Queen of Shadows

  She’d said enough. She rolled her shoulders, leashing her temper. “With my magic, I could help him—I could try to find a way to free him.”

  But most likely kill him. She wouldn’t admit that aloud. Not until she could see him for herself.

  “And what then?” Chaol asked. “Will you hold all of Rifthold hostage the way you did Doranelle? Burn anyone who doesn’t agree with you? Or will you just incinerate our kingdom from spite? And what of others like you, who feel that they have a score to settle with Adarlan?” He huffed a bitter laugh. “Perhaps we’re better off without magic. Perhaps magic doesn’t exactly make things fair amongst us mere mortals.”

  “Fair? You think that any part of this is fair?”

  “Magic makes people dangerous.”

  “Magic has saved your life a few times now, if I recall correctly.”

  “Yes,” he breathed, “you and Dorian both—and I’m grateful, I am. But where are the checks against your kind? Iron? Not much of a deterrent, is it? Once magic is free, who is to stop the monsters from coming out again? Who is to stop you?”

  A spear of ice shot through her heart.

  Monster.

  It truly had been horror and revulsion that she’d seen on his face that day she revealed her Fae form in the other world—the day she’d cleaved the earth and called down fire to save him, to save Fleetfoot. Yes, there would always need to be checks against any sort of power, but … Monster.

  She wished he’d struck her instead. “So Dorian is allowed to have magic. You can come to terms with his power, and yet my power is an abomination to you?”

  “Dorian has never killed anyone. Dorian didn’t gut Archer Finn in the tunnels or torture and kill Grave and then chop him up into pieces. Dorian didn’t go on a killing spree at Endovier that left dozens dead.”

  It was an effort to put up that old, familiar wall of ice and steel. Everything behind it was crumbling and shaking. “I’ve made my peace with that.” She sucked on her teeth, trying so damn hard not to go for her weapons as she might once have done, as she still ached to do, and said, “I’ll be at my old apartment, should you decide to take your head out of your ass. Good night.”

  She didn’t give him a chance to reply before she stalked down the street.

  Chaol stood in the small bedroom of the ramshackle house that had been his squadron’s primary headquarters for the past three weeks, staring at a desk littered with maps and plans and notes regarding the palace, the guards’ rotations, and Dorian’s habits. Brullo had nothing to offer during their meeting an hour earlier—just grim reassurance that Chaol had done the right thing in leaving the king’s service and walking away from everything he’d ever worked for. The older man still insisted on calling him captain, despite Chaol’s protests.

  Brullo had been the one who’d found Chaol and offered to be his eyes inside the castle, not three days after he’d run. Fled, Aelin had said. She’d known exactly what word she wielded.

  A queen—raging and fiery and perhaps more than a little cruel—had found him tonight. He’d seen it from the moment he’d staggered out of the Valg’s darkness to find her standing with a predator’s stillness beside Nesryn. Despite the dirt and blood on her, Aelin’s face was tan and flushed with color, and—different. Older, as if the stillness and power she radiated had honed not just her soul but also the very shape of her. And when he had seen her bare finger …

  Chaol took out the ring he’d tucked into his pocket and glanced at the unlit hearth. It would be a matter of minutes to light a blaze and chuck the ring into it.

  He turned the ring over between his fingers. The silver was dull and marred with countless scratches.

  No, Celaena Sardothien certainly did not exist anymore. That woman—the woman he had loved … Perhaps she’d drowned in the vast, ruthless sea between here and Wendlyn. Perhaps she’d died at the hands of the Valg princes. Or maybe he’d been a fool all this time, a fool to look at the lives she’d taken and blood she’d so irreverently spilled, and not be disgusted.

  There had been blood on her tonight—she’d killed many men before finding him. She hadn’t even bothered to wash it off, hadn’t even seemed to notice she was wearing the blood of her enemies.

  A city—she’d encircled a city with her flames, and made a Fae Queen tremble. No one should possess that sort of power. If she could make an entire city burn as retribution for a Fae Queen whipping her friend … What would she do to the empire that had enslaved and butchered her people?

