Queen of Shadows

  When her cousin and the captain were almost to the top of the stairs, when it became clear no one was about to burst in, she followed them. But pausing had cost her; pausing had let the razor-sharp focus slip, let every thought she’d kept at bay come sweeping in. Every step she took was heavier than the last.

  One foot up, then the next, then the next.

  By the time she made it to the second floor, Chaol had taken Aedion into the guest bedroom. The sound of running water gurgled out to greet her.

  Aelin left the front door unlocked for Lysandra, and for a moment, she just stood in her apartment, bracing a hand on the back of the couch, staring at nothing.

  When she was certain she could move again, she strode into her bedroom. She was naked before she reached the bathing chamber, and she sat herself right in the cold, dry tub before she turned on the water.

  Once she emerged, clean and wearing one of Sam’s old white shirts and a pair of his undershorts, Chaol was waiting for her on the couch. She didn’t dare look at his face—not yet.

  Lysandra popped her head in from the guest room. “I’m just finishing cleaning him up. He should be fine, if he doesn’t burst the stitches again. No infection, thank the gods.”

  Aelin lifted a limp hand in thanks, also not daring to look into the room behind Lysandra to see the massive figure lying on the bed, a towel around his waist. If Chaol and the courtesan had been introduced, she didn’t particularly care.

  There was no good place to have this talk with Chaol, so she just stood in the center of the room and watched as the captain rose from his seat, his shoulders tight.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  She swallowed once. “I killed a lot of people today. I’m not in the mood to analyze it.”

  “That’s never bothered you before.”

  She couldn’t dredge up the energy to even feel the sting of the words. “The next time you decide you don’t trust me, try not to prove it at a time when my life or Aedion’s is on the line.”

  A flash of his bronze eyes told her he’d somehow already seen Nesryn. Chaol’s voice was hard and cold as ice as he said, “You tried to kill him. You said you’d try to get him out, to help him, and you tried to kill him.”

  The bedroom where Lysandra was working had gone silent.

  Aelin let out a low snarl. “You want to know what I did? I gave him one minute. I gave up one minute of my escape to him. Do you understand what can happen in one minute? Because I gave one to Dorian when he attacked Aedion and me today—to capture us. I gave him a minute, in which the fate of my entire kingdom could have changed forever. I chose the son of my enemy.”

  He gripped the back of the sofa as though physically restraining himself. “You’re a liar. You’ve always been a liar. And today was no exception. You had a sword over his head.”

  “I did,” she spat. “And before Faliq arrived to wreck everything, I was going to do it. I should have done it, as anyone with common sense would have, because Dorian is gone.”

  And there was her breaking heart, fracturing at the monster she’d seen living in Dorian’s eyes, the demon that would hunt her and Aedion down, that would stalk her dreams.

  “I do not owe you an apology,” she said to Chaol.

  “Don’t talk down to me like you’re my queen,” he snapped.

  “No, I’m not your queen. But you are going to have to decide soon whom you serve, because the Dorian you knew is gone forever. Adarlan’s future does not depend on him anymore.”

  The agony in Chaol’s eyes hit her like a physical blow. And she wished she had mastered herself better when explaining it, but … she needed him to understand the risk she’d taken, and the danger he’d let Arobynn manipulate him into putting her in. He had to know that there was a hard line that she must draw, and that she would hold, to protect her own people.

  So she said, “Go to the roof and take the first watch.”

  Chaol blinked.

  “I’m not your queen, but I’m going to attend to my cousin right now. And since I hope Nesryn is lying low, someone needs to take the watch. Unless you’d like for us all to be caught unawares by the king’s men.”

  Chaol didn’t bother replying as he turned on his heel and strode out. She listened to him storming up the stairs and onto the roof, and it was only then that she loosed a breath and scrubbed at her face.

  When she lowered her hands, Lysandra was standing in the guest bedroom doorway, her eyes wide. “What do you mean, queen?”

  Aelin winced, swearing under her breath.

  “That’s exactly the word I’d use,” Lysandra said, her face pale.

