Before Falkan could figure it out, Fenrys stepped forward. “Shifter?”
But Nesryn said, “And Lysandra’s uncle.”
Aelin slumped into the chair beside Chaol’s. Rowan laid a hand on her shoulder, and when she looked up, she found him near laughter. “What’s so funny, exactly?” she hissed.
Rowan smirked. “That for once, you are the one who gets knocked on your ass by a surprise.”
Aelin stuck out her tongue. Borte grinned, and Aelin winked at the girl.
But Falkan said to Aelin and her companions, “You know my niece.”
His brother must have been a great deal older to have sired Lysandra. There was nothing of Falkan in her friend’s face, though Lysandra had also forgotten her original form.
“Lysandra is my friend, and Lady of Caraverre,” Aelin said. “She is not with us,” she added upon Falkan’s hopeful glance toward the tent flaps. “She’s in the North.”
Borte had gone back to studying the Fae males. Not their considerable beauty, but their size, their pointed ears, their weapons and elongated canines. Aelin whispered conspiratorially to the girl, “Make them roll over before you offer them a treat.”
Lorcan glared, but Fenrys shifted in a flash, the enormous white wolf filling the space.
Hasar swore, Sartaq backing away a step, but Borte beamed. “You are all truly Fae, then.”
Gavriel, ever the gallant knight, sketched a bow. Lorcan, the bastard, just crossed his arms.
Yet Rowan smiled at Borte. “Indeed we are.”
Borte whirled to Aelin. “Then you are Aelin Galathynius. You look just how Nesryn said.”
Aelin grinned at Nesryn, the woman leaning against Sartaq’s side. “I hope you only said horrible things about me.”
“Only the worst,” Nesryn said with dead flatness, though her mouth twitched.
But Falkan whispered, “The queen,” and fell to his knees.
Hasar laughed. “He never showed that sort of awe when he met us.”
Sartaq lifted his brows. “You told him to turn into a rat and scuttle away.”
Aelin hoisted up Falkan by the shoulder. “I can’t have my friend’s uncle kneeling on the ground, can I?”
“You said you were an assassin.” Falkan’s eyes were so wide the whites around them gleamed. “You stole horses from the Lord of Xandria—”
“Yes, yes,” Aelin said, waving a hand. “It’s a long story, and we’re in the middle of a war council, so …”
“Piss off?” Falkan finished.
Aelin laughed, but glanced to Nesryn and Sartaq. The former jerked her chin to Falkan. “He’s become our spy of sorts. He joins us in these meetings.”
Aelin nodded, then winked at the shifter. “I suppose you didn’t need me to slay that stygian spider after all.”
But Falkan tensed, his attention going to Nesryn and Sartaq, to Borte, still gawking at the Fae males. “Do they know?”
Aelin had a feeling she’d need to sit down again. Chaol indeed patted the chair beside him, earning a chuckle from Yrene.
Doing herself a favor, Aelin indeed sat, Rowan taking up his place behind her, both of his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. His thumb ran along the nape of her neck, then drifted over the mating marks again scarring one side thanks to the seawater they’d used to seal them.
But as her muscles soothed beneath that loving touch, her soul with it, her breath remained tight.
It didn’t get any better when Nesryn said, “The stygian spiders are Valg.”
Silence.
“We encountered their kin, the kharankui, deep in the Dagul Fells. They came into this world through a temporary crack between realms, and remained afterward to guard the entrance, should it ever reappear.”
“This cannot end well,” Fenrys muttered. Elide hummed her agreement.
“They feed on dreams and years and life,” Falkan said, a hand on his own chest. “As my friends have said the Valg do.”
Aelin had seen Valg princes drain a human of every last drop of youth and vigor and leave only a dried corpse behind. She wouldn’t put it past the spiders to have a similar gift.
“What does this mean for the war?” Rowan asked, his thumbs still stroking Aelin’s neck.
“Will they join Erawan’s forces is the better question,” Lorcan challenged with a face like stone.
