Aelin glanced to Rowan, seated beside her, but not touching. Her fingers curled in her lap. A blink into the gloom was the only indication that he was aware of her every movement.
Aelin breathed in his scent, let its strength settle into her a bit deeper.
Dorian and Manon might be anywhere. To hunt for the witch and king would be a fool’s errand. Their paths would meet again, or they would not. And if he found the final key and then brought it to her, she would pay what the gods demanded. What she owed Terrasen, the world.
Yet if Dorian chose to end it himself, to forge the Lock … her stomach churned. He had the power. As much as she did, if not more so.
It was meant to be her sacrifice. Her blood shed to save them all. To let him claim it …
She could. She must. With Erawan no doubt unleashing himself on Terrasen, with Maeve’s army likely to cause them untold grief, she could let Dorian do this. She trusted him.
Even if she might never forgive herself for it.
Her debt, it was supposed to have been her debt to pay. Perhaps the punishment for failing to do so would be having to live with herself. Having to live with all that had been done to her these months, too.
The blackness of the subterranean river pressed in, wrapped its arms around her and squeezed.
Different from the blackness of the iron box. The darkness she’d found inside herself.
A place she might never escape, not really.
Her power stirred, awakening. Aelin swallowed, refusing to acknowledge it. Heed it.
She wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not yet. Until she was ready.
She had seen Rowan’s face when she spoke of what his deception with the collar had prompted her to do. Had noted the way her companions looked at her, pity and fear in their eyes. At what had been done to her, what she’d become.
A new body. A foreign, strange body, as if she’d been ripped from one and shoved into another. Different from moving between her forms, somehow. She hadn’t tried shifting into her human body yet. Didn’t see the point.
Sitting in silence as the boat was pulled through the gloom, she felt the weight of those stares. Their dread. Felt them wondering just how broken she was.
You do not yield.
She knew that had been true—that it had been her mother’s voice who had spoken and none other.
So she would not yield to this. What had been done. What remained.
For the companions around her, to lift their despair, their fear, she wouldn’t yield.
She’d fight for it, claw her way back to it, who she’d been before. Remember to swagger and grin and wink. She’d fight against that lingering stain on her soul, fight to ignore it. Would use this journey into the dark to piece herself back together—just enough to make it convincing.
Even if this fractured darkness now dwelled within her, even if speech was difficult, she would show them what they wished to see.
An unbroken Fire-Bringer. Aelin of the Wildfire.
She would show the world that lie as well. Make them believe it.
Maybe she’d one day believe it, too.
CHAPTER 37
Days of near-silent travel passed.
Three days, if whatever senses Rowan and Gavriel possessed proved true. Perhaps the latter carried a pocket watch. Aelin didn’t particularly care.
She used each of those days to consider what had been done, what lay before her. Sometimes, the roar of her magic drowned out her thoughts. Sometimes it slumbered. She never heeded it.
They sailed through the darkness, the river below so black that they might as well have been drifting through Hellas’s realm.
It was near the end of the fourth day through the dark and rock, their escorts hauling the boat tirelessly, that Rowan murmured, “We’re entering barrow-wight territory.”
Gavriel twisted from his spot by the prow. “How can you tell?”
Sprawled beside him, still in wolf form, Fenrys cocked his ears forward.
She hadn’t asked him why he remained in his wolf’s body. No one asked her why she remained in her Fae form, after all. But she supposed that if he donned his Fae form, he might feel inclined to talk. To answer questions that he was perhaps not yet ready to discuss. Might begin simply screaming and screaming at what had been done to them, to Connall.
Rowan pointed with a tattooed finger toward an alcove in the wall. Shadow veiled its recesses, but as the blue light of the lantern touched it, gold glittered along the rocky floor. Ancient gold.
“What’s a barrow-wight?” Elide whispered.
“Creatures of malice and thought,” Lorcan answered, scanning the passageway, a hand drifting to the hilt of his sword. “They covet gold and treasure, and infested the ancient tombs of kings and queens so they might dwell amongst it. They hate light of any kind. Hopefully, this will keep them away.”
Elide cringed, and Aelin felt inclined to do the same.
Instead, she dredged up enough speech to ask Rowan, “Are these the same ones beneath the burial mounds we visited?”
Rowan straightened, eyes sparking at her question—or at the fact that she’d spoken at all. He’d kept by her these days, a silent, steady presence. Even when they’d slept, he’d remained a few feet away, still not touching, but just there. Close enough that the pine-and-snow scent of him eased her into slumber.
Rowan braced a hand along the boat’s rim. “There are many barrow-wight mounds across Wendlyn, but no others between the Cambrians and Doranelle beyond those we went to. As far as we know,” he amended. “I didn’t realize their tombs had been carved so deep.”
“The wights needed some way in, with the tomb doors likely sealed above,” Gavriel observed, studying a larger alcove that appeared on the right ahead. Not an alcove, but a dry cave mouth that flowed to the edge of the river before rising out of sight.
“Stop the boat,” Aelin said.
Silence at the order, even from Rowan.
Aelin pointed to the lip of shore by the cave mouth. “Stop the boat,” she repeated.
“I don’t think we can,” Elide murmured. Indeed, the two of them had resorted to using a bucket to see to their needs these few days, the males engaging in whatever conversation they could to make the silence more bearable.
But the boat headed for the alcove, its speed banking. Fenrys eased to his feet, sniffing the air as they neared the shore ledge. Rowan and Lorcan leaned out to brace their hands against the stone to keep them from colliding too hard.
Aelin didn’t wait for the boat to cease rocking before she grabbed a lantern and leaped onto the river-smooth ground.
Rowan swore, jumping after her. “Stay here,” he warned whoever remained on the boat.
Aelin didn’t bother to see who obeyed as she strode into the cave.
The queen had been reckless before Cairn and Maeve had worked on her for two months, but it seemed she’d had any bit of common sense flayed from her.
Lorcan refrained from saying that, though, as he found himself and Elide alone in the boat. Gavriel and Fenrys had gone after Rowan and Aelin, their path marked only by the fading gleam of blue light on the walls.
Not firelight. She hadn’t shown an ember since they’d entered the cave.
Elide remained sitting across from him on the left side of the boat, her back resting along the curved edge. She had been silent these past few minutes, watching the now-dark cave mouth.
“Barrow-wights are nothing to fear if you’re armed with magic,” Lorcan found himself saying.
Her dark eyes slid to him. “Well, I don’t have any, so forgive me if I remain alert.”
No, she’d once told him that while magic flowed in the Lochan bloodline, she had none to speak of. He’d never told her that he’d always considered her cleverness to be a mighty magic on its own, regardless of Anneith’s whisperings.
Elide went on, “It’s not the wights I’m worried about.”
Lorcan assessed the quiet river flowing by, the caves around them, before he said, “It will take time for her to readjust.”
She stared at him with those damning eyes.
He braced his forearms on his knees. “We got her back. She’s with us now. What more do you want?” From me, he didn’t need to add.
Elide straightened. “I don’t want anything.” From you.
He clenched his teeth. This was where they’d have it out, then. “How much longer am I supposed to atone?”