Aelin lay in darkness, the slab of iron like a starless night overhead.
She’d awoken in here. Had been in here for … a long time.
Long enough she’d relieved herself. Hadn’t cared.
Perhaps it had all been for nothing. The Queen Who Was Promised.
Promised to die, to surrender herself to fulfill an ancient princess’s debt. To save this world.
She wouldn’t be able to do it. She would fail in that, even if she outlasted Maeve.
Outlasted what she might have glimpsed lay beneath the queen’s skin. If that had been real at all.
Against Erawan, there had been little hope. But against Maeve as well …
Silent tears pooled in her mask.
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t leaving this place. This box.
She would never again feel the buttery warmth of the sun on her hair, or a sea-kissed breeze on her cheeks.
She couldn’t stop crying, ceaseless and relentless. As if some dam had cracked open inside her the moment she’d seen the blood dribble down Maeve’s face.
She didn’t care if Cairn saw the tears, smelled them.
Let him break her until she was bloody smithereens on the floor. Let him do it over and over again.
She wouldn’t fight. Couldn’t bear to fight.
A door groaned open and closed. Stalking footsteps neared.
Then a thump on the lid of the coffin. “How does a few more days in there sound to you?”
She wished she could fold herself into the blackness around her.
Cairn told Fenrys to relieve himself and return. Silence filled the room.
Then a thin scraping. Along the top of the box. As if Cairn were running a dagger over it.
“I’ve been thinking how to repay you when I let you out.”
Aelin blocked out his words. Did nothing but gaze into the dark.
She was so tired. So, so tired.
For Terrasen, she had gladly done this. All of it. For Terrasen, she deserved to pay this price.
She had tried to make it right. Had tried, and failed.
And she was so, so tired.
Fireheart.
The whispered word floated through the eternal night, a glimmer of sound, of light.
Fireheart.
The woman’s voice was soft, loving. Her mother’s voice.
Aelin turned her face away. Even that movement was more than she could bear.
Fireheart, why do you cry?
Aelin could not answer.
Fireheart.
The words were a gentle brush down her cheek. Fireheart, why do you cry?
And from far away, deep within her, Aelin whispered toward that ray of memory, Because I am lost. And I do not know the way.
Cairn was still talking. Still scraping his knife over the coffin’s lid.
But Aelin did not hear him as she found a woman lying beside her. A mirror—or a reflection of the face she’d bear in a few years’ time. Should she live that long.
Borrowed time. Every moment of it had been borrowed time.
Evalin Ashryver ran gentle fingers down Aelin’s cheek. Over the mask.
Aelin could have sworn she felt them against her skin.
You have been very brave, her mother said. You have been very brave, for so very long.
Aelin couldn’t stop the silent sob that worked its way up her throat.
But you must be brave a little while longer, my Fireheart.
She leaned into her mother’s touch.
You must be brave a little while longer, and remember …
Her mother placed a phantom hand over Aelin’s heart.
It is the strength of this that matters. No matter where you are, no matter how far, this will lead you home.
Aelin managed to slide a hand up to her chest, to cover her mother’s fingers. Only thin fabric and iron met her skin.
But Evalin Ashryver held Aelin’s gaze, the softness turning hard and gleaming as fresh steel. It is the strength of this that matters, Aelin.
Aelin’s fingers dug into her chest as she mouthed, The strength of this.
Evalin nodded.
Cairn’s hissed threats danced through the coffin, his knife scraping and scraping.
Evalin’s face didn’t falter. You are my daughter. You were born of two mighty bloodlines. That strength flows through you. Lives in you.
Evalin’s face blazed with the fierceness of the women who had come before them, all the way back to the Faerie Queen whose eyes they both bore.
You do not yield.
Then she was gone, like dew under the morning sun.
But the words lingered.
Blossomed within Aelin, bright as a kindled ember.
You do not yield.