“They do not answer to Erawan,” Nesryn said quietly, and Aelin knew. Knew from the look Chaol gave her, the sympathy and fear, knew in her bones before Nesryn even finished. “The stygian spiders, the kharankui, answer to their Valg queen. The only Valg queen. To Maeve.”
CHAPTER 50
Rowan’s hands tightened on Aelin’s shoulders as the words settled into her, hollow and cold. “Maeve is a Valg queen?” he breathed.
Aelin said nothing. Couldn’t find the words.
Her power roiled. She didn’t feel it.
Nesryn nodded solemnly. “Yes. The kharankui told us the entire history.”
And so Nesryn did as well. Of how Maeve had somehow found a way into this world, fleeing or bored with her husband, Orcus. Erawan’s elder brother. Of how Erawan, Orcus, and Mantyx had torn apart worlds to find her, Orcus’s missing wife, and only halted here because the Fae had risen to challenge them. Fae led by Maeve, whom the Valg kings did not know or recognize, in the form she had taken.
The life she had crafted for herself. The minds of all the Fae who had existed that she had ripped into, convincing them that there had been three queens, not two. Including the minds of Mab and Mora, the two sister-queens who had ruled Doranelle. Including Brannon himself.
“The spiders claimed,” Nesryn went on, “that even Brannon didn’t know. Even now, in the Afterworld, he doesn’t know. That was how deep Maeve’s powers went into his mind, into all their minds. She made herself their true queen.”
The words, the truth, pelted Aelin, one after another.
Elide’s face was white as death. “But she fears the healers.” A nod toward Yrene. “She keeps that owl, you said—an enslaved Fae healer—should the Valg ever discover her.”
For that was the other piece of it. The other thing Nesryn had revealed, Chaol and Yrene adding in their own accounts.
The Valg were parasites. And Yrene could cure their human hosts of them. Had done so for Princess Duva. And might be able to do with so many others enslaved with rings or collars.
But what had infested Duva … A Valg princess.
Aelin leaned back into her chair, her head resting against the solid wall of Rowan’s body. His hands shook against her shoulders. Shook as he seemed to realize what, exactly, had ripped into his mind. Where Maeve’s power had come from that allowed her to do so. Why she remained deathless and ageless, and had outlasted any other. Why Maeve’s power was darkness.
“It is also why she fears fire,” Sartaq said, jerking his chin to Aelin. “Why she fears you so.”
And why she’d wanted to break her. To be just like that enslaved healer bound in owl form at her side.
“I thought—I managed to cut her once,” Aelin said at last. That quiet, ancient darkness pushed in, dragging her down, down, down—“I saw her blood flow black. Then it changed to red.” She blew out a breath, pulling out of the darkness, the silence that wanted to devour her whole. Made herself straighten. Peer at Fenrys. “You said that her blood tasted ordinary to you when you swore the oath.”
The white wolf shifted back into his Fae body. His bronze skin was ashen, his dark eyes swimming with dread. “It did.”
Rowan growled, “It didn’t taste any different to me, either.”
“A glamour—like the form she maintains,” Gavriel mused.
Nesryn nodded. “From what the spiders said, it seems entirely possible that she would be able to convince you that her blood looked and tasted like Fae blood.”
Fenrys made a sound like he was going to be sick. Aelin was inclined to do the same.
And from far away—a memory-that-was-not-a-memory stirred. Of summer nights spent in a forest glen, Maeve instructing her. Telling her a story about a queen who walked between worlds.
Who had not been content in the realm in which she’d been born, and had found a way to leave it, using the lost knowledge of ancient wayfarers. World-walkers.
Maeve had told her. Perhaps a skewed, biased tale, but she’d told her. Why? Why do it at all? Some way to win her—or to make her hesitate, should it ever come to this?
“But Maeve hates the Valg kings,” Elide said, and even from the silent, drifting place to which Aelin had gone, she could see the razor-sharp mind churning behind Elide’s eyes. “She’s hidden for this long. Surely she wouldn’t ally with them.”
