aelin—that brilliant, insane fool—had taken a tremendous risk in weaving her power with his. The prince had raw magic that could be shaped into anything. Aelin could have burnt herself out in a second.

Rowan turned his head and glared at her.

And found Aelin glaring back.

“I save the world,” Aelin said, her voice like gravel, “and yet I wake up to you being pissy.”

“It was a group effort,” Rowan said from a chair nearby. “And I’m pissy for about twenty different reasons, most of them having to do with you making some of the most reckless decisions I’ve ever—”

“Dorian,” she blurted. “Is Dorian—”

“Fine. Asleep. He’s been out as long as you.”

“Chaol—”

“Asleep. Recovering. But alive.”

A weight eased from her shoulders. And then … she looked at the Fae Prince and understood that he was unharmed, that she was in her old room, that they weren’t in chains or collars, and that the king … What the king had said before he died …

“Fireheart,” Rowan murmured, starting from his chair, but she shook her head. The movement made her skull throb.

She took a steadying breath, wiping at her eyes. Gods, her arm ached, her back ached, her side ached … “No more tears,” she said. “No more weeping.” She lowered her hands to the blankets. “Tell me—everything.”

So he did. About the hellfire, and the Wyrdhounds, and Lorcan. And then the past three days, of organizing and healing and Lysandra scaring the living shit out of everyone by shifting into a ghost leopard anytime one of Dorian’s courtiers stepped out of line.

When he’d finished, Rowan said, “If you can’t talk about it, you don’t—”

“I need to talk about it.” To him—if only to him. The words tumbled out, and she did not cry as she explained what the king had said, what he’d claimed. What Dorian had still done. Rowan’s face remained drawn, thoughtful, throughout. At last, she said, “Three days?”

Rowan nodded gravely. “Distracting Aedion with running the castle is the only way I’ve kept him from chewing on the furniture.”

She met those pine-green eyes, and he opened his mouth again, but she made a small noise. “Before we say anything else …” She glanced at the door. “I need you to help me get to the bathing room. Or else I’m going to wet myself.”

Rowan burst out laughing.

She glared at him again as she sat up, the movement agonizing, exhausting. She was naked save for the clean undergarments someone had stuffed her into, but she supposed she was decent enough. He’d seen every part of her, anyway.

Rowan was still chuckling as he helped her up, letting her lean against him as her legs—useless, wobbling like a newborn fawn—tried to work. It took her so long to go three steps that she didn’t object when he swept her up and carried her to the bathing room. She growled when he tried to set her on the toilet itself, and he left with his hands upraised, his eyes dancing as if to say Can you blame me for trying? You might very well fall into it instead.

He laughed once more at the profanities in her eyes, and when she was done, she managed to stand and walk the three steps to the door before he hefted her in his arms again. No limp, she realized—his leg, mercifully, was mostly healed.

Her arms draped around him, she pressed her face into his neck as he carried her toward the bed, and breathed in his scent. When he made to set her down, she held on to him, a silent request.

So Rowan sat on the bed, holding her in his lap as he stretched out his legs and settled into the rows of pillows. For a moment, they said nothing.

Then, “So this was your room. And that was the secret passage.”

A lifetime ago, a whole other person ago. “You don’t sound impressed.”

“After all your stories, it just seems so … ordinary.”

“Most people would hardly call this castle ordinary.”

A huff of laughter warmed her hair. She grazed her nose against the bare skin of his neck.

“I thought you were dying,” he said roughly.

She held him tighter, even if it made her back ache. “I was.”

“Please don’t ever do that again.”

It was her turn to puff out a laugh. “Next time, I’ll just ask Dorian not to stab me.”

But Rowan pulled back, scanning her face. “I felt it—I felt every second of it. I went out of my mind.”

She brushed a finger along his cheek. “I thought something had gone wrong for you, too—I thought you might be dead, or hurt. And it killed me not to be able to go to you.”

“Next time we need to save the world, we do it together.”

She smiled faintly. “Deal.”

He shifted his arm so he could brush her hair back. His fingers lingered along her jaw. “You make me want to live, too, Aelin Galathynius,” he said. “Not exist—but live.” He cupped her cheek, and took a steadying breath—as if he’d thought about every word these past three days, over and over again. “I spent centuries wandering the world, from empires to kingdoms to wastelands, never settling, never stopping—not for one moment. I was always looking toward the horizon, always wondering what waited across the next ocean, over the next mountain. But I think … I think that whole time, all those centuries, I was just looking for you.”

He brushed away a tear that escaped her then, and Aelin gazed at the Fae Prince who held her—at her friend, who had traveled through darkness and despair and ice and fire with her.

She didn’t know which one of them moved first, but then Rowan’s mouth was on hers, and Aelin gripped his shirt, pulling him closer, claiming him as he claimed her.

His arms wrapped tighter around her, but gently—so careful of the wounds that ached. He brushed his tongue against hers, and she opened her mouth to him. Each movement of their lips was a whisper of what was to come once they were both healed, and a promise.

The kiss was slow—thorough. As if they had all the time in the world.

As if they were the only ones in it.

Realizing he’d forgotten to tell Rowan about the letter he’d received from the Bane, Aedion Ashryver walked into Aelin’s suite of rooms in time to see that Aelin was awake—finally awake, and lifting her face to Rowan’s. They were sitting on the bed, Aelin in Rowan’s lap, the Fae warrior’s arms locked around her as he looked at her the way she deserved to be looked at. And when they kissed, deeply, without hesitation—

Rowan didn’t so much as glance Aedion’s way before a wind snapped through the suite, slamming the bedroom door in Aedion’s face.

Point taken.

A strange, ever-changing female scent hit him, and Aedion found Lysandra leaning against the hallway door. Tears gleamed in her eyes even as she smiled.

She gazed at the closed bedroom door, as if she could still see the prince and queen inside. “That,” she said, more to herself than to him. “That is what I am going to find one day.”

“A gorgeous Fae warrior?” Aedion said, shifting a bit.

Lysandra chuckled, wiping away her tears, and gave him a knowing look before walking away.

Apparently, Dorian’s golden ring was gone—and Aelin knew exactly who had been responsible for the momentary blackness when she’d hit the ground as the castle collapsed, who had bestowed the unconsciousness courtesy of a blow to the back of her head.

She didn’t know why Lorcan hadn’t killed her, but she didn’t particularly care—not when he was long gone. She supposed he’d never promised not to steal the ring back.

Though he’d also never made them verify that the Amulet of Orynth wasn’t a fake. Too bad she wouldn’t be there to see his face when he realized it.

The thought was enough to make Aelin smile the next day, despite the door she stood before—despite who waited behind it.