  Aelin said, “My name—”

  “Oh, I know what your real name is, Aelin.”

  Shit. “You understand why I had to keep it a secret.”

  “Of course I do,” Lysandra said, pursing her lips. “You don’t know me, and more lives than yours are at stake.”

  “No—I do know you.” Gods, why were the words so damn hard to get out? The longer the hurt flickered in Lysandra’s eyes, the wider the gap across the room felt. Aelin swallowed. “Until I had Aedion back, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I knew I would have to tell you the moment you saw us in a room together.”

  “And Arobynn knows.” Those green eyes were hard as chips of ice.

  “He’s always known. This—this changes nothing between us, you know. Nothing.”

  Lysandra glanced behind her, to the bedroom where Aedion now lay unconscious, and loosed a long breath. “The resemblance is uncanny. Gods, the fact that you went undiscovered for so many years boggles the mind.” She studied Aedion again. “Even though he’s a handsome bastard, it’d be like kissing you.” Her eyes were still hard, but—a flicker of amusement gleamed there.

  Aelin grimaced. “I could have lived without knowing that.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I was ever nervous you would start bowing and scraping.”

  Light and understanding danced in Lysandra’s eyes. “Where would the fun be in that?”

  CHAPTER

  20

  Several days after running into the Wing Leader, Elide Lochan’s ankle was sore, her lower back a tight knot, and her shoulders aching as she took the last step into the aerie. At least she’d made it without encountering any horrors in the halls—though the climb had nearly killed her.

  She hadn’t grown accustomed to the steep, endless steps of Morath in the two months since she’d been dragged to this horrible place by Vernon. Just completing her daily tasks made her ruined ankle throb with pain she hadn’t experienced in years, and today was the worst yet. She would have to scrounge up some herbs from the kitchen tonight to soak her foot; maybe even some oils, if the ornery cook was feeling generous enough.

  Compared with some of the other denizens of Morath, he was fairly mild. He tolerated her presence in the kitchen, and her requests for herbs—especially when she oh-so-sweetly offered to clean a few dishes or prepare meals. And he never blinked twice when she inquired about when the next shipment of food and supplies would come in, because Oh, she’d loved his whatever-fruit pie, and it would be so nice to have it again. Easy to flatter, easy to trick. Making people see and hear what they wanted to: one of the many weapons in her arsenal.

  A gift from Anneith, the Lady of Wise Things, Finnula had claimed—the only gift, Elide often thought, that she’d ever received, beyond her old nursemaid’s good heart and wits.

  She’d never told Finnula that she often prayed to the Clever Goddess to bestow another gift on those who made the years in Perranth a living hell: death, and not the gentle sort. Not like Silba, who offered peaceful ends, or Hellas, who offered violent, burning ones. No, deaths at Anneith’s hands—at the hands of Hellas’s consort—were brutal, bloody, and slow.

  The kind of death Elide expected to receive at any moment these days, from the witches who prowled the halls or from the dark-eyed duke, his lethal soldiers, or the white-haired Wing Leader who’d tasted her blood like fine wine.
She’d had nightmares about it ever since. That is, when she could sleep at all.

  Elide had needed to rest twice on her way to the aerie, and her limp was deep by the time she reached the top of the tower, bracing herself for the beasts and the monsters who rode them.

  An urgent message had come for the Wing Leader while Elide was cleaning her room—and when Elide explained that the Wing Leader was not there, the man heaved a sigh of relief, shoved the letter in Elide’s hand, and said to find her.

  And then the man had run.

  She should have suspected it. It had taken two heartbeats to note and catalog the man’s details, his tells and ticks. Sweaty, his face pale, pupils diluted—he’d sagged at the sight of Elide when she opened the door. Bastard. Most men, she’d decided, were bastards of varying degrees. Most of them were monsters. None worse than Vernon.

  Elide scanned the aerie. Empty. Not even a handler to be seen.

