Its enormous eyes had gone right to Lysandra, snarling softly in the corner in ghost leopard form.
“Shifter,” it hissed again, that longing twisting its features.
And Aelin had a feeling she knew what this thing had begun as. What Erawan had trapped and mutilated in the mountains around Morath.
“As I was saying,” Aelin drawled as best she could, “you really brought this upon yourself—”
“I came for the Blackbeak heir,” the Bloodhound panted. “But look at you all: a trove worth your weight in gold.”
Its eyes went murky, as if it were no longer here, as if it had drifted into another room—
Shit.
Aelin attacked with her flame.
The Bloodhound screamed—
And Aelin’s flame melted away into steam.
Rowan was instantly there, shoving her back, sword out. Her magic—
“You should have given me the witch,” the Bloodhound laughed, and ripped the porthole clean out of the side of the ship. “Now he knows who you travel with, what ship you sail …”
The creature lunged for the hole it had hewn in the side of the ship, spindrift misting in.
A black-tipped arrow slammed into its knee, then another one.
The Bloodhound went down an inch from freedom.
Snarling as he stepped into the room, Fenrys fired another, pinning its shoulder into the wood planks.
Apparently, he didn’t take well to being impersonated. He gave Rowan a seething look that said as much. And that demanded how they all hadn’t noticed the difference.
But the Bloodhound wrenched herself up, black blood spraying the room, filling it with her reek. Aelin had a dagger angled, ready to fly; Manon was about to pounce; Rowan’s hatchet was cocked—
The Bloodhound chucked a strap of black leather into the center of the room.
Manon stopped dead.
“Your Second screamed when Erawan broke her,” the Bloodhound said. “His Dark Majesty sends this to remember her by.”
Aelin didn’t dare take her eyes off the creature. But she could have sworn Manon swayed.
And then the Bloodhound said to the witch, “A gift from a King of the Valg … to the last living Crochan Queen.”
Manon stared and stared at that braided leather band—the one Asterin had worn every day, even when battle did not demand it—and did not care what the Bloodhound had declared to the others. Did not care if she was heir to the Blackbeak Witch-Clan or Queen of the Crochans. Did not care if—
Manon did not finish the thought over the roar that silenced everything in her head.
The roar that came out of her mouth as she launched herself at the Bloodhound.
The arrows through the beast scratched at Manon as she tackled that dewy, bony body into the wood. Claws and teeth slashed for her face, but Manon got her hands around that neck, and iron tore through damp skin.
Then those claws were pinned in the wood beneath phantom hands as Dorian sauntered over, face so unyieldingly unmoved. The Bloodhound thrashed, those claws trying to wrench free—
The creature screamed as those invisible hands crunched down on bone.
Then through it.
Manon gaped at the severed hands a moment before the Bloodhound screamed, so loud her own ears rang. But Dorian crooned, “Be done with it.”
Manon lifted her other hand, wanting iron to shred her and not steel.
The others watched behind them, weapons ready.
But the Bloodhound panted, “Don’t you want to know what your Second said before she died? What she begged for?”
Manon hesitated.
“What a horrible brand on her stomach—unclean. Did you do that yourself, Blackbeak?”
No. No, no, no—
“A baby; she said she’d birthed a stillborn witchling.”
Manon froze entirely.
And didn’t particularly care as the Bloodhound lunged for her throat, teeth bared.
It was not flame or wind that snapped the Bloodhound’s neck.
But invisible hands.
The crunch echoed through the room, and Manon whirled on Dorian Havilliard. His sapphire eyes were utterly merciless. Manon snarled. “How dare you take my kill—”
Men on the deck began screaming, and Abraxos roared.
Abraxos.
Manon turned on her heel and sprinted through the wall of warriors, careening down the hall, up the stairs—
Her iron nails tore chunks out of the slippery wood as she hauled herself up, stomach aching. Muggy night air hit her, then the sea’s scent, then—
There were six of them.
