Queen of Shadows

  “I’m going to let him put a collar on you, and then we can play.”

  She hit the tower door, fumbling for the latch.

  But it was iced over.

  She clawed at the ice, glancing between the prince and the sun that had begun to peek around the corner of the tower.

  Dorian was ten steps away.

  She whirled back around. “Sorscha—her name was Sorscha, and she loved you. You loved her. And they took her away from you.”

  Five steps.

  There was nothing human in that face, no flicker of memory in those sapphire eyes.

  Aelin began weeping, even as blood leaked down her nose from his nearness. “I came back for you. Just like I promised.”

  A dagger of ice appeared in his hand, its lethal tip glinting like a star in the sunlight. “I don’t care,” Dorian said.

  She shoved a hand between them as if she could push him away, grabbing one of his own hands tight. His skin was so cold as he used the other to plunge the knife into her side.

  Rowan’s blood sprayed from his mouth as the creature slammed into him, knocking him to the ground.

  Four were dead, but three remained between him and the fuse.

  Aedion bellowed in pain and fury, holding the line, keeping the other three at bay as Rowan drove his blade home—

  The creature flipped back, away out of reach.

  The three beasts converged again, wild with the Fae blood now covering the passage. His blood. Aedion’s. The general’s face was already pale from the loss of it. They couldn’t stand this much longer.

  But he had to get that tower down.

  As though they were of one mind, one body, the three Wyrdhounds lunged, driving him and Aedion apart, one leaping for the general, two snapping for him—

  Rowan went down as stone jaws clamped onto his leg.

  Bone snapped, and black crushed in—

  He roared against the darkness that meant death.

  Rowan slammed his fighting knife into the creature’s eye, driving up and deep, just as the second beast lunged for his outstretched arm.

  But something massive slammed into the creature, and it yelped as it was thrown against the wall. The dead one was hurled away a heartbeat later, and then—

  And then there was Lorcan, swords out and swinging, a battle cry on his lips as he tore into the remaining creatures.

  Rowan bellowed against the agony in his lower leg as he got to his feet, balancing his weight. Aedion was already up, his face a bloody mess but his eyes clear.

  One of the creatures lunged for Aedion, and Rowan hurled his fighting knife—hurled it hard and true, right into its gaping mouth. The Wyrdhound hit the ground not six inches from the general’s feet.

  Lorcan was a whirlwind of steel, his fury unmatched. Rowan drew his other knife, readying to throw it—

  Just as Lorcan drove his sword clean down into the creature’s skull.

  Silence—utter silence in the bloodied tunnel.

  Aedion scrambled, limping and swaying, for the fuse twenty paces away. It was still attached to the spool.

  “Now,” Rowan barked. He didn’t care if they didn’t make it out. For all he knew—

  A phantom pain lanced through his ribs, brutally violent and nauseating.

  His knees buckled. Not pain from a wound of his—but another’s.

  No.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  He might have been screaming it, might have been roaring it, as he surged for the passage exit—as he felt that agony, that lick of cold.

  Things had gone very, very wrong.

  He made it another step before his leg gave out, and it was only that invisible bond, straining and fraying, that kept him conscious. A hard, blood-soaked body slammed into his, an arm wrapping around his waist, hauling him up. “Run, you stupid fool,” Lorcan hissed, hauling him from the fuse.

  Aedion was crouched over it, his bloody hands steady as he grasped the flint and struck.

  Once. Twice.

  Then a spark, and a flame that went roaring off into the darkness.

  They ran like hell.

  “Faster,” Lorcan said, and Aedion caught up to them, taking Rowan’s other arm and adding his strength and speed.

  Down the passage. Past the broken iron gates, into the sewers.

  There was not enough time and space between them and the tower.

  And Aelin—

  The bond stretched tighter, splintering. No.

  Aelin—

  They heard it before they felt it.

  The utter lack of sound, like the world had paused. Followed by a cracking boom.