Rowan lingered at the end of the hallway, guarding the only way in or out. He gave her a nod, and even from the distance, she read the words in his eyes. I’ll be right here. One shout, and I’ll be at your side.

She rolled her eyes at him. Overbearing, territorial Fae beast.

She’d lost track of how long they’d kissed for, how long she’d lost herself in him. But then she’d taken his hand and laid it on her breast, and he’d growled in a way that made her toes curl and her back arch … and then wince at the remnant of pain flickering in her body.

He had pulled back at that wince, and when she’d tried to convince him to keep going, he’d told her that he had no interest in bedding an invalid, and since they’d already waited this long, she could cool her heels and wait some more. Until she was able to keep up with him, he’d added with a wicked grin.

Aelin shoved away the thought with another glare in Rowan’s direction, loosed a steadying breath, and pushed down on the handle.

He was standing by the window overlooking the wrecked gardens where servants were struggling to repair the catastrophic damage he’d caused.

“Hello, Dorian,” she said.

84

Dorian Havilliard had awoken alone, in a room he didn’t recognize.

But he was free, even though a pale band of skin now marred his neck.

For a moment, he had lain in bed, listening.

No screaming. No wailing. Just a few birds tentatively chirping outside the window, summer sunshine leaking in, and … silence. Peace.

There was such an emptiness in his head. A hollowness in him.

He’d even put a hand over his heart to see if it was beating.

The rest was a blur—and he lost himself in it, rather than think about that emptiness. He bathed, he dressed, and he spoke to Aedion Ashryver, who looked at him as if he had three heads and who was apparently now in charge of castle security.

Chaol was alive but still recovering, the general said. Not yet awake—and maybe that was a good thing, because Dorian had no idea how he’d face his friend, how he’d explain everything. Even when most of it was mere shards of memory, pieces he knew would further break him if he ever put them together.

A few hours later, Dorian was still in that bedroom, working up the nerve to survey what he’d done. The castle he’d destroyed; the people he’d killed. He’d seen the wall: proof of his enemy’s power … and mercy.

Not his enemy.

Aelin.

“Hello, Dorian,” she said. He turned from the window as the door shut behind her.

She lingered by the door, in a tunic of deep blue and gold, unbuttoned with careless grace at the neck, her hair loose at her shoulders, her brown boots scuffed. But the way she held herself, the way she stood with utter stillness … A queen looked out at him.

He didn’t know what to say. Where to begin.

She prowled for the little sitting area where he stood. “How are you feeling?”

Even the way she talked was slightly different. He’d already heard what she’d said to his people, the threats she’d made and the order she’d demanded.

“Fine,” he managed to say. His magic rumbled deep inside him, but it was barely more than a whisper, as if it was drained. As if it was as empty as him.

“You wouldn’t be hiding in here, would you?” she said, slumping into one of the low chairs on the pretty, ornate rug.

“Your men put me in here so they could keep an eye on me,” he said, remaining by the window. “I wasn’t aware that I was allowed to leave.” Perhaps that was a good thing—considering what the demon prince had made him do.

“You can leave whenever you please. This is your castle—your kingdom.”

“Is it?” he dared ask.

“You’re the King of Adarlan now,” she said softly, but not gently. “Of course it is.”

His father was dead. Not even a body was left to reveal what they’d done that day.

Aelin had publicly declared she’d killed him, but Dorian knew he’d ended his father when he shattered the castle. He had done it for Chaol, and for Sorscha, and he knew she’d claimed the kill because to tell his people … to tell his people that he’d killed his father—

“I still have to be crowned,” he said at last. His father had stated such wild things in those last few moments; things that changed everything and nothing.

She crossed her legs, leaning back in her seat, but there was nothing casual in her face. “You say that like you hope it doesn’t happen.”

Dorian stifled the urge to touch his neck and confirm that the collar was still gone and clenched his hands behind his back. “Do I deserve to be king after all I did? After all that happened?”

“Only you can answer that question.”

“Do you believe what he said?”

Aelin sucked on her teeth. “I don’t know what to believe.”

“Perrington’s going to war with me—with us. My being king won’t stop that army.”

“We’ll figure it out.” She loosed a breath. “But your being king is the first step of it.”

Beyond the window, the day was bright, clear. The world had ended and begun anew, and yet nothing at all had changed, either. The sun would still rise and fall, the seasons would still change, heedless of whether he was free or enslaved, prince or king, heedless of who was alive and who was gone. The world would keep moving on. It didn’t seem right, somehow.

“She died,” he said, his breathing ragged, the room crushing him. “Because of me.”

Aelin got to her feet in a smooth movement and walked to where he stood by the window, only to tug him down onto the sofa beside her. “It is going to take a while. And it might never be right again. But you …” She gripped his hand, as if he hadn’t used those hands to hurt and maim, to stab her. “You will learn to face it, and to endure it. What happened, Dorian, was not your fault.”

“It was. I tried to kill you. And what happened to Chaol—”

“Chaol chose. He chose to buy you time—because your father was to blame. Your father, and the Valg prince inside him, did that to you, and to Sorscha.”

He almost vomited at the name. It would dishonor her to never say it again, to never speak of her again, but he didn’t know if he could let out those two syllables without a part of him dying over and over again.

“You’re not going to believe me,” Aelin went on. “What I’ve just said, you’re not going to believe me. I know it—and that’s fine. I don’t expect you to. When you’re ready, I’ll be here.”

“You’re the Queen of Terrasen. You can’t be.”

“Says who? We are the masters of our own fates—we decide how to go forward.” She squeezed his hand. “You’re my friend, Dorian.”

A flicker of memory, from the haze of darkness and pain and fear. I came back for you.

“You both came back,” he said.

Her throat bobbed. “You pulled me out of Endovier. I figured I could return the favor.”

Dorian looked at the carpet, at all the threads woven together. “What do I do now?” They were gone: the woman he’d loved—and the man he’d hated. He met her stare. No calculation, no coldness, no pity in those turquoise eyes. Just unflinching honesty, as there had been from the very start with her. “What do I do?”

She had to swallow before she said, “You light up the darkness.”

Chaol Westfall opened his eyes.

The Afterworld looked an awful lot like a bedroom in the stone castle.

There was no pain in his body, at least. Not like the pain that had slammed into him, followed by warring blackness and blue light. And then nothing at all.

He might have yielded to the exhaustion that threatened to drag him back into unconsciousness, but someone—a man—let out a rasping breath, and Chaol turned his head.

There were no sounds, no words in him as he found Dorian seated in a chair beside the bed. Bruised shadows were smudged beneath his eyes; his hair was unkempt, as if he’d been running his hands through it, but—but beyond his unbuttoned jacket, there was no collar. Only a pale line marring his golden skin.

