She braced herself on her elbows. “When?”
“A few days ago. I don’t know where they all are or whether they’ll arrive in time. Maeve might not let them come—or some of them might not even ask her. They can be . . . unpredictable. And it may be that I just get the order to return to Doranelle, and—”
“You actually called for aid?”
His eyes narrowed. I just said that I did.
She stood, and he retreated a step. What changed your mind?
Some things are worth the risk.
He didn’t back away again as she approached and said with every ember left in her shredded heart, “I claim you, Rowan Whitethorn. I don’t care what you say and how much you protest. I claim you as my friend.”
He just turned to the washbasin again, but she caught the unspoken words that he’d tried to keep her from reading on his face. It doesn’t matter. Even if we survive, when we go to Doranelle, you will walk out of Maeve’s realm alone.
•
Emrys joined them—along with all the demi-Fae at Mistward who had not been dispatched with messages—in traveling down to the healers’ compound the next morning to help cart the patients to safety. Anyone who could not fight remained to help the sick and wounded, and Emrys declared he would stay there until the very end. So they left him, along with a small contingent of sentries in case things went very, very wrong. When Celaena headed off into the trees with Rowan, she did not bother with good-byes. Many of the others did not say farewell, either—it seemed like an invitation for death, and Celaena was fairly certain she wasn’t on the good side of the gods.
She was awoken that night by a large, callused hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake. It seemed that death was already waiting for them.
51
“Get your sword and your weapons, and hurry,” Rowan said to Celaena as she instantly came to her feet, reaching for the dagger beside the bed.
He was already halfway across the room, slinging on his clothes and weapons with lethal efficiency. She didn’t bother with questions—he would tell her what was necessary. She hopped into her pants and boots.
“I think we’ve been betrayed,” Rowan said, and her fingers caught on a buckle of her sword-belt as she turned to the open window. Quiet. Absolute quiet in the forest.
And along the horizon, a growing smear of blackness. “They’re coming tonight,” she breathed.
“I did a sweep of the perimeter.” Rowan stuffed a knife into his boot. “It’s as if someone told them where every trap, every warning bell is located. They’ll be here within the hour.”
“Are the ward-stones still working?” She finished braiding her hair and strapped her sword across her back.
“Yes—they’re intact. I raised the alarm, and Malakai and the others are readying our defenses on the walls.” A small part of her smiled at the thought of what it must have been like for Malakai to find a half-naked Rowan shouting orders in his room.
She asked, “Who would have betrayed us?”
“I don’t know, and when I find them, I’ll splatter them on the walls. But for now, we have bigger problems to worry about.”
The darkness on the horizon had spread, devouring the stars, the trees, the light. “What is that?”
Rowan’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Bigger problems.”
•
The ward-stones were the last line of defense before the fortress itself. If Narrok planned to lay siege to Mistward, they couldn’t outlast him forever—but hopefully the barrier would wear down the creatures and their power a bit. On the battlements, in the courtyard and atop the towers, stood the demi-Fae. Archers would take down as many men as possible once the barrier fell, and they would use the oak doors of the fortress as a bottleneck into the courtyard.
But there were still the creatures and Narrok, along with the darkness that they carried with them. Birds and animals streamed past the fortress as they fled—an exodus of flapping wings, padding feet, claws clicking on stone. Herding the animals to safety were the Little Folk, hardly more than a gleam of night-seeing eyes. Whatever darkness Narrok and the creatures brought . . . once you went in, you did not come out.
She was standing with Rowan just beyond the gates of the courtyard, the grassy expanse of earth between the fortress and the ward-stones feeling far too small. The animals and Little Folk had stopped appearing moments before, and even the wind had died.
“As soon as the barrier falls, I want you to put arrows through their eyes,” Rowan said to her, his bow slack in his hands. “Don’t give them a chance to enthrall you—or anyone. Leave the soldiers to the others.”
They hadn’t heard or seen any of the two hundred men, but she nodded, gripping her own bow. “What about magic?”
“Use it sparingly, but if you think you can destroy them with it, don’t hesitate. And don’t get fancy. Take them down by any means possible.” Such icy calculation. Purebred, undiluted warrior. She could almost feel the aggression pouring off him.
A reek was rising from beyond the barrier, and some of the sentries in the courtyard behind them began murmuring. A smell from another world, from whatever hellish creature lurked under mortal skin. Some straggling animals darted out of the trees, foaming at the mouth, the darkness behind them thickening. “Rowan,” she said as she felt rather than saw them. “They’re here.”
At the edge of the trees, hardly five yards from the ward-stones, the creatures emerged.
Celaena started. Three.
Three, not two. “But the skinwalkers—” She couldn’t finish the words as the three men surveyed the fortress. They were clad in deepest black, their tunics open to reveal the Wyrdstone torques at their throats. The skinwalkers hadn’t killed it—no, because there was that same perfect male, looking straight at her. Smiling at her. As if he could already taste her.