“She ran at the chance to get hold of a Valg collar,” Fenrys said darkly. “Seemed convinced that she could control the prince inside it.”
Not only through Maeve’s power, but because she was a demon queen.
Aelin forced herself to take another breath. Another. Her fingers curled, gripping an invisible weapon.
Lorcan had not uttered a word. Had done nothing but stand there, pale and silent. As if he’d stopped being in his body, too.
“We don’t know her plans,” Nesryn said. “The kharankui have not seen her for millennia, and only hear whisperings carried by lesser spiders. But they still worship her, and wait for her return.”
Chaol met Aelin’s stare, his gaze questioning.
Aelin said quietly, “I was Maeve’s prisoner for two months.”
Utter silence in the tent. Then she explained—all of it. Why she was not in Terrasen, who now fought there, where Dorian and Manon had gone.
Aelin swallowed as she finished, leaning into Rowan’s touch. “Maeve wished me to reveal the location of the two Wyrdkeys. Wanted me to hand them over, but I managed to get them away before she took me. To Doranelle. She wanted to break me to her will. To use me to conquer the world, I thought. But it perhaps now seems she wanted to use me as a shield against the Valg, to guard her always.” The words tumbled out, heavy and sharp. “I was her captive until nearly a month ago.” She nodded toward her court. “When I got free, they found me again.”
Silence fell again, her new companions at a loss. She didn’t blame them.
Then Hasar hissed, “We’ll make the bitch pay for that, too, won’t we?”
Aelin met the princess’s dark stare. “Yes, we will.”
The truth had slammed into Rowan like a physical blow.
Maeve was Valg.
A Valg queen. Whose estranged husband had once invaded this world and, if Chaol was correct, wished to enter it again, should Erawan succeed in opening the Wyrdgate.
He knew his cadre, or whatever they were now called, was in shock. Knew he himself had fallen into some sort of stupor.
The female they’d served, bowed to … Valg.
They had been so thoroughly deceived they had not even tasted it in her blood.
Fenrys looked like he was going to empty the contents of his stomach onto the tent floor. For him, the truth would be the most horrendous.
Lorcan’s face remained cold and blank. Gavriel kept rubbing his jaw, his eyes swimming with dismay.
Rowan loosed a long breath.
A Valg queen.
That’s who had held his Fireheart. What sort of power had tried to break into her mind.
What power had broken into Rowan’s mind. All their minds, if she could glamour her blood to look and taste ordinary.
He felt the tension rising in Aelin, a raging storm that nearly hummed into his hands as he gripped her shoulders.
Yet her flames made no appearance. They hadn’t shown so much as an ember these weeks, despite how hard they’d trained.
Occasionally, he’d spy Goldryn’s ruby gleaming while she held it, as if fire glowed in the heart of the stone. But nothing more.
Not even when they’d tangled in their bed on the ship, when his teeth had found that mark on her neck.
Elide surveyed them all, their silence, and said to their new companions, “Perhaps we should determine a plan of action regarding tomorrow’s battle.” And give them time, later tonight, to sort through this colossal mess.
Chaol nodded. “We brought a trunk of books with us,” he said to Aelin. “From the Torre. They’re all full of Wyrdmarks.” Aelin didn’t so much as blink, but Chaol finished, “If we get through this battle, they’re yours to peruse. In case there’s anything in them that might help.” Against Erawan, against Maeve, against his mate’s terrible fate.
Aelin just vaguely nodded.
So Rowan forced himself to shove away the shock and disgust and fear, and focus upon the plan ahead. Only Gavriel seemed able to do the same, Fenrys staying where he was, and Lorcan just staring and staring at nothing.
Aelin remained in her chair, simmering. Roiling.
They planned it quickly and efficiently: they would return with Chaol and Yrene to the keep, to help with the fighting tomorrow. The khaganate royals would push from here, Nesryn and Prince Sartaq leading the ruks, and Princess Hasar commanding the foot soldiers and Darghan cavalry.