  He would not tell her how to free magic—not until he knew for certain that she wouldn’t turn Rifthold into cinders on the wind.

  There was a knock on his door—two efficient beats. “You should be on your shift, Nesryn,” he said by way of greeting.

  She slipped in, smooth as a cat. In the three years he’d known her, she’d always had that quiet, sleek way of moving. A year ago, a bit shattered and reckless from Lithaen’s betrayal, it had intrigued him enough that he’d spent the summer sharing her bed.

  “My commander’s drunk with his hand up the shirt of whatever new barmaid was in his lap. He won’t notice my absence for a while yet.” A faint sort of amusement shone in her dark eyes. The same sort of amusement that had been there last year whenever they would meet, at inns or in rooms above taverns or sometimes even up against the wall of an alley.

  He’d needed it—the distraction and release—after Lithaen had left him for the charms of Roland Havilliard. Nesryn had just been bored, apparently. She’d never sought him out, never asked when she would see him again, so their encounters had always been initiated by him. A few months later, he hadn’t felt particularly bad when he’d gone to Endovier and stopped seeing her. He’d never told Dorian—or Aelin. And when he’d run into Nesryn three weeks ago at one of the rebel gatherings, she hadn’t seemed to be holding a grudge.

  “You look like a man who got punched in the balls,” she said at last.

  He cut a glare in her direction. And because he did indeed feel that way, because maybe he was again feeling a bit shattered and reckless, he told her what had happened. Who it had happened with.

  He trusted her, though. In the three weeks they’d been fighting and plotting and surviving together, he’d had no choice but to trust her. Ren had trusted her. Yet Chaol still hadn’t told Ren who Celaena truly was before he’d left. Perhaps he should have. If he’d known that she would come back like this, act this way, he supposed Ren should have learned who he was risking his life for. He supposed Nesryn deserved to know, too.

  Nesryn cocked her head, her hair shimmering like black silk. “The King’s Champion—and Aelin Galathynius. Impressive.” He didn’t need to bother to ask her to keep it to herself. She knew exactly how precious that information was. He hadn’t asked her to be his second in command for nothing. “I should be flattered she held a knife to my throat.”

  Chaol glanced again at the ring. He should melt it, but money was scarce. He’d already used up much of what he’d snatched from the tomb.

  And he would need it now more than ever. Now that Dorian was …

  Was …

  Dorian was gone.

  Celaena—Aelin had lied about many things, but she wouldn’t have lied about Dorian. And she might be the only person able to save him. But if she tried to kill him instead …

  He sank into the desk chair, staring blankly at the maps and plans he’d been cultivating. Everything—everything was for Dorian, for his friend. For himself, he had nothing left to lose. He was nothing more than a nameless oath-breaker, a liar, a traitor.

  Nesryn took a step toward him. There was little concern in her face, but he’d never expected coddling from her. Never wanted it. Perhaps because she alone understood it—what it was like to face a father’s disapproval to follow the path that called. But while Nesryn’s father had eventually accepted her choice, Chaol’s own father … He didn’t want to think about his father right now, not as Nesryn said, “What she claimed about the prince—”
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  “It changes nothing.”

  “It sounds like it changes everything. Including the future of this kingdom.”

  “Just drop it.”

  Nesryn crossed her thin arms. She was slender enough that most opponents underestimated her—to their own misfortune. Tonight, he’d seen her rip into one of those Valg soldiers like she was filleting a fish. “I think you’re letting your personal history get in the way of considering every route.”

  He opened his mouth to object. Nesryn lifted a groomed brow and waited.

  Maybe he’d been hotheaded just now.

  Maybe it had been a mistake to refuse to tell Aelin how to free magic.

  And if it cost him Dorian in the process—

  He swore softly, the rush of breath guttering the candle on the desk.

  The captain he’d once been would have refused to tell her. Aelin was an enemy of his kingdom.

  But that captain was no more. That captain had died alongside Sorscha in that tower room. “You fought well tonight,” he said, as if that were an answer.