And his eyes … Haunted, but clear. Alive.

Chaol’s vision burned and blurred.

She had done it. Aelin had done it.

Chaol’s face crumpled.

“I didn’t realize I looked that bad,” Dorian said, his voice raw.

He knew then—that the demon inside the prince was gone.

Chaol wept.

Dorian surged from the chair and dropped to his knees beside the bed. He grabbed Chaol’s hand, squeezing it as he pressed his brow against his. “You were dead,” the prince said, his voice breaking. “I thought you were dead.”

Chaol at last mastered himself, and Dorian pulled back far enough to scan his face. “I think I was,” he said. “What—what happened?”

So Dorian told him.

Aelin had saved his city.

And saved his life, too, when she’d slipped the Eye of Elena into his pocket.

Dorian’s hand gripped Chaol’s a bit tighter. “How do you feel?”

“Tired,” Chaol admitted, flexing his free hand. His chest ached from where the blast had hit him, but the rest of him felt—

He didn’t feel anything.

He couldn’t feel his legs. His toes.

“The healers that survived,” Dorian said very quietly, “said you shouldn’t even be alive. Your spine—I think my father broke it in a few places. They said Amithy might have been able to …” A flicker of rage. “But she died.”

Panic, slow and icy, crept in. He couldn’t move, couldn’t—

“Rowan healed two of the injuries higher up. You would have been … paralyzed”—Dorian choked on the word—“from the neck down otherwise. But the lower fracture … Rowan said it was too complex, and he didn’t dare trying to heal it, not when he could make it worse.”

“Tell me there’s a ‘but’ coming,” Chaol managed to say.

If he couldn’t walk—if he couldn’t move—

“We won’t risk sending you to Wendlyn, not with Maeve there. But the healers at the Torre Cesme could do it.”

“I’m not going to the Southern Continent.” Not now that he’d gotten Dorian back, not now that they’d all somehow survived. “I’ll wait for a healer here.”

“There are no healers left here. Not magically gifted ones. My father and Perrington wiped them out.” Cold flickered in those sapphire eyes. Chaol knew that what his father had claimed, what Dorian had still done to him despite it, would haunt the prince for a while.

Not the prince—the king.

“The Torre Cesme might be your only hope of walking again,” Dorian said.

“I’m not leaving you. Not again.”

Dorian’s mouth tightened. “You never left me, Chaol.” He shook his head once, sending tears slipping down his face. “You never left me.”

Chaol squeezed his friend’s hand.

Dorian glanced toward the door a moment before a hesitant knock sounded, and smiled faintly. Chaol wondered just what Dorian’s magic allowed him to detect, but then the king wiped away his tears and said, “Someone’s here to see you.”

The handle quietly lowered and the door cracked open, revealing a curtain of inky black hair and a tan, pretty face. Nesryn beheld Dorian and bowed deeply, her hair swaying with her.

Dorian rose to his feet, waving a hand in dismissal. “Aedion might be the new head of castle security, but Miss Faliq is my temporary Captain of the Guard. Turns out, the guards find Aedion’s style of leadership to be … What’s the word, Nesryn?”

Nesryn’s mouth twitched, but her eyes were on Chaol, as if he were a miracle, as if he were an illusion. “Polarizing,” Nesryn murmured, striding right for him, her gold-and-crimson uniform fitting her like a glove.

“There’s never been a woman in the king’s guard before,” Dorian said, heading for the door. “And since you’re now Lord Chaol Westfall, the King’s Hand, I needed someone to fill the position. New traditions for a new reign.”

Chaol broke Nesryn’s wide-eyed stare to gape at his friend. “What?”

But Dorian was at the door, opening it. “If I have to be stuck with king duty, then you’re going to be stuck right there with me. So go to the Torre Cesme and heal fast, Chaol. Because we’ve got work to do.” The king’s gaze flicked to Nesryn. “Fortunately, you already have a knowledgeable guide.” Then he was gone.

Chaol stared up at Nesryn, who was holding a hand over her mouth.

“Turns out I wound up breaking my promise to you after all,” he said. “Since I technically can’t walk out of this castle.”

She burst into tears.

“Remind me to never make a joke again,” he said, even as the crushing, squeezing panic set in. His legs—no. No … They wouldn’t be sending him to the Torre Cesme unless they knew there was a possibility he would walk again. He would accept no other alternative.

Nesryn’s thin shoulders shook as she wept.

“Nesryn,” he croaked. “Nesryn—please.”

She slid onto the floor beside his bed and buried her face in her hands. “When the castle shattered,” she said, her voice cracking, “I thought you were dead. And when I saw the glass coming for me, I thought I’d be dead. But then the fire came, and I prayed … I prayed she’d somehow saved you, too.”

Rowan had been the one who’d done that, but Chaol wasn’t about to correct her.

She lowered her hands, at last looking at his body beneath the blankets. “We will fix this. We will go to the Southern Continent, and I will make them heal you. I’ve seen the wonders they can do, and I know they can do it. And—”

He reached for her hand. “Nesryn.”

“And now you’re a lord,” she went on, shaking her head. “You were a lord before, I mean, but—you are the king’s second in command. I know it’s—I know we—”

“We’ll figure it out,” Chaol said.

She met his stare at last. “I don’t expect anything of you—”

“We’ll figure it out. You might not even want a crippled man.”

She pulled back. “Do not insult me by assuming I’m that shallow or fickle.”

He choked on a laugh. “Let’s have an adventure, Nesryn Faliq.”

85

Elide couldn’t stop crying as the witches flew northward.

She didn’t care that she was flying, or that death loomed on every side.

What Kaltain had done … She didn’t dare open her clenched fist for fear the fabric and the little stone would be ripped away in the wind.

At sunset, they landed somewhere in Oakwald. Elide didn’t care about that, either. She lay down and passed into a deep sleep, still wearing Kaltain’s dress, that bit of cloak clutched in her hand.

Someone covered her with a cloak in the night, and when she awoke, there was a set of clothes—flying leathers, a shirt, pants, boots—beside her. The witches were sleeping, their wyverns a mass of muscle and death around them. None of them stirred as Elide strode to the nearest stream, stripped off that dress, and sat in the water, watching the two pieces of her loose chain swaying in the current until her teeth were chattering.

When she had dressed, the clothes a bit big, but warm, Elide tucked that scrap of cloak and the stone it contained into one of her inner pockets.

Celaena Sardothien.

She’d never heard that name—didn’t know where to start looking. But to repay the debt she owed Kaltain …

“Don’t waste your tears on her,” Manon said from a few feet away, a pack dangling from her clean hands. She must have washed off the blood and dirt the night before. “She knew what she was doing, and it wasn’t for your sake.”

