She curled over Lorcan, waiting for the wolf and mountain lion to end it, to take her neck in their jaws and crunch down.
No attack came. Silence cleaved the world.
Lorcan flipped her over, his breathing ragged, his face bloody and pale as he took in her face, her arm. “ElideElideElide—”
She couldn’t draw breath, couldn’t see around the sensation that her arm was mere shredded flesh and splintered bone—
Lorcan grabbed her face before she could look and snapped, “Why did you do that? Why?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He lifted his head, his snarl so vicious it echoed in her bones, made the pain in her arm surge violently enough that she whimpered.
He growled to the lion and the wolf, his shield a swirling, obsidian wind around them, “You’re dead. You’re both dead—”
Elide shifted her head enough to see the white wolf staring at them. At Lorcan. See the wolf change in a flash of light into the most beautiful man she’d ever beheld. His golden-brown face tightened as he took in her arm. Her arm, her arm—
“Lorcan, we were ordered,” said an unfamiliar, gentle male voice from where the lion, too, had transformed into a Fae male.
“Damn your orders to hell, you stupid bastard—”
The wolf-warrior hissed, chest heaving, “We can’t fight against the command much longer, Lorcan—”
“Put the shield down,” the calmer one said. “I can heal the girl. Let her get away.”
“I’ll kill you both,” Lorcan swore. “I’ll kill you—”
Elide looked at her arm.
There was a piece missing. From her forearm. There was blood gushing into the burnt remnants of grass. White bone jutting out—
Maybe she started screaming or sobbing or silently shaking.
“Don’t look,” Lorcan snapped, squeezing her face again to draw her eyes to his own. His face was lined with such wrath she barely recognized it, but he made no move against the males.
His power was drained. He’d nearly wiped it out shielding against Aelin’s flame and whoever had borne that other magic on the field. This shield … this was all Lorcan had left.
And if he lowered it so they could heal her … they’d kill him. He had warned them of the attack, and they’d still kill him.
Aelin—where was Aelin—
The world was blackening at the edges, her body begging to submit rather than endure the pain that reordered everything in her life.
Lorcan tensed as if sensing the oblivion that threatened. “You heal her,” he said to the gentle-eyed male, “and then we continue—”
“No,” she got out. Not for this, not for her—
Lorcan’s onyx eyes were unreadable as he scanned her face. And then he said quietly, “I wanted to go to Perranth with you.”
Lorcan dropped the shield.
It was not a hard choice. And it did not frighten him. Not nearly as much as the fatal wound in her arm did.
Fenrys had hit an artery. She’d bleed out in minutes.
Lorcan had been born from and gifted with darkness. Returning to it was not a difficult task.
But letting that glimmering, lovely light before him die out … In his ancient, bitter bones, he could not accept it.
She had been forgotten—by everyone and everything. And still she had hoped. And still she had been kind to him.
And still she had offered him a glimpse of peace in the time he’d known her.
She had offered him a home.
He knew Fenrys wouldn’t be able to fight Maeve’s kill order. Knew Gavriel would stay true to his word and heal her, but Fenrys couldn’t hold out against the blood oath’s command.
He knew the bastard would regret it. Knew the wolf had been horrified the moment Elide had jumped between them.
Lorcan let go of his shield, praying she wouldn’t watch when the bloodletting started. When he and Fenrys went claw-to-claw and fang-to-fang. He’d last against the warrior. Until Gavriel joined back in.
The shield vanished, and Gavriel was instantly kneeling, reaching with his broad hands for her arm. Pain paralyzed her, but she tried telling Lorcan to run, to put the shield back up—
Lorcan stood, shutting out her pleading.
He faced Fenrys. The warrior was trembling with restraint, his hands clenched at his sides to keep from going for any of his blades.
Elide was still sobbing, still begging him.
Fenrys’s taut features were lined with regret.
Lorcan just smiled at the warrior.
It snapped Fenrys’s leash.
His sentinel leaped for him, sword out, and Lorcan lifted his own, already knowing the move Fenrys planned to use. He’d trained him how to do it. And he knew the guard Fenrys let drop on his left side, just for a heartbeat, exposing his neck—
Fenrys landed before him, swiping low and dodging right.
Lorcan angled his blade for that vulnerable neck.
They were both blown back by an icy, unbreakable wind. Whatever was left of it after the battle.
Fenrys was up, lost to the blood fury, but the wind slammed into him. Again. Again. Holding him down. Lorcan struggled against it, but the shield Whitethorn had thrown over them, the raw power he now used to keep them pinned, was too strong when his own magic was depleted.
Boots crunched on the burnt grass. Sprawled on the bank of a little hill, Lorcan lifted his head. Whitethorn stood between him and Fenrys, the prince’s eyes glazed with wrath.
Rowan surveyed Gavriel and Elide, the latter still weeping, still begging for it to stop. But her arm …
A scratch marred that moon-white arm, but Gavriel’s rough battlefield healing had filled the holes, the missing flesh and broken bones. He must have used all his magic to—
Gavriel swayed ever so slightly.
Whitethorn’s voice was like gravel. “This ends now. You two don’t touch them. They’re under the protection of Aelin Galathynius. If you harm them, it will be considered an act of war.”
Specific, ancient words, the only way a blood order could be detained. Not overridden—just delayed for a little while. To buy them all time.
Fenrys panted, but relief flickered in his eyes. Gavriel sagged a bit.