  “Move,” Lorcan said, a barked order that had Rowan blindly obeying just as he had for centuries.

  Then the wind—the dry, burning wind that flayed his skin.

  Then a flash of blinding light.

  Then heat—such heat that Lorcan swore, shoving them into an alcove.

  The tunnels shook; the world shook.

  The ceilings came crashing down.

  When the dust and debris cleared, when Rowan’s body was singing with pain and joy and power, the way into the castle was blocked. And behind them, stretching into the gloom of the sewers, were a hundred Valg commanders and foot soldiers, armed and smiling.

  Reeking to Hellas’s realm with Valg blood, Manon and Asterin were soaring down the continent, back to Morath, when—

  A soft wind, a shudder in the world, a silence.

  Asterin barked a cry, her wyvern banking right as if the reins had been yanked. Abraxos loosed a yelp of his own, but Manon just peered down at the land, where birds were taking flight at the shimmer that seemed to rush past …

  At the magic that now rippled through the world, free.

  Darkness embrace her.

  Magic.

  Whatever had happened, however it had been freed, Manon didn’t care.

  That mortal, human weight vanished. Strength coursed through her, coating her bones like armor. Invincible, immortal, unstoppable.

  Manon tipped her head back to the sky, spread her arms wide, and roared.

  The Keep was in chaos. Witches and humans were running around, shouting.

  Magic.

  Magic was free.

  Not possible.

  But she could feel it, even with the collar around her neck and that scar on her arm.

  The loosing of some great beast inside her.

  A beast who purred at the shadowfire.

  Aelin crawled away from the door stained with her blood, away from the Valg prince who laughed as she clutched at her side and inched across the bridge, her blood a smear behind her.

  The sun was still creeping around that tower.

  “Dorian,” she said, her legs pushing against the glass, her blood dribbling out from between her freezing fingers, warming them. “Remember.”

  The Valg prince stalked her, smiling faintly as she collapsed onto her front in the center of the bridge. The shadowed spires of the glass castle loomed around her—a tomb. Her tomb.

  “Dorian, remember,” she gasped out. He’d missed her heart—barely.

  “He said to retrieve you, but perhaps I’ll have my fun first.”

  Two knives appeared in his hands, curved and vicious.

  The sun began glinting just above the tower overhead.

  “Remember Chaol,” she begged. “Remember Sorscha. Remember me.”

  A boom shook the castle from somewhere on the other side of the building.

  And then a great wind, a soft wind, a lovely wind, as if the heart-song of the world were carried on it.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and pressed her hand against her side, drawing in a breath.

  “We get to come back,” Aelin said, pushing her hand harder and harder into her wound until the blood stopped, until it was only her tears that flowed. “Dorian, we get to come back from this loss—from this darkness. We get to come back, and I came back for you.”

  She was weeping now, weeping as that wind
faded away and her wound knitted closed.

  The prince’s daggers had gone slack in his hands.

  And on his finger, Athril’s golden ring glowed.

  “Fight it,” she panted. The sun angled closer. “Fight it. We get to come back.”

  Brighter and brighter, the golden ring pulsed at his finger.

  The prince staggered back a step, his face twisting. “You human worm.”

  He had been too busy stabbing her to notice the ring she’d slipped onto his finger when she’d grabbed his hand as if to shove him away.

  “Take it off,” he growled, trying to touch it—and hissing as though it burned. “Take it off!”

  Ice grew, spreading toward her, fast as the rays of sunlight that now shot between the towers, refracting across every glass parapet and bridge, filling the castle with Mala Fire-Bringer’s glorious light.

  The bridge—this bridge that she and Chaol had selected for this purpose, for this one moment at the apex of the solstice—was smack in the middle of it.

  The light hit her, and it filled her heart with the force of an exploding star.

  With a roar, the Valg prince sent a wave of ice for her, spears and lances aimed at her chest.

