Queen of Shadows

  “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “Oh?”

  Aelin reached into her pocket and pushed a folded piece of paper across the table. “It’s for you. And her.”

  “We don’t need—” Lysandra’s eyes fell upon the wax seal. A snake in midnight ink: Clarisse’s sigil. “What is this?”

  “Open it.”

  Glancing between her and the paper, Lysandra cracked the seal and read the text.

  “I, Clarisse DuVency, hereby declare that any debts owed to me by—”

  The paper began shaking.

  “Any debts owed to me by Lysandra and Evangeline are now paid in full. At their earliest convenience, they may receive the Mark of their freedom.”

  The paper fluttered to the table as Lysandra’s hands slackened. She raised her head to look at Aelin.

  “Och,” Aelin said, even as her own eyes filled. “I hate you for being so beautiful, even when you cry.”

  “Do you know how much money—”

  “Did you think I’d leave you enslaved to her?”

  “I don’t … I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know how to thank you—”

  “You don’t need to.”

  Lysandra put her face in her hands and sobbed.

  “I’m sorry if you wanted to do the proud and noble thing and stick it out for another decade,” Aelin began.

  Lysandra only wept harder.

  “But you have to understand that there was no rutting way I was going to leave without—”

  “Shut up, Aelin,” Lysandra said through her hands. “Just—shut up.” She lowered her hands, her face now puffy and splotchy.

  Aelin sighed. “Oh, thank the gods. You can look hideous when you cry.”

  Lysandra burst out laughing.

  Manon and Asterin stayed in the mountains all day and night after her Second revealed her invisible wound. They caught mountain goats for themselves and their wyverns and roasted them over a fire that night as they carefully considered what they might do.

  When Manon eventually dozed off, curled against Abraxos with a blanket of stars overhead, her head felt clearer than it had in months. And yet something nagged at her, even in sleep.

  She knew what it was when she awoke. A loose thread in the loom of the Three-Faced Goddess.

  “You ready?” Asterin said, mounting her pale-blue wyvern and smiling—a real smile.

  Manon had never seen that smile. She wondered how many people had. Wondered if she herself had ever smiled that way.

  Manon gazed northward. “There’s something I need to do.” When she explained it to her Second, Asterin didn’t hesitate to declare that she would go with her.

  So they stopped by Morath long enough to get supplies. They let Sorrel and Vesta know the bare details, and instructed them to tell the duke she’d been called away.

  They were airborne within an hour, flying hard and fast above the clouds to keep hidden.

  Mile after mile they flew. Manon couldn’t tell why that thread kept yanking, why it felt so urgent, but she pushed them hard, all the way to Rifthold.

  Four days. Elide had been in this freezing, festering dungeon for four days.

  It was so cold that she could hardly sleep, and the food they chucked in was barely edible. Fear kept her alert, prompting her to test the door, to watch the guards whenever they opened it, to study the halls behind them. She learned nothing useful.

  Four days—and Manon had not come for her. None of the Blackbeaks had.

  She didn’t know why she expected it. Manon had forced her to spy on that chamber, after all.

  She tried not to think about what might await her now.

  Tried, and failed. She wondered if anyone would even remember her name when she was dead. If it would ever be carved anywhere.

  She knew the answer. And knew there was no one coming for her.

  CHAPTER

  65

  Rowan was more tired than he’d admit to Aelin or Aedion, and in the flurry of planning, he hardly had a moment alone with the queen. It had taken him two days of rest and sleeping like the dead before he was back on his feet and able to go through his training exercises without being winded.

  After finishing his evening routine, he was so exhausted by the time he staggered into bed that he was asleep before Aelin had finished washing up. No, he hadn’t given humans nearly enough credit all these years.

