“Was it hard?”
“Incredibly. But he did it. We did it.”
Elide considered, then shrugged. “We’d have to survive this war first, I suppose. If we live … then we can talk about it.”
“Fair enough.”
Elide frowned at the wagon’s ceiling. “I wonder what they’ve learned up there.”
Up in the Omega and Northern Fang, where Chaol and the others were now meeting with the breeders and wranglers who had been left behind.
Yrene didn’t want to know more than that, and Chaol had not offered any other insight into how they’d be extracting information from the men.
“Hopefully something worth our visit to this awful place,” Yrene muttered, then drained the rest of her tea. The sooner they left, the better.
It was as if the gods were laughing at her—at them both. A knock on the wagon doors had Elide limping toward them, just before Borte appeared. Her face uncharacteristically solemn.
Yrene braced herself, but it was Elide whom the ruk rider addressed.
“You’re to come with me,” Borte said breathlessly. Behind the girl, Arcas waited, a sparrow perched on the saddle. Falkan Ennar. Not a companion, Yrene realized, but an additional guard.
Elide asked, “What’s wrong?”
Borte shifted, with impatience or nerves, Yrene couldn’t tell. “They found someone in the mountain. They want you up there—to decide what to do with him.”
Elide had gone still. Utterly still.
Yrene asked, “Who?”
Borte’s mouth tightened. “Her uncle.”
Elide wondered if the rukhin would shun her forever if she vomited all over Arcas. Indeed, during the swift, steep flight up to the bridge spanning the Omega and Northern Fang, it was all she could do not to hurl the contents of her stomach all over the bird’s feathers.
“They found him hiding in the Northern Fang,” Borte had said before she’d hauled Elide into the saddle, Falkan already flying up the sheer face of the pass. “Trying to pretend to be a wyvern trainer. But one of the other trainers sold him out. Queen Aelin called for you as soon as they had him secure. Your uncle, not the trainer, I mean.”
Elide hadn’t been able to respond. Had only nodded.
Vernon was here. At the Gap. Not in Morath with his master, but here.
Gavriel and Fenrys were waiting when Arcas landed in the cavernous opening into the Northern Fang. The rough-hewn rock loomed like a gaping maw, the reek of what lay within making her stomach turn again. Like rotting meat and worse. Valg, undoubtedly, but also a smell of hate and cruelty and tight, airless corridors.
The two Fae males silently fell into step beside her as they entered. No sign of Lorcan, or Aelin. Or her uncle.
Men lay dead in some of the dim hallways that Fenrys and Gavriel led her through, killed by the rukhin when they’d swept in. None of them leaked black blood, but they still had that reek to them. Like this place had infected their very souls.
“They’re just up here,” Gavriel said quietly—gently.
Elide’s hands began shaking, and Fenrys placed one of his own on her shoulder. “He’s well restrained.”
She knew not with mere ropes or chains. Likely with fire and ice and perhaps even Lorcan’s own dark power.
But it did not stop her from shaking, from how small and brittle she became as they turned a corner and beheld Aelin, Rowan, and Lorcan standing before a shut door. Farther down the hall, Nesryn and Sartaq, Lord Chaol with them, waited. Letting them decide what to do.
Letting Elide decide.
Lorcan’s grave face was frozen with rage, his depthless eyes like frigid pools of night. He said quietly, “You don’t need to go in there.”
“We had you brought here,” Aelin said, her own face the portrait of restrained wrath, “so you could choose what to do with him. If you wish to speak to him before we do.”
One look at the knives at Rowan’s and Lorcan’s sides, at the way the queen’s fingers curled, and Elide knew what their sort of talking would include. “You mean to torture him for information?” She didn’t dare meet Aelin’s eyes.
“Before he receives what is due to him,” Lorcan growled.
Elide glanced between the male she loved and the queen she served. And her limp had never felt so pronounced, so obvious, as she took a step closer. “Why is he here?”
“He has yet to reveal that,” Rowan said. “And though we have not confirmed that you are here, he suspects.” A glance toward Lorcan. “The call is yours, Lady.”