  The hay floor was fresh, the feeding troughs full of meat and grain. But the food was untouched by the wyverns whose massive, leathery bodies loomed beyond the archways, perched on wooden beams jutting over the plunge as they surveyed the Keep and the army below like thirteen mighty lords. Limping as close as she dared to one of the massive openings, Elide peered out at the view.

  It was exactly as the Wing Leader’s map had depicted it in the spare moments when she could sneak a look.

  They were surrounded by ashy mountains, and though she’d been in a prison wagon for the long journey here, she had taken note of the forest she spied in the distance and the rushing of the massive river they had passed days before they ascended the broad, rocky mountain road. In the middle of nowhere—that’s where Morath was, and the view before her confirmed it: no cities, no towns, and an entire army surrounding her. She shoved back the despair that crept into her veins.

  She had never seen an army before coming here. Soldiers, yes, but she’d been eight when her father passed her up onto Vernon’s horse and kissed her good-bye, promising to see her soon. She hadn’t been in Orynth to witness the army that seized its riches, its people. And she’d been locked in a tower at Perranth Castle by the time the army reached her family’s lands and her uncle became the king’s ever-faithful servant and stole her father’s title.

  Her title. Lady of Perranth—that’s what she should have been. Not that it mattered now. There wasn’t much of Terrasen’s court left to belong to. None of them had come for her in those initial months of slaughter. And in the years since, none had remembered that she existed. Perhaps they assumed she was dead—like Aelin, that wild queen-who-might-have-been. Perhaps they were all dead themselves. And maybe, given the dark army now spread before her, that was a mercy.

  Elide gazed across the flickering lights of the war camp, and a chill went down her spine. An army to crush whatever resistance Finnula had once whispered about during the long nights they were locked in that tower in Perranth. Perhaps the white-haired Wing Leader herself would lead that army, on the wyvern with shimmering wings.

  A fierce, cool wind blew into the aerie, and Elide leaned into it, gulping it down as if it were fresh water. There had been so many nights in Perranth when only the wailing wind had kept her company. When she could have sworn it sang ancient songs to lull her into sleep. Here … here the wind was a colder, sleeker thing—serpentine, almost. Entertaining such fanciful things will only distract you, Finnula would have chided. She wished her nurse were here.

  But wishing had done her no good these past ten years, and Elide, Lady of Perranth, had no one coming for her.

  Soon, she reassured herself—soon the next caravan of supplies would crawl up the mountain road, and when it went back down, Elide would be stowed away in one of the wagons, free at long last. And then she would run somewhere far, far away, where they’d never heard of Terrasen or Adarlan, and leave these people to their miserable continent. A few weeks—then she might stand a chance of escaping.

  If she survived until then. If Vernon didn’t decide he truly did have some wicked purpose in dragging her here. If she didn’t wind up with those poor people, caged inside the surrounding mountains, screaming for salvation every night. She’d overheard the other servants whisper about the dark, fell things that went on under those mountains: people being splayed open on black stone altars and then forged into something new, something other. For what wretched purpose, Elide had not yet learned, and mercifully, beyond the screaming, she’d never encountered whatever was being broken and pieced together beneath the earth. The witches were bad enough.

  Elide shuddered as she took another step into the vast chamber. The crunching of hay under her too-small shoes and the clank of her chains were the only sounds. “W-Wing Lea—”

  A roar blasted through the air, the stones, the floor, so loud that her head swam and she cried out. Tumbling back, her chains tangled as she slipped on the hay.

  Hard, iron-tipped hands dug into her shoulders and kept her upright.

  “If you are not a spy,” a wicked voice purred in her ear, “then why are you here, Elide Lochan?”

  Elide wasn’t faking it when her hand shook as she held out the letter, not daring to move.

  The Wing Leader stepped around her, circling Elide like prey, her long white braid stark against her leather flying gear.

  The details hit Elide like stones: eyes like burnt gold; a face so impossibly beautiful that Elide was struck dumb by it; a lean, honed body; and a steady, fluid grace in every movement, every breath, that suggested the Wing Leader could easily use the assortment of blades on her. Human only in shape—immortal and predatory in every other sense.

