That, should they succeed in their quest to find Aelin, the young queen would still be expected to pay the ultimate price to those gods. If Dorian Havilliard and Manon Blackbeak were able to recover the third and final Wyrdkey. If the young king didn’t offer himself up as the sacrifice in Aelin’s stead.
So Elide endured those occasional nudges, refusing to contemplate what manner of creature had taken such an interest in her. In all of them.
Elide had discarded those thoughts as they’d combed through the streets, listening for any whisper of Maeve’s location. The sun had set, Rowan snarling with each passing hour that yielded nothing. As all other cities had yielded nothing.
Elide had made them keep strolling the merry streets, unnoticed and unmarked. She’d reminded Rowan each time he flashed his teeth that there were eyes in every kingdom, every land. And if word got out that a group of Fae warriors was terrorizing cities in their search for Maeve, surely it would get back to the Fae Queen in no time.
Night had fallen, and in the rolling golden hills beyond the city walls, bonfires had kindled.
Rowan had finally stopped growling at the sight. As if they had tugged on some thread of memory, of pain.
But then they’d passed by a group of Fae soldiers out drinking and Rowan had gone still. Had sized the warriors up in that cold, calculating way that told Elide he’d crafted some plan.
When they’d ducked into an alley, the Fae Prince had laid it out in stark, brutal terms.
A week later, and here they were. The shouting grew in the building above.
Elide grimaced as the cracking wood overpowered the ringing city bells. “Should we help?”
Gavriel ran a tattooed hand through his golden hair. The names of warriors who had fallen under his command, he’d explained when she’d finally dared ask last week. “He’s almost done.”
Indeed, even Lorcan now scowled with impatience at the window above Elide and Gavriel.
As the noon bells finished pealing, the shutters burst open.
Shattered was a better word for it as two Fae males came flying through them.
One of them, brown-haired and bloodied, shrieked while he fell.
Prince Rowan Whitethorn said nothing while he fell with him. While he held his grip on the male, teeth bared.
Elide stepped aside, giving them ample space while they crashed into the pile of crates in the alley, splinters and debris soaring.
She knew a gust of wind kept the fall from being fatal for the broad-shouldered male, whom Rowan hauled from the wreckage by the collar of his blue tunic.
He was of no use to them dead.
Gavriel drew a knife, remaining by Elide’s side as Rowan slammed the stranger against the alley wall. There was nothing kind in the prince’s face. Nothing warm.
Only cold-blooded predator. Hell-bent on finding the queen who held his heart.
“Please,” the male sputtered. In the common tongue.
Rowan had found him, then. They couldn’t hope to track Maeve, Rowan had realized on Samhuinn. Yet finding the commanders who served Maeve, spread across various kingdoms on loan to mortal rulers—that, they could do.
And the male Rowan snarled at, his own lip bleeding, was a commander. A warrior, from the breadth of his shoulders to his muscled thighs. Rowan still dwarfed him. Gavriel and Lorcan, too. As if, even amongst the Fae, the three of them were a wholly different breed.
“Here’s how this goes,” Rowan said to the sniveling commander, his voice deadly soft. A brutal smile graced the prince’s mouth, setting the blood from his split lip running. “First I break your legs, maybe a portion of your spine so you can’t crawl.” He pointed a bloodied finger down the alley. To Lorcan. “You know who that is, don’t you?”
As if in answer, Lorcan prowled from the archway. The commander began trembling.
“The leg and spine, your body would eventually heal,” Rowan went on as Lorcan continued his stalking approach. “But what Lorcan Salvaterre will do to you …” A low, joyless laugh. “You won’t recover from that, friend.”
The commander cast frantic eyes toward Elide, toward Gavriel.
The first time this had happened—two days ago—Elide hadn’t been able to watch. That particular commander hadn’t possessed any information worth sharing, and given the unspeakable sort of brothel they’d found him in, Elide hadn’t really regretted that Rowan had left his body at one end of the alley. His head at the other.
But today, this time … Watch. See, a small voice hissed in her ear. Listen.
Despite the heat and sun, Elide shuddered. Clenched her teeth, bottling up all the words that swelled within her. Find someone else. Find a way to use your own powers to forge the Lock. Find a way to accept your fates to be trapped in this world, so we needn’t pay a debt that wasn’t ours to begin with.
Yet if Anneith now spoke when she had only nudged her these months … Elide swallowed those raging words. As all mortals were expected to. For Aelin, she could submit. As Aelin would ultimately submit.
Gavriel’s face held no mercy, only a grim sort of practicality as he beheld the shaking commander dangling from Rowan’s iron grip. “Tell him what he wants to know. You’ll only make it worse for yourself.”
Lorcan had nearly reached them, a dark wind swirling about his long fingers.
There was nothing of the male she’d come to know on his harsh face. At least, the male he’d been before that beach. No, this was the mask she’d first seen in Oakwald. Unfeeling. Arrogant. Cruel.
The commander beheld the power gathering in Lorcan’s hand, but managed to sneer at Rowan, blood coating his teeth. “She’ll kill all of you.” A black eye already bloomed, the lid swollen shut. Air pulsed at Elide’s ears as Rowan locked a shield of wind around them. Sealing in all sound. “Maeve will kill every last one of you traitors.”
“She can try,” was Rowan’s mild reply.
See, Anneith whispered again.
When the commander began screaming this time, Elide did not look away.
And as Rowan and Lorcan did what they’d been trained to do, she couldn’t decide if Anneith’s order had been to help—or a reminder of precisely what the gods might do should they disobey.
CHAPTER 3
The Staghorns were burning, and Oakwald with them.
The mighty, ancient trees were little more than charred husks, ash thick as snow raining down.
Embers drifted on the wind, a mockery of how they had once bobbed in her wake like fireflies while she’d run through the Beltane bonfires.
So much flame, the heat smothering, the air itself singeing her lungs.
You did this you did this you did this.
The crack of dying trees groaned the words, cried them.
The world was bathed in fire. Fire, not darkness.
Motion between the trees snared her attention.
The Lord of the North was frantic, mindless with agony, as he galloped toward her. As smoke streamed from his white coat, as fire devoured his mighty antlers—not the immortal flame held between them on her own sigil, the immortal flame of the sacred stags of Terrasen, and of Mala Fire-Bringer before that. But true, vicious flames.
The Lord of the North thundered past, burning, burning, burning.
She reached a hand toward him, invisible and inconsequential, but the proud stag plunged on, screams rising from his mouth.
Such horrible, relentless screams. As if the heart of the world were being shredded.
She could do nothing when the stag threw himself into a wall of flame spread like a net between two burning oaks.
He did not emerge.
The white wolf was watching her again.
Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius ran an ironclad finger over the rim of the stone altar on which she lay.
As much movement as she could manage.
Cairn had left her here this time. Had not bothered moving her to the iron box against the adjacent wall.
A rare reprieve. To wake not in darkness, but in flickering firelight.
The braziers were dying, beckoning in the damp cold that pressed to her skin. To whatever wasn’t covered by the iron.
She’d already tugged on the chains as quietly as she could. But they held firm.
They’d added more iron. On her. Starting with the metal gauntlets.
She did not remember when that was. Where that had been. There had only been the box then.