To his credit, Dorian snarled and said, “Consider your words carefully, Father.”
“Oh?” The king raised a thick, scarred brow. “I had it on good authority that you were planning to run away with this healer. Why would you ever do such a thing?”
The prince’s throat bobbed, but he kept his head high. “Because I can’t stand the thought of her spending another minute in this festering shithole that you call a court.” Aedion couldn’t help but admire him for it—for yielding nothing until the king showed his hand. Smart man—brave man. But it might not be enough to get them out of this alive.
“Good,” the king said. “Neither can I.”
He waved a hand, and before Aedion could bark a warning, the guards separated the prince and the girl. Four held Dorian back, and two forced Sorscha to kneel with a kick behind the knees.
She cried out as she hit the marble, but went silent—the whole room went silent—as a third guard pulled a sword and placed it lightly on the back of her slender neck.
“Don’t you dare,” Dorian growled.
Aedion looked to Chaol, but the captain was frozen. These were not his guards. Their uniforms were those of the men who had hunted Ren. They had the same dead eyes, the same vileness, that had made him not at all regret killing their colleagues in the alley. He’d taken down six that night with minimal damage—how many could he cut down now? His gaze met the captain’s, and the captain flicked his eyes to the guard who held Aedion’s sword. That would be one of his first moves—get Aedion a sword so they could fight.
Because they would fight. They would fight their way out of this, or to their deaths.
The king said to Dorian, “I would choose your next words carefully, Prince.”
•
Chaol couldn’t start the fight, not with that sword resting on Sorscha’s neck. That was his first goal: get the girl out alive. Then Aedion. Dorian, the king wouldn’t kill—not here, not in this way. But Aedion and Sorscha had to get away. And that could not happen until the king called off the guard. Then Dorian spoke.
“Let her go and I’ll tell you anything.” Dorian took a step toward his father, palms out. “She has nothing to do with—with whatever this is. Whatever you think has happened.”
“But you do?” The king was still smiling. There was a carved, round bit of familiar black stone resting on the small table beside the king. From the distance, Chaol couldn’t see what it was, but it made his stomach turn over regardless. “Tell me, son: why were General Ashryver and Captain Westfall meeting these months?”
“I don’t know.”
The king clicked his tongue, and the guard raised his sword to strike. Chaol started forward as Sorscha sucked in a breath.
“No—stop!” Dorian flung out a hand.
“Then answer the question.”
“I am! You bastard, I am! I don’t know why they were meeting!”
The guard’s sword still remained up, ready to fall before Chaol could move an inch.
“Do you know that there has been a spy in my castle for several months now, Prince? Someone feeding information to my enemies and plotting against me with a known rebel leader?”
Shit. Shit. He had to mean Ren—the king knew who Ren was, had sent those men to hunt him down.
“Just tell me who, Dorian, and you can do whatever you wish with your friend.”
The king didn’t know, then—if it was he or Aedion or both of them who had been meeting with Ren. He didn’t know how much they’d learned about his plans, his control over magic. Aedion was somehow still keeping his mouth shut, somehow still looking ready for battle.
Aedion, who had survived for so long without hope, holding together his kingdom as best he could . . . who would never see the queen he so fiercely loved. He deserved to meet her, and she deserved to have him serve in her court.
Chaol took a breath, preparing himself for the words that would doom him.
But it was Aedion who spoke.
“You want a spy? You want a traitor?” the general drawled, and flung his replicated black ring on the floor. “Then here I am. You want to know why the captain and I were meeting? It was because your stupid bastard of a boy-captain figured out that I’d been working with one of the rebels. He’s been blackmailing information out of me for months to give to his father to offer you when the Lord of Anielle needed a favor. And you know what?” Aedion grinned at them all, the Northern Wolf incarnate. If the king was shocked about the ring, he didn’t show it. “All you monsters can burn in hell. Because my queen is coming—and she will spike you to the walls of your gods-damned castle. And I can’t wait to help her gut you like the pigs you are.” He spat at the king’s feet, right on top of the fake ring that had stopped bouncing.
It was flawless—the rage and the arrogance and the triumph. But as he stared each of them down, Chaol’s heart fractured.
Because for a flicker, as those turquoise eyes met with his, there was none of that rage or triumph. Only a message to the queen that Aedion would never see. And there were no words to convey it—the love and the hope and the pride. The sorrow at not knowing her as the woman she had become. The gift Aedion thought he was giving her in sparing Chaol’s life.
Chaol nodded slightly, because he understood that he could not help, not at this point—not until that sword was removed from Sorscha’s neck. Then he could fight, and he might still get them out alive.
Aedion didn’t struggle as the guards clapped shackles around his wrists and ankles.
“I’ve always wondered about that ring,” the king said. “Was it the distance, or some true strength of spirit that made you so unresponsive to its suggestions? But regardless, I am so glad that you confessed to treason, Aedion.” He spoke with slow, deliberate glee. “So glad you did it in front of all these witnesses, too. It will make your execution that much easier. Though I think . . .” The king smiled and looked at the fake black ring. “I think I’ll wait. Perhaps give it a month or two. Just in case any last-minute guests have to travel a long, long way for the execution. Just in case someone gets it into her head that she can rescue you.”
