Queen of Shadows

  Holy gods.

  The wyverns were enormous. Enormous, vicious, and … and those were indeed saddles on their backs. “Poisoned barbs on the tail,” Rowan mouthed in her ear. “With that wingspan, they can probably fly hundreds of miles a day.”

  He would know, she supposed.

  Only thirteen wyverns were grounded in the meadow. The smallest of them was sprawled on his belly, face buried in a mound of wildflowers. Iron spikes gleamed on his tail in lieu of bone, scars covered his body like a cat’s stripes, and his wings … she knew the material grafted there. Spidersilk. That much of it must have cost a fortune.

  The other wyverns were all normal, and all capable of ripping a man in half in one bite.

  They would be dead within moments against one of these things. But an army three thousand strong? Panic pushed in.

  I am Aelin Ashryver Galathynius—

  “That one—I bet she’s the Wing Leader,” Rowan said, pointing now to the women gathered at the edge of the meadow.

  Not women. Witches.

  They were all young and beautiful, with hair and skin of every shade and color. But even from the distance, she picked out the one Rowan had pointed to. Her hair was like living moonlight, her eyes like burnished gold.

  She was the most beautiful person Aelin had ever seen.

  And the most horrifying.

  She moved with a swagger that Aelin supposed only an immortal could achieve, her red cloak snapping behind her, the riding leathers clinging to her lithe body. A living weapon—that’s what the Wing Leader was.

  The Wing Leader prowled through the camp, inspecting the wyverns and giving orders Aelin’s human ears couldn’t hear. The other twelve witches seemed to track her every movement, as if she were the axis of their world, and two of them followed behind her especially closely. Lieutenants.

  Aelin fought to keep her balance on the wide bough.

  Any army that Terrasen might raise would be annihilated. Along with the friends around her.

  They were all so, so dead.

  Rowan put a hand on her waist, as if he could hear the refrain pounding through her with every heartbeat. “You took down one of their Matrons,” he said in her ear, barely more than a rustling leaf. “You can take down her inferiors.”

  Maybe. Maybe not, given the way the thirteen witches in the clearing moved and interacted. They were a tight-knit, brutal unit. They did not look like the sort that took prisoners.

  If they did, they likely ate them.

  Would they fly Lysandra to Morath once the prison wagon arrived? If so … “Lysandra doesn’t get within thirty feet of the wyverns.” If she got hauled onto one of them, then it would already be too late.

  “Agreed,” Rowan murmured. “Horses approaching from the north. And more wings from the west. Let’s go.”

  The Matron, then. The horses would be the king and the prison wagon. And Dorian.

  Aedion looked ready to start ripping out witch throats as they reached the ground and slunk through the forest again, heading for the clearing. Nesryn had an arrow nocked in her bow as she slipped into the brush to provide cover, her face grave—ready for anything. At least that made one of them.

  Aelin fell into step beside Chaol. “No matter what you see or hear, do not move. We need to assess Dorian before we act. Just one of those Valg princes is lethal.”

  “I know,” he said, refusing to meet her stare. “You can trust me.”

  “I need you to make sure Lysandra gets out. You know this forest better than any of us. Get her somewhere safe.”

  Chaol nodded. “I promise.” She didn’t doubt it. Not after this winter.

  She reached out, paused—and then put a hand on his shoulder. “I won’t touch Dorian,” she said. “I swear it.”

  His bronze eyes flickered. “Thank you.”

  They kept moving.

  Aedion and Rowan had them all doubling back to the area they’d scouted earlier, a little outcropping of boulders with enough brush for them to crouch unseen and observe everything that was happening in the clearing.

  Slowly, like lovely wraiths from a hell-realm, the witches appeared.

  The white-haired witch strode to greet an older, black-haired female who could only be the Matron of the Blackbeak Clan. Behind the Matron, a cluster of witches hauled a large covered wagon, much like the one the Yellowlegs had once parked before the glass palace. The wyverns must have carried it between them. It looked ordinary—painted black and blue and yellow—but Aelin had a feeling that she didn’t want to know what was inside.