Elide wiped at her face. “She still saved our lives—and put an end to those poor witches in the catacombs.”

“She did it for herself. To free herself. And she was entitled to. After what they did, she was entitled to rip the entire damn world to shreds.”

Instead, she’d taken out a third of Morath.

Manon was right. Kaltain hadn’t cared if they’d cleared the blast. “What do we do now?”

“We’re going back to Morath,” Manon said plainly. “But you’re not.”

Elide started.

“This is as far as we can take you without raising suspicions,” Manon said. “When we return, if your uncle survived, I’ll tell him you must have been incinerated in the blast.”

And with that blast, all evidence of what Manon and her Thirteen had done to get Elide out of the dungeons would also have been erased.

But to leave her here … The world opened wide and brutal around her. “Where do I go?” Elide breathed. Endless woods and hills surrounded them. “I—I can’t read, and I have no map.”

“Go where you will, but if I were you, I’d head north, and stick to the forest. Stay out of the mountains. Keep going until you hit Terrasen.”

That had never been part of the plan. “But—but the king—Vernon—”

“The King of Adarlan is dead,” Manon said. The world stopped. “Aelin Galathynius killed him and shattered his glass castle.”

Elide covered her mouth with a hand, shaking her head. Aelin … Aelin …

“She was aided,” Manon went on, “by Prince Aedion Ashryver.”

Elide began sobbing.

“And rumor has it Lord Ren Allsbrook is working in the North as a rebel.”

Elide buried her face in her hands. Then there was a hard, iron-tipped hand on her shoulder.

A tentative touch.

“Hope,” Manon said quietly.

Elide lowered her hands and found the witch smiling at her. Barely a tilt to her lips, but—a smile, soft and lovely. Elide wondered if Manon even knew she was doing it.

But to go to Terrasen … “Things will get worse, won’t they,” Elide said.

Manon’s nod was barely perceptible.

South—she could still go south, run far, far away. Now that Vernon thought she was dead, no one would ever come looking for her. But Aelin was alive. And strong. And maybe it was time to stop dreaming of running. Find Celaena Sardothien—she would do that, to honor Kaltain and the gift she’d been given, to honor the girls like them, locked in towers with no one to speak for them, no one who remembered them.

But Manon had remembered her.

No—she would not run.

“Go north, Elide,” Manon said, reading the decision in Elide’s eyes and extending the pack. “They are in Rifthold, but I bet they won’t be there for long. Get to Terrasen and lie low. Keep off the roads, avoid inns. There’s money in that pack, but use it sparingly. Lie and steal and cheat if you have to, but get to Terrasen. Your queen will be there. I’d suggest not mentioning your mother’s heritage to her.”

Elide considered, shouldering the pack. “Having Blackbeak blood does not seem like such a horrible thing,” she said quietly.

Those gold eyes narrowed. “No,” Manon said. “No, it does not.”

“How can I thank you?”

“It was a debt already owed,” Manon said, shaking her head when Elide opened her mouth to ask more. The witch handed her three daggers, showing her where to tuck one into her boot, storing one in her pack, and then sheathing the other at her hip. Finally, she bade Elide to take off her boots, revealing the shackles she’d squeezed inside. Manon removed a small skeleton key and unlocked the chains, still clamped to her ankles.

Cool, soft air caressed her bare skin, and Elide bit her lip to keep from weeping again as she tugged her boots back on.

Through the trees, the wyverns were yawning and grumbling, and the sounds of the Thirteen laughing flitted past. Manon looked toward them, that faint smile returning to her mouth. When Manon turned back, the heir of the Blackbeak Witch-Clan said, “When war comes—which it will if Perrington survived—you should hope you do not see me again, Elide Lochan.”

“All the same,” Elide said, “I hope I do.” She bowed to the Wing Leader.

And to her surprise, Manon bowed back.

“North,” Manon said, and Elide supposed it was as much of a good-bye as she’d get.

“North,” Elide repeated, and set off into the trees.

Within minutes, she’d passed beyond the sounds of the witches and their wyverns and was swallowed up by Oakwald.

She gripped the straps of her pack as she walked.

Suddenly, the animals went silent, and the leaves rustled and whispered. A moment later, thirteen great shadows passed overhead. One of them—the smallest—lingered, sweeping back a second time, as if in farewell.

Elide didn’t know if Abraxos could see through the canopy, but she raised a hand in farewell anyway. A joyous, fierce cry echoed in response, and then the shadow was gone.

North.

To Terrasen. To fight, not run.

To Aelin and Ren and Aedion—grown and strong and alive.

She did not know how long it would take or how far she would have to walk, but she would make it. She would not look back.

Walking under the trees, the forest buzzing around her, Elide pressed a hand against the pocket inside her leather jacket, feeling the hard little lump tucked there. She whispered a short prayer to Anneith for wisdom, for guidance—and could have sworn a warm hand brushed her brow as if in answer. It straightened her spine, lifted her chin.

Limping, Elide began the long journey home.

86

“This is the last of your clothes,” Lysandra said, toeing the trunk that one of the servants had just dropped off. “I thought I had a shopping problem. Don’t you ever throw anything away?”

From her perch on the velvet ottoman in the center of the enormous closet, Aelin stuck out her tongue. “Thank you for getting it all,” she said. There was no point in unpacking the clothes Lysandra had brought from her old apartment, just as there was no point in returning there. It didn’t help that Aelin couldn’t bring herself to leave Dorian alone. Even if she’d finally managed to get him out of that room and walking around the castle.

He looked like the living dead, especially with that white line around his golden throat. She supposed he had every right to.

She’d been waiting for him outside of Chaol’s room. When she heard Chaol speak at last, she had summoned Nesryn as soon as she’d mastered the tears of relief that had threatened to overwhelm her. After Dorian had emerged, when he’d looked at her and his smile had crumpled, she’d taken the king right back into his bedroom and sat with him for a good long while.

The guilt—that would be as heavy a burden for Dorian as his grief.

Lysandra put her hands on her hips. “Any other tasks for me before I retrieve Evangeline tomorrow?”

Aelin owed Lysandra more than she could begin to express, but—

She pulled a small box from her pocket.

“There’s one more task,” Aelin said, holding the box out to Lysandra. “You’ll probably hate me for it later. But you can start by saying yes.”

“Proposing to me? How unexpected.” Lysandra took the box but didn’t open it.

Aelin waved a hand, her heart pounding. “Just—open it.”

With a wary frown, Lysandra opened the lid and cocked her head at the ring inside—the movement purely feline. “Are you proposing to me, Aelin Galathynius?”