A rabbit bolted out of the bushes, racing for the ward-stones. Like the paw of a massive beast, the darkness behind the creatures lashed out, sweeping over the fleeing animal.
The rabbit fell midleap, its fur turning dull and matted, bones pushing through as the life was sucked out of it. The sentries on the walls and towers stirred, some swearing. She had stood a chance of escaping the clutches of just one of those creatures. But all three together became something else, something infinitely powerful.
“The barrier cannot be allowed to fall,” Rowan said to her. “That blackness will kill anything it touches.” Even as he spoke, the darkness stretched around the fortress. Trapping them. The barrier hummed, and the reverberations zinged against the soles of her boots.
She shifted into her Fae form, wincing against the pain. She needed the sharper hearing, the strength and healing. Still, the three creatures remained on the forest edge, the darkness spreading. No sign of the two hundred soldiers.
As one, the three half turned to the shadows behind them and stepped aside, heads bowed. Then, stalking out of the trees, Narrok appeared.
Unlike the others, Narrok was not beautiful. He was scarred and powerfully built, and armed to the teeth. But he, too, had skin carved with those glittering black veins, and wore that torque of obsidian. Even from this distance, she could see the devouring emptiness in his eyes. It seeped toward them like blood in a river.
She waited for him to say something, to parlay and offer a choice between yielding to the king’s power or death, to give some speech to break their morale. But Narrok looked upon Mistward with a slow, almost delighted sweep of the head, drew his iron blade, and pointed at the curving ward-stone gates.
There was nothing Celaena or Rowan could do as a whip of darkness snapped out and struck the invisible barrier. The air shuddered, and the stones whined.
Rowan was already moving toward the oak doors, shouting orders to the archers to ready themselves and use what
ever magic they had to shield against the oncoming darkness. Celaena remained where she was. Another strike, and the barrier rippled.
“Aelin,” Rowan snapped, and she looked over her shoulder at him. “Get inside the gates.”
But she slung her bow across her back, and when she raised her hand, it was consumed with fire. “In the woods that night, it balked from the flame.”
“To use it, you’ll have to get outside the barrier, or it’ll just rebound against the walls.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“The last time, you took one look at that thing and fell under its spell.”
The darkness lashed again.
“It won’t be like last time,” she said, eyes on Narrok, on his three creatures. Not when she had a score to settle. Her blood heated, but she said, “I don’t know what else to do.”
Because if that darkness reached them, then all the blades and arrows would be useless. They wouldn’t have a chance to strike.
A cry sounded behind them, followed by a few more, then the clash of metal on metal. Someone shouted, “The tunnel! They’ve been let in through the tunnel!”
For a moment, Celaena just stood there, blinking. The escape tunnel. They had been betrayed. And now they knew where the soldiers were: creeping through the underground network, let in perhaps because the ward-stones, with that strange sentience, were too focused on the threat above to be able to contain the one below.
The shouting and fighting grew louder. Rowan had stationed their weaker fighters inside to keep them safe—right in the path of the tunnel entrance. It would be a slaughterhouse. “Rowan—”
Another blow to the barrier from the darkness, and another. She began walking toward the stones, and Rowan growled. “Do not take one more step—”
She kept going. Inside the fortress, screaming had begun—pain and death and terror. Each step away from it tore at her, but she headed to the stones, toward the megalith gates. Rowan grabbed her elbow. “That was an order.”
She knocked his hand away. “You’re needed inside. Leave the barrier to me.”
“You don’t know if it’ll work—”
“It will work,” she snarled. “I’m the expendable one, Rowan.”
“You are heir to the throne of—”
“Right now, I am a woman who has a power that might save lives. Let me do this. Help the others.”
Rowan looked at the ward-stones, at the fortress and the sentries scrambling to help below. Weighing, calculating. At last, Rowan said, “Do not engage them. You focus on that darkness and keeping it away from the barrier, and that’s it. Hold the line, Aelin.”
But she didn’t want to hold the line—not when her enemy was so close. Not when the weight of those souls at Calaculla and Endovier pressed on her, screaming as loudly as the soldiers inside the fortress. She had failed all of them. She had been too late. And it was enough. But she nodded, like the good soldier Rowan believed she was, and said, “Understood.”
“They will attack you the moment you set foot outside the barrier,” he said, releasing her arm. Her magic began to boil in her veins. “Have a shield ready.”
“I know” was her only answer as she neared the barrier and the swirling dark beyond. The curving stones of the gateway loomed, and she drew the sword from her back with her right hand, her left hand enveloped in flame.
Nehemia’s people, butchered. Her own people, butchered. Her people.
Celaena stepped under the archway of stones, magic zinging and kissing her skin. Just a few steps would take her outside the barrier. She could feel Rowan lingering, waiting to see if she would survive the first moments. But she would—she was going to burn these things into ash and dust.
This was the least she owed those murdered in Endovier and Calaculla—the least she could do, after so long. A monster to destroy monsters.