Their skin was not bone white like the Bloodhound’s, but rather a mottled darkness—bred for shadows and stealth. Winged, all with humanoid faces and bodies—
Ilken, one of them hissed as it disemboweled a man in one swipe of its claws. We are the ilken, and we have come to feast. Indeed, pirates were dead on the deck, blood a coppery tang that filled her senses as she raced for where Abraxos’s roar had sounded.
But he was airborne, flapping high, tail swinging.
The shape-shifter in wyvern form at his side.
Taking on three of the smaller figures, so much more nimble as they—
Flame blasted into the night, along with wind, and ice.
One ilken melted. The second had its wings snapped. And the third—the third froze into a solid block and shattered upon the deck.
Eight more ilken landed, one ripping into a screaming sailor’s neck on the foredeck—
Manon’s iron teeth snapped down. Flame blasted again, spearing for the approaching terrors.
Only for them to sail through it.
The ship became a melee as wings and talons tore into delicate human hides, as the immortal warriors unleashed themselves upon the ilken that landed on the deck.
Aedion hurtled after Aelin the moment the wyvern roared.
He got as far as the main deck before those things attacked.
Before Aelin’s flame ruptured from the deck ahead, and he realized his cousin could look after herself because shit, the Valg king had been busy. Ilken, they’d called themselves.
There were two of them now before him on the quarterdeck, where he’d run to spare the first mate and captain from having their organs ripped out of their bellies. Both beasts were nearly eight feet and born of nightmares, but in their eyes … those were human eyes. And their scents … like rotted meat, but … human. Partially.
They stood between him and the stairs back to the main deck. “What a bounty this hunt has yielded,” one said.
Aedion didn’t dare take his attention off them, though he vaguely heard Aelin ordering Rowan to go help the other ships. Vaguely heard a wolf and a lion’s snarl, and felt the kiss of cold as ice slammed into the world.
Aedion gripped his sword, flipping it once, twice. Had the Pirate Lord sold them out to Morath? The way that Bloodhound had looked at Lysandra—
His rage became a song in his blood.
They sized him up, and Aedion flipped his sword again. Two against one—he might stand a chance.
That was when the third lunged from the shadows behind him.
Aelin killed one with Goldryn. Beheading.
The other two … They hadn’t been too pleased by it, if their incessant shrieking in the moments following was any indication.
A lion’s roar cleaved the night, and Aelin prayed Gavriel was with Aedion somewhere—
The two in front of her, blocking the way belowdecks, finally stopped their hissy fits long enough to ask, “Where are your flames now?”
Aelin opened her mouth. But then Fenrys leaped out of a patch of night as if he’d simply run through a doorway, and slammed into the one nearest. He had a score to settle, it seemed.
Fenrys’s jaws went around the ilken’s throat, and the other whirled, claws out.
She was not fast enough to stop it as two sets of claws slashed through the white coat, through the shield he kept on
himself, and Fenrys’s cry of pain barked across the water.
Twin swords of flame plunged through two ilken necks.
Heads rolled onto the blood-slick deck.
Fenrys staggered back, making it all of a step before he crashed to the planks. Aelin surged for him, swearing.
Blood and bone and greenish slime—poison. Like those on the wyverns’ tails.
Like blowing out a thousand candles, she pushed aside her flame, rallied that healing water. Fenrys shifted back into a male, his teeth clenched, swearing low and vicious, a hand against his torn ribs. “Don’t move,” she told him.
She’d immediately sent Rowan to the other ships, and he’d tried to argue, but … had obeyed. She had no idea where the Wing Leader was—the Crochan Queen. Holy gods.
Aelin readied her magic, trying to calm her raging heart—
“The others,” panted Aedion, limping for them, coated in black blood, “are fine.” She almost sobbed in relief—until she noticed the way her cousin’s eyes shone, and that … that Gavriel, bloodied and limping worse than Aedion, was a step behind his son. What the hell had happened?
Fenrys groaned, and she focused on his wounds, that poison slithering into his blood. She opened her mouth to tell Fenrys to lower his hand when wings flapped.