A brilliantly trained, lethal group. Rowan had already marked the Darghan soldiers, with their fine horses and armor, their spears and crested helmets, while they’d strode for this tent, and breathed a sigh of relief at their skill. Perhaps the last sigh of relief he’d have in this war. Certainly if the khagan’s forces hadn’t yet decided where they would take this army afterward.
He supposed it was fair—so many territories were now in Morath’s path—but when this battle was over, he’d make damn sure they marched northward. To Terrasen.
But tomorrow—tomorrow they’d hammer Morath’s legion against the keep walls, Chaol and Rowan leading the men from inside, picking off enemy soldiers.
Aelin didn’t volunteer to do anything. Didn’t indicate that she’d heard them.
And when they’d all deemed the plan sound, along with a contingency plan should it go awry, Nesryn only said, “We’ll find you ruks to carry you back to the keep,” before Aelin stormed into the frigid night, Rowan barely keeping up with her.
No embers trailed her. Mud did not hiss beneath her boots.
There was no fire at all. Not a spark.
As if Maeve had snuffed out that flame. Made her fear it.
Hate it.
Aelin cut through the neatly organized tents, past horses and their armored riders, past foot soldiers around campfires, past the ruk riders and their mighty birds, who filled him with such awe he had no words for it. All the way to the eastern edge of the camp and the plains that stretched past, the space wide and hollow after the closeness of the army.
She didn’t stop until she reached a stream they’d crossed only hours ago. It was nearly frozen over, but a stomp of her boot had the ice cracking. Breaking free to reveal dark water kissed with silvery starlight.
Then she fell to her knees and drank.
Drank and drank, cupping the water to her mouth. It had to be cold enough to burn, but she kept at it until she braced her hands on her knees and said, “I can’t do this.”
Rowan sank to a knee, the shield he’d kept around her while she stalked here sealing out the cold wind off the open plain.
“I—I can’t—” She took a shuddering breath, and covered her face with her wet hands.
Gently, Rowan gripped her wrists and lowered them. “You do not face this alone.”
Anguish and terror filled those beautiful eyes, and his chest tightened to the point of pain as she said, “It was a fool’s shot against Erawan. But against him and Maeve? She gathered an army to her. Is likely bringing that army to Terrasen right now. And if Erawan summons his two brothers, if the other kings return—”
“He needs the two other keys to do that. He doesn’t have them.”
Her fingers curled, digging into her palms hard enough that the tang of her blood filled the air. “I should have gone after the keys. Right away. Not come here. Not done this.”
“It is Dorian’s task now, not yours. He will not fail at it.”
“It is my task, and always has been—”
“We made the choice to come here, and we will stick to that decision,” he snarled, not bothering to temper his tone. “If Maeve is indeed bringing her army to Terrasen, then it only confirms that we were right to come here. That we must convince the khagan’s forces to go northward after this. It is the only chance we stand of succeeding.”
Aelin ran her hands through her hair. Streams of blood stained the gold. “I cannot win against them. Against a Valg king and queen.” Her voice turned to a rasp. “They have already won.”
“They have not.” And though Rowan hated each word, he growled, “And you survived two months against Maeve with no magic to protect you. Two months of a Valg queen trying to break into your head, Aelin. To break you.”
Aelin shook. “She did, though.”
Rowan waited for it.
Aelin whispered, “I wanted to die by the end, before she ever threatened me with the collar. And even now, I feel like someone has ripped me from myself. Like I’m at the bottom of the sea, and who I am, who I was, is far up at the surface, and I will never get back there again.”
He didn’t know what to say, what to do other than to gently pull her fingers from her palms.
“Did you buy the swagger, the arrogance?” she demanded, voice breaking. “Did the others? Because I’ve been trying to. I’ve been trying like hell to convince myself that it’s real, reminding myself I only need to pretend to be how I was just long enough.”
Long enough to forge the Lock and die.
He said softly, “I know, Aelin.” He hadn’t bought the winks and smirks for a heartbeat.