Cairn scraped his dagger over the metal, right above her head. “When I cut you up this time, bitch, I’m going to—”
Aelin slammed her hand into the lid.
Cairn paused.
Aelin pounded her fist into the iron again. Again.
You do not yield.
Again.
You do not yield.
Again. Again.
Until she was alive with it, until her blood was raining onto her face, washing away the tears, until every pound of her fist into the iron was a battle cry.
You do not yield.
You do not yield.
You do not yield.
It rose in her, burning and roaring, and she gave herself wholly to it. Distantly, close by, wood crashed. Like someone had staggered into something. Then shouting.
Aelin hammered her fist into the metal, the song within her pulsing and cresting, a tidal wave racing for the shore.
“Get me that gloriella!”
The words meant nothing. He was nothing. Would always be nothing.
Over and over, she pounded against the lid. Over and over, that song of fire and darkness flared through her, out of her, into the world.
You do not yield.
Something hissed and crackled nearby, and smoke poured through the lid.
But Aelin kept striking. Kept striking until the smoke choked her, until its sweet scent dragged her under and away.
And when she awoke chained on the altar, she beheld what she had done to the iron coffin.
The top of the lid had been warped. A great hump now protruded, the metal stretched thin.
As if it had come so very close to breaking entirely.
On a dark hilltop overlooking a sleeping kingdom, Rowan froze.
The others were already halfway down the hill, leading the horses along the dried slope that would take them over Akkadia’s border and onto the arid plains below.
His hand dropped from the stallion’s reins.
He had to have imagined it.
He scanned the starry sky, the slumbering lands beyond, the Lord of the North above.
It hit him a heartbeat later. Erupted around him and roared.
Over and over and over, as if it were a hammer against an anvil.
The others whirled to him.
That raging, fiery song charged closer. Through him.
Down the mating bond. Down into his very soul.
A bellow of fury and defiance.
From down the hill, Lorcan rasped, “Rowan.”
It was impossible, utterly impossible, and yet—
“North,” Gavriel said, turning his bay gelding. “The surge came from the North.”
From Doranelle.
A beacon in the night. Power rippling into the world, as it had done in Skull’s Bay.
It filled him with sound, with fire and light. As if it screamed, again and again, I am alive, I am alive, I am alive.
And then silence. Like it had been cut off.
Extinguished.
He refused to think of why. The mating bond remained. Stretched taut, but it remained.
So he sent the words along it, with as much hope and fury and unrelenting love as he had felt from her. I will find you.
There w
as no answer. Nothing but humming darkness and the Lord of the North glistening above, pointing the way north. To her.
He found his companions waiting for his orders.
He opened his mouth to voice them, but halted. Considered. “We need to draw Maeve out—away from Aelin.” His voice rumbled over the drowsy buzzing of insects in the grasses. “Just long enough for us to infiltrate Doranelle.” For even with the three of them together, they might not be enough to take on Maeve.
“If she hears we’re coming,” Lorcan countered, “Maeve will spirit Aelin away again, not come to meet us. She’s not that foolish.”
But Rowan looked to Elide, the Lady of Perranth’s eyes wide. “I know,” he said, his plan forming, as cold and ruthless as the power in his veins. “We’ll draw out Maeve with a different sort of lure, then.”
CHAPTER 13
The spider spoke true.
Keeping hidden amongst the ice-crusted rocks of a jagged mountain peak, Manon and the Thirteen peered down into the small pass.
At the camp of red-cloaked witches, the location confirmed by the Shadows just an hour ago.
Manon glanced over her shoulder, to where Dorian was nearly invisible against the snow, the spider in her plain human form beside him.
The depthless eyes of the creature met hers, shining with triumph.
Fine. Cyrene, or whatever she called herself, might live. Where it would lead them, she’d see. The horrors the spider had mentioned in Morath—
Later.
Manon scanned the darkening blue skies. None of them had questioned when Manon had sailed off on Abraxos hours earlier. And none of her Thirteen now asked where she’d gone as they monitored their ancient enemy’s camp.