Aedion snarled. Chaol bit back his own reaction. Perhaps the king had never had anything on them—perhaps this had only been a ruse to get Aedion to confess to something, because the king knew that the general would offer up his own life instead of an innocent’s. The king wanted to savor this, and savor the trap that he had now set for Aelin, even if it cost him a fine general in the process. Because once she heard that Aedion was captured, once she knew the execution date . . . she would run to Rifthold.
“After she comes for you,” Aedion promised the king, “they’ll have to scrape what’s left of you off the walls.”
The king only smiled. Then he looked to Dorian and Sorscha, who seemed to be hardly breathing. The healer remained on the floor and did not lift her head as the king braced his massive forearms on his knees and said, “And what do you have to say for yourself, girl?”
She trembled, shaking her head.
“That’s enough,” Dorian snapped, sweat gleaming on his brow. The prince winced in pain as his magic was repressed by the iron in his system. “Aedion confessed; now let her go.”
“Why should I release the true traitor in this castle?”
•
Sorscha couldn’t stop shaking as the king spoke.
All her years of remaining invisible, all her training, first from those rebels in Fenharrow, then the contacts they’d sent her family to in Rifthold . . . all of it ruined.
“Such interesting letters you send to your friend. Why, I might not ever have read them,” the king said, “if you hadn’t left one in the rubbish for your superior to find. See—you rebels have your spies, and I have mine. And as soon as you decided to start using my son . . .” She coul
d feel the king smirking at her. “How many of his movements did you report to your rebel friends? What secrets of mine have you given away over the years?”
“Leave her alone,” Dorian growled. It was enough to set her crying. He still thought she was innocent.
And maybe, maybe he could get out of this if he was surprised enough by the truth, if the king saw his son’s shock and disgust.
So Sorscha lifted her head, even as her mouth trembled, even as her eyes burned, and stared down the King of Adarlan.
“You destroyed everything that I had, and you deserve everything that’s to come,” she said. Then she looked at Dorian, whose eyes were indeed wide, his face bone-white. “I was not supposed to love you. But I did. I do. And there is so much I wish . . . I wish we could have done together, seen together.”
The prince just stared at her, then walked to the foot of the dais and dropped to his knees. “Name your price,” he said to his father. “Ask it of me, but let her go. Exile her. Banish her. Anything—say it, and it will be done.”
She began shaking her head, trying to find the words to tell him that she hadn’t betrayed him—not her prince. The king, yes. She had reported his movements for years, in each carefully written letter to her “friend.” But never Dorian.
The king looked at his son for a long moment. He looked at the captain and Aedion, so quiet and so tall—beacons of hope for their future.
Then he looked again at his son, on his knees before the throne, on his knees for her, and said, “No.”
•
“No.”
Chaol thought he had not heard it, the word that cleaved through the air just before the guard’s sword did.
One blow from that mighty sword.
That was all it took to sever Sorscha’s head.
The scream that erupted out of Dorian was the worst sound that Chaol had ever heard.
Worse even than the wet, heavy thud of her head hitting the red marble.
Aedion began roaring—roaring and cursing at the king, thrashing against his chains, but the guards hauled him away, and Chaol was too stunned to do anything other than watch the rest of Sorscha’s body topple to the ground. And then Dorian, still screaming, was scrambling through the blood toward it—toward her head, as if he could put it back.
As if he could piece her together.
65
Chaol hadn’t been able to move a muscle from the moment the guard cut off Sorscha’s head to the moment Dorian, still kneeling in a pool of her blood, stopped screaming.
“That is what awaits traitors,” the king said to the silent room.
And Chaol looked at the king, at his shattered friend, and drew his sword.
The king rolled his eyes. “Put away your sword, Captain. I’ve no interest in your noble antics. You’re to go home to your father tomorrow. Don’t leave this castle in disgrace.”
Chaol kept his sword drawn. “I will not go to Anielle,” he growled. “And I will not serve you a moment longer. There is one true king in this room—there always has been. And he is not sitting on that throne.”
Dorian stiffened.
But Chaol went on. “There is a queen in the north, and she has already beaten you once. She will beat you again. And again. Because what she represents, and what your son represents, is what you fear most: hope. You cannot steal it, no matter how many you rip from their homes and enslave. And you cannot break it, no matter how many you murder.”
The king shrugged. “Perhaps. But maybe I can start with you.” He flicked his fingers at the guards. “Kill him, too.”
Chaol whirled to the guards behind him and crouched, ready to fight a path out for himself and Dorian.
Then a crossbow snapped and he realized there had been others in the room—hidden behind impossibly thick shadows.
He had only enough time to twist—to see the bolt firing for him with deadly accuracy.
Only enough time to see Dorian’s eyes widen, and the whole room plunge into ice.
