Queen of Shadows

  She didn’t want to know about the people who had been on the grounds—or in the castle.

  She forced herself to walk.

  Toward the wall. Toward the panicked city beyond. Toward the new world that beckoned.

  Two scents converged, then a third. A strange, wild scent that belonged to everything and nothing.

  But Aelin did not look at Aedion, or Rowan, or Lysandra as she descended the hill to the city.

  Every step was an effort, every breath a trial to pull herself back from the brink, to hold on to the here and now, and what had to be done.

  Aelin approached the towering glass wall that now separated the castle from the city, that separated death from life.

  She punched a battering ram of blue flame through it.

  More yelling arose as the flame ate away at the glass, forming an archway.

  The people beyond, crying and holding one another or gripping their heads or covering their mouths, went quiet as she strode through the door she’d made.

  The gallows still stood just beyond the wall. It was the only raised surface that she could see.

  Better than nothing.

  Aelin ascended the butchering block, her court falling into rank behind her. Rowan was limping, but she didn’t allow herself to examine him, to even ask if he was all right. Not yet.

  Aelin kept her shoulders back, her face grave and unyielding as she stopped at the edge of the platform.

  “Your king is dead,” she said. The crowd stirred. “Your prince lives.”

  “All hail Dorian Havilliard,” someone shouted down the street. No one else echoed it.

  “My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius,” she said. “And I am the Queen of Terrasen.”

  The crowd murmured; some onlookers stepped away from the platform.

  “Your prince is in mourning. Until he is ready, this city is mine.”

  Absolute silence.

  “If you loot, if you riot, if you cause one lick of trouble,” she said, looking a few in the eye, “I will find you, and I will burn you to ash.” She lifted a hand, and flames danced at her fingertips. “If you revolt against your new king, if you try to take his castle, then this wall”—she gestured with her burning hand—“will turn to molten glass and flood your streets, your homes, your throats.”

  Aelin lifted her chin, her mouth cutting a hard, unforgiving line as she surveyed the crowd filling the streets, people craning to see her, see the Fae ears and elongated canines, see the flames flickering around her fingers.

  “I killed your king. His empire is over. Your slaves are now free people. If I catch you holding on to your slaves, if I hear of any household keeping them captive, you are dead. If I hear of you whipping a slave, or trying to sell one, you are dead. So I suggest that you tell your friends, and families, and neighbors. I suggest that you act like reasonable, intelligent people. And I suggest that you stay on your best behavior until your king is ready to greet you, at which time I swear on my crown that I will yield control of this city to him. If anyone has a problem with it, you can take it up with my court.” She motioned behind her. Rowan, Aedion, and Lysandra—bloodied, battered, filthy—grinned like hellions. “Or,” Aelin said, the flames winking out on her hand, “you can take it up with me.”

  Not a word. She wondered whether they were breathing.

  But Aelin didn’t care as she strode off the platform, back through the gate she’d made, and all the way up the barren hillside to the stone castle.

  She was barely inside the oak doors before she collapsed to her knees and wept.

  CHAPTER

  80

  Elide had been in the dungeon so long that she’d lost track of time.

  But she’d felt that ripple in the world, could have sworn she heard the wind singing her name, heard panicked shouts—and then nothing.

  No one explained what it was, and no one came. No one was coming for her.

  She wondered how long Vernon would wait before he gave her to one of those things. She tried counting meals to track time, but the food they gave her was the same for breakfast and dinner, and her meal times changed around … As if they wanted her to lose track. As if they wanted her to fold herself into the darkness of the dungeon so that when they came for her, she’d be willing, desperate just to see the sun again.

  The door to her cell clicked open, and she staggered to her feet as Vernon slipped inside. He left the door ajar behind him, and she blinked at the torchlight as it stung her eyes. The stone hallway beyond was empty. He probably hadn’t brought guards with him. He knew how futile running would be for her.

