It was the last summer they had spent in friendship, once it had started to become clear to Ren’s father that Aedion was favored to take the blood oath. And then the rivalry had begun.
One summer: thick as thieves and as wild. The next: endless pissing contests, everything from footraces through the courtyards to shoving in the stairwells to outright brawling in the Great Hall. Rhoe had tried to defuse it, but Rhoe had never been a comfortable liar. Had refused to deny to Ren’s father that Aedion was the one who’d swear that oath. And by the end of that summer, even the Crown Prince had begun to look the other way when the two boys launched into yet another fight in the dirt. Not that it mattered now.
Would his own father, would Gavriel, have encouraged the rivalry? He supposed it didn’t matter, either. But for a heartbeat, Aedion tried to picture it—Gavriel here, presiding over his training. His father and Rhoe, teaching him together. And he knew that Gavriel would have found some way to calm the competition, much in the way he held the peace in the cadre. What manner of man would he have become, had the Lion been here? Gavriel likely would have been butchered with the rest of the court, but … he would have been here.
A fool’s path, to wander down that road. Aedion was who he was, and most of the time, didn’t mind that one bit. Rhoe had been his father in the ways that counted. Even if there had been times when Aedion had looked at Rhoe and Evalin and Aelin and still felt like a guest.
Aedion shook the thought from his head. Being here, in this castle, had addled him. Dragged him into a realm of ghosts.
“Don’t expect Darrow to put out a breakfast spread like the ones we used to have,” Aedion said. Not that he expected or wanted one. He ate only because his body demanded he do so, ate because it was strength, and he would need it, his people would need it, before long.
Ren surveyed the city, then the Plain of Theralis beyond. The still-empty horizon. “I’ll get the archers sorted today. And ensure the soldiers at the gates know how to wield that boiling oil.”
“Do you know how to wield it?” Aedion arched a brow.
Ren snorted. “What’s to learn? You dump a giant cauldron over the side of the walls. Damage done.”
It certainly required a bit more skill than that, but it was better than nothing. At least Darrow had made sure they had such supplies.
Aedion prayed they’d get the chance to use them. With Morath’s witch towers, the odds were that they’d be blasted into rubble before the enemy host even reached either of the two gates into the city.
“What we could really use is some hellfire,” Ren muttered. “That’d keep them from the gates.”
And potentially melt everyone around them, too.
Aedion opened his mouth to agree when his brows narrowed.
He surveyed the plain, the horizon.
“Out with it,” Ren said.
Aedion steered Ren back toward the tower entrance. “We need to talk to Rolfe.”
Not about hellfire at the southern and western gates. Not at all.
They waited until cover of darkness, when Morath’s spies might not spot the small band of them who crept, mile after mile, across the Plain of Theralis.
Clad in battle-black, they moved over the field that would once more become bathed in blood. When they reached the landmarks that Aedion and Ren had used the daylight hours to plan out, Aedion held up a hand.
The Silent Assassins lived up to their name as Ilias signaled back and they spread out. Amongst them moved Rolfe’s Mycenians, bearing their heavy loads.
But it was the shape-shifter who began to work first. Turning herself into a giant badger, bigger than a horse, who scooped out the frozen earth with skilled, strong paws.
The scent of her blood filled the air, but Lysandra didn’t stop digging.
And when she’d finished the first pit, she moved on to the next, leaving the group of Silent Assassins and Mycenians to lay their trap, then bury it once more.
The brutal wind moaned past them. Yet they worked through the night, used every minute given to them. And when they were done, they vanished back to the city, invisible once more.
Morath appeared on the horizon a day later.
From the castle’s highest towers and walkways, every marching line could be counted. One after another after another.
Her hands still bruised and bandaged from digging through frozen earth, Lysandra stood with an assortment of their allies on one of those walkways, Evangeline clinging to her.
“That’s fifteen thousand,” Ansel of Briarcliff announced as yet another line emerged. No one said anything. “Twenty.”
