Queen of Shadows

  It was the sound of Elide’s weeping—that girl of quiet steel and quicksilver wit who had not wept for herself or her sorry life, only faced it with grim determination—that made Manon snap entirely.

  She killed those guards in the hall.

  She saw what they had been laughing at: the girl gripped between two other guards, her robe tugged open to reveal her nakedness, the full extent of that ruined leg—

  Her grandmother had sold them to these people.

  She was a Blackbeak; she was no one’s slave. No one’s prize horse to breed.

  Neither was Elide.

  Her wrath was a song in her blood, and Manon had merely said, “You’re already dead men,” before she unleashed herself on them.

  When she’d chucked the last guard’s body onto the ground, when she was covered in black and blue blood, Manon looked at the girl on the floor.

  Elide tugged her green robe shut, shaking so badly Manon thought she’d puke. She could smell vomit already in the cell. They had kept her here, in this rotting place.

  “We need to run,” Manon said.

  Elide tried to rise, but couldn’t so much as get to her knees.

  Manon stalked to her, helping the girl to her feet, leaving a smear of blood on her forearm. Elide swayed, but Manon was looking at the old chain around her ankles.

  With a swipe of her iron nails, she snapped through it.

  She’d unlock the shackles later. “Now,” Manon said, tugging Elide into the hall.

  There were more soldiers shouting from the way she’d come, and Asterin and Sorrel’s battle cries rang out down the stairs. But behind them, from the catacombs below …

  More men—Valg—curious about the clamor leaking in from above.

  Bringing Elide into the melee might very well kill her, but if the soldiers from the catacombs attacked from behind … Worse, if they brought one of their princes …

  Regret. It had been regret she’d felt that night she’d killed the Crochan. Regret and guilt and shame, for acting on blind obedience, for being a coward when the Crochan had held her head high and spoken truth.

  They have made you into monsters. Made, Manon. And we feel sorry for you.

  It was regret that she’d felt when she heard Asterin’s tale. For not being worthy of trust.

  And for what she had allowed to happen to those Yellowlegs.

  She did not want to imagine what she might feel should she bring Elide to her death. Or worse.

  Brutality. Discipline. Obedience.

  It did not seem like a weakness to fight for those who could not defend themselves. Even if they weren’t true witches. Even if they meant nothing to her.

  “We’re going to have to battle our way out,” Manon said to Elide.

  But the girl was wide-eyed, gaping at the cell doorway.

  Standing there, her dress flowing around her like liquid night, was Kaltain.

  CHAPTER

  82

  Elide stared at the dark-haired young woman.

  And Kaltain stared back.

  Manon let out a warning snarl. “Unless you want to die, get the rutting hell out of the way.”

  Kaltain, her hair unbound, her face pale and gaunt, said, “They are coming now. To find out why she has not yet arrived.”

  Manon’s bloodied hand was sticky and damp as it clamped around Elide’s arm and tugged her toward the door. The single step, the freedom of movement without that chain … Elide almost sobbed.

  Until she heard the fighting ahead. Behind them, from the dark stairwell at the other end of the hall, the rushing feet of more men approached from far below.

  Kaltain stepped aside as Manon pushed past.

  “Wait,” Kaltain said. “They will turn this Keep upside down looking for you. Even if you get airborne, they will send out riders after you and use your own people against you, Blackbeak.”

  Manon dropped Elide’s arm. Elide hardly dared to breathe as the witch said, “How long has it been since you destroyed the demon inside that collar, Kaltain?”

  A low, broken laugh. “A while.”

  “Does the duke know?”

  “My dark liege sees what he wants to see.” She shifted her eyes to Elide. Exhaustion, emptiness, sorrow, and rage danced there together. “Remove your robe and give it to me.”

  Elide backed up a step. “What?”

  Manon looked between them. “You can’t trick them.”

  “They see what they want to see,” Kaltain said again.

  The men closing in on either side grew nearer with every uneven heartbeat. “This is insane,” Elide breathed. “It’ll never work.”