  Nesryn clicked her tongue. “I came back because I received a report that three of the city garrisons were called to the Vaults not thirty minutes after we left. Her Majesty,” Nesryn said drily, “killed a great number of the king’s men, the owners and investors of the hall, and took it upon herself to wreck the place. They won’t be open again anytime soon.”

  Gods above. “Do they know it was the King’s Champion?”

  “No. But I thought I should warn you. I bet she had a reason for doing it.”

  Maybe. Maybe not. “You’ll find that she tends to do what she wants, when she wants, and doesn’t ask for permission first.” Aelin probably had just been in a pissy mood and decided to unleash her temper on the pleasure hall.

  Nesryn said, “You should have known better than to get tangled up with a woman like that.”

  “And I suppose you would know everything about getting tangled up with people, given how many suitors are lined up outside your father’s bakeries.” A cheap shot, maybe, but they’d always been blunt with each other. She hadn’t ever seemed bothered by it, anyway.

  That faint gleam of amusement returned to her eyes as Nesryn put her hands in her pockets and turned away. “This is why I never get too involved. Too messy.”

  Why she didn’t let anyone in. Ever. He debated asking why—pushing about it. But limiting the questions about their pasts was part of their deal, and had been from the start.

  Honestly, he didn’t know what he’d expected when the queen returned.

  Not this.

  You do not get to pick and choose which parts of her to love, Dorian had once said to him. He’d been right. So painfully right.

  Nesryn let herself out.

  At first light, Chaol went to the nearest jeweler and pawned the ring for a handful of silver.

  Exhausted and miserable, Aelin trudged back to her old apartment above the unremarkable warehouse. She didn’t dare linger outside the large, two-level wooden building that she’d purchased when she’d at last paid off her debts to Arobynn—purchased for herself, to get out of the Keep. But it had only started to feel like a home once she’d paid off Sam’s debts as well, and he’d come to live here with her. A few weeks—that was all she’d been able to share with him.

  Then he was dead.

  The lock on the large, rolling door was new, and inside the warehouse, the towering stacks of crates full of ink remained in prime condition. No dust coated the stairs in the back. Either Arobynn or another face from her past would be inside.

  Good. She was ready for another fight.

  When she opened the green door, a knife angled behind her, the apartment was dark. Empty.

  But it smelled fresh.

  It was a matter of a few moments to check the apartment—the great room, the kitchen (a few old apples, but no other signs of an occupant), her bedroom (untouched), and the guest room. It was there that someone’s scent lingered; the bed was not quite perfectly made, and a note lay on the high dresser beside the door.

  The captain said I could stay here for a while. Sorry for trying to kill you this winter. I was the one with the twin swords. Nothing personal. —Ren

  She swore. Ren had been staying here? And—and he still thought she was the King’s Champion. The night the rebels had kept Chaol hostage in a warehouse, she had tried to kill him, and had been surprised when he’d held his ground. Oh, she remembered him.

  At least he was safe in the North.

  She knew herself well enough to admit that the relief was partially that of a coward—that she didn’t have to face Ren and see how he might react to who she was, what she’d done with Marion’s sacrifice. Given Chaol’s own reaction, “not well” seemed like a fair guess.

  She walked back into the darkened great room, lighting candles as she went. The large dining table occupying one half of the space was still set with her elegant plates. The couch and two red velvet armchairs before the ornate mantel were a bit rumpled, but clean.

  For a few moments, she just stared at the mantel. A beautiful clock had once sat there—until the day she’d learned Sam had been tortured and killed by Rourke Farran. That the torture had gone on for hours while she’d sat on her ass in this apartment, packing trunks that were now nowhere to be seen. And when Arobynn had come to deliver the news, she’d taken that beautiful clock and hurled it across the room, where it had shattered against the wall.

  She hadn’t been back here since then, though someone had cleaned up the glass. Either Ren or Arobynn.

  A look at one of the many bookshelves gave her the answer.

