Empire of Storms

by Sarah J. Maas

  And Aedion’s eyes went right to the golden-haired man—one of two, but … there was no denying which one was … his.

  Gavriel set his fork on his half-eaten plate.

  He wore clothes like Rowan’s—and like the Fae Prince, he was heavily armed, even at breakfast.

  Aelin was the other side of his fair coin, but Gavriel was a murky reflection. The honed, broad features; the harsh mouth—that was where he’d gotten them from. The cropped golden hair was different; more sunshine to Aedion’s shoulder-length honey gold. And Aedion’s skin was Ashryver golden—not the sun-kissed, deep tan.

  Slowly, Gavriel stood. Aedion wondered if he’d also inherited that grace, the predatory stillness, the unreadable, intent face—or if they’d both been trained that way.

  The Lion incarnate.

  He’d wanted to do it this way, little more than an ambush, so his father wouldn’t have time to prepare pretty speeches. He wanted to see what his father would do when confronted with him, what sort of male he was, how he reacted to anything—

  The other warrior, Fenrys, was glancing between them, a fork still raised to his open mouth.

  Aedion made himself walk, knees surprisingly steady, even if his body felt as if it belonged to someone else. Lysandra kept at his side, solid and bright-eyed. With every step he took, his father surveyed him, face yielding nothing, until—

  “You look … ,” Gavriel breathed, sinking into his chair. “You look so much like her.”

  Aedion knew Gavriel didn’t mean Aelin. Even Fenrys looked at the Lion now, at the grief rippling in those tawny eyes.

  But Aedion barely remembered his mother. Barely recalled anything more than her dying, wrecked face.

  So he said, “She died so your queen wouldn’t get her claws on me.”

  He wasn’t sure his father was breathing. Lysandra stepped closer, a solid rock in the thrashing sea of his rage.

  Aedion pinned his father with a look, not sure where the words came from, the wrath, but there they were, snapping from his lips like whips. “They could have cured her in the Fae compounds, but she wouldn’t go near them, wouldn’t let them come for fear of Maeve”—he spat the name—“knowing I existed. For fear I’d be enslaved to her as you were.”

  His father’s tan face had drained of all color. Whatever Gavriel had suspected until now, Aedion didn’t care. The Wolf snarled at the Lion, “She was twenty-three years old. She never married, and her family shunned her. She refused to tell anyone who’d sired me, and took their disdain, their humiliation, without an ounce of self-pity. She did it because she loved me, not you.”

  And he suddenly wished he’d asked Aelin to come, so he could tell her to burn this warrior into ashes like that commander in Ilium, because looking at the face—his face … he hated him. He hated him for the twenty-three-year-old his mother had been, younger than he now was when she’d died, alone and sorrowful.

  Aedion growled, “If your bitch of a queen tries to take me, I’ll slit her throat. If she hurts my family any more than she already has, I’ll slit yours, too.”

  His father rasped, “Aedion.”

  The sound of the name his mother had given him on his lips … “I want nothing from you. Unless you plan to help us, in which case I will not object to the … assistance. But beyond that, I want nothing from you.”

  “I’m sorry,” his father said, those Lion’s eyes full of such grief Aedion wondered if he’d just struck a male already down.

  “I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” he said, turning toward the door.

  His father’s chair scraped against the floor. “Aedion.”

  Aedion kept walking, Lysandra falling into place beside him.

  “Please,” his father said as Aedion’s hand clamped down on the handle.

  “Go to hell,” Aedion said, and left.

  He didn’t return to the Ocean Rose. And he couldn’t stand to be around people, to be around their sounds and smells. So he strode for the dense mountain above the bay, losing himself in the jungle of leaves and shade and damp soil. Lysandra stayed a step behind him, silent as he was.

  It wasn’t until he’d found a rocky outcropping jutting from the side of the mountain to overlook the bay, the town, the pristine waters beyond, that he paused. That he sat. And breathed.

  Lysandra sat beside him on the flat rock, crossing her legs beneath her.

  He said, “I didn’t expect to say any of that.”