“Morath must be empty to now have so many here,” Prince Galan murmured.
Evangeline trembled, not entirely from the cold, and Lysandra tightened her arm around the girl. Down the wall of the walkway, Darrow and the other Terrasen lords spoke quietly. As if sensing Lysandra’s attention, Darrow threw a narrow glance her way—that then dipped to the pale-faced, shaking Evangeline. Darrow said nothing, and Lysandra didn’t bother to look pleasant, before he turned back to his companions.
“That’s thirty,” Ansel said.
“We can count,” Rolfe snipped.
Ansel lifted a wine-red brow. “Can you really?”
Despite the army marching on them, Lysandra’s mouth twitched upward.
Rolfe just rolled his eyes and went back to watching the approaching army.
“They won’t arrive until dawn at the earliest,” Aedion observed, his face grim.
She had not yet decided what form to take. Where to fight. If ilken still flew in their ranks, then it would be a wyvern, but if closer quarters were required, then … she hadn’t decided. No one had asked her to be anywhere in particular, though Aedion’s request the other night to assist in their wild plan had been a rare reprieve from these days of waiting and dreading.
She’d gladly take days of pacing instead of what approached them.
“Fifty thousand,” Ansel said, throwing a wry glance to Rolfe.
Lysandra swallowed against the tightness in her throat. Evangeline pressed her face into Lysandra’s side.
And then the witch towers took form.
Like massive lances jutting from the horizon, they appeared through the gray morning light. Three of them, spread out equally amid the army that continued to flow behind them.
Even Ansel stopped counting now.
“I did not think it would be so terrible,” Evangeline whispered, hands digging into Lysandra’s heavy cloak. “I did not think it would be so wretched.”
Lysandra pressed a kiss to the top of her red-gold hair. “No harm shall come to you.”
“I am not afraid for myself,” Evangeline said. “But for my friends.”
Those citrine eyes indeed shone with tears of terror, and Lysandra brushed one away before watching the advancing witch towers creep toward them. She had no words to comfort the girl.
“Any minute now,” Aedion murmured, and Lysandra glanced down to the snowy plain.
To the figures that emerged from beneath the snow, clad in white. Flaming arrows nocked in their bows. Morath’s front lines were nearly upon them, but those soldiers were not their target.
Down the wall, Murtaugh gripped the ancient stones as a figure that had to be Ren gave the order. Flaming arrows arched and flew, Morath soldiers ducking under their shields.
They did not bother to look beneath their feet.
Neither did the witches leading their three towers.
The flaming arrows struck the earth with deadly accuracy, thanks to the Silent Assassins who wielded those bows.
Right atop the fuse lines that flowed directly into the pits they’d dug. Just as the witch towers passed over them.
Blinding flashes broke apart the black sea of the army. Then the mighty boom.
And then a rain of stone, all Morath’s forces whirling to see. Providing the right distraction as Ren, Ilias, and the Silent Assassins raced on foot to the white horses hidden behind a snowdrift.
When the flash cleared, when the smoke was gone, a sigh of relief went down the walkway.
Two of those witch towers had been directly over the pits. Pits that they had filled with the chemical reactors and powders that fueled Rolfe’s firelances, then concealed beneath the earth—waiting for a spark to ignite them.
Those two towers now lay in scattered ruin, their wyverns broken beneath them, soldiers squashed under falling stone.
Yet one still stood, the pit it had been closest to exploding too soon. One of the wyverns who had pulled it had been hit by debris from another tower—and lay either dead or injured.
And that third remaining tower had stopped.
A wicked, low horn sounded from the enemy host, and the army halted, too.
“Thank the rutting gods,” Rolfe said, head bowing.
But Aedion was still staring at the plain—at the figures on horseback galloping to Orynth’s walls. Making sure they all returned.
“How long will that stop them?” Evangeline asked.
Everyone, Darrow included, turned to the girl. No one had an answer. No lie to offer.
