Her master glanced at the wide-eyed, ravenous men beside him—then nodded to her.
Chaol’s stomach turned over. Arobynn had seen enough. Proved enough.
It hadn’t even been a fair fight. Aelin had let it go on because Arobynn had wanted it to go on. And once she took out that clock tower and her magic was back … What checks would there be against her? Against Aedion, and that Fae Prince of hers, and all the warriors like them? A new world, yes. But a world in which the ordinary human voice would be nothing more than a whisper.
Aelin twisted the commander’s arms, and the demon shrieked in pain, and then—
Then Aelin was staggering back, clutching at her forearm, at the blood shining bright through the shred in her suit.
It was only when the commander whirled, blood slipping down his chin, his eyes pitch black, that Chaol understood. He’d bitten her. Chaol hissed through his teeth.
The commander licked his lips, his bloody grin growing. Even with the crowd, Chaol could hear the Valg demon say, “I know what you are now, you half-breed bitch.”
Aelin lowered the hand she’d clapped on her arm, blood shining on her dark glove. “Good thing I know what you are, too, prick.”
End it. She had to end it now.
“What’s your name?” she said, circling the demon commander.
The demon inside the man’s body chuckled. “You cannot pronounce it in your human tongue.” The voice skittered down Chaol’s veins, icing them.
“So condescending for a mere grunt,” she crooned.
“I should bring you down to Morath myself, half-breed, and see how much you talk then. See what you make of all the delicious things we do to your kind.”
Morath—Duke Perrington’s Keep. Chaol’s stomach turned leaden. That was where they brought the prisoners who weren’t executed. The ones who vanished in the night. To do the gods knew what with them.
Aelin didn’t give him time to say anything more, and Chaol again wished he could see her face, if only to know what the hell was going on in her head as she tackled the commander. She slammed his considerable weight into the sand and grabbed his head.
Crack went the commander’s neck.
Her hands lingering on either side of the demon’s face, Aelin stared at the empty eyes, at the open mouth. The crowd screamed its triumph.
Aelin panted, her shoulders hunched, and then she straightened, brushing the sand off the knees of her suit.
She gazed up at the pit-lord. “Call it.”
The man blanched. “Victory is yours.”
She didn’t bother looking up again as she knocked her boot against the stone wall, freeing a thin, horrible blade.
Chaol was grateful for the screams of the crowd as she stomped it down through the neck of the commander. Again. Again.
In the dim lighting, no one else could tell the stain in the sand wasn’t the right color.
No one but the stone-faced demons gathered around them, marking Aelin, watching each movement of her leg as she severed the commander’s head from his body and then left it in the sand.
Aelin’s arms were trembling as she took Arobynn’s hand and was hauled out of the pit.
Her master crushed her fingers in a lethal grip, pulling her close in what anyone else would have thought was an embrace. “That’s twice now, darling, you haven’t delivered. I said unconscious.”
“Bloodlust got the better of me, it seems.” She eased back, her left arm aching from the vicious bite the thing had given her. Bastard. She could almost feel its blood seeping through the thick leather of her boot, feel the weight of the gore clinging onto the toe.
“I expect results, Ansel—and soon.”
“Don’t worry, Master.” Chaol was making his way toward a darkened corner, Nesryn a shadow behind him, no doubt readying to track the Valg once they left. “You’ll get what’s owed to you.” Aelin looked toward Lysandra, whose attention wasn’t on the corpse being hauled out of the pit by the grunts, but fixed—with predatory focus—on the other Valg guards sneaking out.
Aelin cleared her throat, and Lysandra blinked, her expression smoothing into unease and repulsion.
Aelin made to slip out, but Arobynn said, “Aren’t you the least bit curious where we buried Sam?”
He’d known his words would register like a blow. He’d had the upper hand, the sure-kill shot, the entire time. Even Lysandra recoiled a bit.
Aelin slowly turned. “Is there a price for learning that information?”
A flick of his attention to the pit. “You just paid it.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you to give me a fake location and have me bring stones to the wrong grave.”