  She was gazing toward the nearby watchtower nestled at the base of the mountain. He watched her green eyes survey the lower level where Ship-Breaker was wrapped around a massive wheel, the spiraling exterior staircase up the tower itself, all the way up to the upper levels, where a catapult, and a turret-mounted, massive harpoon—or was it a giant crossbow?—was locked into place, its wielder’s seat and arrow aimed at an invisible enemy in the bay below. With the size of the weapon and the machine that had been rigged to launch it into the bay, he had no doubt it could smash through a hull and do lethal damage to a ship. Or spear three men on it.

  Lysandra said simply, “You spoke from your heart. Perhaps it’s good he heard that.”

  “We need them to work with us. I might have made an enemy of him.”

  She tucked her hair over a shoulder. “Trust me, Aedion, you have not. If you’d told him to crawl over hot coals, he would have.”

  “He’ll realize soon enough who, exactly, I am, and perhaps not be so desperate.”

  “Who, exactly, do you think you are?” She frowned at him. “Adarlan’s Whore? Is that what you still think of yourself? The general who held his kingdom together, who saved his people when they were forgotten even by their own queen—that’s the man I know.” She snarled softly, and not at him. “And if he starts pointing fingers, I’ll remind him that he’s served that bitch in Doranelle for centuries without question.”

  Aedion snorted. “I’d pay good money to see you go toe-to-toe with him. And Fenrys.”

  She nudged him with an elbow. “You say the word, General, and I’ll transform into the face of their nightmares.”

  “And what creature is that?”

  She gave him a knowing little smile. “Something I’ve been working on.”

  “I don’t want to know, do I?”

  White teeth flashed. “No, you really don’t.”

  He laughed, surprised he could even do so. “He’s a handsome bastard, I’ll give him that.”

  “I think Maeve likes to collect pretty men.”

  Aedion snorted. “Why not? She has to deal with them for eternity. They might as well be pleasant to look at.”

  She laughed again, and the sound loosed a weight from his shoulders.

  Bearing both Goldryn and Damaris for once, Aelin walked into the Sea Dragon two hours later and wished for the days when she could sleep without the dread or urgency of something pulling at her.

  Wished for the days when she might have had the time to bed her gods-damned lover and not choose to catch a few hours of sleep instead.

  She’d meant to. Last night, they’d returned to the inn, and she’d bathed faster than she’d ever washed before. She’d even emerged from the bathing room naked … and found her Fae Prince asleep atop the glowingly white bed, still clothed, looking for all the world like he’d intended to close his eyes while she washed.

  And the heavy exhaustion on him … She let Rowan rest. Had curled up beside him above the blankets, still naked, and had been unconscious before her head had settled against his chest. There would be a time, she knew, when they would not be able to sleep so safely, so soundly.

  A grand total of five minutes before Lysandra barged in, Rowan had awoken—and begun the process of awakening her, too. Slowly, with taunting, proprietary strokes down her bare torso, her thighs, accented with little biting kisses to her mouth, her ear, her neck.

  But as soon as Lysandra had thundered through the room to steal clothes for Aedion, as soon as she’d explained where Aedion was going … the interr
uption had lasted. Made her remember what, exactly, she needed to accomplish today. With a man currently inclined to kill her and a scattered, petrified fleet.

  Gavriel and Fenrys were now sitting with Rolfe at the table in the back of the taproom, no sign of Aedion, both a bit wide-eyed as she swaggered in.

  She might have preened at the look, had Rowan not prowled in right behind her, already prepared to slit their throats.

  Rolfe shot to his feet. “What are you doing here?”

  “I would be very, very careful how you speak to her today, Captain,” Fenrys said with more wariness and consideration than she’d seen him use yesterday. His eyes were fixed on Rowan, who was indeed watching Rolfe as if he were dinner. “Choose your words wisely.”

  Rolfe glanced at Rowan, saw his face, and seemed to get it.

  Maybe that caution would make Rolfe more inclined to agree to her request today. If she played it right. If she’d played all of it right.