  “I’m glad to see they’ve been feeding you. A shame about the smell, though.”

  She refused to be embarrassed by it. Smell was the least of her concerns.

  Elide pressed herself against the slick, freezing stone wall. Maybe if she got lucky, she’d find a way to get the chain around his throat.

  “I’ll send someone to clean you up tomorrow.” Vernon began to turn, as if his inspection were done.

  “For what?” she managed to ask. Her voice was already hoarse with disuse.

  He looked over his thin shoulder. “Now that magic has returned …”

  Magic. That was what the ripple had been.

  “I want to learn what lies dormant in your bloodline—our bloodline. The duke is even more curious what will come of it.”

  “Please,” she said. “I’ll disappear. I’ll never bother you. Perranth is yours—it’s all yours. You’ve won. Just let me go.”

  Vernon clicked his tongue. “I do like it when you beg.” He glanced into the hall beyond and snapped his fingers. “Cormac.”

  A young man stepped into view.

  He was a man of unearthly beauty, with a flawless face beneath his red hair, but his green eyes were cold and distant. Horrific.

  There was a black collar around his throat.

  Darkness leaked from him in tendrils. And as his eyes met with hers …

  Memories tugged at her, horrible memories, of a leg that had slowly broken, of years of terror, of—

  “Leash it,” Vernon snapped. “Or she’ll be no fun for you tomorrow.”

  The red-haired young man sucked the darkness back into himself, and the memories stopped.

  Elide vomited her last meal onto the stones.

  Vernon chuckled. “Don’t be so dramatic, Elide. A little incision, a few stitches, and you’ll be perfect.”

  The demon prince smiled at her.

  “You’ll be given into his care afterward, to make sure that everything takes as it should. But with magic so strong in your bloodline, how could it not? Perhaps you’ll outshine those Yellowlegs. After the first time,” Vernon mused, “maybe His Highness will even perform his own experiments with you. The acquaintance that sold him out mentioned in his letter that Cormac enjoyed … playing with young women, when he lived in Rifthold.”

  Oh, gods. Oh, gods. “Why?” she begged. “Why?”

  Vernon shrugged. “Because I can.”

  He walked out of the cell, taking the demon prince—her betrothed—with him.

  As soon as the door clicked shut, Elide bolted for it, yanking on the handle, tugging until the metal bit into her hands and rubbed them raw, begging Vernon, begging anyone, to hear her, remember her.

  But there was no one.

  Manon was more than ready to fall into bed at last. After all that had happened … She hoped that the young queen was lingering around Rifthold, and had understood the message.

  The halls of the Keep were in an uproar, bustling with messengers who avoided looking at her. Whatever it was, she didn’t care. She wanted to bathe, and then sleep. For days.

  When she awoke, she’d tell Elide what she’d learned about her queen. The final piece of the life debt she owed.

  Manon shouldered into her room. Elide’s pallet of hay was tidy, the room spotless. The girl was probably skulking about somewhere, spying on whoever seemed most useful to her.

  Manon w
as halfway to the bathing room when she noticed the smell.

  Or lack of it.

  Elide’s scent was worn—stale. As if she hadn’t been here for days.

  Manon looked toward the fire. No embers. She reached a hand over it. Not a hint of warmth.

  Manon scanned the room.

  No signs of a struggle. But …

  Manon was out the door the next moment, headed back downstairs.

  She made it three steps before her prowl turned into a full-on sprint. She took the stairs two and three at a time and leaped the last ten feet onto the landing, the impact shuddering through her legs, now strong, so wickedly strong, with magic returned.

  If there had been a time for Vernon to get back at her for taking Elide from him, it would have been while she was away. And if magic ran in Elide’s family along with the Ironteeth blood in her veins … Its return might have awakened something.

  They want kings, Kaltain had said that day.

  Hall after hall, stairwell after stairwell, Manon ran, her iron nails sparking as she gripped corners to swing herself around. Servants and guards darted out of her way.