  “Take off your robe and give it to the lady,” Manon ordered. “Do it now.”

  No room for disobedience. So Elide listened, blushing at her own nakedness, trying to cover herself.

  Kaltain merely let her black dress slip from her shoulders. It rippled on the ground.

  Her body—what they had done to her body, the bruises on her, the thinness …

  Kaltain wrapped herself in the robe, her face empty again.

  Elide slid on the gown, its fabric horribly cold when it should have been warm.

  Kaltain knelt before one of the dead guards—oh, gods, those were corpses lying there—and ran her hand over the hole in the guard’s neck. She smeared and flicked blood over her face, her neck, her arms, the robe. She ran it through her hair, tugging it forward, hiding her face until bits of blood were all that could be seen, folding her shoulders inward, until—

  Until Kaltain looked like Elide.

  You could be sisters, Vernon had said. Now they could be twins.

  “Please—come with us,” Elide whispered.

  Kaltain laughed quietly. “Dagger, Blackbeak.”

  Manon pulled out a dagger.

  Kaltain sliced it deep into the hideous scarred lump in her arm. “In your pocket, girl,” Kaltain said to her. Elide reached into the dress and pulled out a scrap of dark fabric, frayed and ripped at the edges, as if it had been torn from something.

  Elide held it toward the lady as Kaltain reached into her arm, no expression of pain on that beautiful, bloodied face, and pulled out a glimmering sliver of dark stone.

  Kaltain’s red blood dripped off it. Carefully, the lady set it onto the scrap of fabric Elide held out, and folded Elide’s fingers around it.

  A dull, strange thudding pounded through Elide as she grasped the shard.

  “What is that?” Manon asked, sniffing subtly.

  Kaltain just squeezed Elide’s fingers. “You find Celaena Sardothien. Give her this. No one else. No one else. Tell her that you can open any door, if you have the key. And tell her to remember her promise to me—to punish them all. When she asks why, tell her I said that they would not let me bring the cloak she gave me, but I kept a piece of it. To remember that promise she made. To remember to repay her for a warm cloak in a cold dungeon.”

  Kaltain stepped away.

  “We can take you with us,” Elide tried again.

  A small, hateful smile. “I have no interest in living. Not after what they did. I don’t think my body could survive without their power.” Kaltain huffed a laugh. “I shall enjoy this, I think.”

  Manon tugged Elide to her side. “They’ll notice you without the chains—”

  “They’ll be dead before they do,” Kaltain said. “I suggest you run.”

  Manon didn’t ask questions, and Elide didn’t have time to say thank you before the witch grabbed her and they ran.

  She was a wolf.

  She was death, devourer of worlds.

  The guards found her curled up in the cell, shuddering at the carnage. They didn’t ask questions, didn’t look twice at her face before they hauled her down the hall and into the catacombs.

  Such screaming here. Such terror and despair. But the horrors under the other mountains were worse. So much worse. Too bad she would not have the opportunity to also spare them, slaughter them.

  She was a void, empty witho
ut that sliver of power that built and ate and tore apart worlds inside of her.

  His precious gift, his key, he had called her. A living gate, he promised. Soon, he had said he would add the other. And then find the third.

  So that the king inside him might rule again.

  They led her into a chamber with a table in the center. A white sheet covered it, and men watched as they shoved her onto the table—the altar. They chained her down.

  With the blood on her, they did not notice the cut on her arm, or whose face she wore.

  One of the men came forward with a knife, clean and sharp and gleaming. “This won’t take but a few minutes.”

  Kaltain smiled up at him. Smiled broadly, now that they had brought her into the bowels of this hellhole.

  The man paused.

  A red-haired young man walked into the room, reeking of the cruelty born in his human heart and amplified by the demon inside him. He froze as he saw her.

  He opened his mouth.

  Kaltain Rompier unleashed her shadowfire upon them all.