Aelin held her friend’s gaze. “There’s a territory in the North, a small bit of fertile land that used to belong to the Allsbrook family. Aedion took it upon himself to inform me that the Allsbrooks have no use for it, so it’s been sitting open for a while.” Aelin shrugged. “It could use a lady.”

The blood drained from Lysandra’s face. “What.”

“It’s plagued by ghost leopards—hence the engraving on the ring. But I suppose if there were anyone capable of handling them, it’d be you.”

Lysandra’s hands shook. “And—and the key symbol above the leopard?”

“To remind you of who now holds your freedom. You.”

Lysandra covered her mouth, staring at the ring, then at Aelin. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Most people would probably think so. But as the land was officially released by the Allsbrooks years ago, I can technically appoint you lady of it. With Evangeline as your heir, should you wish it.”

Her friend had not voiced any plans for herself or her ward beyond retrieving Evangeline, had not asked to come with them, to start over in a new land, a new kingdom. Aelin had hoped it meant she wanted to join them in Terrasen, but—

Lysandra sank to the carpeted floor, staring at the box, at the ring.

“I know it’ll be a great deal of work—”

“I don’t deserve this. No one will ever want to serve me. Your people will resent you for appointing me.”

Aelin slid onto the ground, knee to knee with her friend, and took the box from the shape-shifter’s trembling hands. She pulled out the gold ring that she’d commissioned weeks ago. It had only been ready this morning, when Aelin and Rowan had slipped out to retrieve it, along with the real Wyrdkey.

“There is no one who deserves it more,” Aelin said, grabbing her friend’s hand and putting the ring on her finger. “There is no one else I’d want guarding my back. If my people cannot see the worth of a woman who sold herself into slavery for the sake of a child, who defended my court with no thought for her own life, then they are not my people. And they can burn in hell.”

Lysandra traced a finger over the coat of arms that Aelin had designed. “What’s the territory called?”

“I have no idea,” Aelin said. “‘Lysandria’ sounds good. So does ‘Lysandrius,’ or maybe ‘Lysandraland.’”

Lysandra gaped at her. “You are out of your mind.”

“Will you accept?”

“I don’t know the first thing about ruling a territory—about being a lady.”

“Well, I don’t know the first thing about ruling a kingdom. We’ll learn together.” She flashed her a conspirator’s grin. “So?”

Lysandra gazed at the ring, then lifted her eyes to Aelin’s face— and threw her arms around her neck, squeezing tight. She took that as a yes.

Aelin grimaced at the dull throb of pain, but held on. “Welcome to the court, Lady.”

Aelin honestly wanted nothing more than to climb into bed that evening, hopefully with Rowan beside her. But as they finished up dinner—their first meal together as a court—a knock sounded on the door. Aedion was answering it before Aelin could so much as set down her fork.

He returned with Dorian in tow, the king glancing between them all. “I wanted to see if you’d eaten—”

Aelin pointed with her fork to the empty seat beside Lysandra. “Join us.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“Sit your ass down,” she told the new King of Adarlan. That morning he’d signed a decree freeing all the conquered kingdoms from Adarlan’s rule. She’d watched him do it, Aedion holding her hand tightly throughout, and wished that Nehemia had been there to see it.

Dorian moved to the table, amusement sparking in those haunted sapphire eyes. She introduced him again to Rowan, who bowed his head deeper than Aelin expected. Then she introduced Lysandra, explaining who she was and what she had become to Aelin, to her court.

Aedion watched them, his face tight, his lips a thin line. Their eyes met.

Ten years later, and they were all sitting together at a table again—no longer children, but rulers of their own territories. Ten years later, and here they were, friends despite the forces that had shattered and destroyed them.

Aelin looked at the kernel of hope glowing in that dining room and lifted her glass.

“To a new world,” the Queen of Terrasen said.

The King of Adarlan lifted his glass, such endless shadows dancing in his eyes, but—there. A glimmer of life. “To freedom.”

87

The duke survived. So did Vernon.

A third of Morath had been blown out, and a good number of guards and servants with it, along with two covens and Elide Lochan.

A solid loss, but not nearly as devastating as it might have been. Manon herself had spilled three drops of her own blood in thanks to the Three-Faced Goddess that most of the covens had been out on a training exercise that day.

Manon stood in the duke’s council chamber, hands behind her back as the man ranted.

A major setback, he hissed at the other men who were assembled: war leaders and councilmen. It would take months to repair Morath, and with so many of their supplies incinerated, they would have to put their plans on hold.

Day and night, men hauled away the stones piled high above the ruins of the catacombs—searching, Manon knew, for the body of a woman who was no more than ash, and the stone she’d borne. Manon had not even told her Thirteen who now limped northward with that stone.

“Wing Leader,” the duke snapped, and Manon lazily turned her eyes toward him. “Your grandmother will be arriving in two weeks. I want your covens trained with the latest battle plans.”

She nodded. “As you will it.”

Battles. There would be battles, because even now that Dorian Havilliard was king, the duke had no plans to let go—not with this army. As soon as those witch towers were built and he found another source of shadowfire, Aelin Galathynius and her forces would be obliterated.

Manon quietly hoped that Elide would not be on those battlefields.

The council meeting was soon over, and Manon paused as she walked past Vernon on her way out. She put a hand on his shoulder, her nails digging into his skin, and he yelped as she brought her iron teeth close to his ear. “Just because she is dead, Lord, do not think that I will forget what you tried to do to her.”

Vernon paled. “You can’t touch me.”

Manon dug her nails in deeper. “No, I can’t,” she purred into his ear. “But Aelin Galathynius is alive. And I hear that she has a score to settle.” She yanked out her nails and squeezed his shoulder, setting the blood running down Vernon’s green tunic before she stalked from the room.

“What now?” Asterin said as they studied the new aerie they’d commandeered from one of the lesser covens. “Your grandmother arrives, and then we fight in this war?”

Manon gazed out the open archway to the ashy sky beyond. “For now, we stay. We wait for my grandmother to bring those towers.”

She didn’t know what she’d do when she saw her grandmother. She glanced sidelong at her Second. “That human hunter … How did he die?”

Asterin’s eyes gleamed. For a moment she said nothing. Then: “He was old—very old. I think he went into the woods one day and lay down somewhere and never came back. He would have liked that, I think. I never found his body.”

But she’d looked.

“What was it like?” Manon asked quietly. “To love.”

For love was what it had been—what Asterin perhaps alone of all the Ironteeth witches had felt, had learned.