  Aelin gave Rolfe a little smile and leaned against the vacant table beside theirs, the chipped gold lettering on the slats reading Mist-Cutter. Rowan took up a spot beside her, his knee brushing hers. Like even a few feet of distance was unbearable.

  But she smiled a bit wider at Rolfe. “I came to see if you’d changed your mind. About my alliance.”

  Rolfe drummed his tattooed fingers on the table, right over some gilded letters that read Thresher. And beside it … a map of the continent had been spread between Rolfe and the Fae warriors.

  Not the map she really, truly needed now that she knew the damn thing worked, but—Aelin stiffened at what she beheld.

  “What is that,” she said, noting the silver figurines camped across the middle of the continent, an impenetrable line from the Ferian Gap to the mouth of the Avery. And the additional figures in the Gulf of Oro. And in Melisande and Fenharrow and near Eyllwe’s northern border.

  Gavriel, looking a bit like someone had knocked him in the head—gods, how had the meeting with Aedion gone?—said before Rolfe could get his throat ripped out by Rowan with whatever response he had brewing, “Captain Rolfe received word this morning. He wanted our counsel.”

  “What is this,” she said, stabbing a finger near the main line of figures stretched across the middle of the continent.

  “It’s the latest report,” Rolfe drawled, “of the locations of Morath’s armies. They have moved into position. Aid to the North is now impossible. And they stand poised to strike Eyllwe.”

  33

  “Eyllwe has no standing army,” Aelin said, feeling the blood drain from her face. “There is nothing and no one to fight after this spring—save for rebel militia bands.”

  Rowan said to Rolfe, “Do you have exact numbers?”

  “No,” the captain said. “The news was given only as a warning—to keep any shipments away from the Avery. I wanted their opinions”—a nod of the chin toward the cadre—“for handling it. Though I suppose I should have invited you, too, since they seem intent on telling you my business.”

  None of them deigned to respond. Aelin scanned that line—that line of armies.

  Rowan said, “How fast do they move?”

  “The legions departed Morath nearly three weeks ago,” Gavriel supplied. “They moved faster than any army I’ve ever seen.”

  The timing of it…

  No. No—no, it couldn’t be because of Ilium, because she’d taunted him…

  “It’s an extermination,” Rolfe said baldly.

  She closed her eyes, swallowing hard. Even the captain didn’t dare speak.

  Rowan slid a hand along her lower back, a silent comfort. He knew—was piecing it together, too.

  She opened her eyes, that line burning into her vision, her heart, and said, “It’s a message. For me.” She unfurled her fist, gazing at the scar there.

  “Why attack Eyllwe, though?” Fenrys asked. “And why move into position but not sack it?”

  She couldn’t say the words aloud. That she’d brought this upon Eyllwe by mocking Erawan, because he knew who Celaena Sardothien had cared for, and he wanted to break her spirit, her heart, by showing her what his armies could do. What they would do, whenever he now felt like it. Not to Terrasen … but to the kingdom of the friend she’d loved so dearly.

  The kingdom she had sworn to protect, to save.

  Rowan said, “We have personal ties to Eyllwe. He knows it matters to her.”

  Fenrys’s eyes lingered on her, scanning. But Gavriel, voice steady, said, “Erawan now holds everything south of the Avery. Save for this archipelago. And even here, he has a foothold in the Dead End.”

  Aelin stared at that map, at the space that now seemed so small to the north.

  To the west, the vast expanse of the Wastes spread beyond the mountainous continental divide. And her gaze snagged on a small name along the western coast.

  Briarcliff.

  The name clanged through her, shuddering her awake, and she realized they’d been talking, debating how such an army might move so quickly over the terrain.

  She rubbed her temple, staring at that speck on the map.

  Considering the life debt owed to her.

  Her gaze dragged down—south. To the Red Desert. Where another life debt, many life debts, waited for her to claim them.

  Aelin realized they had asked her something, but she didn’t care to figure it out as she said quietly to Rolfe, “You’re going to give me your armada. You’re going to arm it with those firelances I know you’ve ordered, and you will ship any extras to the Mycenian fleet when they arrive.”

