Empire of Storms

  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 …”

  Vernon had mocked her about it once. Said it had been taken by the King of Adarlan and melted down. Burned, along with the antler throne.

  Aedion’s turquoise eyes softened. “It survived. We survived.”

  The three of them, the remnants of their court, their families.

  But Aelin was again sizing up Lorcan, bristling, that wicked grin returning. Elide said softly, “I survived, Majesty, because of him.” She pointed with her chin to Manon. “And because of her. I am here because of both of them.”

  Manon nodded, focus going to the pocket where she’d seen Elide hide that scrap of stone. The confirmation she’d been looking for. The reminder of the third part of the triangle.

  “I’m here,” Elide said as Aelin fixed those unnervingly vivid eyes on her, “because of Kaltain Rompier.” Her throat clogged, but she pushed past it as her trembling fingers fished out the little bit of cloth from her inside pocket. The otherworldly feel of it pulsed in her palm.

  “She said to give this to you. To Celaena Sardothien, I mean. She didn’t know they … you were the same. She said it was payment for … for a warm cloak offered in a cold dungeon.” She wasn’t ashamed of the tears that fell, not in honor of what that woman had done. Aelin studied the scrap of cloth in Elide’s shaking palm. “I think she kept this as a reminder of kindness,” Elide said hoarsely. “They … they broke her, and hurt her. And she died alone in Morath. She died alone, so I wouldn’t … so they couldn’t …” None of them spoke or moved. She couldn’t tell if it made it worse. If the hand that Lorcan laid on her back made her cry harder.

  The words tumbled out of Elide’s shaking mouth. “She said t-to remember your promise to punish them all. And s-said that you can unlock any door, if you only have the k-key.”

  Aelin clamped her lips together and closed her eyes.

  A beautiful, dark-haired man now approached. He was perhaps a few years older than her, but carried himself so gracefully that she felt small and unmolded before him. His sapphire eyes fixed on Elide, clever and unruffled—and sad. “Kaltain Rompier saved your life? And gave you that?”

  He knew her—had known her.

  Manon Blackbeak said in a faint, amused voice, “Lady Elide Lochan of Perranth, meet Dorian Havilliard, King of Adarlan.” The king lifted his brows at the witch.

  “M-majesty,” she stammered, inclining her head. She should really get up. Really stop lying on the ground like a worm. But the cloth and stone still lay in her hand.

  Aelin wiped her damp face on a sleeve, then straightened. “Do you know what it is you carry, Elide?”

  “Y-yes, Majesty.”

  Turquoise eyes, haunted and weary, lifted to her own. Then slid to Lorcan. “Why didn’t you take it?” The voice was hollow and hard. Elide suspected she’d be lucky if it was never used on her.

  Lorcan met her gaze without flinching. “It wasn’t mine to take.”

  Aelin now glanced between them, seeing too much. And there was no warmth on the queen’s face, but she said to Lorcan, “Thank you—for bringing her to me.”

  The others seemed to be trying not to look too shocked at the words.

  But Aelin turned to Manon. “I lay claim to her. Witch-blood in her veins or no, she is Lady of Perranth, and she is mine.”

  Gold eyes gleamed with the thrill of challenge. “And if I claim her for the Blackbeaks?”

  “Blackbeaks—or the Crochans?” Aelin purred.

  Elide blinked. Manon—and the Crochans? What was the Wing Leader doing here? Where was Abraxos? The witch said, “Careful, Majesty. With your power reduced to embers, you’ll have to fight me the old-fashioned way again.”

  That dangerous grin returned. “You know, I’ve been hoping for round two.”

  “Ladies,” the silver-haired prince said through clenched teeth.

  They both turned, giving Rowan Whitethorn horrifyingly innocent smiles. The Fae Prince, to his credit, only winced after they looked away again.

  Elide wished she could hide behind Lorcan as both women fixed that near-feral attention on her again. Manon reached forward, tipping Elide’s hand over—to where Aelin’s waited. “There you go, over and done with,” Manon said.

  Aelin cringed slightly but pocketed the cloth and the key inside. A shadow instantly lifted from Elide’s heart, a whispering presence now silenced.

  Manon ordered, “On your feet. We were in the middle of something.”

  She reached to pull Elide up, but Lorcan stepped in and did it himself. He didn’t let go of Elide’s arm, and she tried not to lean into his warmth. Tried not to make it seem like she hadn’t just met her queen, her friend, her court, and … somehow now found Lorcan to be the safest of them all.

  Manon smirked at Lorcan. “Your claim on her, male, is at the very bottom of the list.” Iron teeth slid out, turning that beautiful face petrifying. Lorcan didn’t let go. Manon crooned in that way that usually meant death, “Don’t. Touch. Her.”

