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The tower of Noll was built afterward, and then the locals cursed it, too.
“The truth was, by the time we got our archers ready, the men who went mad had already bashed their own skulls in. Every time, as if they couldn’t get the pain out.”
“There was no door. Always seemed more decorative than anything. But I hated it—we all did. It was just this awful black stone.” Just like the clock tower in the glass castle. Built around the same time, if not a few years before. “Why
Amaroth. The other outpost, and Murtaugh’s other possible origin point for their spell. Due north from Noll. Both the same distance from Rifthold. Three towers of black stone, all three points making an equilateral triangle. It had to be part of the spell, then.
They had a long way to fly today and tomorrow—all the way to the edge of the Ruhnn Mountains. To find spidersilk. And the legendary Stygian spiders, large as horses and deadlier than poison, who wove it.
She would have preferred snow over this freezing rain, which came with so much wind that she couldn’t light a fire.
It was worth it. To secure victory for the Thirteen, to be Wing Leader, one night in a storm was nothing.
She’d survived storms some witches didn’t awaken from the next morning. But she still would have preferred snow.
When she opened her eyes, she was in shadow—shadow, but dry and warm, thanks to the massive wing shielding her from the elements and the heat of Abraxos’s breath filling the space like a little furnace. He was still snoozing—a deep, heavy sleep.
“I suppose we are sisters, you and I. Two faces of the same dark coin, from the same dark maker. Sisters in spirit, if not in flesh.”
“Your hair reminds me of our silk.”
“A merchant came by a few years ago—he told me there was a mortal High King who had set himself up there. But I heard a whisper on the wind recently that said he’d been deposed by a young woman with wine-red hair who now calls herself their High Queen.”
“The merchant himself was from there—a former shape-shifter. Lost his gifts, just like all of you truly mortal things. He was stuck in a man’s body, thankfully, but he did not realize that when he sold me twenty years of his life, some of his gifts passed to me. I can’t use them, of course, but I wonder … I do wonder what it would be like. To see the world through your pretty eyes. To touch a human man.”
“Oh, I don’t mean your literal face. But the color of your skin, the hue of your burnt gold eyes. The way your hair catches the light, like moonlight on snow. Those things I could take. That beauty could win you a king. Perhaps if magic returns, I’ll use it for my woman’s body. Perhaps I’ll win a king of my very own.”
Win her a king?!!
also heard that your Thirteen and your mounts only eat the meat they catch. My Keelie caught this on our morning flight. She wanted to share with Abraxos.”
Petrah cocked her head. “Doesn’t your wyvern talk to you?” Abraxos was watching with as much awareness as the other witches. “They don’t talk.” Petrah shrugged, tapping a hand casually over her heart. “Don’t they?”
In the war camps, we had a commander who used to tattoo the number of enemies he’d killed on his flesh—sometimes he’d write the whole story of a battle. All the young soldiers were enamored of it, and I convinced him to teach me.”
With his immortal, fast-healing body, Rowan’s ink was mixed with salt and powdered iron to keep the magic in his blood from wiping away any trace of the tattoo.
“My parents were very old when they conceived me.” Not old in the human sense, she knew. “I was their only child in the millennia they’d been mated. They faded into the Afterworld before I reached my second decade.”
“My mother, thanks to her Fae heritage, had a difficult time with the pregnancy. She stopped breathing during labor. They said it was my father’s will that kept her tethered to this world. I don’t know if she even could have conceived again after that. So, no siblings. But—” Gods, she should shut her mouth. “But I had a cousin. He was five years older than me, and we fought and loved each other like siblings.”
Aedion. She hadn’t spoken that name aloud in ten years.
he’d done in the north all these years. Aedion had been fiercely, wildly loyal to Terrasen as a child. She didn’t want to know what he’d been forced to do, what had happened to him, to change that. It was by luck or fate or something else entirely that he had never been in the castle when she was there.
“I think facing my cousin after everything would be the worst of it—worse than facing the king.”
Though their eyes were identical, their bloodlines were distant enough that she’d heard servants and courtiers alike pondering the usefulness of a Galathynius-Ashryver union someday. The idea was as laughable now as it had been ten years ago.
She used her free hand to make a particularly vulgar gesture, and he caught it with his own, teeth still out. “That is not very queenly.” “Then it’s good I’m not a queen, isn’t it?”