Aelin let out a sob that cracked something in him. “I can’t feel me—myself anymore. It’s like she snuffed it out. Ripped me from it. She, and Cairn, and everything they did to me.” She gulped down air, and Rowan wrapped her in his arms and pulled her onto his lap. “I am so tired,” she wept. “I am so, so tired, Rowan.”
“I know.” He stroked her hair. “I know.” It was all there really was to say.
Rowan held her until her weeping eased and she lay still, nestled against his chest.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.
“You fight,” he said simply. “We fight. Until we can’t anymore. We fight.”
She sat up, but remained on his lap, staring into his face with a rawness that destroyed him.
Rowan laid a hand on her chest, right over that burning heart. “Fireheart.”
A challenge and a summons.
She placed her hand atop his, warm despite the frigid night. As if that fire had not yet gone out entirely. But she only gazed up at the stars. To the Lord of the North, standing watch. “We fight,” she breathed.
Aelin found Fenrys by a quiet fire, gazing into the crackling flames.
She sat on the log beside him, raw and open and trembling, but … the salt of her tears had washed away some of it. Steadied her. Rowan had steadied her, and still did, as he kept watch from the shadows beyond the fire.
Fenrys lifted his head, his eyes as hollow as she knew hers had been.
“Whenever you need to talk about it,” she said, her voice still hoarse, “I’m here.”
Fenrys nodded, his mouth a tight line. “Thank you.”
The camp was readying for their departure, but Aelin scooted closer, and sat beside him in silence for long minutes.
Two healers, marked only by the white bands around their biceps, hurried past, arms full of bandages.
Aelin tensed. Focused on her breathing.
Fenrys marked her line of sight. “They were horrified, you know,” he said quietly. “Every time she brought them in to … fix you.”
The two healers vanished around a tent. Aelin flexed her fingers, shaking the lightness from them. “It didn’t stop them from doing it.”
“They didn’t have a choice.”
She met his dark stare. Fenrys’s mouth tightened. “No one would have left you in those states. No one.”
Broken and bloody and burned—
She gripped Goldryn’s hilt. Helpless.
“They defied her in their own way,” Fenrys went on. “Sometimes, she’d order them to bring you back to consciousness. Often, they claimed they couldn’t, that you’d fallen too deeply into oblivion. But I knew—I think Maeve did, too—that they put you there. For as long as possible. To buy you time.”
She swallowed. “Did she punish them?”
“I don’t know. It was never the same healers.”
Maeve likely had. Had likely ripped their minds apart for their defiance.
Aelin’s grip tightened on the sword at her side.
Helpless. She had been helpless. As so many in this city, in Terrasen, in this continent, were helpless.
Goldryn’s hilt warmed in her hand.
She wouldn’t be that way again. For whatever time she had left.
Gavriel padded up beside Rowan, took one look at the queen and Fenrys, and murmured, “Not the news we needed to hear.”
Rowan closed his eyes for a heartbeat. “No, it was not.”
Gavriel settled a hand on Rowan’s shoulder. “It changes nothing, in some ways.”
“How.”
“We served her. She was … not what Aelin is. What a queen should be. We knew that long before we knew the truth. If Maeve wants to use what she is against us, to ally with Morath, then it changes things. But the past is over. Done with, Rowan. Knowing Maeve is Valg or just a wretched person doesn’t change what happened.”
“Knowing a Valg queen wants to enslave my mate, and nearly did so, changes a great deal.”
“But we know what Maeve fears, why she fears it,” Gavriel countered, his tawny eyes bright. “Fire, and the healers. If Maeve comes with that army of hers, we are not defenseless.”
It was true. Rowan could have cursed himself for not thinking of it already. Another question formed, though. “Her army,” Rowan said. “It’s made up of Fae.”
“So was her armada,” Gavriel said warily.
Rowan ran a hand through his hair. “Will you be able to live with it—fighting our own people?” Killing them.
“Will you?” Gavriel countered.
Rowan didn’t answer.
Gavriel asked after a moment, “Why didn’t Aelin offer me the blood oath?”