  Then the royal party arrived.

  She didn’t know where to look: at the King of Adarlan, at the small, too-familiar prison wagon in the center of the riders …

  Or at Dorian, riding at his father’s side, that black collar around his neck and nothing human in his face.

  CHAPTER

  58

  Manon Blackbeak hated this forest.

  The trees were unnaturally close—so close that they’d had to leave the wyverns behind in order to make their way to the clearing a half mile from the crumbling temple. At least the humans hadn’t been stupid enough to pick the temple itself as a meeting site. It was too precariously perched, the ravine too open to spying eyes. Yesterday, Manon and the Thirteen had scouted all the clearings within a mile radius, weighing them for their visibility, accessibility, and cover, and finally settled on this one. Near enough to where the king had originally demanded they meet—but a far more protected spot. Rule one of dealing with mortals: never let them pick the exact location.

  First, her grandmother and her escort coven strode through the trees from wherever they’d landed, a covered wagon in tow, no doubt carrying the weapon she’d created. She assessed Manon with a slashing glance and merely said, “Keep silent and out of our way. Speak only when spoken to. Don’t cause trouble, or I’ll rip out your throat.”

  Later, then. She would talk to her grandmother about the Valg later.

  The king was late, and his party made enough gods-damned noise as they traipsed through the woods that Manon heard them a good five minutes before the king’s massive black warhorse appeared around the bend in the path. The other riders flowed behind him like a dark shadow.

  The scent of the Valg slithered along her body.

  They’d brought a prison wagon with them, containing a prisoner to be transferred to Morath. Female, from the smell of her—and strange. She’d never come across that scent before: not Valg, not Fae, not entirely human. Interesting.

  But the Thirteen were warriors, not couriers.

  Her hands behind her back, Manon waited as her grandmother glided toward the king, monitoring his human-Valg entourage while they surveyed the clearing. The man closest to the king didn’t bother glancing around. His sapphire eyes went right to Manon, and stayed there.

  He would have been beautiful were it not for the dark collar around his throat and the utter coldness in his perfect face.

  He smiled at Manon as though he knew the taste of her blood.

  She stifled the urge to bare her teeth and shifted her focus to the Matron, who had now stopped before the mortal king. Such a reek from these people. How was her grandmother not grimacing as she stood before them?

  “Your Majesty,” her grandmother said, her black robes like liquid night as she gave the slightest of bobs. Manon shut down the bark of protest in her throat. Never—never had her grandmother bowed or curtsied or so much as nodded for another ruler, not even the other Matrons.

  Manon shoved the outrage down deep as the king dismounted in one powerful movement. “High Witch,” he said, angling his head in not quite a bow, but enough to show some kernel of acknowledgment. A massive sword hung at his side. His clothes were dark and rich, and his face …

  Cruelty incarnate.

  Not the cold, cunning cruelty that Manon had honed and delighted in, but base, brute cruelty, the kind that sent all those men to break into her cottages, thinking her in need of a lesson.

>   This was the man to whom they were to bow. To whom her grandmother had lowered her head a fraction of an inch.

  Her grandmother gestured behind her with an iron-tipped hand, and Manon lifted her chin. “I present to you my granddaughter, Manon, heir of the Blackbeak Clan and Wing Leader of your aerial cavalry.”

  Manon stepped forward, enduring the raking gaze of the king. The dark-haired young man who had ridden at his side dismounted with fluid grace, still smirking at her. She ignored him.

  “You do your people a great service, Wing Leader,” the king said, his voice like granite.

  Manon just stared at him, keenly aware of the Matron judging her every move.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” the king demanded, his thick brows—one scarred—high.

  “I was told to keep my mouth shut,” Manon said. Her grandmother’s eyes flashed. “Unless you’d prefer I get on my knees and grovel.”

  Oh, there would certainly be hell to pay for that remark. Her grandmother turned to the king. “She’s an arrogant thing, but you’ll find no deadlier warrior.”