“It was like dying a little every day. It was like being alive, too. It was joy so complete it was pain. It destroyed me and unmade me and forged me. I hated it, because I knew I couldn’t escape it, and knew it would forever change me. And that witchling … I loved her, too. I loved her in a way I cannot describe—other than to tell you that it was the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt, greater than rage, than lust, than magic.” A soft smile. “I’m surprised you’re not giving me the ‘Obedience. Discipline. Brutality’ speech.”

Made into monsters.

“Things are changing,” Manon said.

“Good,” Asterin said. “We’re immortals. Things should change, and often, or they’ll get boring.”

Manon lifted her brows, and her Second grinned.

Manon shook her head and grinned back.

88

With Rowan circling high above the castle on watch, and with their departure scheduled for dawn, Aelin took it upon herself to make one last trip to Elena’s tomb as the clock struck twelve.

Her plans, however, were ruined: the way to the tomb was blocked by rubble from the explosion. She’d spent fifteen minutes searching for a way in, with both her hands and her magic, but had no luck. She prayed Mort hadn’t been destroyed—though perhaps the skull door knocker would have embraced his strange, immortal existence coming to an end at last.

The sewers of Rifthold, apparently, were as clear of the Valg as the castle tunnels and catacombs, as if the demons had fled into the night when the king had fallen. For the moment, Rifthold was safe.

Aelin emerged from the hidden passageway, wiping the dust off her. “You two make so much noise, it’s ridiculous.” With her Fae hearing, she’d detected them minutes ago.

Dorian and Chaol were seated before her fireplace, the latter in a special wheeled chair that they’d acquired for him.

The king looked at her pointed ears, the elongated canines, and lifted a brow. “You look good, Majesty.” She supposed he hadn’t really noticed that day on the glass bridge, and she’d been in her human form until now. She grinned.

Chaol turned his head. His face was gaunt, but a flicker of determination shone there. Hope. He would not let his injury destroy him.

“I always look good,” Aelin said, plopping onto the armchair across from Dorian’s.

“Find anything interesting down there?” Chaol asked.

She shook her head. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to look one last time. For old time’s sake.” And maybe bite Elena’s head off. After she got answers to all her questions. But the ancient queen was nowhere to be found.

The three of them looked at each other, and silence fell.

Aelin’s throat burned, so she turned to Chaol and said, “With Maeve and Perrington breathing down our necks, we might need allies sooner rather than later, especially if the forces in Morath block access to Eyllwe. An army from the Southern Continent could cross the Narrow Sea within a few days and provide reinforcements—push Perrington from the south while we hammer from the north.” She crossed her arms. “So I’m appointing you an official Ambassador for Terrasen. I don’t care what Dorian says. Make friends with the royal family, woo them, kiss their asses, do whatever you have to do. But we need that alliance.”

Chaol glanced at Dorian in silent request. The king nodded, barely a dip of his chin. “I’ll try.” It was the best answer she could hope for. Chaol reached into the pocket of his tunic and chucked the Eye toward her. She caught it in a hand. The metal had been warped, but the blue stone remained. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely.

“He was wearing that for months,” Dorian said as she tucked the amulet into her pocket, “yet it never reacted—even in peril. Why now?”

Aelin’s throat tightened. “Courage of the heart,” she said. “Elena once told me that courage of the heart was rare—and to let it guide me. When Chaol chose to …” She couldn’t form the words. She tried again. “I think that courage saved him, made the amulet come alive for him.” It had been a gamble, and a fool’s one, but—it had worked.

Silence fell again.

Dorian said, “So here we are.”

“The end of the road,” Aelin said with a half smile.

“No,” Chaol said, his own smile faint, tentative. “The beginning of the next.”

The following morning, Aelin yawned as she leaned against her gray mare in the castle courtyard.

Once Dorian and Chaol had left last night, Lysandra had entered and passed out in her bed with no explanation for why or what she’d been doing beforehand. And since she was utterly unconscious, Aelin had just climbed into bed beside her. She had no idea where Rowan had curled up for the night, but she wouldn’t have been surprised to look out her window and spy a white-tailed hawk perched on the balcony rail.

At dawn, Aedion had burst in, demanding why they weren’t ready to leave—to go home.

Lysandra had shifted into a ghost leopard and chased him out. Then she returned, lingering in her massive feline form, and again sprawled beside Aelin. They managed to get another thirty minutes of sleep before Aedion came back and chucked a bucket of water on them.

He was lucky to escape alive.

But he was right—they had little reason to linger. Not with so much to do in the North, so much to plan and heal and oversee.

They would travel until nightfall, where they’d pick up Evangeline at the Faliqs’ country home and then continue north, hopefully uninterrupted, until they reached Terrasen.

Home.

She was going home.

Fear and doubt curled in her gut—but joy flickered alongside them.

They’d readied themselves quickly, and now all that was left, she supposed, was good-bye.

Chaol’s injuries made taking the stairs impossible, but she’d crept into his room that morning to say good-bye—only to find Aedion, Rowan, and Lysandra already there, chatting with him and Nesryn. When they’d left, Nesryn following them out, the captain had merely squeezed Aelin’s hand and said, “Can I see it?”

She knew what he meant, and had held up her hands before her.

Ribbons and plumes and flowers of red and gold fire danced through his room, bright and glorious and elegant.

Chaol’s eyes had been lined with silver when the flames winked out. “It’s lovely,” he said at last.

She’d only smiled at him and left a rose of gold flame burning on his nightstand—where it would burn without heat until she was out of range.

And for Nesryn, who had been called away on captain duty, Aelin had left another gift: an arrow of solid gold, presented to her last Yulemas as a blessing of Deanna—her own ancestor. Aelin figured the sharpshooter would love and appreciate that arrow more than she ever would have, anyway.

“Do you need anything else? More food?” Dorian asked, coming to stand beside her. Rowan, Aedion, and Lysandra were already mounting their horses. They’d packed light, taking only the barest supplies. Mostly weapons, including Damaris, which Chaol had given to Aedion, insisting the ancient blade remain on these shores. The rest of their belongings would be shipped to Terrasen.

“With this group,” Aelin said to Dorian, “it’ll probably be a daily competition to see who can hunt the best.”

Dorian chuckled. Silence fell, and Aelin clicked her tongue. “You’re wearing the same tunic you had on a few days ago. I don’t think I ever saw you wear the same thing twice.”

A flicker in those sapphire eyes. “I think I have bigger things to worry about now.”

“Will you—will you be all right?”

“Do I have any option but to be?”

She touched his arm. “If you need anything, send word. It’ll be a few weeks before we reach Orynth, but—I suppose with magic returned, you can find a messenger to get word to me quickly.”

“Thanks to you—and to your friends.”

She glanced over her shoulder at them. They were all trying their best to look like they weren’t eavesdropping. “Thanks to all of us,” she said quietly. “And to you.”