The male hadn’t asked these weeks. And Rowan wasn’t sure why Gavriel inquired now, but he gave him the truth. “Because she won’t do it until Aedion has taken the oath first. To offer it to you before him … she wants Aedion to take it first.”
“In case he doesn’t wish me to be near his kingdom.”
“So that Aedion knows she placed his needs before her own.”
Gavriel bowed his head. “I would say yes, if she offered.”
“I know.” Rowan clapped his oldest friend on the back. “She knows, too.”
The Lion gazed northward. “Do you think … we haven’t heard any news from Terrasen.”
“If it had fallen, if Aedion had fallen, we would know. People here would know.”
Gavriel rubbed at his chest. “We’ve been to war. He’s been to war. Fought on battlefields as a child, gods be damned.” Rage flickered over Gavriel’s face. Not at what Aedion had done, but what he’d been made to do by fate and misfortune. What Gavriel had not been there to prevent. “But I still dread every day that passes and we hear nothing. Dread every messenger we see.”
A terror Rowan had never known, different from his fear for his mate, his queen. The fear of a father for his child.
He didn’t allow himself to look toward Aelin. To remember his dreams while hunting for her. The family he’d seen. The family they’d make together.
“We must convince the khaganate royals to march northward when this battle is over,” Gavriel swore softly.
Rowan nodded. “If we can smash this army tomorrow, and convince the royals that Terrasen is the only course of action, then we could indeed be heading north soon. You might be fighting at Aedion’s side by Yulemas.”
Gavriel’s hands clenched at his sides, tattoos spreading over his knuckles. “If he will allow me that honor.”
Rowan would make Aedion allow it. But he only said, “Gather Elide and Lorcan. The ruks are almost ready to depart.”
CHAPTER 51
Lorcan lingered by the edge of the ruk encampment, barely taking in the magnificent birds or their armored riders as they settled down for the night. A few, he knew, would not yet find their rest, instead bearing them and needed supplies back to the keep towering over the city and plain.
He didn’t care, didn’t marvel that he was soon to be airborne on one of those incredible beasts. Didn’t care that tomorrow, they would all take on the dark army gathered beyond.
He’d fought in more battles, more wars, than he cared to remember. Tomorrow would be little different, save for the demons they’d slay, rather than men or Fae.
Demons like his former queen, apparently.
He had offered himself to her, had wanted her, or believed he did. And she had laughed at him. He didn’t know what it meant. About her, about himself.
He’d thought his darkness, Hellas’s gifts, had been drawn to her, that they’d been matched.
Perhaps the dark god had wanted him not to swear fealty to Maeve, but to kill her. To get close enough to do so.
Lorcan didn’t adjust his cape against the gust of frigid air off the distant lake. Rather, he leaned into the cold, into the ice on the wind. As if it might rip away the truth.
“We’re leaving.”
Elide’s low voice cut through the roaring silence of his thoughts.
“The ruks are ready,” she added.
There was no fear or pity on her face, her black hair gilded by the torches and campfires. Of all of them, she’d mastered the news with little difficulty, stepping up to the desk as if she’d been born on a battlefield.
“I didn’t know,” he said, voice strained.
Elide knew what he meant. “We have bigger things to worry about anyway.”
He took a step toward her. “I didn’t know,” he said again.
She tipped her head back to study his face and pursed her mouth, a muscle ticking in her jaw. “Do you want me to give you some sort of absolution for it?”
“I served her for nearly five hundred years. Five hundred years, and I just thought her to be immortal and cold.”
“That sounds like the definition of a Valg to me.”
He bared his teeth. “You live for eons and see what it does to you, Lady.”
“I don’t see why you’re so shocked. Even with her being immortal and cold, you loved her. You must have accepted those traits. What difference does it make what we call her, then?”
“I didn’t love her.”
“You certainly acted like you did.”
Lorcan snarled, “Why is that the point you keep returning to, Elide? Why is it the one thing you cannot let go of?”
“Because I’m trying to understand. How you could come to love a monster.”
“Why?” He pushed into her space. She didn’t balk one step.
Indeed, her eyes were blazing as she hissed, “Because it will help me understand how I did the same.”