“Because if I free Eyllwe and destroy the king as Celaena, I can go anywhere after that. The crown … my crown is just another set of shackles.”
Nehemia, long ago, had once said as much—it was her most ardent and selfish wish to be ordinary, without the weight of her crown. Had her friend known how deeply those words had echoed in her?
“And if I asked for the moon on a string?” “Then I would start praying to Deanna.”
Always hiding—was that to be his life? Not just the women he loved, but his magic, his true thoughts …
“My greatest wish,” she said with a little smile, “is for a morning when I don’t have to run out the door at first light.”
“You cannot pick and choose what parts of her to love.” He pitied Chaol, he realized. His heart hurt for his friend, for all that Chaol had surely been realizing these past few months. “Just as you cannot pick which parts of me you accept.”
Like it or not, you played a role in getting us all to this point, too. You set her down that path, to revealing what and who she is, to whatever she decides to do now.”
“If I could, I would put it all back to the way it was. If I could, she wouldn’t be queen, and you wouldn’t have magic.” “Of course—of course you still see the magic as a problem. And of course you wish she wasn’t who she is. Because you’re not really scared of those things, are you? No—it’s what they represent. The change.
“things have already changed. And changed because of you. I have magic—there is no undoing that, no getting rid of it.
“you do not have the right to wish she were not what she is. The only thing you have a right to do is decide whether you are her enemy or her friend.”
And he knew, deep down, that she had not blinked at his magic but rather understood that burden, and that fear. She had not walked away or wished him to be anything but what he was. I’ll come back for you.
“I’ve already made my decision about her. And when the time comes, regardless of whether you are here or in Anielle, I hope your choice is the same as mine.”
The pirates had scattered, actually. The Pirate Lord Rolfe had taken half of them south; some had gone east; and some had made the fatal mistake of sailing to Terrasen’s north coast.
Narrok’s fleet is gone. Captain Rolfe is again Pirate Lord of Skull’s Bay, though not more than that. His men do not venture into the eastern Dead Islands.”
“Because the men who go into the eastern islands do not come back. And on windy nights, even Rolfe swears he can hear … roaring, roaring from the islands; human, but not quite.
Rolfe …” Murtaugh rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He told me that on the night they sailed back into the islands, they saw something standing on an outcropping of rocks, just on the border of the eastern islands. Looked like a pale man, but … not. Rolfe might be in love with himself, but he’s not a liar. He said whatever—whoever—it was felt wrong. Like there was a hole of silence around it, at odds with the roaring they usually hear. And that it just watched them sail past. The next day, when they returned to the same spot, it was gone.”
“Rolfe and his men swore that this was nothing from legend. It was made, they said.”
“The Pirate Lord thinks there are monsters in the Dead Islands?” “He thinks, and I also believe, that they were being made there. And Narrok took some of them with him.” It was Chaol who asked, “Where did Narrok go?” “To Wendlyn,”
Because I do not believe for one moment that His Majesty’s newest surprises were located only in the Dead Islands.”
“I will not turn my back on my kingdom or my prince,” Chaol snapped. “I will not fight in your army and slaughter my people. And I will not break my vow to my father.” His honor might very well be all he would have left at the end of this.
“I think your queen would condemn you if you spilled one drop of innocent blood. She would spit in your face. There are good people in this kingdom, and they deserve to be considered in any course of action your side takes.”
“When your men have died around you, when you have seen your women unforgivably hurt, when you have watched droves of orphaned children starve to death in the streets of your city, then you can talk to me about sparing innocent lives. Until then, the fact remains, Captain, that you have not picked a side because you are still a boy, and you are still afraid. Not of losing innocent lives, but of losing whatever dream it is you’re clinging to. Your prince has moved on, my queen has moved on. But you have not. And it will cost you in the end.”
Sometimes they would talk. Well, she would make him talk, because after telling him about Aedion and her own selfish wish for freedom, she decided that talking was … good. Even if she wasn’t able to open up about some things, she liked hearing Rowan speak.
And as she listened, she began to hate Maeve—truly hate her aunt in her core.
It came as some surprise when Emrys announced one day that Beltane was two days off and they would begin preparations for their feasting and dancing and celebrating.