  But the king was smiling—though it didn’t reach his dark eyes. “I don’t think you’ve ever groveled for anything in your life, Wing Leader.”

  Manon gave him a half smile in return, her iron teeth out. Let his young companion wet himself at the sight. “We witches aren’t born to grovel before humans.”

  The king chuckled mirthlessly and faced her grandmother, whose iron-tipped fingers had curved as if she were imagining them around Manon’s throat. “You chose our Wing Leader well, Matron,” he said, and then gestured to the wagon painted with the Ironteeth banner. “Let us see what you’ve brought for me. I hope it will be equally impressive—and worth the wait.”

  Her grandmother grinned, revealing iron teeth that had begun to rust in some spots, and ice licked up Manon’s spine. “This way.”

  Shoulders back, head high, Manon waited at the bottom of the wagon steps to follow the Matron and the king inside, but the man—so much taller and wider than she up close—frowned at the sight of her. “My son can entertain the Wing Leader.”

  And that was it—she was shut out as he and her grandmother vanished within. Apparently, she wasn’t to see this weapon. At least, not as one of the first, Wing Leader or not. Manon took a breath and checked her temper.

  Half of the Thirteen encircled the wagon for the Matron’s safety, while the others dispersed to monitor the royal party around them. Knowing their place, their inadequacy in the face of the Thirteen, the escort coven faded back into the tree line. Black-uniformed guards watched them all, some armed with spears, some with crossbows, some with vicious swords.

  The prince was now leaning against a gnarled oak. Noticing her attention, he gave her a lazy grin.

  It was enough. King’s son or not, she didn’t give a damn.

  Manon crossed the clearing, Sorrel behind her. On edge, but keeping her distance.

  There was no one in earshot as Manon stopped a few feet away from the Crown Prince. “Hello, princeling,” she purred.

  The world kept slipping out from underneath Chaol’s feet, so much so that he grabbed a handful of dirt just to remember where he was and that this was real, not some nightmare.

  Dorian.

  His friend; unharmed, but—but not Dorian.

  Not even close to Dorian, as the prince smirked at that beautiful, white-haired witch.

  The face was the same, but the soul gazing out of those sapphire eyes had not been created in this world.

  Chaol squeezed the dirt harder.

  He had run. He had run from Dorian, and let this happen.

  It hadn’t been hope that he carried when he fled, but stupidity.

  Aelin had been right. It would be a mercy to kill him.

  With the king and Matron occupied … Chaol glanced toward the wagon and then at Aelin, lying on her stomach in the brush, a dagger out. She gave him a quick nod, her mouth a tight line. Now. If they were going to make their move to free Lysandra, it would have to be now.

  And for Nehemia, for the friend vanished beneath a Wyrdstone collar, he would not falter.

  The ancient, cruel demon squatting inside him began thrashing as the white-haired witch sauntered up to him.

  It had been content to sneer from afar. One of us, one of ours, it hissed to him. We made it, so we’ll take it.

  Every step closer made her unbound hair shimmer like moonlight on water. But the demon began scrambling away as the sun lit up her eyes.

  Not too close, it said. Do not let the witchling too close. The eyes of the Valg kings—

  “Hello, princeling,” she said, her voice bedroom-soft and full of glorious death.

  “Hello, witchling,” he said.

  And the words were his own.

  For a moment he was so stunned that he blinked. He blinked. The demon inside of him recoiled, clawing at the walls of his mind. Eyes of the Valg kings, eyes of our masters, it shrieked. Do not touch that one!

  “Is there a reason you’re smiling at me,” she said, “or shall I interpret it as a death wish?”

  Do not speak to it.

  He didn’t care. Let this be another dream, another nightmare. Let this new, lovely monster devour him whole. He had nothing beyond the here and now.

  “Do I need a reason to smile at a beautiful woman?”

  “I’m not a woman.” Her iron nails glinted as she crossed her arms. “And you …” She sniffed. “Man or demon?”

  “Prince,” he said. That’s what the thing inside him was; he had never learned its name.