“You will kill him regardless?”
Lorcan asked, “Do you wish us to?” Months ago, she had told him to. And Lorcan had agreed to do it. That had been before Vernon and the ilken had come to abduct her—before the night when she had been willing to embrace death rather than go with him to Morath.
Elide peered inward. They gave her the courtesy of silence. “I would like to speak to him before we decide his fate.”
A bow of Lorcan’s head was his only answer before he opened the door behind him.
Torches flickered, the chamber empty save for a worktable against one wall.
And her uncle, bound in thick irons, seated on a wooden chair.
His finery was worn, his dark hair unkempt, as if he’d struggled while they’d bound him. Indeed, blood crusted one of his nostrils, his nose swollen.
Shattered.
A glance to her right confirmed the blood on Lorcan’s knuckles.
Vernon straightened as Elide stopped several feet away, the door shutting, Lorcan and Aelin mere steps behind. The others remained in the hall.
“What mighty company you keep these days, Elide,” Vernon said.
That voice. Even with the broken nose, that silky, horrible voice raked talons along her skin.
But Elide kept her chin up. Kept her eyes upon her uncle. “Why are you here?”
“First you let the brute at me,” Vernon drawled, nodding to Lorcan, “then you send in the sweet-faced girl to coax answers?” A smile toward Aelin. “A technique of yours, Majesty?”
Aelin leaned against the stone wall, hands sliding into her pockets. Nothing human in her face. Though Elide marked the way her hands, even within their confines, shifted.
Bound in irons. Battered.
Only weeks ago, it had been the queen herself in Vernon’s place. And now it seemed she stood here through sheer will. Stood here, ready to pry the information from Vernon, for Elide’s sake.
It strengthened Elide enough that she said to her uncle, “Your breaths are limited. I would suggest you use them wisely.”
“Ruthless.” Vernon smirked. “The witch-blood in your veins ran true after all.”
She couldn’t stand it. To be in this room with him. To breathe the same air as the man who had smiled while her father had been executed, smiled while he locked her in that tower for ten years. Smiled while he’d touched Kaltain, done far worse perhaps, then tried to sell Elide to Erawan for breeding. “Why?” she asked.
It was the only question she could really think of, that really mattered. “Why do any of it?”
“Since my breaths are limited,” Vernon said, “I suppose it makes no difference what I tell you.” A small smile curled his lips. “Because I could,” her uncle said. Lorcan growled. “Because my brother, your father, was an insufferable brute, whose only qualification to rule was the order of our birth. A warrior-brute,” Vernon spat, sneering toward Lorcan. Then at Elide. “Your mother’s preference seems to have passed to you, too.” A hateful shake of the head. “Such a pity. She was a rare beauty, you know. Such a pity that she was killed, defending Her Majesty.” Heat flared across the room, but Aelin’s face remained unmoved. “There might have been a place for her in Perranth had she not—”
“Enough,” Elide said softly, but not weakly. She took another step toward him. “So you were jealous. Of my father. Jealous of his strength, his talent. Of his wife.” Vernon opened his mouth, but Elide lifted a hand. “I am not done yet.”
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Vernon blinked.
Elide kept her breathing steady, shoulders back. “I do not care why you are here. I do not care what they plan to do with you. But I want you to know that once I walk from this room, I will never think of you again. Your name will be erased from Perranth, from Terrasen, from Adarlan. There will never be a whisper of you, nor any reminder. You will be forgotten.”
Vernon paled—just slightly. Then he smiled. “Erased from Perranth? You say that as if you do not know, Lady Elide.” He leaned forward as much as his chains would allow. “Perranth now lies in the hands of Morath. Your city has been sacked.”
The words rippled through her like a blow, and even Lorcan sucked in a breath.
Vernon leaned back, smug as a cat. “Go ahead and erase me, then. With the rubble, it will not be hard to do.”
Perranth had been captured by Morath. Elide didn’t need to glance over a shoulder to know that Aelin’s eyes were near-glowing. Bad—this was far worse than they’d anticipated. They had to move quickly. Get to the North as fast as they could.