Dorian gazed toward the city horizon, the rolling green foothills beyond. “If you had asked me nine months ago if I thought …” He shook his head. “So much has changed.”

“And will keep changing,” she said, squeezing his arm once. “But … There are things that won’t change. I will always be your friend.”

His throat bobbed. “I wish I could see her, just one last time. To tell her … to say what was in my heart.”

“She knows,” Aelin said, blinking against the burning in her eyes.

“I’ll miss you,” Dorian said. “Though I doubt the next time we meet will be in such … civilized circumstances.” She tried not to think about it. He gestured over her shoulder to her court. “Don’t make them too miserable. They’re only trying to help you.”

She smiled. To her surprise, a king smiled back.

“Send me any good books that you read,” she said.

“Only if you do the same.”

She embraced him one last time. “Thank you—for everything,” she whispered.

Dorian squeezed her, and then stepped away as Aelin mounted her horse and nudged it into a walk.

She moved to the head of the company, where Rowan rode a sleek black stallion. The Fae Prince caught her eye. Are you all right?

She nodded. I didn’t think saying good-bye would be so hard. And with everything that’s to come—

We’ll face it together. To whatever end.

She reached across the space between them and took his hand, gripping it tightly.

They held on to each other as they rode down the barren path, through the gateway she’d made in the glass wall, and into the city streets, where people paused what they were doing and gaped or whispered or stared.

But as they rode out of Rifthold, that city that had been her home and her hell and her salvation, as she memorized each street and building and face and shop, each smell and the coolness of the river breeze, she didn’t see one slave. Didn’t hear one whip.

And as they passed by the domed Royal Theater, there was music—beautiful, exquisite music—playing within.

Dorian didn’t know what awoke him. Perhaps it was that the lazy summer insects had stopped their nighttime buzzing, or perhaps it was the chilled wind that slithered into his old tower room, ruffling the curtains.

The moonlight gleaming on the clock revealed it was three in the morning. The city was silent.

He rose from the bed, touching his neck yet again—just to make sure. Whenever he woke from his nightmares, it took him minutes to tell if he was indeed awake—or if it was merely a dream and he was still trapped in his own body, enslaved to his father and that Valg prince. He had not told Aelin or Chaol about the nightmares. Part of him wished he had.

He could still barely remember what had happened while he’d worn that collar. He’d turned twenty—and had no recollection of it. There were only bits and pieces, glimpses of horror and pain. He tried not to think about it. Didn’t want to remember. He hadn’t told Chaol or Aelin that, either.

He already missed her, and the chaos and intensity of her court. He missed having anyone around at all. The castle was too big, too quiet. And Chaol was to leave in two days. He didn’t want to think about what missing his friend would be like.

Dorian padded onto his balcony, needing to feel the river breeze on his face, to know that this was real and he was free.

He opened the balcony doors, the stones cool on his feet, and gazed out across the razed grounds. He’d done that. He loosed a breath, taking in the glass wall as it sparkled in the moonlight.

There was a massive shadow perched atop it. Dorian froze.

Not a shadow but a giant beast, its claws gripping the wall, its wings tucked into its body, shimmering faintly in the glow of the full moon. Shimmering like the white hair of the rider atop it.

Even from the distance, he knew she was staring right at him, her hair streaming to the side like a ribbon of moonlight, caught in the river breeze.

Dorian lifted a hand, the other rising to his neck. No collar.

The rider on the wyvern leaned down in her saddle, saying something to her beast. It spread its massive, glimmering wings and leaped into the air. Each beat of its wings sent a hollowed-out, booming gust of wind toward him.

It flapped higher, her hair streaming behind her like a glittering banner, until they vanished into the night, and he couldn’t hear its wings beating anymore. No one sounded the alarm. As if the world had stopped paying attention for the few moments they’d looked at each other.

And through the darkness of his memories, through the pain and despair and terror he’d tried to forget, a name echoed in his head.

Manon Blackbeak sailed into the starry night sky, Abraxos warm and swift under her, the blazingly bright moon—the Mother’s full womb—above her.

She didn’t know why she’d bothered to go; why she’d been curious.

But there had been the prince, no collar to be seen around his neck.

And he had lifted his hand in greeting—as if to say I remember you.

The winds shifted, and Abraxos rode them, rising higher into the sky, the darkened kingdom below passing by in a blur.

Changing winds—a changing world.

Perhaps a changing Thirteen, too. And herself.

She didn’t know what to make of it.

But Manon hoped they’d all survive it.

She hoped.

89

For three weeks they rode straight north, keeping off the main roads and out of the villages. There was no need to announce that Aelin was on her way back to Terrasen. Not until she saw her kingdom for herself and knew what she faced, both from within and from what gathered down in Morath. Not until she had somewhere safe to hide the great, terrible thing in her saddlebag.

With her magic, no one noticed the Wyrdkey’s presence. But Rowan would occasionally glance at the saddlebag and angle his head in inquiry. Each time, she’d silently tell him she was fine, and that she hadn’t noticed anything strange regarding the amulet. Or regarding the Eye of Elena, which she again wore at her throat. She wondered if Lorcan was indeed on his way to hunt down the second and third keys, perhaps where Perrington—Erawan—had held them all along. If the king hadn’t been lying.

She had a feeling Lorcan would start looking in Morath. And prayed the Fae warrior would defy the odds stacked against him and emerge triumphant. It would certainly make her life easier. Even if he’d one day come to kick her ass for deceiving him.

The summer days grew cooler the farther north they rode. Evangeline, to her credit, kept pace with them, never complaining about having to sleep on a bedroll night after night. She seemed perfectly happy to curl up with Fleetfoot, her new protector and loyal friend.

Lysandra used the journey to test out her abilities—sometimes flying with Rowan overhead, sometimes running as a pretty black dog alongside Fleetfoot, sometimes spending days in her ghost leopard form and pouncing on Aedion whenever he least expected it.

Three weeks of grueling travel—but also three of the happiest weeks Aelin had ever experienced. She would have preferred a little more privacy, especially with Rowan, who kept looking at her in that way that made her want to combust. Sometimes when no one was watching, he’d sneak up behind her and nuzzle her neck or tug at her earlobe with his teeth, or just slide his arms around her and hold her against him, breathing her in.

One night—just one gods-damned night with him was all she wanted.

They didn’t dare stop at an inn, so she was left to burn, and to endure Lysandra’s quiet teasing.

The terrain grew steeper, hillier, and the world turned lush and green and bright, the rocks becoming jagged granite outcroppings.

