She didn’t feel the cold slam into her bare skin, didn’t care as she collapsed to her knees.
Ansel was already there, slinging her cloak around her. “Where the hell have you been?”
Even the Queen of the Wastes was pale, her wine-red hair plastered to her head beneath the dirt and blood.
Lysandra had no speech left in her. Could only kneel, clutching the cloak.
“We move an hour before dawn,” Aedion said, the order a clear dismissal.
Ansel and Galan nodded, peeling out of the tent. Ren only murmured, “I’ll find you some food, Lady,” before he exited the tent.
Boots crunched in hay, and then he was knee to knee before her. Aedion.
There was nothing kind on his face. No pity or warmth.
For a long minute, they only stared at each other.
Then the prince growled softly, “Your plan was bullshit.”
She said nothing, and couldn’t stop her shoulders from curving inward.
“Your plan was bullshit,” he breathed, his eyes sparking. “How could you ever be her, wear her skin, and think to get away with it? How could you ever think you’d get around the fact that our armies are counting on you to burn the enemy to ashes, and all you can do is run away and emerge as some beast instead?”
“You don’t get to pin this retreat on me,” she rasped. The first words she’d spoken in days and days.
“You agreed to let Aelin go to her death, and leave us here to be slashed to bloody ribbons. You two told no one of this plan, told none of us who might have explained the realities of this war, and that we would need a gods-damned Fire-Bringer and not an untrained, useless shape-shifter against Morath.”
Blow after blow, the words landed upon her weary heart. “We—”
“If you were so willing to let Aelin die, then you should have let her do it after she incinerated Erawan’s hordes!”
“It would not have stopped Maeve from capturing her.”
“If you’d told us, we might have planned differently, acted differently, and we would not be here, damn you!”
She stared at the muddy hay. “Throw me out of your army, then.”
“You ruined everything.” His words were colder than the wind outside. “You, and her.”
Lysandra closed her eyes.
Hay rustled, and she knew he’d risen to his feet, knew it as his words speared from above her bowed head. “Get out of my tent.”
She wasn’t certain she could move enough to obey, though she wished to. Needed to.
Fight back. She should fight back. Rage at him as he lashed at her, needing an outlet for his fear and despair.
Lysandra opened her eyes, peering up at him. At the rage on his face, the hatred.
She managed to stand, her body bleating in pain. Managed to look him in the eye, even as Aedion said again with quiet cold, “Get out.”
Barefoot in the snow, naked beneath her cloak. Aedion glanced at her bare legs, as if realizing it. And not caring.
So Lysandra nodded, clutching Ansel’s cloak tighter, and strode into the frigid night.
“Where is she?” Ren asked, a mug of what smelled like watery soup in one hand, a chunk of bread in the other. The lord scanned the tent as if he would find her under the cot, the hay.
Aedion stared at the precious few logs burning in the brazier, and said nothing.
“What have you done?” Ren breathed.
Everything was about to end. Had been doomed since Maeve had stolen Aelin. Since his queen and the shifter had struck their agreement.
So it didn’t matter, what he’d said. He hadn’t cared if it wasn’t fair, wasn’t true.
Didn’t care if he was so tired he couldn’t muster shame at his pinning on her the blame for the sure defeat they’d face in a matter of days before Perranth’s walls.
He wished she’d smacked him, had screamed at him.
But she had let him rage. And had walked out into the snow, barefoot.
He’d promised to save Terrasen, to hold the lines. Had done so for years.
And yet this test against Morath, when it had counted … he had failed.
He’d muster the strength to fight again. To rally his men. He just … he needed to sleep.
Aedion didn’t notice when Ren left, undoubtedly in search of the shifter with whom he was so damned enamored.
He should summon his Bane commanders. See how they thought to manage this disaster.
But he couldn’t. Could do nothing but stare into that fire as the long night passed.
CHAPTER 35
She had not trusted this world, this dream. The companions who had walked with her, led her here. The warrior-prince with pine-green eyes and who smelled of Terrasen.
Him, she had not dared to believe at all. Not the words he spoke, but the mere fact that he was there. She did not trust that he’d removed the mask, the irons. They had vanished in other dreams, too—dreams that had proved false.
But the Little Folk had told her it was true. All of this. They had said it was safe, and she was to rest, and they would look after her.
And that terrible, relentless pressure writhing in her veins—it had eased. Just enough to think, to breathe and act beyond pure instinct.
She’d siphoned off as much as she dared, but not all. Certainly not all.
So she had slept. She’d done that, too, in those other dreams. Had lived through days and weeks of stories that then washed away like footprints in the sand.
Yet when she opened her eyes, the cave remained, dimmer now. The thrumming power had nestled deeper, slumbering. The ache in her ribs had faded, the slice down her forearm had healed—but the scab remained.
The only mark on her.
Aelin prodded it with a finger. Dull pain echoed in response.
Smooth—not the scab, but her finger. Smooth like glass as she rubbed the pads of her thumb and forefinger together.
No calluses. Not on her fingers, on her palms. Utterly blank, wiped of the imprint from the years of training, or the year in Endovier.
But this new scab, this faint throbbing beneath it—that remained, at least.
Curled on the rock floor, she took in the cave.
The white wolf lay at her back, snoring softly. Their sphere of transparent flame still burned around them, easing the strain ember by ember. But not wholly.
Aelin swallowed, tasting ash.
Her magic opened an eye in response.
Aelin sucked in a breath. Not here—not yet.
She whispered it to the flame. Not yet.
But the flame around her and the wolf flared and thickened, blotting out the cave. She clenched her jaw.
Not yet, she promised it. Not until it could be done safely. Away from them.
Her magic pushed against her bones, but she ignored it. Leashed it.
The bubble of flame shrunk, protesting, and grew transparent once more. Through it she could make out a water-carved basin, the slumbering forms of her other companions.
The warrior-prince slept only a few feet from the edge of her fire, tucked into an alcove in the cave wall. Exhaustion lay heavy upon him, though he had not disarmed himself.
A sword hung from his belt, its ruby smoldering in the light of her fire.
She knew that sword. An ancient sword, forged in these lands for a deadly war.
It had been her sword, too. Those erased calluses had fit its hilt so perfectly. And the warrior-prince now bearing it had found the sword for her. In a cave like this one, full of the relics of heroes long since sent to the Afterworld.
