No sign of Rowan or Gavriel. But no grief on Lorcan’s face, nothing beyond urgency, given how he monitored the sky, the trees. Searching for any pursuit.
Aelin halted at the edge of the clearing. Her feet were bare, and the thin, short shift she wore revealed no major injuries.
But there was little recognition in Aelin’s eyes, shadowed with the mask.
Lorcan said to the queen, “We’ll wait here for them.”
Aelin, as if her body didn’t quite belong to her, lifted her shackled, metal-encased hands. The chain linking them had been severed, and hung in pieces off either manacle. The same with those at her ankles.
She tugged at one of the metal gauntlets. It didn’t budge.
She tugged again. The gauntlet didn’t so much as shift.
“Take it off.”
Her voice was low, gravelly.
Elide didn’t know which one of them she’d ordered, but before she could cross the clearing, Lorcan gripped the queen’s wrist to examine the locks.
One corner of his mouth tightened. There was no easy way to free them, then.
Elide approached, her limp deep once more with Gavriel’s magic occupied.
The gauntlets had been locked at her wrist, overlapping slightly with the shackle. Both had small keyholes. Both were made from iron.
Elide shifted slightly, bracing her weight on her uninjured leg, to get a view of where the mask was bound to the back of Aelin’s head.
That lock was more complicated than the others, the chains thick and ancient.
Lorcan had fitted the tip of a slender dagger into the lock of the gauntlet, and was now angling it, trying to pick the mechanism.
“Take it off.” The queen’s guttural words were swallowed by the moss-crusted trees.
“I’m trying,” Lorcan said—not gently, though certainly without his usual coldness.
The dagger scraped in the lock, but to no avail.
“Take it off.” The queen began trembling.
“I’m—”
Aelin snatched the dagger from him, metal clicking on metal as she fitted the blade’s tip into the lock. The dagger shook in her ironclad hand. “Take it off,” she breathed, lips curling back from her teeth. “Take it off. ”
Lorcan made to grab the dagger, but she angled away. He snapped, “These locks are too clever. We need a proper locksmith.”
Panting through her clenched teeth, Aelin dug and twisted the dagger into the gauntlet’s lock. A snap cracked through the clearing.
But not the lock. Aelin withdrew the dagger to reveal the broken, chipped point. A shard of metal tumbled from the lock and into the moss.
Aelin stared at the broken blade, at the shard in the greenery cushioning her bare, bloodied feet, her breaths coming faster and faster.
Then she dropped the dagger into the moss. Began clawing at the shackles on her arms, the gauntlets on her hands, the mask on her face. “Take it off,” she begged as she scratched and tugged and yanked. “Take it off!”
Elide reached a hand for her, to stop her before she ripped the skin clean off her bones, but Aelin dodged away, staggering deeper into the clearing.
The queen dropped to her knees, bowing over them, and clawed at the mask.
It didn’t so much as move.
Elide glanced to Lorcan. He was frozen, eyes wide as Aelin knelt in the moss, as her breathing became edged with sobs.
He had done this. Led them to this.
Elide stepped toward Aelin.
The queen’s gauntlets drew blood where they scraped into her neck, her jaw, as she heaved against the mask. “Take it off!” The plea turned into a scream. “Take it off!”
Over and over, the queen screamed it. “Take it off, take it off, take it off!”
She was sobbing amid her screaming, the sounds shattering through the ancient forest. She said no other words. Pleaded to no gods, no ancestors.
Only those words, again and again and again.
Take it off, take it off, take it off.
Movement broke through the trees behind them, and the fact that Lorcan did not go for his weapons told Elide who it was. But any relief was short-lived as Rowan and Gavriel emerged, a massive white wolf hauled between them. The wolf whose jaws had clamped around Elide’s arm, tearing flesh to the bone. Fenrys.
He was unconscious, tongue lagging from his bloodied maw. Rowan had barely entered the clearing before he set down the wolf and stalked for Aelin.
The prince was covered in blood. From his unhindered steps, Elide knew it wasn’t his.
From the blood coating his chin, his neck … She didn’t want to know.
Aelin ripped at the immovable mask, either unaware or uncaring of the prince before her. Her consort, husband, and mate.
“Aelin.”
Take it off, take it off, take it off.
Her screams were unbearable. Worse than those that day on the beach in Eyllwe.
Gavriel came to stand beside Elide, his golden skin pale as he took in the frantic queen.
Slowly, Rowan knelt before her. “Aelin.”
She only tipped her head up to the forest canopy and sobbed.
Blood ran down her neck from the scratches she’d dug into her skin, mingling with what already coated her.
Rowan reached out a trembling hand, the only sign of the agony Elide had little doubt was coursing through him. Gently, he laid his hands on her wrists; gently, he closed his fingers around them. Halting the brutal clawing and digging.
Aelin sobbed, her body shuddering with the force of it. “Take it off. ”
Rowan’s eyes flickered, panic and heartbreak and longing shining there. “I will. But you have to be still, Fireheart. Just for a few moments.”
“Take it off. ” The sobs ebbed, tricking into something broken and raw. Rowan ran his thumbs over her wrists, over those iron shackles. As if it were nothing but her skin. Slowly, her shaking eased.
No, not eased, Elide realized as Rowan rose to his feet and stalked behind the queen. But contained, turned inward. Tremors rippled through Aelin’s tense body, but she kept still as Rowan examined the lock.
Yet something like shock, then horror and sorrow, flashed over his face, as he surveyed her back. It was gone as soon as it appeared.
A glance, and Gavriel and Lorcan drifted to his side, their steps slow. Unthreatening.
Across the small clearing, Fenrys remained out, his white coat soaked with blood.
Elide only walked to Aelin and took up the spot where Rowan had been.
The queen’s eyes were closed, as if it took all her concentration to remain still for another heartbeat, to allow them to look, to not claw at the irons.
So Elide said nothing, demanded nothing from her, save for a companion if she needed one.
Behind Aelin, Rowan’s blood-splattered face was grim while he studied the lock fastening the mask’s chains to the back of her head. His nostrils flared slightly. Rage—frustration.
“I’ve never seen a lock like this,” Gavriel murmured.
Aelin began shaking again.
Elide put a hand on her knee. Aelin had scraped it raw, mud and grass stuck in her blood-crusted skin.
She waited for the queen to shove her hand away, but Aelin didn’t move. Kept her eyes shut, her ragged breathing holding steady.
Rowan gripped one of the chains binding the mask and nodded to Lorcan. “The other one.”
Silently, Lorcan grasped the opposite end. They’d sever the iron if they had to.