  “You don’t give me orders, witch,” Lorcan said. “And you
have no say in what is between us.”

  Elide frowned at him. “You’re making it worse.”

  “We like to call it ‘territorial male nonsense,’” Aelin confided. “Or ‘territorial Fae bastard’ works just as nicely.”

  The Fae Prince coughed pointedly behind her.

  The queen looked over a shoulder, brows raised. “Am I forgetting another term of endearment?”

  The warrior-prince’s eyes glowed, even as his face remained set with predatory intent. “I think you covered it.”

  Aelin winked at Lorcan. “You hurt her, and I’ll melt your bones,” she merely said, and walked away.

  Manon’s iron-clad smile grew, and she gave Lorcan a mocking incline of the head as she followed in the queen’s wake.

  Aedion looked Lorcan over and snorted. “Aelin does whatever she wants, but I think she’d let me see how many of your bones I can break before she melts them.” Then he, too, was walking toward the two females. One silver, one gold.

  Elide almost screamed as a ghost leopard appeared out of nowhere, twitched its whiskers in Lorcan’s direction, and then trotted after the women, its puffy tail swishing behind it.

  Then the king left, then the Fae males. Until only Prince Rowan Whitethorn stood there. He gave Elide a Look.

  Elide immediately shrugged out of Lorcan’s grip. Aelin and Aedion had stopped ahead, waiting for her. Smiling faintly—welcomingly.

  So Elide headed for them, her court, and did not look back.

  Rowan had kept quiet during the past few minutes, observing.

  Lorcan had been willing to die for Elide. Had been willing to put aside his quest for Maeve in order for Elide to live. And had then acted territorial enough to make Rowan wonder if he seemed so ridiculous around Aelin all the time.

  Now alone, Rowan said to Lorcan, “How did you find us?”

  A cutting smile. “The dark god nudged me toward here. The ilken army did the rest.”

  The same Lorcan he’d known for centuries, and yet … not. Some hard edge had been dulled—no, soothed.

  Lorcan stared toward the source of that soothing, but his jaw clenched as his focus shifted to where Aelin walked beside her. “That power could just as easily destroy her, you know.”

  “I know,” Rowan admitted. What she’d done minutes ago, the power she’d summoned and unleashed … It had been a song that had made his magic erupt in kind.

  When the ilken’s resistance had finally yielded beneath flame and ice and wind, Rowan hadn’t been able to stifle the yearning to walk into the burning heart of that power and see her glowing with it.

  Halfway across the plain, he’d realized it wasn’t just the allure of it that tugged at him. It was the woman inside it, who might need physical contact with another living being to remind herself that she had a body, and people who loved her, and to pull back from that killing calm that so mercilessly wiped the ilken from the skies. But then the flames had vanished, their enemies raining down as ash and ice and corpses, and she’d looked at him … Holy gods, when she’d looked at him, he’d almost fallen to his knees.

  Queen, and lover, and friend—and more. He hadn’t cared that they had an audience. He had needed to touch her, to reassure himself that she was all right, to feel the woman who could do such great and terrible things and still look at him with that beckoning, vibrant life in her eyes.

  You make me want to live, Rowan.

  He wondered if Elide Lochan had somehow made Lorcan want to do the same.

  He said to Lorcan, “And what about your mission?”

  Any softness vanished from Lorcan’s granite-hewn features. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re in this shithole place, and then we’ll discuss my plans.”

  “Aelin can decide what to tell you.”

  “Such a good dog.”

  Rowan gave him a lazy smile but refrained from commenting on the delicate, dark-haired young woman who now held Lorcan’s own leash.

  58

  Kaltain Rompier had just turned the tide in this war.

  Dorian had never been more ashamed of himself.

  He should have been better. Should have seen better. They all should have.

  The thoughts swirled and eddied as Dorian kept back in the half-drowned temple complex, silently watching as Aelin studied the chest on the altar as if it were an opponent.

  The queen was now flanked by Lady Elide, Manon on the dark-haired girl’s other side, Lysandra sprawled in ghost leopard form at the queen’s feet.

  The power in that cluster alone was staggering. And Elide … Manon had murmured something to Aelin on their walk back into the ruins about Elide being watched over by Anneith.

  Watched over, as the rest of them seemed to be by other gods.

  Lorcan stepped into the ruins, Rowan at his side. Fenrys, Gavriel, and Aedion approached them, hands on their swords, bodies still thrumming with tension as they kept Lorcan within sight. Especially Maeve’s warriors.