So Elide turned toward the door, Lorcan stalking ahead to open it for her.
“That’s it?” Vernon demanded.
Elide paused. Slowly turned. “What else could I have to say to you?”
“You did not ask me for details.” Another snake’s smile. “You still have not learned how to play the game, Elide.”
Elide returned his smile with one of her own. “There is nothing more that I care to hear from you.” She glanced toward Lorcan and Aelin, toward their companions gathered in the hall. “But they still have questions.”
Vernon’s face went the color of spoiled milk. “You mean to leave me in their hands, utterly defenseless?”
“I was defenseless when you let my leg remain unhealed,” she said, a steady sort of calm settling over her. “I was a child then, and I survived. You’re a grown man.” She let her lips curl in another smile. “We’ll see if you do, too.”
She didn’t try to hide her limp as she strode out. As she caught Lorcan’s eye and beheld the pride gleaming there.
Not a whisper—not one whisper from that voice who had guided her. Not from fear, but … Perhaps she did not need Anneith, Lady of Wise Things. Perhaps the goddess had known she herself was not needed.
Not anymore.
Aelin knew that one word from her, and Lorcan would rip out Vernon’s throat. Or perhaps begin with snapping bones.
Or skin him alive, as Rowan had done with Cairn.
As she followed Elide, the Lady of Perranth’s head still high, Aelin forced her own breathing to remain steady. To brace herself for what was to come. She could get through it. Push past the shaking in her hands, the cold sweat down her back. To learn what they needed, she could find some way to endure this next task.
Elide halted in the hall, Gavriel, Rowan, and Fenrys taking a step closer. No sign of Nesryn, Chaol, or Sartaq, though one shout would likely summon them in this festering warren.
Gods, the stench of this place. The feel of it.
She’d been debating for the past hour whether it was worth it to her sanity and stomach to shift back into her human form—to the blessed lesser sense of smell it offered.
Elide said to none of them in particular, “I don’t care what you do with him.”
“Do you care if he walks out alive?” Lorcan said with deadly calm.
Elide studied the male whose heart she held. “No.” Good, Aelin almost said. Elide added, “But make it quick.” Lorcan opened his mouth. Elide shook her head. “My father would wish it so.”
Punish them all, Kaltain had made Aelin once promise. And Vernon, from what Elide had told Aelin, seemed likely to have been at the top of Kaltain’s list.
“We need to question him first,” Rowan said. “See what he knows.”
“Then do it,” Elide said. “But when it’s time, make it quick.”
“Quick,” Fenrys mused, “but not painless?”
Elide’s face was cold, unyielding. “You can decide.”
Lorcan’s brutal smile told Aelin enough. So did the hatchet, twin to Rowan’s, gleaming at his side.
Her palms turned sweaty. Had been sweating since they’d bound up Vernon, since she’d seen the iron chains.
Aelin reached for her magic. Not the raging flame, but the cooling droplet of water. She listened to its silent song, letting it wash through her. And in its wake, she knew what she wished to do.
Lorcan took a step toward the chamber door, but Aelin blocked his path. She said, “Torture won’t get anything out of him.”
Even Elide blinked at that.
Aelin said, “Vernon likes to play games. Then I’ll play.”
Rowan’s eyes guttered. As if he could scent the sweat on her hands, as if he knew that doing it the old-fashioned way … it’d send her puking her guts up over the edge of the Northern Fang.
“Never underestimate the power of breaking a few bones,” Lorcan countered.
“See what you can get out of him,” Rowan said to her instead. Lorcan whirled, mouth opening, but Rowan snarled, “We can decide, here and now, what we wish to be as a court. Do we act like our enemies? Or do we find alternative methods to break them?”
Her mate met her stare, understanding shining there.
Lorcan still seemed ready to argue.
Above the phantom sting of chains on her wrists, the weight of a mask on her face, Aelin said, “We do it my way first. You can still kill him, but we try my way first.” When Lorcan didn’t object, she said, “We need some ale.”