Not the kind she loved.
Aedion was instantly before them, sword out, grimacing in pain—but one of the ilken lifted a claw-tipped hand. Parley.
Her cousin halted. But Gavriel shifted imperceptibly closer to the ilken as it sniffed at Fenrys and smiled.
“Don’t bother,” the thing told Aelin, laughing quietly. “He won’t have much longer to live.”
Aedion snarled, palming his fighting knives. Aelin rallied her flame. Only the hottest of her fire could kill them—anything less and they remained unscathed. She’d think about the long-term implications of it later.
“I was sent to deliver a message,” the ilken said, smiling over a shoulder toward the horizon. “Thank you for confirming in Skull’s Bay that you carry what His Dark Majesty seeks.”
Aelin’s stomach dropped to her feet.
The key. Erawan knew she had the Wyrdkey.
47
Rowan hauled ass back to their ship, his magic near-flinging him through the air.
The other two ships had been left undisturbed—they’d even had the nerve to demand what the hell all the shouting was about.
Rowan hadn’t bothered to explain other than an enemy attack and to drop anchor until it was over before he’d left. He’d returned to carnage.
Returned with his heart beating so wildly he thought he’d vomit with relief as he swept in for the landing and beheld Aelin kneeling on the deck. Until he saw Fenrys bleeding beneath her hands.
Until that last ilken landed before them.
His rage honed itself into a lethal spear, his magic rallying as he dove through the sky, aiming for the deck. Concentrated bursts, he’d discovered, could get through whatever repellant had been bred into them.
He’d rip the thing’s head right off.
But then the ilken laughed right as Rowan landed and shifted, looking over its thin shoulder. “Morath looks forward to welcoming you,” the creature smirked, and launched skyward before Rowan could lunge for it.
But Aelin wasn’t moving. Gavriel and Aedion, bloodied and limping, were barely moving. Fenrys, his chest a bloody mess with greenish slime—poison …
Power glowed at Aelin’s hands as she knelt over Fenrys, concentrating on that bit of water she’d been given, a drop of water in a sea of fire …
Rowan opened his mouth to offer to help when Lysandra panted from the shadows, “Is anyone going to deal with that thing, or should I?”
Indeed, the ilken was flapping for the distant coast, barely more than a bit of blackness against the darkened sky, hurtling for the coast, no doubt to fly right to Morath to report.
Rowan snatched up Fenrys’s fallen bow and quiver of black-tipped arrows.
None of them stopped him as he strode to the railing, blood splashing beneath his boots.
The only sounds were the tapping waves, the whimpering of the injured, and the groan of the mighty bow as he nocked an arrow and drew back the string. Farther and farther. His arms strained, but he honed in on that dark speck flapping away.
“A gold coin says he misses,” Fenrys rasped.
“Save your breath for healing,” Aelin snapped.
“Make it two,” Aedion said behind him. “I say he hits.”
“You can all go to hell,” Aelin snarled. But then added, “Make it five. Ten says he downs it with the first shot.”
“Deal,” Fenrys groaned, his voice thick with pain.
Rowan gritted his teeth. “Remind me why I bother with any of you.”
Then he fired.
The arrow was nearly invisible as it sailed through the night.
And with his Fae sight, Rowan saw with perfect clarity as that arrow found its mark.
Right through the thing’s head.
Aelin laughed quietly as it hit the water, its splash visible even from the distance.
Rowan turned and scowled down at her. Light shimmered at her fingertips as she held them over Fenrys’s ravaged chest. But he turned his glare on the male, then on Aedion, and said, “Pay up, pricks.”
Aedion chuckled, but Rowan caught the shadow in Aelin’s eyes as she resumed healing his former sentinel. Understood why she’d made light of it, even with Fenrys injured before her. Because if Erawan now knew their whereabouts … they had to move. Fast.
And pray Rolfe’s directions to the Lock weren’t wrong.
Aedion was sick of surprises.
