A shard of glass plunged into the side of his neck. He staggered back, cursing as blood sprayed.
Aelin whirled, glass ripping her soles apart, and hurled the shard in her other hand. Right at Maeve.
It missed by a hairsbreadth. Scraping Maeve’s pale cheek before clattering off the throne behind her. The owl perched just above it screeched.
Rough hands gripped her, Cairn shouting, raging shrieks of You little bitch, but she didn’t hear them. Not as a trickle of blood snaked down Maeve’s cheek.
Black blood. As dark as night.
As dark as the eyes that the queen fixed on her, a hand rising to her cheek.
Aelin’s legs slackened, and she didn’t fight the guards heaving her away.
A blink, and the blood flowed red. Its scent as coppery as her own.
A trick of the light. A hallucination, another dream—
Maeve peered at the crimson stain coating her pale fingers.
An onyx wind snapped for Aelin, wrapping around her neck.
It squeezed, and she knew no more.
CHAPTER 9
Cairn tied her to the altar and left her.
Fenrys didn’t enter until long after she’d awoken.
The blood was still leaking from where Cairn had also left the glass in her legs, her feet.
It was not a wolf who slipped into the stone chamber, but a male.
Each of Fenrys’s steps told her enough before she beheld the deadness of his eyes, the pallor of his usually golden skin. He stared at nothing, even as he stopped before where she lay chained.
Beyond words, unsure her throat would even work, Aelin blinked three times. Are you all right?
Two blinks answered. No.
Lingering salt tracks streaked his cheeks.
Her chains rustled as she stretched a shaking finger toward him.
Silently, he slid his hand into hers.
She mouthed the words, even though he likely couldn’t make them out with the slit of the mask’s mouth. I’m sorry.
His grip only tightened.
His gray jacket was unbuttoned at the top. It gaped open wide enough to reveal a hint of the muscled chest beneath. As if he hadn’t bothered to seal it back up in his hurry to leave.
Her stomach turned over. What he’d undoubtedly had to do afterward, with his twin’s body still lying on the veranda tiles behind him …
“I didn’t know he hated me so much,” Fenrys rasped.
Aelin squeezed his hand.
Fenrys closed his eyes, drawing in a shaking breath. “She gave me leave only to take out the glass. When it’s out, I—I go back over there.” He pointed with his chin toward the wall where he usually sat. He made to examine her legs, but she squeezed his hand again, and blinked twice. No.
Let him stay in this form for a while longer, let him mourn as a male and not a wolf. Let him stay in this form so she could hear a friendly voice, feel a gentle touch—
She began to cry.
She couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop it once it started. Hated every tear and shuddering breath, every jerk of her body that sent lightning through her legs and feet.
“I’ll get them out,” he said, and she couldn’t tell him, couldn’t start to explain that it wasn’t the glass, the shredded skin down to the bone.
He wasn’t coming. He wasn’t coming to get her.
She should be glad. Should be relieved. She was relieved. And yet … and yet …
Fenrys drew out a pair of pincers from the tool kit that Cairn had left on a table nearby. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, Aelin turned her head away while the first piece of glass slid from her knee. Flesh and sinew sundered anew.
Salt overpowered the tang of her blood, and she knew he was crying. The scent of their tears filled the tiny room as he worked.
Neither of them said a word.
CHAPTER 10
The world had become only freezing mud, and red and black blood, and the screams of the dying rising to the frigid sky.
Lysandra had learned these months that battle was no orderly, neat thing. It was chaos and pain and there were no grand, heroic duels. Only the slashing of her claws and the rip of her fangs; the clash of dented shields and bloodied swords. Armor that had once been distinguishable quickly turned gore-splattered, and were it not for the dark of her enemy’s colors, Lysandra wasn’t entirely certain how she would have discerned ally from foe.
Their lines held. At least they had that much.
Shield to shield and shoulder to shoulder in the snowy field that had since become a mud pit, they’d met the legion Erawan had marched through Eldrys.
Aedion had picked the field, the hour, the angle of this battle. The others had pushed for instant attack, but he’d let Morath march far enough inland—right to where he wanted them. Location was as important as numbers, was all he’d said.
Not to Lysandra, of course. He barely said a damn word to her these days.
Now certainly wasn’t the time to think of it. To care.
Their allies and soldiers believed Aelin Galathynius remained en route to them, allowing Lysandra to don the ghost leopard’s form. Ren Allsbrook had even commissioned plated armor for the leopard’s chest, sides, and flanks. So light as to not be a hindrance, but solid enough that the three blows she’d been too slow to stop—an arrow to the side, then two slashes from enemy swords—had been deflected.
Little wounds burned along her body. Blood matted the fur of her paws from the slaughtering she’d done amongst the front lines and being torn open on fallen swords and snapped arrows.
But she kept going, the Bane holding firm against what had been sent to meet them.
Only five thousand.
Only seemed like a ridiculous word, but it was what Aedion and the others had used.
Barely enough to be an army, considering Morath’s full might, but large enough to pose a threat.
To them, Lysandra thought as she lunged between two Bane warriors and launched herself upon the nearest Valg foot soldier.
The man had his sword upraised, poised to strike the Bane soldier before him. With the angle of his head as he brought the blade up, the Valg grunt didn’t spy his oncoming death until her jaws were around his exposed neck.
Hours into this battle, it was instinct to clamp down, flesh splitting like a piece of ripe fruit.
She was moving again before he hit the earth, spitting his throat onto the mud, leaving the advancing Bane to decapitate his corpse. How far away that courtesan’s life in Rifthold now seemed. Despite the death around her, she couldn’t say she missed it.
Down the line, Aedion bellowed orders to the left flank. They’d let rest some of the Bane upon hearing how few Erawan had sent, and had filled the ranks with a mixture of soldiers from the Lords of Terrasen’s own small forces and those from Prince Galan Ashryver and Queen Ansel of the Wastes, both of whom had additional warriors on the way.
No need to reveal they had a small battalion of Fae soldiers courtesy of Prince Endymion and Princess Sellene Whitethorn, or that the Silent Assassins of the Red Desert were amongst them, too. There would be a time when the surprise of their presence would be needed, Aedion had argued during the quick war council they’d conducted upon returning to the camp. Lysandra, winded from carrying him, Ren, and Murtaugh without rest from Allsbrook to the edges of Orynth, had barely listened to the debate. Aedion had won, anyway.