So they again faced the army gathered on the plain, its farthest reaches now visible.
“One hundred thousand,” Ansel of Briarcliff announced softly.
CHAPTER 76
“It’s possible—to show a different world?” Dorian asked Maeve when they were again in their tower room.
Maeve slid into a chair, her face distant. “Using mirrors, yes.”
Dorian lifted a brow.
“You have seen yourself the power of witch mirrors. What it did to Aelin Galathynius and Manon Blackbeak. Who do you think taught the witches such power? Not the Fae.” A small laugh. “And how do you think I have been able to see so far, hear the voices of my eyes, all the way from Doranelle? There are mirrors to spy, to travel, to kill. Even now, Erawan wields them to his advantage with the Ironteeth.” With the witch towers.
Maeve lounged, a queen with no crown. “I can show him what he wishes to see.”
Dorian opened his mouth, then considered the words.
“An illusion. You don’t plan to show him Orcus or Mantyx at all.”
She cut him a cool stare. “A sleight of hand—while you enter the tower.”
“I can’t get in.”
“I am a world-walker,” Maeve said. “I have traveled between universes. Do you think moving between rooms will be so hard?”
“Something kept you from going to Terrasen all these years.”
Maeve’s jaw tightened. “Brannon Galathynius was aware of my gifts to move between places. The wards around his kingdom prevent me from doing so.”
“So you could not transport Erawan’s armies there for him.”
“No. I can only enter on foot. There are too many of them, anyway, for me to hold the portal that long.”
“Erawan is aware of your gift, so he’ll likely have taken steps to guard his own room.”
“Yes, and I have spent my time here slowly unraveling them. He is not so skilled a spellworker as he thinks.” A smug, triumphant smile.
Yet Dorian asked, “Why not do this from the start?”
“Because I had not yet decided it was worth the risk. Because he had not yet pushed me to bring my handmaidens here, to be mere foot soldiers.”
“You care about them—the spiders.”
“You will find, Your Majesty, that a loyal friend is a rare thing indeed. They are not so easy to sacrifice.”
“You offered up six of them to those princesses.”
“And I shall remember that for as long as I live,” Maeve said, and some kernel of emotion indeed danced over her face. “They went willingly. I tell myself that whenever I look upon them now and see nothing of the creatures I knew. They wished to help me.” Her eyes met his. “Not all Valg are evil.”
“Erawan is.”
“Yes,” she said, and her eyes darkened. “He and his brothers … they are the worst of our kind. Their rule was through fear and pain. They delight in such things.”
“And you do not?”
Maeve twirled an inky strand around a finger. And didn’t answer.
Fine. Dorian went on, “So you shall break past Erawan’s wards on his room, open the portal for me, and I’ll slip in while you distract him with an illusion about his brothers.” He frowned. “As soon as I find the key, he’ll know you’ve deceived him. We’ll have to leave quickly.”
Her mouth curved. “We will. And go to wherever you have hidden the others.”
Dorian kept every expression off his face. “You’re certain he won’t know he’s being tricked?”
“Orcus is his brother. But Orcus was also my husband. The illusion will be real enough.”
Dorian considered. “What time do we make our move?”
Nightfall.
That was when Maeve had told Erawan to meet. That liminal space between light and dark, when one force yielded to another. When she would open the portal for Dorian from rooms away.
As the sun set—not that Dorian could see it with the clouds and gloom of Morath—he found himself staring at the wall of Maeve’s chamber.
She had left minutes ago, with nothing more than a farewell glance. Their escape route had been plotted, an alternative with it. All should go according to plan.
And the body he now wore, the golden hair and golden eyes … Should anyone but Erawan himself stumble into the tower, they would find it occupied by their master.
He did not have room in himself for fear, for doubt. Did not think of the Wyrdstone collars beneath the fortress, or every twisted room and dungeon he’d passed through. Darkness fell beyond the room.