Aelin slid the tankard of chilled ale across the table to where Vernon now sat, chains loosened enough for him to use his hands.
One false move, and her fire would melt him.
Only the Lion and Fenrys stood in the chamber, stationed by the doors.
Rowan and Lorcan had snarled at her order to stay in the hall, but Aelin had declared that they would only hinder her efforts here.
Aelin sipped from her own tankard and hummed. “An odd day, when one has to compliment their enemy’s good taste in ale.”
Vernon frowned at the tankard.
“It’s not poisoned,” Aelin said. “It’d defeat the purpose if it was.”
Vernon took a small sip. “I suppose you think plying me with ale and talking like we’re steadfast friends will get you what you want to know.”
“Would you prefer the alternative?” She smiled slightly. “I certainly don’t.”
“The methods may differ, but the end result will be the same.”
“Tell me something interesting, Vernon, and maybe it will change.”
His eyes swept over her. “Had I known you’d grow into such a queen, perhaps I would not have bothered to kneel for Adarlan.” A sly smile. “So different from your parents. Did your father ever torture a man?”
Ignoring the taunt, Aelin drank, swishing the ale in her mouth, as if it could wash away the taint of this place. “You tried and failed to win power for yourself. First by stealing it from Elide, then by trying to sell her to Erawan. Morath has sacked Perranth, and no doubt marches on Orynth, and yet we find you here. Hiding.” She drank again. “One might think Erawan’s favor had shifted elsewhere.”
“Perhaps he stationed me here for a reason, Majesty.”
Her magic had already felt him out. To make sure no heart of iron or Wyrdstone beat in his chest.
“I think you were cast aside,” she said, leaning back and crossing her arms. “I think you outlived your usefulness, especially after you failed to recapture Elide, and Erawan didn’t feel like entirely ridding himself of a lackey, but also didn’t want you skulking about. So here you are.” She waved a hand to the chamber, the mountain above them. “The lovely Ferian Gap.”
“It’s beautiful in the spring,” Vernon said.
Aelin smiled. “Again, tell me something interesting, and perhaps you’ll live to see it.”
“Do you swear it? On your throne? That you shall not kill me?” A glance
toward Fenrys and Gavriel, stone-faced behind her. “Nor any of your companions?”
Aelin snorted. “I was hoping you’d hold out longer before showing your hand.” She drained the rest of her ale. “But yes. I swear that neither me nor any of my companions will kill you if you tell us what you know.”
Fenrys started. All the confirmation Vernon needed that she meant it—that they had not planned it.
Vernon drank deeply from his ale. Then said, “Maeve has come to Morath.”
Aelin was glad she was sitting. She kept her face bored, bland. “To see Erawan?”
“To unite with him.”
CHAPTER 80
The room was spinning slightly. Even the droplet of her mother’s magic couldn’t steady her.
Worse. Worse than anything Aelin had imagined hearing from Vernon’s lips.
“Did Maeve bring her army?” Her cool, unruffled voice sounded far, far away.
“She brought no one but herself.”
“No army—none at all?”
Vernon drank again. “Not that I saw before Erawan packed me off on a wyvern in the dead of night. Claimed I had asked too many questions and I was better suited to be stationed here.”
Erawan or Maeve had to have known. Somehow. That they’d wind up here, and planted Vernon in their path. To tell them this.
“Did she say where her army was?” Not Terrasen—if it had gone ahead to Terrasen …
“She did not, but I assumed her forces had been left near the coast, to await orders on where to sail.”
Aelin shoved aside her rising nausea. “Did you learn what Maeve and Erawan plan to do?”
“Face you, I’d wager.”
She made herself lean back in her seat, her face bored, casual. “Do you know where Erawan keeps the third Wyrdkey?”
“What’s that?”
Not a misleading question. “A sliver of black stone—like the one planted in Kaltain Rompier’s arm.”
Vernon’s eyes shuttered. “She had the fire gift, too, you know. I tremble to think what might happen if Erawan put the stone within your arm.”
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