  It would be such a damn relief to have his magic back—if their plan worked. Considering the fact that they were using hellfire, things could go very, very wrong. Chaol hadn’t been able to meet with Ress or Brullo yet, but tried every day to get messages to them. The real difficulty, it seemed, was that over half the rebels had fled as more Valg soldiers poured in. Three executions a day was the new rule: sunrise, noon, and sunset. Former magic-wielders, rebels, suspected rebel sympathizers—Chaol and Nesryn managed to save some, but not all. The cawing of crows could now be heard on every street.

  A male scent in the room snapped Rowan from sleep. He slid his knife out from under his pillow and sat up slowly.

  Aelin slumbered beside him, her breathing deep and even, yet again wearing one of his shirts. Some primal part of him snarled in satisfaction at the sight, at knowing she was covered in his scent.

  Rowan rolled to his feet, his steps silent as he scanned the room, knife at the ready.

  But the scent wasn’t inside. It was drifting in from beyond.

  Rowan edged to the window and peered out. No one on the street below; no one on the neighboring rooftops.

  Which meant Lorcan had to be on the roof.

  His old commander was waiting, arms crossed over his broad chest. He surveyed Rowan with a frown, noting the bandages and his bare torso. “Should I thank you for putting on pants?” Lorcan said, his voice barely more than a midnight wind.

  “I didn’t want you to feel inadequate,” Rowan replied, leaning against the roof door.

  Lorcan huffed a laugh. “Did your queen claw you up, or are the wounds from one of those beasts she sent after me?”

  “I was wondering who would ultimately win—you or the Wyrdhounds.”

  A flash of teeth. “I slaughtered them all.”

  “Why’d you come here, Lorcan?”

  “You think I don’t know that the heir of Mala Fire-Bringer is planning something for the summer solstice in two days? Have you fools considered my offer?”

  A carefully worded question, to bait him into revealing what Lorcan had only guessed at. “Aside from drinking the first of the summer wine and being a pain in my ass, I don’t think she’s planning anything at all.”

  “So that’s why the captain is trying to set up a meeting with guards at the palace?”

  “How am I supposed to keep up with what he does? The boy used to serve the king.”

  “Assassins, whores, traitors—what fine company you keep these days, Rowan.”

  “Better than being a dog leashed by a psychotic master.”

  “Is that what you thought of us? All those years that we worked together, killed men and bedded females together? I never heard you complain.”

  “I didn’t realize there was anything to complain about. I was as blind as you.”

  “And then a fiery princess flounced into your life, and you decided to change for her, right?” A cruel smile. “Did you tell her about Sollemere?”

  “She knows everything.”

  “Does she now. I suppose her own history makes her even more understanding of the horrors you committed on our queen’s behalf.”

  “Your queen’s behalf. What is it, exactly, about Aelin that gets under your skin, Lorcan? Is it that she’s not afraid of you, or is it that I walked away from you for her?”

  Lorcan snorted. “Whatever you’re planning, it won’t work. You’ll all die in the process.”

  That was highly likely, but Rowan said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You owe me more than that horseshit.”

  ??
?Careful, Lorcan, or you’ll sound like you care about someone other than yourself.” As a discarded bastard child growing up on the back streets of Doranelle, Lorcan had lost that ability centuries before Rowan had even been born. He’d never pitied him for it, though. Not when Lorcan had been blessed in every other regard by Hellas himself.

  Lorcan spat on the roof. “I was going to offer to bring your body back to your beloved mountain to be buried alongside Lyria once I finish with the keys. Now I’ll just let you rot here. Alongside your pretty little princess.”

  He tried to ignore the blow, the thought of that grave atop his mountain. “Is that a threat?”

  “Why would I bother? If you’re truly planning something, I won’t need to kill her—she can do that all on her own. Maybe the king will put her in one of those collars. Just like his son.”

  A chord of horror struck so deep in Rowan that his stomach turned. “Mind what you say, Lorcan.”

  “I bet Maeve would offer good coin for her. And if she gets her hands on that Wyrdkey … You can imagine just as well as I what sort of power Maeve would wield then.”