  So Aelin flung her hands out toward the prince, toward her friend, and hurled her magic at him with everything she had.

  CHAPTER

  75

  There was fire, and light, and darkness, and ice.

  But the woman—the woman was there, halfway across the bridge, her hands out before her as she got to her feet.

  No blood leaked from where the ice had stabbed her. Only clean, polished skin peeked through the black material of her suit.

  Healed—with magic.

  All around him there was so much fire and light, tugging at him.

  We get to come back, she said. As if she knew what this darkness was, what horrors existed. Fight it.

  A light was burning at his finger—a light that cracked inside him.

  A light that cracked a sliver into the darkness.

  Remember, she said.

  Her flames tore at him, and the demon was screaming. But it did not hurt him. Her flames only kept the demon at bay.

  Remember.

  A sliver of light in the blackness.

  A cracked doorway.

  Remember.

  Over the demon’s screaming, he pushed—pushed, and looked out through its eyes. His eyes.

  And saw Celaena Sardothien standing before him.

  Aedion spat blood onto the debris. Rowan was barely remaining conscious as he leaned against the cave-in behind them, while Lorcan tried to cut a path through the onslaught of Valg fighters.

  More and more poured in from the tunnels, armed and bloodthirsty, alerted by the blast.

  Drained and unable to summon the full depths of their magic so soon, even Rowan and Lorcan wouldn’t be able to keep the Valg occupied for long.

  Aedion had two knives left. He knew they weren’t getting out of these tunnels alive.

  The soldiers came in like an unending wave, their hollow eyes lit with bloodlust.

  Even down here, Aedion could hear the people screaming in the streets, either from the explosion or the magic returning to flood their land. That wind … he’d never smelled anything like it, never would again.

  They’d taken out the tower. They’d done it.

  Now his queen would have her magic. Maybe now she’d stand a chance.

  Aedion gutted the Valg commander nearest him, black blood splattering on his hands, and engaged the two that stepped in to replace him. Behind him, Rowan’s breaths were rasping. Too labored.

  The prince’s magic, draining with his blood loss, had begun faltering moments ago, no longer able to choke the air out of the soldiers’ lungs. Now it was no more than a cold wind shoving against them, keeping the bulk at bay.

  Aedion hadn’t recognized Lorcan’s magic as it had blasted from him in near-invisible dark winds. But where it struck, soldiers went down. And did not rise.

  It, too, had now failed him.

  Aedion could scarcely lift his sword arm. Just a little longer; just a few more minutes of keeping these soldiers engaged so that his queen could remain distraction-free.

  With a grunt of pain, Lorcan was engulfed by half a dozen soldiers and shoved out of sight into the blackness.

  Aedion kept swinging and swinging until there were no Valg before him, until he realized that the soldiers had pulled back twenty feet and regrouped.

  A solid line of Valg foot soldiers, their numbers stretching away into the gloom, stood watching him, holding their swords. Waiting for the order to strike. Too many. Too many to escape.

  “It’s been an honor, Prince,” Aedion said to Rowan.

  Rowan’s only reply was a rasping breath.

  The Valg commander stalked to the front of the line, his own sword out. Somewhere back in the sewer, soldiers began screaming. Lorcan—that selfish prick—must have cut a path through them after all. And run.

  “Charge on my mark,” the commander said, his black ring glinting as he lifted a hand.

  Aedion stepped in front of Rowan, useless as it would be. They’d kill Rowan once he was dead, anyway. But at least he’d go down fighting, defending his brother. At least he would have that.

  People were still screaming on the street above—shrieking with blind terror, the sounds of their panic growing closer, louder.

  “Steady,” the commander said to the swordsmen.

  Aedion took a breath—one of his last, he realized. Rowan straightened as best he could, stalwart against the death that now beckoned, and Aedion could have sworn the prince whispered Aelin’s name. More shouting from the soldiers in the back; some in the front turning to see what the panic was about behind them.

