Princess Hasar smirked at Aelin. “So be sure to impress us.”
Again, that tension rippled through the room.
Aelin held the princess’s stare. Smiled slightly. And said nothing.
Nesryn shifted on her feet, as if well aware what that silence could mean.
“How solid are the keep walls?” Gavriel asked Chaol, gently steering the conversation away.
Chaol rubbed at his jaw. “They’ve withstood sieges before, but Morath has been hammering them for days. The battlements are solid enough, but another few blows from the catapults and towers might start coming down.”
Rowan crossed his arms. “The walls were breached today?”
“They were,” Chaol said grimly. “By a siege tower. The ruks couldn’t arrive in time to pull it down.” Nesryn cringed, but Sartaq did not offer an apology. Chaol went on, “We secured the walls, but the Valg soldiers cut down a number of our men—from Anielle, that is.”
Aelin surveyed the map, blocking out the challenge of the fierce-eyed princess who was a mirror in so many ways. “So how do we play it? Do we slam through the lines, or pick them off one by one?”
Nesryn stabbed a finger onto the map, right atop the Silver Lake. “What if we pushed them to the lake itself?”
Hasar hummed, all traces of taunting gone. “Morath placed itself foolishly in their greed to sack the city. They didn’t estimate being trampled by the Darghan, or picked apart by the rukhin.”
Aelin glanced sidelong to Rowan. Found him already staring at her.
We’ll convince them to go to Terrasen, her mate said silently.
Chaol leaned forward, back quivering a bit, and ran a finger over the lake’s western shore. “This section of the lake, unfortunately, is shallow a hundred yards from the shore. The army might be able to wade out there, draw us into the water.”
“A few hours in that water,” Yrene countered, mouth a tight line, “would kill them. The hypothermia would set in quickly. Maybe within minutes, depending on the wind.”
“That’s if the Valg fall victim to such things,” Hasar said. “They don’t die like true men in most ways, and you claim they hail from a land of darkness and cold.” So the royals truly knew about their enemies, then. “We might push them into the water to find they don’t care at all. And in doing so, risk exposing our troops to the elements.” The princess jabbed the keep walls. “We’re better off pushing them right into the stone, breaking them apart against it.”
Aelin was inclined to agree.
Lorcan opened his mouth to say something no doubt unpleasant, but footsteps squelching in mud outside the tent had them whirling toward the entrance long before a pretty, dark-haired young woman burst in, twin braids swinging. “You wouldn’t believe—”
She halted upon seeing Aelin. Seeing the Fae males. Her mouth popped into an O.
Nesryn chuckled. “Borte, meet—”
Another set of steps in the mud, heavier and slower than Borte’s quick movements, and then a young man stumbled in, his skin not the gold-kissed brown of Borte or the royals, but pale. “It’s back,” he panted, gaping at Nesryn. “For days now, I swore I felt something, noted changes, but today it just all came back.”
Nesryn angled her head, her curtain of dark hair sliding over an armored shoulder. “Who …”
Borte squeezed the young man’s arm. “Falkan. It’s Falkan, Nesryn.”
Prince Sartaq stalked to Nesryn’s side, graceful as any Fae warrior. “How.”
But the young man had turned toward Aelin, eyes narrowing. As if trying to place her.
Then he said, “The assassin from the market in Xandria.”
Aelin arched a brow. “Hopefully, the horse I stole didn’t belong to you.”
A cough from Fenrys. Aelin threw the warrior a grin over her shoulder.
The young man’s eyes darted over her face, then landed on the enormous emerald on her finger. The even bigger ruby in Goldryn’s hilt.
Borte blurted to Nesryn, “One minute, we were eating dinner at the campfire, then the next, Falkan clutched his stomach like he was going to puke up his guts all over everyone”—a glare from Falkan at Borte—“and then his face was young. He’s young.”
“I was always young,” Falkan muttered. “I just didn’t look it.” His gray eyes again found Aelin’s. “I gave you a piece of Spidersilk.”
For a heartbeat, the then and the now blended and wobbled. “The merchant,” Aelin murmured. She’d last seen him in the Red Desert—looking twenty years older. “You sold your youth to a stygian spider.”
“You two know each other?” Nesryn gaped.
“The threads of fate weave together in strange ways,” Falkan said, then smiled at Aelin. “I never got your name.”
Hasar chuckled from the other side of the desk. “You already know it, shifter.”
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.