The flames on her left hand burned brighter as Celaena stepped beyond the archway and into the beckoning abyss.
52
The darkness lashed at Celaena the moment she passed beyond the invisible barrier.
A wall of flame seared across the spear of blackness, and, just as she’d gambled, the blackness recoiled. Only to strike again, swift as an asp.
She met it blow for blow, willing the fire to spread, a wall of red and gold encasing the barrier behind her. She ignored the reek of the creatures, the hollowness of the air at her ears, the overwhelming throbbing in her head, so much worse beyond the protection of the wards, especially now that all three creatures were gathered. But she did not give them one inch, even as blood began trickling from her nose.
The darkness lunged for her, simultaneously assaulting the wall, punching holes through her flame. She patched them by reflex, allowing the power to do as it willed, but with the command to protect—to keep that barrier shielded. She took another step beyond the stone gateway.
Narrok was nowhere to be seen, but the three creatures were waiting for her.
Unlike the other night in the woods, they were armed with long, slender swords that they drew with their unearthly grace. And then they attacked.
Good.
She did not look them in the eyes, nor did she acknowledge the bleeding from her nose and the pressure in her ears. She merely called in a shield of fire around her left forearm and begin swinging that ancient sword.
Whether Rowan lingered to see her break his first order, then his next, then his next, she didn’t know.
The three creatures kept coming at her, swift and controlled, as if they’d had eons to practice swordplay, as if they were all of one mind, one body. Where she deflected one, another was there; where she punched one with flame and steel, another was ducking beneath it to grab her. She could not let them touch her, could not let herself meet their gaze.
The shield around the barrier burned hot at her back, the darkness of the creatures stinging and biting at it, but she held firm. She had not lied to Rowan about that—about protecting the wall.
One of them swept its blade at her—not to kill. To incapacitate.
It was second nature, somehow, that flames leapt down her blade as she struck back, willing fire into the sword itself. When it met the black iron of the creature, blue sparks danced, so bright that she dared look into the creature’s face to glimpse—surprise. Horror. Rage.
The hilt of the sword was warm—comforting—in her hand, and the red stone glowed as if with a fire of its own.
The three creatures stopped in unison, their sensual mouths pulling back from their too-white teeth in a snarl. The one in the center, the one who had tasted her before, hissed at the sword, “Goldryn.”
The darkness paused, and she used its distraction to patch her shields, a chill snaking up her spine even as the flames warmed her. She lifted the sword higher and advanced another step.
“But you are not Athril, beloved of the dark queen,” one of them said. Another said, “And you are not Brannon of the Wildfire.”
“How do you—” But the words caught in her throat as a memory struck, from months ago—a lifetime ago. Of a realm that was in-between, of the thing that lived inside Cain speaking. To her, and—Elena. Elena, daughter of Brannon. You were brought back, it said. All the players in the unfinished game.
A game that had begun at the dawn of time, when a demon race had forged the Wyrdkeys and used them to break into this world, and Maeve had used their power to banish them. But some demons had remained trapped in Erilea and waged a second war centuries later, when Elena fought against them. What of the others, who had been sent back to their realm? What if the King of Adarlan, in learning of the keys, had also learned where to find them? Where to . . . harness them?
Oh gods. “You are the Valg,” she breathed.
The three things inside those mortal bodies smiled. “We are princes
of our realm.”
“And what realm is that?” She poured her magic into the shield behind her.
The Valg prince in the center seemed to reach toward her without moving an inch. She sent a punch of flame at him, and he curled back. “A realm of eternal dark and ice and wind,” he said. “And we have been waiting a very, very long time to taste your sunshine again.”
The King of Adarlan was either more powerful than she could imagine, or the most foolish man to ever live if he thought he could control these demon princes.
Blood dripped onto her tunic from her nose. Their leader purred, “Once you let me in, girl, there shall be no more blood, or pain.”
She sent another wall of flame searing at them. “Brannon and the others beat you into oblivion once,” she said, though her lungs were burning. “We can do it again.”
Low laughter. “We were not beaten. Only contained. Until a mortal man was foolish enough to invite us back in, to use these glorious bodies.”
Were the men who had once occupied them still inside? If she cut off their heads—that torque of Wyrdstone—would the creatures vanish, or be unleashed in another form?
This was far, far worse than she had expected.
“Yes,” the leader said, taking a step toward her and sniffing. “You should fear us. And embrace us.”
“Embrace this,” she snarled, and flung a hidden dagger from her vambrace at his head.
He was so swift that it scraped his cheek rather than wedging itself between its eyes. Black blood welled and flowed; he raised a moon-white hand to examine it. “I shall enjoy devouring you from the inside out,” he said, and the darkness lunged for her again.
•
The battle was still raging inside the fortress, which was good, because it meant they hadn’t all died yet. And Celaena was still swinging Goldryn against the three Valg princes—though it grew heavier by the moment, and the shield behind her was beginning to fray. She had not had time to tunnel down into her power, or to consider rationing it.