“Seventy-five that we can see,” Asterin murmured, eyes fixed on the bustling camp. “What in hell are they doing out here?”
Manon didn’t know. The Shadows hadn’t been able to glean anything.
Tents surrounded small campfires—and every few moments, figures departed and arrived on brooms. Her heart thundered in her chest.
The Crochans. The other half of her heritage.
“We move on your command,” Sorrel said, a careful nudge.
Manon drew in a breath, willing the snow-laced wind to keep her cold and steady during this next encounter. And what would come after.
“No nails or teeth,” Manon ordered the Thirteen. Then she looked over her shoulder once more to the king and spider. “You may stay here, if you wish.”
Dorian gave her a lazy smile. “And miss the fun?” Yet she caught the gleam in his eye—the understanding that perhaps he alone could grasp. That she was not just about to face an enemy, but a potential people. He subtly nodded. “We all go in.”
Manon merely nodded back and rose. The Thirteen stood with her.
It was the matter of a few minutes before warning cries rang out.
But Manon kept her hands in the air as Abraxos landed at the edge of the Crochan camp, the Thirteen and their wyverns behind her, Vesta bearing both Dorian and the spider.
Spears and arrows and swords pointed at them with lethal accuracy.
A dark-haired witch stalked past the armed front line, a fine blade in her hand as her eyes fixed on Manon.
Crochans. Her people.
Now—now would be the time to make the speech she’d planned. To free those words that she’d tethered within herself.
Asterin turned toward her in silent urging.
Yet Manon’s lips didn’t move.
The dark-haired one kept her brown eyes fixed on Manon. Over one shoulder, a polished wood staff gleamed. Not a staff—a broom. Beyond the witch’s billowing red cloak, gold-bound twigs shimmered.
High ranking, then, to have such fine bindings. Most Crochans used simpler metals, the poorest just twine.
“What interesting replacements for your ironwood brooms,” the Crochan said. The others were as stone-faced as the Thirteen. The witch glanced toward where Dorian sat atop Vesta’s mount, likely monitoring all with that clear-eyed cunning. “And interesting company you now keep.” The witch’s mouth curled slightly. “Unless things have become so sorry for your ilk, Blackbeak, that you have to resort to sharing.”
A snarl rumbled from Asterin.
But the witch had identified her—or at least what Clan they hailed from. The Crochan sniffed at the spider-shifter. Her eyes shuttered. “Interesting company indeed.”
“We mean you no harm,” Manon finally said.
The witch snorted. “No threats from the White Demon?”
Oh, she knew, then. Who Manon was, who they all were.
“Or are the rumors true? That you broke with your grandmother?” The witch brazenly surveyed Manon from head to boot. A bolder look than Manon usually allowed her enemies to make. “Rumor also claims you were gutted at her hand, but here you are. Hale and once more hunting us. Perhaps the rumors about your defection aren’t true, either.”
“She broke from her grandmother,” said Dorian, sliding off Vesta’s wyvern and prowling toward Abraxos. The Crochans tensed, but made no move to attack. “I pulled her from the sea months ago, when she lay upon Death’s doorstep. Saw the iron shards my friends removed from her abdomen.”
The Crochan’s dark brows rose, again taking in the beautiful, well-spoken male. Perhaps noting the power that radiated from him—and the keys he bore. “And who, exactly, are you?”
Dorian gave the witch one of those charming smiles and sketched a bow. “Dorian Havilliard, at your service.”
“The king,” one of the Crochans murmured from near the wyverns.
Dorian winked. “That I am, too.”
The head of the coven, however, studied him—then Manon. The spider. “There is more to be explained, it seems.”
Manon’s hand itched for Wind-Cleaver at her back.
But Dorian said, “We’ve been looking for you for two months now.” The Crochans again tensed. “Not for violence or sport,” he clarified, the words flowing in a silver-tongued melody. “But so we might discuss matters between our peoples.”