•
The arrow froze midflight and dropped to the floor, shattering into a hundred pieces.
Chaol stared at Dorian in mute horror as his friend’s eyes glowed a deep, raging blue, and the prince snarled at the king, “Don’t you touch him.”
The ice spread across the room, up the legs of the shocked guards, freezing over Sorscha’s blood, and Dorian got to his feet. He raised both hands, and light shimmered along his fingers, a cold breeze whipping through his hair.
“I knew you had it, boy—” the king started, standing, but Dorian threw out a hand and the king was blasted into his chair by a gust of frozen wind, the window behind him shattering. Wind roared into the room, drowning out all sound.
All sound except Dorian’s words as he turned to Chaol, his hands and clothes soaked with Sorscha’s blood. “Run. And when you come back . . .” The king was getting to his feet, but another wave of Dorian’s magic slammed into him, knocking him down. There were tears staining Dorian’s bloody cheeks now. “When you come back,” the prince said, “burn this place to the ground.”
A wall of crackling black hurtled toward them from behind the throne.
“Go,” Dorian ordered, turning toward the onslaught of his father’s power.
Light exploded from Dorian, blocking out the wave, and the entire castle shook.
People screamed, and Chaol’s knees buckled. For a moment, he debated making a stand with his friend, right there and then.
But he knew that this had been the other trap. One for Aedion and Aelin, one for Sorscha. And this one—this one to draw out Dorian’s power.
Dorian had known it, too. Known it, and still walked into it so Chaol could escape—to find Aelin and tell her what had happened here today. Someone had to get out. Someone had to survive.
He looked at his friend, perhaps for the last time, and said what he had always known, from the moment they’d met, when he’d understood that the prince was his brother in soul. “I love you.”
Dorian merely nodded, eyes still blazing, and lifted his hands again toward his father. Brother. Friend. King.
As another wave of the king’s power filled the room, Chaol shoved through the still-frozen guards and fled.
•
Aedion knew everything had gone to hell as the castle shuddered. But he was already on his way to the dungeons, bound from head to toe.
It had been such an easy choice to make. When the captain had been about to take the fall for both of them, he’d thought only of Aelin, what it would do to her if her friend died. Even if he never got to see her, it was still better than having to face her when he explained that the captain was dead.
From the sound of it, it seemed the prince was providing a distraction so the captain could flee—and because there was no way in hell the prince would let his father go unpunished for that woman’s death. So Aedion Ashryver let himself be led into the darkness.
He did not bother with prayers, for himself or for the captain. The gods had not helped him these past ten years, and they would not save him now.
He did not mind dying.
Though he still wished he’d gotten a chance to see her—just once.
•
Dorian slammed into the marble floor, where the puddle of Sorscha’s blood had now melted.
Even as his father sent a wave of blinding, burning black power crashing onto him, filling his mouth and his veins; even as he screamed, all he could see was that moment—when the sword cut through flesh and tendon and bone. He could still see her wide eyes, her hair glimmering in the light as it, too, was severed.
He should have saved her. It had been so sudden.
But when the arrow had fired at Chaol . . . that was the death he could not endure. Chaol had drawn his line—and Dorian was on his side of it. Chaol had called h
im his king.
So revealing his power to his father did not frighten him.
No, to save his friend, dying did not scare him one bit.
The blast of power receded, and Dorian was left panting on the stones. He had nothing left.
Chaol had gotten away. It was enough.
He reached out an arm toward where Sorscha’s body lay. His arm burned—maybe it was broken, or maybe it was his father’s power still branding him—but he reached for her nonetheless.
By the time his father stood over him, he’d managed to move his hand a few inches.
“Do it,” Dorian rasped. He was choking—on blood and the gods knew what.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” his father said, digging a knee into his chest. “It won’t be death for you, my gifted son.”
There was something dark and gleaming in his father’s hands.
Dorian fought like hell against the guards now pinning his arms, trying to drag up any ounce of power as his father brought the collar of Wyrdstone toward his neck.
A collar, like the ones worn by those things Chaol had said were in the Dead Islands.
No—no.
He was screaming it—screaming it because he’d seen that creature in the catacombs, and heard what was being done to Roland and Kaltain. He had seen what a mere ring could do. This was an entire collar, with no visible keyhole . . .
“Hold him still,” his father barked, digging his knee in deeper.
The breath was sucked from his chest, and his ribs groaned in agony. But there was nothing Dorian could do to stop it.
He wrenched his arm from one of the guards—wrenched it free and reached, bellowing.
He had just touched Sorscha’s limp hand when cool stone gripped his throat, there was a faint click and hiss, and the darkness swept in to tear him apart.
•
Chaol ran. He did not have the time to take anything except what he had on him as he sprinted like hell for Dorian’s rooms. Fleetfoot was waiting, as she had been all night, and he scooped her over a shoulder and hauled her to Celaena’s room and into the secret passage. Down and down they went, the dog unusually obedient.
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