Her voice snagged on the last words, and Lorcan stilled as they settled into them. He’d never … he’d never had anyone who—
“Is it a sickness?” she demanded. “Is it something broken within you?”
“Elide.” Her name was a rasp on his lips. Lorcan dared reach a hand for her.
But she pulled out of reach. “If you think that because you swore the blood oath to Aelin, it means anything for you and me, you’re sorely mistaken. You’re immortal—I’m human. Let us not forget that little fact, either.”
Lorcan nearly recoiled at the words, their horrible truth. He was five hundred years old. He should walk away—he shouldn’t be so damned bothered by any of this. And yet Lorcan snarled, “You’re jealous. That’s what truly eats away at you.”
Elide barked a laugh that he’d never heard before, cruel and sharp. “Jealous? Jealous of what? That demon you served?” She squared her shoulders, a wave cresting before it smashed into the shore. “The only thing that I am jealous of, Lorcan, is that she is rid of you.”
Lorcan hated that the words landed like a blow. That he had no defenses left where she was concerned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of it, Elide.”
There, he’d said it, and laid it out before her. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
But Elide’s face did not warm. “I don’t care,” she said, turning on her heel. “And I don’t care if you walk off that battlefield tomorrow.”
Jealous. The idea of it, of being jealous of Maeve for commanding Lorcan’s affection for centuries. Elide limped toward the readying party of ruks, grinding her teeth so hard her jaw ached.
She was almost to the first of the saddled birds when a voice said behind her, “You should have ignored him.”
Elide halted, finding Gavriel following. “Pardon me?”
The Lion’s usually warm face was grave—disapproving. “You might as well have kicked a male already down.”
Elide hadn’t uttered a cross word to Gavriel in all the time she’d known him, but she said, “I don’t see how this is any of your business.”
“I have never heard Lorcan apologize for anything. Even when Maeve whipped him for a mistake, he did not apologize to her.”
“And that means he earns my forgiveness?”
“No. But you have to realize that he swore the blood oath to Aelin for you. For no one else. So he could remain near you. Even knowing well enough that you will have a mortal lifespan.”
The birds shifted on their feet, rustling their wings in anticipation of flight.
She knew. Had known it the moment he’d knelt before Aelin. Weeks later, Elide hadn’t known what to do with it, the knowledge that Lorcan had done this for her. The longing to talk to him, to work with him as they had. She’d hated herself for it. For not trying to hold on to her anger longer.
It was why she’d gone after him tonight. Not to punish him, but herself. To remind herself of who he’d sold their queen to, how profoundly mistaken she had been.
And her parting line to him … it was a lie. A disgusting, hateful lie.
Elide turned to Gavriel again. “I don’t—”
The Lion was gone. And for the cold flight over the army, then over the sea of darkness spread between it and the ancient city, even that wise voice who had whispered for the entirety of her life had gone quiet.
Nesryn lingered by Salkhi, a hand on her mount’s feathered side, and watched the party soar into the skies. The twenty ruks hadn’t just been bearing Aelin Galathynius and her companions, Chaol and Yrene included, but also more healers, supplies, and a few horses, hooded and corralled into wooden pens that the birds could carry. Including Chaol’s own horse, Farasha.
“I wish I could go with them,” Borte sighed from where she was rubbing down Arcas. “To fight alongside the Fae.”
Nesryn gave her an amused, sidelong glance. “You’ll get that opportunity soon enough, if we march to Terrasen after this.”
Nearby, a distinctly male snort of derision sounded.
“Go eavesdrop on someone else, Yeran,” Borte snapped toward her betrothed.
But the Berlad captain only answered back, “A fine commander you are, mooning over the Fae like a doe-eyed girl.”
Borte rolled her eyes. “When they teach me their killing techniques and I use them to wipe you off the map at our next Gathering, you can tell me all about my mooning.”