The Crochans shifted, boots crunching in the icy snow.
The coven leader asked, “Between Adarlan and us, or between the Blackbeaks and our people?”
Manon slid off Abraxos at last, her mount huffing anxiously as he eyed their glinting weapons. “All of us,” Manon said tightly. She jerked her chin to the wyverns. “They will not harm you.” Unless she signaled the command. Then the Crochans’ heads would be torn from their bodies before they could draw their swords. “You can stand down.”
One of the Crochans laughed. “And be remembered as fools for trusting you? I think not.”
The coven leader slashed a silencing glare toward the brown-haired sentinel who’d spoken, a pretty, full-figured witch. The witch shrugged, sighing skyward.
The coven leader turned to Manon. “We will stand down when we are ordered to do so.”
“By whom?” Dorian scanned their ranks.
Now would be the time for Manon to say who she was, what she was. To announce why she had truly come.
The coven leader pointed deeper into the camp. “Her.”
Even from a distance, Dorian had marveled at the brooms the Crochans sat astride to soar through the sky. But now, surrounded by them … No mere myths. But warriors. Ones all too happy to end them.
Bloodred capes flowed everywhere, stark against the snow and gray peaks. Though many of the witches were young-faced and beautiful, there were just as many who appeared middle-aged, some even elderly. How old they must have been to become so withered, Dorian couldn’t fathom. He had little doubt they could kill him with ease.
The coven leader pointed toward the neat rows of tents, and the gathered warriors parted, the wall of brooms and weapons shining in the dying light.
“So,” an ancient voice said as the ranks stepped back to reveal the one to whom the Crochan had pointed. Not yet bent with age, but her hair was white with it. Her blue eyes, however, were clear as a mo
untain lake. “The hunters have now become the hunted.”
The ancient witch paused at the edge of her ranks, surveying Manon. There was kindness on the witch’s face, Dorian noted—and wisdom. And something, he realized, like sorrow. It didn’t halt him from sliding a hand onto Damaris’s pommel, as if he were casually resting it.
“We sought you so we might speak.” Manon’s cold, calm voice rang out over the rocks. “We mean you no harm.”
Damaris warmed at the truth in her words.
“This time,” the brown-haired witch who’d spoken earlier muttered. Her coven leader elbowed her in warning.
“Who are you, though?” Manon instead asked the crone. “You lead these covens.”
“I am Glennis. My family served the Crochan royals, long before the city fell.” The ancient witch’s eyes went to the strip of red cloth tying Manon’s braid. “Rhiannon found you, then.”
Dorian had listened when Manon had explained to the Thirteen the truth about her heritage, and who her grandmother had bade her to slaughter in the Omega.
Manon kept her chin up, even as her golden eyes flickered. “Rhiannon didn’t make it out of the Ferian Gap.”
“Bitch,” a witch snarled, others echoing it.
Manon ignored it and asked the ancient Crochan, “You knew her, then?”
The witches fell silent.
The crone inclined her head, that sorrow filling her eyes once more. Dorian didn’t need Damaris’s confirming warmth to know her next words were true. “I was her great-grandmother.” Even the whipping wind quieted. “As I am yours.”
CHAPTER 14
The Crochans stood down—under the orders of Manon’s so-called great-grandmother. Glennis.
She had demanded how, what the lineage was, but Glennis had only beckoned Manon to follow her into the camp.
At least two dozen other witches tended to the several fire pits scattered amongst the white tents, all of them halting their various work as Manon passed. She’d never seen Crochans going about their domestic tasks, but here they were: some tending to fires, some hauling buckets of water, some monitoring heavy cauldrons of what smelled like mountain-goat stew seasoned with dried herbs.
No words sounded in her head while she strode through the ranks of bristling Crochans. The Thirteen didn’t try to speak, either. But Dorian did.
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