Not flowers—never flowers in Terrasen. Instead, they carried small stones to graves to mark their visits, to tell the dead that they still remembered.
Stones were eternal—flowers were not.
“You wound me with such accusations.” Arobynn’s elegant face told another story. He closed the distance between them, and said so quietly that Lysandra couldn’t hear, “Do you think you will not have to pay up at some point?”
She bared her teeth. “Is that a threat?”
“It is a suggestion,” he said smoothly, “that you remember what my considerable influences are, and what I might have to offer you and yours during a time when you are desperate for so many things: money, fighters …” A glance at the vanishing captain and Nesryn. “Things your friends need, too.”
For a price—always for a price. “Just tell me where you buried Sam and let me leave. I need to clean my shoes.”
He smiled, satisfied that he’d won and she’d accepted his little offering—no doubt soon to make another bargain, and then another, for whatever she needed from him. He named the location, a small graveyard by the river’s edge. Not in the crypts of the Assassins’ Keep, where most of them were entombed. Likely meant as an insult to Sam—not realizing Sam wouldn’t have wanted to be buried in the Keep anyway.
Still, she choked out, “Thank you.” And then she made herself look at Lysandra and drawl, “I hope he’s paying you enough.”
Lysandra’s attention, however, was on the long scar marring Arobynn’s neck—the scar Wesley had left. But Arobynn was too busy smiling at Aelin to notice. “We’ll be seeing each other again soon,” he said. Another threat. “Hopefully when you’ve upheld your end of the bargain.”
The hard-faced men who had been at Arobynn’s side during the fight still lingered several feet away. The owners of the Pits. They gave her a slight nod that she didn’t return. “Tell your new partners I’m officially retired,” she said by way of farewell.
It was an effort of will to leave Lysandra with him in that hellhole.
She could feel the Valg sentries monitoring her, feel their indecision and malice, and hoped that Chaol and Nesryn didn’t run into trouble as she vanished into the open, cool night air.
She hadn’t asked them to come just to watch her back, but to make them realize precisely how stupid they’d been in trusting a man like Arobynn Hamel. Even if Arobynn’s gift was the reason they were now able to track the Valg back to wherever they were squatting.
She just hoped that despite her former master’s gift, they at last understood that she should have killed Dorian that day.
25
Elide was washing dishes, carefully listening to the cook complain about the next scheduled shipment of supplies. A few wagons would arrive in two weeks, it seemed, carrying wine and vegetables and perhaps, if they were lucky, salted meat. Yet it wasn’t what was coming that interested her, but how it was carried, what sort of wagons might bear it. And where Elide might best hide in one.
That was when one of the witches walked in.
Not Manon, but the one named Asterin, golden-haired with eyes like a star-flecked night and a wildness in her very breath. Elide had long ago noted how quick she was to grin, and had marked the moments when Asterin thought no one was looking and gazed across the horizon, her face tight. Secrets—Asterin was a witch with secrets. And secrets made people deadly.
Elide kept her head down, shoulders tucked in, as the kitchen quieted in the Third’s presence. Asterin just swaggered right up to the cook, who had gone pale as death. He was a loud, kind man most days, but a coward at heart.
“Lady Asterin,” he said, and everyone—Elide included—bowed.
The witch smiled—with white, normal teeth, thank the gods. “I was thinking I might help with the dishes.”
Elide’s blood chilled. She felt the eyes of everyone in the kitchen fix on her.
“As much as we appreciate it, Lady—”
“Are you rejecting my offer, mortal?” Elide didn’t dare to turn around. Beneath the soapy water, her pruny hands shook. She fisted them. Fear was useless; fear got you killed.
“N-no. Of course, Lady. We—and Elide—will be glad for the help.”
And that was that.
The clatter and chaos of the kitchen slowly resumed, but conversation remained hushed. They were all watching, waiting—either for Elide’s blood to spill on the gray stones, or to overhear anything juicy from the ever-smiling lips of Asterin Blackbeak.
She felt each step the witch took toward her—unhurried, but powerful.