The handsome captain stormed over from his own ruk, and Nesryn ducked her head to hide her smile, finding herself immensely interested in brushing Salkhi’s brown feathers. “You’ll be my wife then, according to your bargain with my hearth-mother,” he said, crossing his arms. “It would be unseemly for you to kill your own husband in the Gathering.”
Borte smiled with poisoned sweetness at her betrothed. “I’ll just have to kill you some other time, then.”
Yeran grinned back, the portrait of wicked amusement. “Some other time, then,” he promised.
Nesryn didn’t fail to note the light that gleamed in the captain’s eyes. Or the way Borte bit her lip, just barely, her breath hitching.
Yeran leaned in to whisper something in Borte’s ear that made the girl’s eyes widen. And apparently stunned her enough that when Yeran prowled to his ruk, the portrait of swaggering arrogance, Borte blushed furiously and returned to cleaning her ruk.
“Don’t ask,” she muttered.
Nesryn held up her hands. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Borte’s blush remained for minutes afterward, her cleaning near-frantic.
Easy, graceful steps sounded in the snow, and Nesryn knew who approached before the rukhin even straightened to attention. Not at the fact that Sartaq was prince and Heir, but that he was their captain. Of all the rukhin in this war, not just the Eridun aerie.
He waved them off, scanning the night sky and ruks still soaring, shielded by Rowan Whitethorn from any enemy arrows that might find their mark. Sartaq had barely come up beside Nesryn when Borte patted Arcas, tossed her brush into her supply pack, and walked into the night.
Not to give them privacy, Nesryn realized. Not when Yeran prowled from his own ruk’s side a heartbeat later, trailing Borte at a lazy pace. The girl looked over her shoulder once, and there was anything but annoyance on her face as she noted Yeran at her heels.
Sartaq chuckled. “At least they’re a little more clear about it now.”
Nesryn snorted, brush gliding over Salkhi’s feathers. “I’m as confused as ever.”
“The riders whose tents lie on either side of Borte’s aren’t.”
Nesryn’s brows rose, but she smiled. “Good. Not about the riders, but—about them.”
“War does strange things to people. Makes everything more urgent.” He ran a hand down the back of her head, his fingers twining in her hair before he murmured in her ear, “Come to bed.”
Heat flared through her body. “We’ve a battle to launch tomorrow. Again.”
“And a day of death has made me want to hold you,” the prince said, giving her that disarming grin she had no defenses against. Especially as he added, “And do other things with you.”
Nesryn’s toes curled in her boots. “Then help me finish cleaning Salkhi.”
The prince lunged so fast for the brush Borte had discarded that Nesryn laughed.
CHAPTER 52
The Crochans had returned to their camp in the Fangs and waited.
Manon and the Thirteen dismounted from the wyverns. Something churned in her gut with each step toward Glennis’s fire. The strip of red fabric at the end of her braid became a millstone, weighing her head down.
They were almost to Glennis’s hearth when Bronwen fell into step beside Manon.
Asterin and Sorrel, trailing behind, tensed, but neither interfered. Especially not as Bronwen asked, “What happened?”
Manon glanced sidelong at her cousin. “I asked them to consider their position in this war.”
Bronwen frowned at the sky, as if expecting to see the Ironteeth trailing them. “And?”
“And we’ll see, I suppose.”
“I thought you went there to rally them.”
“I went,” Manon said, baring her teeth, “to make them contemplate who they wish to be.”
“I didn’t think Ironteeth were capable of such things.”
Asterin snarled. “Careful, witch.”
Bronwen threw her a mocking smile over a shoulder, then said to Manon, “They let you walk out alive?”
“They did indeed.”
“Will they fight—will they turn on Morath and the other Ironteeth?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t. She truly didn’t.
Bronwen fell silent for a few steps. Manon had just entered the ring of Glennis’s hearth when the witch said, “We shouldn’t have bothered to hope, then.”
Manon had no answer, so she walked away, the Thirteen not giving Bronwen a passing glance.
Manon found Glennis stirring the coals of her hearth, the sacred fire in its center a bright lick of flame that needed no wood to burn. A gift from Brannon—a piece of Terrasen’s queen here.