  Worse—so much worse than he could imagine if Maeve wanted Aelin not dead but enslaved. A weapon without limit in one hand, and the heir of Mala Fire-Bringer in her other. There would be no stopping her.

  Lorcan read the hesitation, the doubt. Gold gleamed in his hand. “You know me, Prince. You know I’m the only one qualified to hunt down and destroy those keys. Let your queen take on the army gathering in the south—leave this task to me.” The ring seemed to glow in the moonlight as Lorcan extended it. “Whatever she’s planning, she’ll need this. Or else you can say good-bye.” Lorcan’s eyes were chips of black ice. “We all know how well you handled saying it to Lyria.”

  Rowan leashed his rage. “Swear it.”

  Lorcan smiled, knowing he’d won.

  “Swear that this ring grants immunity to the Valg, and I’ll give it to you,” Rowan said, and he pulled the Amulet of Orynth from his pocket.

  Lorcan’s focus snapped to the amulet, to the otherworldly strangeness it radiated, and swore.

  A blade flashed, and then the scent of Lorcan’s blood filled the air. He clenched his fist, lifting it. “I swear on my blood and honor that I have not deceived you in any of this. The ring’s power is genuine.”

  Rowan watched the blood drip onto the roof. One drop; two; three.

  Lorcan might have been a prick, but Rowan had never seen him break an oath before. His word was his bond; it had always been the one currency he valued.

  They both moved at once, chucking the amulet and the ring into the space between them. Rowan caught the ring and swiftly pocketed it, but Lorcan just stared at the amulet in his hands, his eyes shadowed.

  Rowan avoided the urge to hold his breath and stayed silent.

  Lorcan slid the chain around his neck and tucked the amulet into his shirt. “You’re all going to die. Carrying out this plan, or in the war that follows.”

  “You destroy those keys,” Rowan said, “and there might not be a war.” A fool’s hope.

  “There will be a war. It’s too late to stop it now. Too bad that ring won’t keep any of you from being spiked on the castle walls.”

  The image flashed through his head—made all the worse, perhaps, because of the times he’d seen it himself, done it himself. “What happened to you, Lorcan? What happened in your miserable existence to make you this way?” He’d never asked for the full story, had never cared to. It hadn’t bothered him until now. Before, he would have stood beside Lorcan and taunted the poor fool who dared defy their queen. “You’re a better male than this.”

  “Am I? I still serve my queen, even if she cannot see it. Who was the one who abandoned her the first time a pretty human thing opened her legs—”

  “That is enough.”

  But Lorcan was gone.

  Rowan waited a few minutes before going back downstairs, turning the ring over and over in his pocket.

  Aelin was awake in the bed when he entered, the windows shut and curtained, the hearth dark. “Well?” she said, the word barely audible above the rustling of the blankets as he climbed in beside her.

  His night-keen eyes allowed him to see the scarred palm she held out as he dropped the ring into it. She slid it onto her thumb, wriggled her fingers, and frowned when nothing particularly exciting happened. A laugh caught in his throat.

  “How mad is Lorcan going to be,” Aelin murmured as they lay down face-to-face, “when he eventually opens up that amulet, finds the Valg commander’s ring inside, and realizes we gave him a fake?”

  The demon ripped down the remaining barriers between their souls as though they were paper, until only one remained, a tiny shell of self.

  He did not remember waking, or sleeping, or eating. Indeed, there were very few moments when he was even there, looking out through his eyes. Only when the demon prince fed on the prisoners in the dungeons—when he allowed him to feed, to drink alongside him—that was the only time he now surfaced.

  Whatever control he’d had that day—

  What day?

  He could not remember a time when the demon had not been there inside of him.

  And yet—

  Manon.

  A name.

  Do not think of that one—do not think of her. The demon hated that name.

  Manon.

  Enough. We do not speak of them, the descendants of our kings.

  Speak of whom?

  Good.

  “You’re ready for tomorrow?” Aelin said to Chaol as they stood on the roof of her apartment, gazing toward the glass castle. In the setting sun, it was awash in gold and orange and ruby—as if it were already aflame.