Dorian stepped back as the stones turned dark, dark, dark—then vanished.
The stench of death, of rot, of hate flowed out. Far more putrid than the tomb levels below.
It threatened to buckle his knees, but Dorian drew Damaris. Rallied his power and lifted his left hand, a faint golden light shining from his fingers. Fire.
With a prayer to whatever gods might bother to help him, Dorian stepped through the portal.
CHAPTER 77
Dorian didn’t know what he had expected from a Valg king’s chamber, but the four-poster bed of carved black wood, the washstand and desk, would have been low on his list of guesses.
Nothing extraordinary. No trove of stolen, ancient weapons or heirlooms, no bubbling potions or spellbooks, no snarling beasts in the corner. No additional of Wyrdstone collars.
A bedroom and nothing more.
He scanned the circular room, even going so far as to peer down the stairwell. A straight shot to the iron door and guards posted outside. No closets. No trapdoors.
He opened the armoire to find row after row of clean clothes. None of the drawers contained anything—and there were no hidden compartments.
But he felt it. That otherworldly, terrible presence. Could feel it all around him—
A small noise had him whirling.
Dorian looked at the bed then. At what he had missed, left lying between obsidian sheets, which nearly swallowed her frail, small body.
The young woman. Her face was hollow, vacant. Yet she stared at him. As if she’d awoken.
A pretty, dark-haired girl. No older than twenty. A near-twin to Kaltain.
Bile burned his throat. And as the girl sat up farther, the sheets falling away to reveal a wasted, naked body, to reveal a too-thin arm and the hideous purplish scar near the wrist … He knew why he had felt the key’s presence throughout the keep. Moving about. Vanishing.
It had been walking. Trailing its master. Her enslaver.
A collar of black stone had been clamped around her throat.
And yet she sat there in that rumpled bed. Staring at him.
Hollow and vacant—and in pain.
He had no words. There was only ringing silence.
Kaltain had destroyed the Valg prince inside her, but the Wyrdkey had driven her mad. Had given her terrible power, but
ripped apart her mind.
Dorian slowly, carefully, took one step closer to the bed. “You’re awake,” he said, willing his voice to the drawl of the Valg king. Knowing it was her captor she saw.
A blink.
Dorian had witnessed Erawan’s experiments, the horrors of his dungeons. Yet this young woman, so starved, the bruises on her skin, the unholy thing in her arm, the unholy thing he’d known had shared this bed with her …
He dared to unspool a thread of his power. It neared her arm and recoiled.
Yes, the key was there.
He prowled closer, willing her not to look toward the portal in the wall.
The young woman trembled—just slightly.
He willed himself not to vomit. Not to do anything but look at her with cool command as he said, “Give me your arm.”
Her brown eyes scanned his face, but she held out her arm.
He nearly staggered back at the festering wound, the black veins running up from it. Leaking its poison into her. What Kaltain’s wound had no doubt looked like, and why the scar remained, even in death.
But he sheathed Damaris and took her arm in his hands.
Ice. Her skin was like ice. “Lie down,” he told her.
She shook, but obeyed. Bracing herself. For him.
Kaltain. Oh gods, Kaltain. What she’d endured—
Dorian freed the knife at his side—the one Sorrel had gifted him—and angled it over her arm. Kaltain had done the same to free it, Manon had said.
But Dorian sent a flicker of his healing magic to her arm. To numb and soothe. She thrashed, but he held firm. Let his magic flare through her. She gasped, arching, and Dorian took advantage of her sudden stillness to plunge in the knife, fast and deft.
Three movements, his healing magic still working through her, soothing her as best he could, and the bloodied shard was in his fingers. Pulsing its hollow, sickening power through him.
The final Wyrdkey.
He dropped her arm, sliding the Wyrdkey into his pocket, and turned for the portal.
But a hand wrapped around his, feeble and shaking.
He whirled, a hand going to Damaris, and found her staring up at him. Tears slid down her face.
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