  This was not the ghost of shadowfire they had made her kill with—the reason why they had first approached her, lied to her when they invited her to that glass castle—but the real thing. The fire she had harbored since magic had returned—golden flame now turned to black.

  The room became cinders.

  Kaltain pushed the chains off her as though they were cobwebs and arose.

  She disrobed as she walked out of the room. Let them see what had been done to her, the body they’d wasted.

  She made it two steps into the hall before they noticed her, and beheld the black flames rippling off her.

  Death, devourer of worlds.

  The hallway turned to black dust.

  She strode toward the chamber where the screaming was loudest, where female cries leaked through the iron door.

  The iron did not heat, did not bend to her magic. So she melted an archway through the stones.

  Monsters and witches and men and demons whirled.

  Kaltain flowed into the room, spreading her arms wide, and became shadowfire, became freedom and triumph, became a promise hissed in a dungeon beneath a glass castle:

  Punish them all.

  She burned the cradles. She burned the monsters within. She burned the men and their demon princes. And then she burned the witches, who looked at her with gratitude in their eyes and embraced the dark flame.

  Kaltain unleashed the last of her shadowfire, tipping her face to the ceiling, toward a sky she’d never see again.

  She took out every wall and every column. As she brought it all crashing and crumbling around them, Kaltain smiled, and at last burned herself into ash on a phantom wind.

  Manon ran. But Elide was so slow—so painfully slow with that leg.

  If Kaltain unleashed her shadowfire before they got out …

  Manon grabbed Elide and hauled her over a shoulder, the beaded dress cutting into Manon’s hand as she sprinted up the stairs.

  Elide didn’t say a word as Manon reached the dungeon landing and beheld Asterin and Sorrel finishing off the last of the soldiers. “Run!” she barked.

  They were coated in that black blood, but they’d live.

  Up and up, they hurtled out of the dungeons, even as Elide became a weight borne on pure defiance of the death surely racing toward them from levels below.

  There was a shudder—

  “Faster!”

  Her Second made it to the giant dungeon doors and hurled herself against them, heaving them open. Manon and Sorrel dashed through; Asterin shoved them sealed with a bang. It would only delay the flame a second, if that.

  Up and up, toward the aerie.

  Another shudder and a boom—

  Screaming, and heat—

  Down the halls they flew, as if the god of wind were pushing at their heels.

  They hit the base of the aerie tower. The rest of the Thirteen were gathered in the stairwell, waiting.

  “Into the skies,” Manon ordered as they took the stairs, one after one, Elide so heavy now that she thought she’d drop her. Only a few more feet to the top of the tower, where the wyverns were hopefully saddled and prepared. They were.

  Manon hurtled for Abraxos and shoved the shuddering girl into the saddle. She climbed up behind her as the Thirteen scrambled onto their mounts. Wrapping her arms around Elide, Manon dug her heels into Abraxos’s side. “Fly now!” she roared.

  Abraxos leaped through the opening, soaring up and out, the Thirteen leaping with them, wings beating hard, beating wildly—

  Morath exploded.

  Black flame erupted, taking out stone and metal, racing higher and higher. People shouted and then were silenced, as even rock melted.

  The air hollowed out and ruptured in Manon’s ears, and she curled her body around Elide’s, twisting them so the heat of the blast singed her own back.

  The aerie tower was incinerated, and crumbled away behind them.

  The blast sent them tumbling, but Manon gripped the girl tight, clenching the saddle with her thighs as hot, dry wind blasted past them. Abraxos screeched, shifting and soaring into the gust.

  When Manon dared to look, a third of Morath was a smoldering ruin.

  Where those catacombs had once been—where those Yellowlegs had been tortured and broken, where they had bred monsters—there was nothing left.

  CHAPTER

  83

  Aelin slept for three days.

  Three days, while Rowan sat by her bed, healing his leg as best he could while the abyss of his power refilled.