  Another ring of power.

  Lorcan—Lorcan, blessed by Hellas himself, Rowan had told him on that skiff ride into the Dead Islands. Hellas, god of death. Who had traveled here with Anneith, his consort.

  The hair on Dorian’s arms rose.

  Scions—each of them touched by a different god, each of them subtly, quietly, guided here. It wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be.

  Manon noticed him standing a few feet away, read whatever wariness was on his face, and broke from the circle of quietly talking women to come to his side. “What?”

  Dorian clenched his jaw. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  He waited for the dismissal, the mockery. Manon only said, “Explain.”

  He opened his mouth, but Aelin stepped up to the dais.

  The Lock—the Lock that would contain the Wyrdkeys, would allow Aelin to put them back in their gate. Thanks to Kaltain, thanks to Elide, they only needed one more. Wherever Erawan had it. But getting this Lock …

  Rowan was instantly at the queen’s side as she peered into the chest.

  Slowly, she looked back at them. At Manon.

  “Get up here,” the queen said in an unnervingly calm voice.

  Manon, wisely, did not refuse.

  “This isn’t the place or time for exploring it,” Rowan said to the queen. “We move it back to the ship, then figure it out from there.”

  Aelin murmured her agreement, her face paling.

  Manon asked them, “Was the Lock ever here to begin with?”

  “I don’t know.” Dorian had never heard Aelin utter the words. It was enough to send him splashing up the stairs, dripping water behind him as he peered in.

  There was no Lock. Not in the way that they had expected, not in the way the queen had been promised and instructed to find it.

  The stone chest held only one thing:

  An iron-bound mirror, the surface near-golden with age, speckled, and covered in grime. And along the twining, intricately carved border, tucked into the upper right corner …

  The marking of the Eye of Elena. A witch symbol.

  “What the hell is it?” Aedion demanded from the steps below.

  It was Manon who answered, glancing sidelong at the grim-faced queen, “It’s a witch mirror.”

  “A what?” Aelin asked. The others edged closer.

  Manon tapped a nail on the stone rim of the chest. “When you killed Yellowlegs, did she give any hint about why she was there, what she wanted from you or the former king?” Dorian searched his own memory but found nothing.

  “No.” Aelin glanced to him in question, but Dorian shook his head as well. She asked the witch, “Do you know why she was there?”

  A hint of a nod. A breath of hesitation. Dorian braced himself. “Yellowlegs was there to meet with the king—to show him how her magic mirrors worked.”

  “I smashed most of them,” Aelin said, crossing her arms.

  “Whatever you destroyd were cheap tricks and replicas. Her true witch mirrors … You cannot break those. Not easi
ly, at least.”

  Dorian had a horrible feeling about where this was headed. “What can they do?”

  “You can see the future, past, present. You can speak between mirrors, if someone possesses the sister-glass. And then there are the rare silvers—whose forging demands something vital from the maker.” Manon’s voice dropped low. Dorian wondered if even among the Blackbeaks, these tales had only been whispered at their campfires. “Other mirrors amplify and hold blasts of raw power, to be unleashed if the mirror is aimed at something.”

  “A weapon,” Aedion said, eliciting a nod from Manon. The general must have been piecing things together as well because he asked before Dorian could, “Yellowlegs met with him about those weapons, didn’t she?”

  Manon went silent for long enough that he knew Aelin was about to push. But Dorian gave her a warning stare to keep quiet. So she did. They all did.

  Finally, the witch said, “They’ve been making towers. Enormous, yet capable of being hauled across battlefields, lined with those mirrors. For Erawan to use with his powers—to incinerate your armies in a few blasts.”

  Aelin closed her eyes. Rowan laid a hand on her shoulder.

  Dorian asked, “Is this …” He gestured to the chest, the mirror inside. “One of the mirrors they plan to use?”

  “No,” Manon said, studying the witch mirror within the chest. “Whatever this mirror is … I’m not sure what it was meant for. What it can even do. But it surely isn’t that Lock you sought.”

  Aelin fished the Eye of Elena from her pocket, weighing it in her hand, and loosed a sharp sigh through her nose. “I’m ready for today to be over.”

  Mile after mile, the Fae males carried the mirror between them.

  Rowan and Aedion pushed Manon for details on those witch towers. Two were already constructed, but she didn’t know how many more were being built. They were stationed in the Ferian Gap, but with others possibly elsewhere. No, she didn’t know the mode of transportation. Or how many witches to a tower.

  Aelin let their words settle into some deep, quiet part of her. She’d figure it out tomorrow—after she slept. Figure out this damn witch mirror tomorrow, too.