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.
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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 mo
rning, 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?”
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“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 fu
ll 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.
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