  She reached the kitchens moments later, iron teeth out. Everyone went dead silent as she leaped down the stairs, heading right for the head cook. “Where is she?”

  The man’s ruddy face went pale. “W-who?”

  “The girl—Elide. Where is she?”

  The cook’s spoon clattered to the floor. “I don’t know; I haven’t seen her in days, Wing Leader. She sometimes volunteers at the laundry, so maybe—”

  Manon was already sprinting out.

  The head laundress, a haughty bull, snorted and said she hadn’t seen Elide, and perhaps the cripple had gotten what was coming to her. Manon left her screaming on the floor, four lines gouged across her face.

  Manon hurtled up the stairs and across an open stone bridge between two towers, the black rock smooth against her boots.

  She had just reached the other side when a woman shouted from the opposite end of the bridge, “Wing Leader!”

  Manon slammed to a stop so hard she almost collided with the tower wall. When she whirled, a human woman in a homespun gown was running for her, reeking of whatever soaps and detergents they used in the laundry.

  The woman gulped down great breaths of air, her dark skin flushed. She had to brace her hands on her knees to catch her breath, but then she lifted her head and said, “One of the laundresses sees a guard who works in the Keep dungeons. She said that Elide’s locked up down there. No one’s allowed in but her uncle. Don’t know what they’re planning to do, but it can’t be good.”

  “What dungeons?” There were three different ones here—along with the catacombs in which they kept the Yellowlegs coven.

  “She didn’t know. He’ll only tell her so much. Some of us girls were trying to—to see if there was anything to be done, but—”

  “Tell no one that you spoke to me.” Manon turned. Three dungeons, three possibilities.

  “Wing Leader,” the young woman said. Manon looked over her shoulder. The woman put a hand on her heart. “Thank you.”

  Manon didn’t let herself think about the laundress’s gratitude, or what it meant for those weak, helpless humans to have even considered trying to rescue Elide on their own.

  She did not think that woman’s blood would be watery or taste of fear.

  Manon launched into a sprint—not to the dungeon, but to the witches’ barracks.

  To the Thirteen.

  CHAPTER

  81

  Elide’s uncle sent two stone-faced female servants down to scrub her, both bearing buckets of water. She tried to fight when they stripped her, but the women were walls of iron. Any sort of Blackbeak blood in Elide’s veins, she realized, had to be the diluted kind. When she was naked before them, they dumped the water on her and attacked her with their brushes and soaps, not even hesitating as they washed her everywhere, even when she shrieked at them to stop.

  A sacrificial offering; a lamb to the slaughter.

  Shaking, weak from the effort of fighting them, Elide had hardly any strength to retaliate as they dragged combs through her hair, yanking hard enough that her eyes watered. They left it unbound, and dressed her in a plain green robe. With nothing beneath.

  Elide begged them, over and over. They might as well have been deaf.

  When they left, she tried to squeeze out the cell door after them. The guards shoved her back in with a laugh.

  Elide backed up until she was pressed against the wall of her cell.

  Every minute was closer to her last.

  A stand. She’d make a stand. She was a Blackbeak, and her mother had secretly been one, and they would both go down swinging. Force them to gut her, to kill her before they could touch her, before they could implant that stone inside her, before she could birth those monsters—

  The door clicked open. Four guards appeared.

  “The prince is waiting in the catacombs.”

  Elide dropped to her knees, shackles clanking. “Please. Please—”

  “Now.”

  Two of them shoved into the cell, and she couldn’t fight back against the hands that grabbed under her arms and dragged her toward that door. Her bare feet tore on the stones as she kicked and thrashed, despite the chain, trying to claw free.

  Closer and closer, they hauled her like a bucking horse toward the open cell door.