  Aedion assumed control of the castle, imprisoning any surviving guards. Most, Rowan had been viciously pleased to learn, had been killed in the storm of glass the prince had called down. Chaol had survived, by some miracle—probably the Eye of Elena, which they’d found tucked into his pocket. It was an easy guess who had put it there. Though Rowan honestly wondered if, when the captain woke up, he might wish he hadn’t made it after all. He’d encountered enough soldiers who felt that way.

  After Aelin had so spectacularly leashed the people of Rifthold, they found Lorcan waiting by the doors to the stone castle. The queen hadn’t even noticed him as she sank to her knees and cried and cried, until Rowan scooped her into his arms and, limping slightly, carried her through the frenzied halls, servants dodging them as Aedion led the way to her old rooms.

  It was the only place to go. Better to establish themselves in their enemy’s former stronghold than retreat to the warehouse apartment.

  A servant named Philippa was asked to look after the prince, who had been unconscious the last time Rowan had seen him—when he plummeted to earth and Rowan’s wind stopped his fall.

  He didn’t know what had happened in the castle. Through her weeping, Aelin hadn’t said anything.

  She had been unconscious by the time Rowan reached her lavish suite of rooms, not even stirring as he kicked open the locked door. His leg had burned in pain, the rough healing he’d done barely holding the wound together, but he didn’t care. He’d barely set Aelin on the bed before Lorcan’s scent hit him again, and he whirled, snarling.

  But there was already someone in Lorcan’s face, blocking the warrior’s path into the queen’s bedchamber. Lysandra.

  “May I help you?” the courtesan had said sweetly. Her dress was in shreds, and blood both black and red coated most of her, but she held her head high and her back straight. She’d made it as far as the upper levels of the stone castle before the glass one above it had exploded. And showed no plans of leaving anytime soon.

  Rowan had thrown a shield of hard air around Aelin’s room as Lorcan stared down at Lysandra, his blood-splattered face impassive. “Out of my way, shifter.”

  Lysandra had held up a slender hand—and Lorcan paused. The shape-shifter pressed her other hand against her stomach, her face blanching. But then she smiled and said, “You forgot to say ‘please.’”

  Lorcan’s dark brows flattened. “I don’t have time
for this.” He made to step around her, shove her aside.

  Lysandra vomited black blood all over him.

  Rowan didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe as Lysandra, panting, gaped at Lorcan, and at the blood on his neck and chest. Slowly, too slowly, Lorcan looked down at himself.

  She pressed a hand over her mouth. “I am—so sorry—”

  Lorcan didn’t even step out of the way as Lysandra vomited on him again, black blood and bits of gore now on the warrior and on the marble floor.

  Lorcan’s dark eyes flickered.

  Rowan decided to do them both a favor and joined them in the antechamber, shutting the queen’s bedroom door behind him as he stepped around the puddle of blood, bile, and gore.

  Lysandra gagged again, and wisely darted to what looked to be a bathing room off the foyer.

  All of the men and demons she’d wasted, it seemed, did not sit well in her human stomach. The sounds of her purging leaked out from beneath the bathing room door.

  “You deserved that,” Rowan said.

  Lorcan didn’t so much as blink. “That’s the thanks I get?”

  Rowan leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and keeping the weight off his now-healing leg. “You knew we’d try to use those tunnels,” Rowan said, “and yet you lied about the Wyrdhounds being dead. I should rip out your gods-damned throat.”

  “Go ahead. Try.”

  Rowan remained against the door, calculating every move of his former commander. A fight right here, right now would be too destructive, and too dangerous with his queen unconscious in the room behind him. “I wouldn’t have given a shit about it if it had just been me. But when you let me walk into that trap, you endangered my queen’s life—”

  “Looks like she did just fine—”

  “—and the life of a brother in my court.”

  Lorcan’s mouth tightened—barely.

  “That’s why you came to help, isn’t it?” Rowan said. “You saw Aedion when we left the apartment.”

  “I did not know Gavriel’s son would be in that tunnel with you. Until it was too late.”

  Of course, Lorcan would never have warned them about the trap after learning Aedion would be there. Not in a thousand years would Lorcan ever admit to a mistake.