  Every book she’d packed for that one-way trip to the Southern Continent, for that new life with Sam, had been put back in place. Exactly where she’d once kept them.

  And there was only one person who would know those details—who would use the unpacked trunks as a taunt and a gift and a quiet reminder of what leaving him would cost her. Which meant Arobynn had no doubt known she would return here. At some point.

  She padded into her bedroom. She didn’t dare to check whether Sam’s clothes had been unpacked into the drawers—or thrown out.

  A bath—that’s what she needed. A long, hot bath.

  She hardly noticed the room that had once been her sanctuary. She lit the candles in the white-tiled bathroom, casting the chamber in flickering gold.

  After turning the brass knobs on the oversized porcelain bathtub to start the water flowing, she unstrapped each of her weapons. She peeled off her filthy, bloody clothes layer by layer, until she stood in her own scarred skin and gazed at her tattooed back in the mirror above the sink.

  A month ago, Rowan had covered her scars from Endovier with a stunning, scrolling tattoo, written in the Old Language of the Fae—the stories of her loved ones and how they’d died.

  She would not have Rowan ink another name on her flesh.

  She climbed into the tub, moaning at the delicious heat, and thought of the empty place on the mantel where the clock should have been. The place that had never quite been filled again since that day she’d shattered the clock. Maybe—maybe she’d also stopped in that moment.

  Stopped living and started just … surviving. Raging.

  And maybe it had taken until this spring, when she had been sprawled on the ground while three Valg princes fed on her, when she had at last burned through that pain and darkness, for the clock to start again.

  No, she would not add another name of her beloved dead to her flesh.

  She yanked a washcloth from beside the tub and scrubbed at her face, bits of mud and blood clouding the water.

  Unpredictable. The arrogance, the sheer single-minded selfishness …

  Chaol had run. He’d run, and Dorian had been left to be enslaved by the collar.

  Dorian. She’d come back—but too late. Too late.

  She dunked the washcloth again and covered her face with it, hoping it would somehow ease the stinging in her eyes. Maybe she??
?d sent too strong a message from Wendlyn by destroying Narrok; maybe it was her fault that Aedion had been captured, Sorscha killed, and Dorian enslaved.

  Monster.

  And yet …

  For her friends, for her family, she would gladly be a monster. For Rowan, for Dorian, for Nehemia, she would debase and degrade and ruin herself. She knew they would have done the same for her. She slung the washcloth into the water and sat up.

  Monster or no, never in ten thousand years would she have let Dorian face his father alone. Even if Dorian had told her to go. A month ago, she and Rowan had chosen to face the Valg princes together—to die together, if need be, rather than do so alone.

  You remind me of what the world ought to be; what the world can be, she’d once said to Chaol.

  Her face burned. A girl had said those things; a girl so desperate to survive, to make it through each day, that she hadn’t questioned why he served the true monster of their world.

  Aelin slipped back under the water, scrubbing at her hair, her face, her bloody body.

  She could forgive the girl who had needed a captain of the guard to offer stability after a year in hell; forgive the girl who had needed a captain to be her champion.

  But she was her own champion now. And she would not add another name of her beloved dead to her flesh.

  So when she awoke the next morning, Aelin wrote a letter to Arobynn, accepting his offer.

  One Valg demon, owed to the King of the Assassins.

  In exchange for his assistance in the rescue and safe return of Aedion Ashryver, the Wolf of the North.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Manon Blackbeak, heir of the Blackbeak Witch-Clan, bearer of the blade Wind-Cleaver, rider of the wyvern Abraxos, and Wing Leader of the King of Adarlan’s aerial host, stared at the portly man sitting across the black glass table and kept her temper on a tight leash.

  In the weeks that Manon and half the Ironteeth legion had been stationed in Morath, the mountain stronghold of Duke Perrington, she had not warmed to him. Neither had any of her Thirteen. Which was why Asterin’s hands were within easy reach of her twin blades as she leaned against the dark stone wall, why Sorrel was posted near the doors, and why Vesta and Lin stood guard outside them.