  The two waiting guards sniggered, eyes on the flap of the robe that fell open as she kicked, revealing her thighs, her stomach, everything to them. Elide sobbed, even as she knew the tears would do her no good. They just laughed, devouring her with their eyes—

  Until a hand with glittering iron nails shoved through the throat of one of them, puncturing it wholly. The guards froze, the one at the door whirling at the spray of blood—

  He screamed as his eyes were slashed into ribbons by one hand, his throat shredded by another.

  Both guards collapsed to the ground, revealing Manon Blackbeak standing behind them.

  Blood ran down her hands, her forearms.

  And Manon’s golden eyes glowed as if they were living embers as she looked at the two guards gripping Elide. As she beheld the disheveled robe.

  They released Elide to grab their weapons, and she sagged to the floor.

  Manon just said, “You’re already dead men.”

  And then she moved.

  Elide didn’t know if it was magic, but she’d never seen anyone in her life move like that, as if she were a phantom wind.

  Manon snapped the neck of the first guard with a brutal crunch. As the second lunged for her, Elide scrambling out of the way, Manon only laughed—laughed and twirled away, moving behind him to plunge her hand into his back, into his body.

  His shriek blasted through the cell. Flesh tore, revealing a white column of bone—his spine—which she gripped, her nails shredding deep, and broke in two.

  Elide trembled—at the man who fell to the ground, bleeding and broken, and at the witch standing over him, bloodied and panting. The witch who had come for her.

  “We need to run,” Manon said.

  Manon knew rescuing Elide would be a statement—and knew there were others who would want to make it with her.

  But chaos had broken out in the Keep as she had raced to summon her Thirteen. News had come.

  The King of Adarlan was dead. Destroyed by Aelin Galathynius.

  She had shattered his glass castle, used her fire to spare the city from a deadly wave of glass, and declared Dorian Havilliard King of Adarlan.

  The Witch Killer had done it.

  People were in a panic; even the witches were looking to her for answers. What would they do now that the mortal king was dead? Where would they go? Were they free of their bargain?

  Later—Manon would think of those things later. Now she had to act.

  So she had found her Thirteen and ordered them to get the wyverns saddled and ready.

  Three dungeons.

/>   Hurry, Blackbeak, whispered a strange, soft female voice in her head that was at once old and young and wise. You race against doom.

  Manon had hit the nearest dungeon, Asterin, Sorrel, and Vesta at her back, the green-eyed demon twins behind them. Men began dying—fast and bloody.

  No use arguing—not when the men took one look at them and drew their weapons.

  The dungeon held rebels of all kingdoms, who pleaded for death when they saw them, in such states of unspeakable torment that even Manon’s stomach turned. But no sign of Elide.

  They had swept the dungeon, Faline and Fallon lingering to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.

  The second dungeon held more of the same. Vesta stayed this time to sweep it again.

  Faster, Blackbeak, that wise female voice begged her, as if there were only so much she might interfere. Faster—

  Manon ran like hell.

  The third dungeon was above the catacombs, and so heavily guarded that black blood became a mist around them as they launched themselves into tier after tier of soldiers.

  Not one more. Not one more female would she allow them to take.

  Sorrel and Asterin plunged into the soldiers, plowing a path for her. Asterin ripped out the throat of one man with her teeth while she gutted another with her nails. Black blood sprayed from Asterin’s mouth as she pointed to the stairs ahead and roared, “Go!”

  So Manon had left her Second and Third behind, leaping down the stairs, around and around. There had to be a secret entrance from these dungeons into the catacombs, some quiet way to transport Elide—

  Faster, Blackbeak! that sage voice barked.

  And as a little wind pushed at Manon’s feet as if it could hurry her along, she knew that it was a goddess peering over her shoulder, a lady of wise things. Who perhaps had watched over Elide her entire life, muted without magic, but now that it was free …

  Manon hit the lowest level of the dungeon, a mere floor above the catacombs. Sure enough, at the end of the hall, a door opened onto a descending staircase.

  Between her and that staircase were two guards sniggering at an open cell door as a young woman begged for their mercy.