  Chaol prayed it wouldn’t come to that, but … “As ready as I can be.”

  He’d tried not to look too hesitant, too wary, when he’d arrived minutes ago to run through tomorrow’s plan one last time and Aelin had instead asked him to join her up here. Alone.

  She was wearing a loose white shirt tucked into tight brown pants, her hair unbound, and hadn’t even bothered to put on shoes. He wondered what her people would think of a barefoot queen.

  Aelin braced her forearms on the roof rail, hooking one ankle over the other as she said, “You know that I won’t unnecessarily endanger any lives.”

  “I know. I trust you.”

  She blinked, and shame washed through him at the shock on her face. “Do you regret,” she said, “sacrificing your freedom to get me to Wendlyn?”

  “No,” he said, surprising himself to find it true. “Regardless of what happened between us, I was a fool to serve the king. I like to think I would have left someday.”

  He needed to say that to her—had needed to say it from the moment she’d returned.

  “With me,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You would have left with me—when I was just Celaena.”

  “But you were never just Celaena, and I think you knew that, deep down, even before everything happened. I understand now.”

  She studied him with eyes that were far older than nineteen. “You’re still the same person, Chaol, that you were before you broke the oath to your father.”

  He wasn’t sure whether or not that was an insult. He supposed he deserved it, after all he’d said and done.

  “Maybe I don’t want to be that person anymore,” he said. That person—that stupidly loyal, useless person—had lost everything. His friend, the woman he loved, his position, his honor. Lost everything, with only himself to blame.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “About Nehemia—about everything.” It wasn’t enough. It never would be.

  But she gave him a grim smile, eyes darting to the faint scar on his cheek. “I’m sorry I mauled your face, then tried to kill you.” She turned to the glass castle again. “It’s still hard for me, to think about what happened this winter. But in the end I’m grateful you sent me to Wendlyn, and made that bargain with your father.” She closed her eyes and took a shallow br
eath. When she opened her eyes, the setting sun filled them with liquid gold. Chaol braced himself. “It meant something to me. What you and I had. More than that, your friendship meant something to me. I never told you the truth about who I was because I couldn’t face that truth. I’m sorry if what I said to you on the docks that day—that I’d pick you—made you think I’d come back, and it would all be fixed. Things changed. I changed.”

  He’d waited for this conversation for weeks now, months now—and he’d expected himself to yell, or pace, or just shut her out entirely. But there was nothing but calm in his veins, a steady, peaceful calm. “You deserve to be happy,” he said. And meant it. She deserved the joy he so often glimpsed on her face when Rowan was near—deserved the wicked laughter she shared with Aedion, the comfort and teasing with Lysandra. She deserved happiness, perhaps more than anyone.

  She flicked her gaze over his shoulder—to where Nesryn’s slim silhouette filled the doorway onto the roof, where she’d been waiting for the past few minutes. “So do you, Chaol.”

  “You know she and I haven’t—”

  “I know. But you should. Faliq—Nesryn is a good woman. You deserve each other.”

  “This is assuming she has any interest in me.”

  A knowing gleam in those eyes. “She does.”

  Chaol again glanced toward Nesryn, who gazed at the river. He smiled a bit.

  But then Aelin said, “I promise I’ll make it quick and painless. For Dorian.”

  His breathing locked up. “Thank you. But—if I ask …” He couldn’t say it.

  “Then the blow is yours. Just say the word.” She ran her fingers over the Eye of Elena, its blue stone gleaming in the sunset. “We do not look back, Chaol. It helps no one and nothing to look back. We can only go on.”

  There she was, that queen looking out at him, a hint of the ruler she was becoming. And it knocked the breath out of him, because it made him feel so strangely young—when she now seemed so old. “What if we go on,” he said, “only to more pain and despair? What if we go on, only to find a horrible end waiting for us?”

  Aelin looked northward, as if she could see all the way to Terrasen. “Then it is not the end.”