The sun had barely risen as Aelin walked beside her horse, sparing it from having to carry her up a particularly steep hill. She was already on her second meal of the day—already sweaty and dirty and cranky. Fire magic, it turned out, came in rather handy while traveling, keeping them warm on the chill nights, lighting their fires, and boiling their water. She would have killed for a tub big enough to fill with water and bathe in, but luxuries could wait.

“It’s just up this hill,” Aedion said from her left.

“What is?” she asked, finishing her apple and chucking the remains behind her. Lysandra, wearing the form of a crow, squawked in outrage as the core hit her. “Sorry,” Aelin called.

Lysandra cawed and soared skyward, Fleetfoot barking merrily at her as Evangeline giggled from atop her shaggy pony.

Aedion pointed to the hillcrest ahead. “You’ll see.”

Aelin looked at Rowan, who had been scouting ahead for part of the morning as a white-tailed hawk. Now he walked beside her, guiding his black stallion along. He lifted his brows at her silent demand for information. I’m not going to tell you.

She glowered at him. Buzzard.

Rowan grinned. But with every step, Aelin did the calculations about what day it was, and—

They crested the hill and halted.

Aelin released the reins and took a staggering step, the emerald grass soft underfoot.

Aedion touched her shoulder. “Welcome home, Aelin.”

A land of towering mountains—the Staghorns—spread before them, with valleys and rivers and hills; a land of untamed, wild beauty.

Terrasen.

And the smell—of pine and snow … How had she never realized that Rowan’s scent was of Terrasen, of home? Rowan came close enough to graze her shoulder and murmured, “I feel as if I’ve been looking for this place my entire life.”

Indeed—with the wicked wind flowing fast and strong between the gray, jagged Staghorns in the distance, with the dense spread of Oakwald to their left, and the rivers and valleys sprawling toward those great northern mountains—it was paradise for a hawk. Paradise for her.

“Right there,” Aedion said, pointing to a small, weather-worn granite boulder carved with whorls and swirls. “Once we pass that rock, we’re on Terrasen soil.”

Not quite daring to believe she wasn’t still asleep, Aelin walked toward that rock, whispering the Song of Thanks to Mala Fire-Bringer for leading her to this place, this moment.

Aelin ran a hand over the rough rock, and the sun-warmed stone tingled as if in greeting.

Then she stepped beyond the stone.

And at long last, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was home.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I think it’s common knowledge by now that I’d cease to function without my soul-twin, Jaeger copilot, and Threadsister, Susan Dennard.

Sooz, you are my light in dark places. You inspire and challenge me to not only be a better writer, but to also be a better person. Your friendship gives me strength and courage and hope. No matter what happens, no matter what might be waiting around the next bend in the road, I know I can face it, I can endure and triumph, because I have you at my side. There is no greater magic than that. I can’t wait to be majestic tiger-vampires with you for the rest of eternity.

To my fellow lady-in-arms and appreciator of all things feral/shape-shifting, Alex Bracken: How can I ever thank you enough for reading this book (and all my others) so many times? And how can I ever thank you enough for the years of e-mails, the countless lunches/drinks/dinners, and for always having my back? I don’t think I would have enjoyed this wild journey half as much without you—and I don’t think I would have survived this long without your wisdom, kindness, and generosity. Here’s to writing many more scenes with flimsy excuses for having shirtless dudes.

These books would not exist (I would not exist!) without my hardworking, supremely badass teams at the Laura Dail Literary Agency, CAA, and Bloomsbury worldwide. So my eternal love and gratitude go to Tamar Rydzinski, Cat Onder, Margaret Miller, Jon Cassir, Cindy Loh, Cristina Gilbert, Cassie Homer, Rebecca McNally, Natalie Hamilton, Laura Dail, Kathleen Farrar, Emma Hopkin, Ian Lamb, Emma Bradshaw, Lizzy Mason, Sonia Palmisano, Erica Barmash, Emily Ritter, Grace Whooley, Charli Haynes, Courtney Griffin, Nick Thomas, Alice Grigg, Elise Burns, Jenny Collins, Linette Kim, Beth Eller, Kerry Johnson, and the tireless, wonderful foreign rights team.

To my husband, Josh: Every day with you is a gift and a joy. I’m so lucky to have such a loving, fun, and spectacular friend to go on adventures with around the world. Here’s to many, many more.

To Annie, aka the greatest dog of all time: Sorry for accidentally eating all your turkey jerky that one time. Let’s never mention it again. (Also, I love you forever and ever. Let’s go cuddle.)

To my marvelous parents: Thank you for reading me all those fairy-tales—and for never telling me I was too old to believe in magic. These books exist because of that.

To my family: thank you, as always, for the endless and unconditional love and support.

To the Maas Thirteen: You guys are beyond amazing. Thank you so much for all your support and enthusiasm and for shouting about this series from rooftops all over the world. To Louisse Ang, Elena Yip, Jamie Miller, Alexa Santiago, Kim Podlesnik, Damaris Cardinali, and Nicola Wilkinson: you are all so generous and lovely—thank you for all that you do!

To Erin Bowman, Dan Krokos, Jennifer L. Armentrout, Christina Hobbs, and Lauren Billings: You guys are the best. I mean it. The ultimate best. I thank the Universe every day that I’m blessed to have such talented, funny, loyal, and wonderful friends in my life.

And to all my Throne of Glass readers: There aren’t enough words in the English language to properly convey the depth of my gratitude. It has been such an honor to meet you at events across the globe, and interact with so many of you online. Your words, artwork, and music keep me going. Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything.

Lastly, thanks so much to the incredible readers who submitted content to be part of the Heir of Fire trailer:

Abigail Isaac, Aisha Morsy, Amanda Clarity, Amanda Riddagh, Amy Kersey, Analise Jensen, Andrea Isabel Munguía Sánchez, Anna Vogl, Becca Fowler, Béres Judit, Brannon Tison, Bronwen Fraser, Claire Walsh, Crissie Wood, Elena Mieszczanski, Elena NyBlom, Emma Richardson, Gerakou Yiota, Isabel Coyne, Isabella Guzy-Kirkden, Jasmine Chau, Kristen Williams, Laura Pohl, Linnea Gear, Natalia Jagielska, Paige Firth, Rebecca Andrade, Rebecca Heath, Suzanah Thompson, Taryn Cameron, and Vera Roelofs. Bloomsbury Publishing, Oxford, London, New York, New Delhi and Sydney

Watch the trailer now:

Bloomsbury Publishing, Oxford, London, New York, New Delhi and Sydney

First published in Great Britain in September 2015 by

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Published in the USA in September 2015 by

Bloomsbury Children’s Books

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www.sarahjmaas.com

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Text copyright © Sarah J. Maas 2015

Map copyright © Kelly de Groot 2012

The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted

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No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

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ISBN 978 1 4088 5861 5