  Fortunately, the Wing Leader was alone. Unfortunately, those gold eyes held nothing but death.

  Elide said, “Th-this came for you.” The stammer—that was faked. People usually couldn’t wait to get away when she stammered and stuttered. Though she doubted the people who ran this place would care about the stammer if they decided to have some fun with a daughter of Terrasen. If Vernon handed her over.

  The Wing Leader held Elide’s gaze as she took the letter.

  “I’m surprised the seal isn’t broken. Though if you were a good spy, you would know how to do it without breaking the wax.”

  “If I were a good spy,” Elide breathed, “I could also read.”

  A bit of truth to temper the witch’s distrust.

  The witch blinked, and then sniffed, as if trying to detect a lie. “You speak well for a mortal, and your uncle is a lord. Yet you cannot read?”

  Elide nodded. More than the leg, more than the drudgery, it was that miserable shortcoming that hounded her. Her nurse, Finnula, couldn’t read—but Finnula had been the one to teach her how to take note of things, to listen, and to think. During the long days when they’d had nothing to do but needlepoint, her nurse had taught her to mark the little details—each stitch—while also never losing sight of the larger image. There will come a day when I am gone, Elide, and you will need to have every weapon in your arsenal sharp and ready to strike.

  Neither of them had thought that Elide might be the one who left first. But she would not look back, not even for Finnula, once she ran. And when she found that new life, that new place … she would never gaze northward, to Terrasen, and wonder, either.

  She kept her eyes on the ground. “I—I know basic letters, but my lessons stopped when I was eight.”

  “At your uncle’s behest, I assume.” The witch paused, rotating the envelope and showing the jumble of letters to her, tapping on them with an iron nail. “This says ‘Manon Blackbeak.’ You see anything like this again, bring it to me.”

  Elide bowed her head. Meek, submissive—just the way these witches liked their humans. “Of-of course.”

  “And why don’t you stop pretending to be a stammering, cowering wretch while you’re at it.”

  Elide kept her head bent low enough that her hair hopefully covered any glimmer of surprise. “I’ve tried to be pleasing—”

  “I smelled you
r human fingers all over my map. It was careful, cunning work, not to put one thing out of order, not to touch anything but the map … Thinking of escaping after all?”

  “Of course not, mistress.” Oh, gods. She was so, so dead.

  “Look at me.”

  Elide obeyed. The witch hissed, and Elide flinched as she shoved Elide’s hair out of her eyes. A few strands fell to the ground, sliced off by the iron nails. “I don’t know what game you’re playing—if you’re a spy, if you’re a thief, if you’re just looking out for yourself. But do not pretend that you are some meek, pathetic little girl when I can see that vicious mind working behind your eyes.”

  Elide didn’t dare drop the mask.

  “Was it your mother or father who was related to Vernon?”

  Strange question—but Elide had known for a while she would do anything, say anything, to stay alive and unharmed. “My father was Vernon’s elder brother,” she said.

  “And where did your mother come from?”

  She didn’t give that old grief an inch of room in her heart. “She was low-born. A laundress.”

  “Where did she come from?”

  Why did it matter? The golden eyes were fixed on her, unyielding. “Her family was originally from Rosamel, in the northwest of Terrasen.”

  “I know where it is.” Elide kept her shoulders bowed, waiting. “Get out.”

  Hiding her relief, Elide opened her mouth to make her good-byes, when another roar set the stones vibrating. She couldn’t conceal her flinch.

  “It’s just Abraxos,” Manon said, a hint of a smile forming on her cruel mouth, a bit of light gleaming in those golden eyes. Her mount must make her happy, then—if witches could be happy. “He’s hungry.”

  Elide’s mouth went dry.

  At the sound of his name, a massive triangular head, scarred badly around one eye, poked into the aerie.

  Elide’s knees wobbled, but the witch went right up to the beast and placed her iron-tipped hands on his snout. “You swine,” the witch said. “You need the whole mountain to know you’re hungry?”