Elide’s dark eyes were still glassy with pain, the smattering of freckles on her cheeks stark against the unnatural whiteness of her skin.
Whitethorn said to Fenrys and Gavriel, “Are we clear on what the hell will happen if you step out of line?”
To Lorcan’s eternal shock, they lowered their heads and said, “Yes, Prince.”
Rowan let the shields drop, and then Lorcan was hurtling to Elide, who struggled to sit up, gaping at her nearly healed arm. Gavriel, wisely, backed away. Lorcan examined her arm, her face, needing to touch her, smell her—
He didn’t notice that the light footsteps in the grass didn’t belong to his former companions.
But he knew the female voice that said from behind him, “What the rutting hell is going on?”
Elide had no words to express to Lorcan what she’d felt in that moment he’d let the shield drop. What she’d felt when the silver-haired, tattooed warrior-prince had halted that fatal bloodshed.
But she had no breath in her body when she looked over Lorcan’s broad shoulder and beheld the golden-haired woman striding toward them.
Young, and yet her face … It was an ancient face, wary and cunning and limned with power. Beautiful, with the sun-kissed skin, the vibrant turquoise eyes. Turquoise eyes, with a core of gold around the pupil.
Ashryver eyes.
The same as the golden-haired, handsome man who came up beside her, muscled body tense as he assessed whether he’d need to spill blood, a bow dangling from his hand.
Two sides of the same golden coin.
Aelin. Aedion.
They were both staring at her with those Ashryver eyes.
Aelin blinked. And her golden face crumpled as she said, “Are you Elide?”
It was all Elide could do to nod. Lorcan was taut as a bowstring, his body still half angled over her.
Aelin strode closer, eyes never leaving Elide’s face. Young—she felt so young compared to the woman who approached. There were scars all over Aelin’s hands, along her neck, around her wrists … where shackles had been.
Aelin slid to her knees not a foot away, and it occurred to Elide that she should be bowing, head to the dirt—
“You look … so much like your mother,” Aelin said, her voice cracking. Aedion silently knelt, putting a broad hand on Aelin’s shoulder.
Her mother, who had gone down swinging, who had died fighting so this woman could live—
“I’m sorry,” Aelin said, shoulders curving inward, head dropping low as tears slid down her flushed cheeks. “I’m so sorry.” How many years had those words been locked up?
Elide’s arm ached, but it didn’t stop her from touching Aelin’s hand, clenched in her lap.
Touching that tanned, scarred hand. Warm, sticky skin met her fingertips.
Real. This was—Aelin was—real.
As if Aelin realized the same, her head lifted. She opened her mouth, but her lips wobbled, and the queen clamped them together.
None of the gathered company spoke.
And at last Aelin said to Elide, “She bought me time.”
Elide knew who the queen meant.
Aelin’s hand began shaking. The queen’s voice broke entirely as she said, “I am alive today because of your mother.”
Elide only whispered, “I know.”
“She told me to tell you …” A shuddering inhale. But Aelin didn’t break her stare, even as tears continued cutting through the dirt on her cheeks. “Your mother told me to tell you that she loves you—very much. Those were her last words to me. ‘Tell my Elide I love her very much.’”
For over ten years, Aelin had been the sole bearer of those final words. Ten years, through death and despair and war, Aelin had carried them across kingdoms.
And here, at the edge of the world, they had found each other again. Here at the edge of the world, just for a heartbeat, Elide felt the warm hand of her mother brush her shoulder.
Tears stung Elide’s eyes as they slipped free. But then the grass crunched behind them.
She saw the white hair first. Then the golden eyes.
And Elide sobbed as Manon Blackbeak emerged, smiling faintly.
As Manon Blackbeak saw her and Aelin, knee-to-knee in the grass, and mouthed one word.
Hope.
Not dead. None of them were dead.
Aedion said hoarsely, “Is your arm—”
Aelin grabbed it—gently. Inspecting the shallow cut, the new pink skin that revealed what had been missing mere moments before. Aelin twisted on her knees, snarling at the wolf-warrior.
The golden-haired male averted his eyes as the queen glared her displeasure. “It wasn’t his fault,” Elide managed to say.
“The bite,” Aelin said drily, turquoise eyes livid, “would suggest otherwise.”
“I’m sorry,” the male said, either to the queen or Elide, she didn’t know. His eyes lifted to Aelin—something like devastation there.
Aelin ignored the words. The male flinched. And the silver-haired prince seemed to give him a brief pitying glance.
But if the order hadn’t come from Aelin to kill Lorcan …
Aelin said to the other golden-haired male behind Elide, the one who had healed her—the lion, “I assume Rowan told you the deal. You touch them, you die. You so much as breathe wrong in their direction, and you’re dead.”
Elide tried not to cringe at the viciousness. Especially when Manon smiled in wicked delight.
Aelin tensed as the witch came at her exposed back but allowed Manon to settle on her right. To look over Elide with those gold eyes. “Well met, witchling,” Manon said to her. Manon faced Lorcan just as Aelin did.
Aelin snorted. “You look a bit worse for wear.”
“Likewise,” Lorcan snapped at her.
Aelin’s grin was terrifying. “Got my note, did you?”
Aedion’s hand had slid to his sword—
“The Sword of Orynth,” Elide blurted, noticing the bone pommel, the ancient markings. Aelin and Lorcan paused being at each other’s throats. “The sword … you …”