  Do not speak to it!

  He cocked his head. “I’ve never been with a witch.”

  Let her rip out his throat for that. End it.

  A row of iron fangs snapped down over her teeth as her smile grew. “I’ve been with plenty of men. You’re all the same. Taste the same.” She looked him over as if he were her next meal.

  “I dare you,” he managed to say.

  Her eyes narrowed, the gold like living embers. He’d never seen anyone so beautiful.

  This witch had been crafted from the darkness between the stars.

  “I think not, Prince,” she said in her midnight voice. She sniffed again, her nose crinkling slightly. “But would you bleed red, or black?”

  “I’ll bleed whatever color you tell me to.”

  Step away, get away. The demon prince inside him yanked so hard he took a step. But not away. Toward the white-haired witch.

  She let out a low, vicious laugh. “What is your name, Prince?”

  His name.

  He didn’t know what that was.

  She reached out, her iron nails glimmering in the dappled sunlight. The demon’s screaming was so loud in his head that he wondered if his ears would bleed.

  Iron clinked against stone as she grazed the collar around his neck. Higher—if she just slashed higher—

  “Like a dog,” she murmured. “Leashed to your master.”

  She ran a finger along the curve of the collar, and he shuddered—in fear, in pleasure, in anticipation of the nails tearing into his throat.

  “What is your name.” A command, not a question, as eyes of pure gold met his.

  “Dorian,” he breathed.

  Your name is nothing, your name is mine, the demon hissed, and a wave of that human woman’s screaming swept him away.

  Crouched in the brush just twenty feet from the prison wagon, Aelin froze.

  Dorian.

  It couldn’t have been. There wasn’t a chance of it, not when the voice that Dorian had spoken with was so empty, so hollow, but—

  Beside her, Chaol’s eyes were wide. Had he heard the slight shift?

  The Wing Leader cocked her head, her iron-tipped hand still touching the Wyrdstone collar. “Do you want me to kill you, Dorian?”

  Aelin’s blood went cold.

  Chaol tensed, his hand going to his sword. Aelin gripped the back of his tunic in silent reminder. She had no doubt that a
cross the clearing, Nesryn’s arrow was already pointed with lethal accuracy at the Wing Leader’s throat.

  “I want you to do lots of things to me,” the prince said, raking his eyes along the witch’s body.

  The humanity was gone again. She’d imagined it. The way the king had acted … That was a man who held pure control over his son, confident that there was no struggle inside.

  A soft, joyless laugh, and then the Wing Leader released Dorian’s collar. Her red cloak flowed around her on a phantom wind as she stepped back. “Come find me again, Prince, and we’ll see about that.”

  A Valg prince inhabited Dorian—but Aelin’s nose did not bleed in its presence, and there was no creeping fog of darkness. Had the king muted its powers so his son could deceive the world around him? Or was that battle still being waged inside the prince’s mind?

  Now—they had to move now, while the Matron and the king remained in that painted wagon.

  Rowan cupped his hands to his mouth and signaled with a bird’s call, so lifelike that none of the guards shifted. But across the clearing, Aedion and Nesryn heard, and understood.

  She didn’t know how they managed to accomplish it, but a minute later, the wyverns of the High Witch’s coven were roaring with alarm, the trees shuddering with the sound. Every guard and sentinel turned toward the racket, away from the prison wagon.

  It was all the distraction Aelin needed.

  She’d spent two weeks in one of those wagons. She knew the bars of the little window, knew the hinges and the locks. And Rowan, fortunately, knew exactly how to dispatch the three guards stationed at the back door without making a sound.

  She didn’t dare breathe too loudly as she climbed the few steps to the back of the wagon, pulled out her lock-picking kit, and set to work. One look over here, one shift of the wind—

  There—the lock sprang open, and she eased back the door, bracing for squeaky hinges. By some god’s mercy, it made no sound, and the wyverns went on bellowing.

  Lysandra was curled against the far corner, bloody and dirty, her short nightgown torn and her bare legs bruised.