  Aedion didn’t care. Not with a row of swords before them, gleaming like the teeth of some mighty beast.

  The commander’s hand came down.

  And was ripped clean off by a ghost leopard.

  For Evangeline, for her freedom, for her future.

  Where Lysandra lunged, slashing with claws and fangs, soldiers died.

  She’d made it halfway across the city before she got out of that carriage. She told Evangeline to take it all the way to the Faliqs’ country house, to be a good girl and stay safe. Lysandra had sprinted two blocks toward the castle, not caring if she had little to offer them in their fight, when the wind slammed into her and a wild song sparkled in her blood.

  Then she shed her human skin, that mortal cage, and ran, tracking the scents of her friends.

  The soldiers in the sewer were screaming as she tore into them— a death for every day in hell, a death for the childhood taken from her and from Evangeline. She was fury, she was wrath, she was vengeance.

  Aedion and Rowan were backed up against the cave-in, their faces bloody and gaping as she leaped upon the back of a sentry and shredded his spine clean out of his skin.

  Oh, she liked this body.

  More soldiers rushed into the sewers and Lysandra whirled toward them, giving herself wholly to the beast whose form she wore. She became death incarnate.

  When there were none left, when blood soaked her pale fur—blood that tasted vile—she paused at last.

  “The palace,” Rowan gasped from where he’d slumped against the stones, Aedion pressing a hand to a wound in the Fae warrior’s leg. Rowan pointed to the open sewer behind them, littered with gore. “To the queen.”

  An order and a plea.

  Lysandra nodded her furry head, that disgusting blood leaking from her maw, black gore in her fangs, and bolted back the way she’d come.

  People screamed at the ghost leopard that shot down the street, sleek as an arrow, dodging whinnying horses and carriages.

  The glass castle loomed, half shrouded by the smoking ruins of the clock tower, and light—fire—exploded between its turrets. Aelin.

  Aelin was still alive, and fighting like hell.

  The iron gates of the ca
stle appeared ahead, strung with reeking corpses.

  Fire and darkness slammed into each other atop the castle, and people fell silent as they pointed. Lysandra raced for the gates, and the crowd spied her at last, scrambling and bleating to get out of her way. They cleared a path right to the open entrance.

  Revealing thirty Valg guards armed with crossbows lined up in front of it, ready to fire.

  They all trained their weapons on her.

  Thirty guards with bolts—and beyond them, an open path to the castle. To Aelin.

  Lysandra leaped. The closest guard fired a clean, spiraling shot right for her chest.

  She knew, with that leopard’s senses, that it would hit home.

  Yet Lysandra did not slow. She did not stop.

  For Evangeline. For her future. For her freedom. For the friends who had come for her.

  The bolt neared her heart.

  And was knocked from the air by an arrow.

  Lysandra landed on the guard’s face and shredded it with her claws.

  There was only one sharpshooter with that sort of aim.

  Lysandra loosed a roar, and became a storm of death upon the guards nearest her while arrows rained on the rest.

  When Lysandra dared look, it was in time to see Nesryn Faliq draw another arrow atop the neighboring rooftop, flanked by her rebels, and fire it clean through the eye of the final guard between Lysandra and the castle.

  “Go!” Nesryn shouted over the panicking crowd.

  Flame and night warred in the highest spires, and the earth shuddered.

  Lysandra was already running up the sloped, curving path between the trees.

  Nothing but the grass and the trees and the wind.

  Nothing but this sleek, powerful body, her shape-shifter’s heart burning, glowing, singing with each step, each curve she took, fluid and swift and free.

  Faster and faster, every movement of that leopard’s body a joy, even as her queen battled for her kingdom and their world high, high above.

  CHAPTER

  76

  Aelin panted, fighting against the throbbing in her head.

  Too soon; too much power too soon. She hadn’t had time to draw it up the safe way, spiraling slowly to its depths.