  Silence.

  Rolfe barked a laugh and sat again. “Like hell I am.” He waved that tattooed hand over the map, the waters inked on it churning and changing in some pattern she wondered if only he could read. A pattern she needed him to be able to read, to find that Lock. “This just shows how utterly outmatched you are.” He chewed over her words. “The Mycenian fleet is little more than a myth. A bedside tale.”

  Aelin looked to the hilt of Rolfe’s sword, to the inn itself and his ship anchored just outside.

  “You are the heir of the Mycenian people,” Aelin said. “And I have come to claim the debt you owe my bloodline on that account, too.”

  Rolfe did not move, did not blink.

  “Or were all the sea dragon references from some personal fetish?” Aelin asked.

  “The Mycenians are gone,” Rolfe said flatly.

  “I don’t think so. I think they have been hiding here, in the Dead Islands, for a long, long time. And you somehow managed to claw your way back to power.”

  The three Fae males were glancing between them.

  Aelin said to Rolfe, “I have liberated Ilium from Adarlan. I took back the city—your ancient home—for you. For the Mycenians. It is yours, if you dare to claim your people’s inheritance.”

  Rolfe’s hand shook slightly. He fisted it, tucking it beneath the table.

  She allowed a flicker of her magic to rise to the surface then, allowed the gold in her eyes to glow like bright flame. Gavriel and Fenrys straightened as her power filled the room, filled the city. The Wyrdkey between her breasts began thrumming, whispering.

  She knew there was nothing human, nothing mortal on her face.

  Knew it because Rolfe’s golden-brown skin had paled to a sickly sheen.

  She closed her eyes and loosed a breath.

  The tendril of power she’d gathered rippled away in an invisible line. The world shuddered in its wake. A city bell chimed once, twice, in its force. Even the waters in the bay shivered as it swept past and out into the archipelago.

  When Aelin opened her eyes, the mortality had returned.

  “What the rutting hell was that?” Rolfe at last demanded.

  Fenrys and Gavriel became very interested in the map before them.

  Rowan said smoothly, “Milady has to release bits of her power daily or it can consume her.”

  Despite herself, despite what she’d done, she decided she wanted Rowan to call
her milady at least once every day.

  Rowan continued on, pressing Rolfe about the moving army. The Pirate Lord, who Lysandra had confirmed weeks ago was Mycenian thanks to Arobynn’s own spying on his business partners, seemed barely able to speak, thanks to the offer she’d laid out for him. But Aelin merely waited.

  Aedion and Lysandra arrived after some time—and her cousin only spared Gavriel a passing glance as he stood over the map and fell into that general’s mindset, demanding details large and minute.

  But Gavriel silently stared up at his son, watching her cousin’s eyes dart over the map, listening to the sound of his voice as if it were a song he was trying to memorize.

  Lysandra drifted to the window, monitoring the bay.

  Like she could see that ripple Aelin had sent out into the world.

  The shifter had told Aedion by now—of why they had truly gone to Ilium. Not only to see Brannon, not only to save its people … but for this. She and the shifter had hatched the plan during the long night watches together on the road, considering all pitfalls and benefits.

  Dorian strolled in ten minutes later, his eyes going straight to Aelin. He’d felt it, too.

  The king gave a polite greeting to Rolfe, then remained silent as he was briefed on the positioning of Erawan’s armies. Then he slid into a seat beside her while the other males continued discussing supply routes and weapons, being led in circle after circle by Rowan.

  Dorian just gave her an unreadable glance and folded his ankle over a knee.

  The clock struck eleven, and Aelin rose to her feet in the middle of whatever Fenrys had been saying about various armor and Rolfe possibly investing in the ore to supply the demand.

  Silence fell again. Aelin said to Rolfe, “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  And then turned away. She made it a step before he demanded, “That’s it?”

  She looked over her shoulder, Rowan approaching her side. Aelin let a bit of that flame rise to the surface. “Yes. If you will not give me an armada, if you will not unite what is left of the Mycenians and return to Terrasen, then I’ll find someone else who will.”

  “There is no one else.”