Sick of feeling his heart stop dead in his chest.
As it had when Gavriel had leaped to save his ass with the ilken, the Lion tearing into them with a ferocity that had left Aedion standing there like a novice with his first practice sword.
The stupid bastard had injured himself in the process, earning a swipe down his arm and ribs that set the male roaring in pain. The venom coating those claws, mercifully, had been used up on other men.
But it was the tang of his father’s blood that launched Aedion into action—that coppery, mortal scent. Gavriel had only blinked at him as Aedion had ignored the throbbing pain in his leg, courtesy of a blow moments before right above his knee, and they’d fought back-to-back until those creatures were nothing but twitching heaps of bone and flesh.
He hadn’t said a word to the male before sheathing sword and shield across his back and stalking to find Aelin.
She still knelt over Fenrys, offering Rowan nothing more than a pat on his thigh as he stormed past to help with the other wounded. A pat on the thigh—for making a shot that Aedion was fairly certain most of his Bane would have judged to be impossible.
Aedion set down the pail of water she’d asked him to get for Fenrys, trying not to wince as she wiped away the green poison that oozed out. A few feet away, his father was tending to a blubbering pirate—who had barely more than a tear to the thigh.
Fenrys hissed, and Aelin let out a grunt of pain herself. Aedion pushed in. “What?”
Aelin shook her head once, a sharp dismissal. But he watched as she locked eyes with Fenrys—locked and held them in a way that told Aedion whatever she was about to do would hurt. He’d seen that same look pass between healer and soldier a hundred times on killing fields and in the healers’ tents afterward.
“Why,” Fenrys panted, “didn’t”—another pant—“you just melt them?”
“Because I wanted to get some information out of them before you charged in, you bossy Fae bastard.” She gritted her teeth again, and Aedion braced a hand on her back as the poison no doubt brushed against her magic. As she tried to wash it out. She leaned a bit into his touch.
“Can heal on my own,” Fenrys rasped, noting the strain. “Get to the others.”
“Oh, please,” she snapped. “You’re all insufferable. That thing had poison on its claws—”
“The others—”
“Tell me how your magic works—how you can leap between places like that.” A clever, easy way to keep him focused elsewhere.
Aedion scanned the deck, making sure he wasn’t needed, and then carefully sopped up the blood and poison leaking from Fenrys’s chest. It had to hurt like hell. The insistent throbbing in his leg was likely nothing by comparison.
“No one knows where it comes from—what it is,” Fenrys said between shallow breaths, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides. “But it lets me slip between folds in the world. Only short distances, and only a few times before I’m drained, but … it’s useful on a killing field.” He panted through his clenched teeth as the outer edges of his gash began to reach for each other. “Aside from that, I’ve got nothing special. Speed, strength, swift healing … more than the average Fae, but the same stock of gifts. I can shield myself and others, but can’t summon an element.”
Aelin’s hand wavered slightly over his wound. “What’s your shield made of, then?”
Fenrys tried and failed to shrug. But Gavriel muttered from where he worked on the still-whimpering pirate, “Arrogance.”
Aelin snorted, but didn’t dare take her eyes off Fenrys’s injury as she said, “So you do have a sense of humor, Gavriel.”
The Lion of Doranelle gave a wary smile over his shoulder. The rare-sighted, restrained twin to Aedion’s own flashing grins. Aelin had called him Uncle Kitty-Cat all of one time before Aedion had snarled viciously enough to make her think carefully before using the term again. Gavriel, to his credit, had merely given Aelin a long-suffering sigh that seemed to be used only when she or Fenrys were around.
“That sense of humor only appears about once every century,” Fenrys rasped, “so you’d better hope you Settle, or else that’s the last time you’ll see it.” Aelin chuckled, though it faded quickly. Something cold and oily slid into Aedion’s gut. “Sorry,” Fenrys added, wincing either at the words or the pain.
Aelin asked before Aedion let his words sink in, “Where did you come from? Lorcan, I know, was a bastard in the slums.”