Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)

by Sarah J. Maas

And if Elide needed to go to Aelin anyway … Oh, he’d find Aelin for Elide. And he’d make the Queen of Terrasen crawl before the end of it.

He crawled instead

Her cycle had come. And through whatever steady, healthy diet she’d been consuming this past month, it had gone from an inconsistent trickle to the deluge she’d awoken to this morning.

She said flatly to him, “I need supplies.” “You still reek of blood.” “I suspect I will reek of blood for several more days, and it will get worse before it gets better, so I need supplies. Now.”

She’d been so annoyed at her own helplessness that after the first day, she’d started copying his movements—and had earned herself a fat trout in the process. She’d made him kill it and gut it and cook it, but … she’d at least caught the thing.

She aimed for the cabin to find some other fabrics to tide her over, but Lorcan said, “You barely bled the last time.” The last thing she wanted to do was have this conversation. “Perhaps my body finally felt safe enough to be normal.”

“So … there’s nothing wrong, then.” He didn’t bother to look at her as he said it.

“No, there’s nothing wrong,” she said. At least, she hoped. But Finnula, her nursemaid, had always clicked her tongue and said her cycles were spotty—too light and irregular. For this one to have come precisely a month later … She didn’t feel like wondering about it.

Not right, not right, not right, his magic whispered. Where was she?

Something wasn’t coming—something was here.

The door snapped shut, sealing her in. Elide lunged for the handle as that little voice whispered, Run run run run run run.

Vernon. Sitting on the other side of the table, smiling at her like a cat.

“Your companion, last we heard, was putting supplies on his boat and unmooring it. You probably should have paid him more.” “He’s my husband,” she hissed. “You have no right to take me from him—none.” Because once she was married, Vernon’s wardenship over her life ended.

“Lorcan Salvaterre, Maeve’s second-in-command, is your husband? Really, Elide.” He waved a lazy hand to the ilken. “We depart now.”

Erawan will be interested to learn what you’ve been up to. What you … took from Kaltain.” The stone in her jacket’s breast pocket. It thrummed and whispered, awakening as she bucked.

But a voice that was young and old, wise and sweet, whispered, Do not touch it. Do not use it. Do not acknowledge it.

No, she wouldn’t go. She wouldn’t let them take her, break and use her— One shot. She’d have one shot.

Vernon didn’t have time to realize what she intended as she whipped the knife free from its sheath at his hip. As she flipped the knife in her fingers, her other hand wrapping around the hilt. As her shoulders curved inward, her chest caving, and she drove the blade home.

And grabbed his dagger. Not to kill him. For the first time in five centuries, Lorcan knew true fear as Elide turned that knife on herself, the blade angled to plunge up and into her heart.

He threw them, but the ilken had already learned his aim, his throwing style. They hadn’t learned Elide’s. She hadn’t just gone into the alley to save herself. She’d gone after the hatchet.

When it fell silent, she said in a quiet, merciless voice he’d never heard her use, clear despite the blood clogging one nostril, “I want Erawan to know that the next time he sends you after me like a pack of dogs, I’ll return the favor. I want Erawan to know that the next time I see him, I will carve Manon’s name on his gods-damned heart.”

“He told me you’d left.” Lorcan still didn’t set her down, holding her aloft with one arm as he untied the ropes. “You believed him.”

Tears rolled down her face as she stared at the water. He didn’t know how to comfort, how to soothe—not in the way she needed.

“The Wing Leader of the Ironteeth legion,” Elide said, voice trembling, the words snagging on the blood clogging her nose. Lorcan took a shot in the dark. “She was the one who got you out. That day—she was why you’re in witch leathers, why you wound up wandering in Oakwald.” A nod.

“And Kaltain—who was she?” The person who’d given her that thing she carried. “Erawan’s mistress—his slave. She was my age. He put the stone inside her arm and made her into a living ghost. She bought me and Manon time to run; she incinerated most of Morath in the process, and herself.”

Lorcan’s breath caught as she pulled out a scrap of dark fabric. The scent clinging to it was female, foreign—broken and sad and cold. But there was another scent beneath it, one he knew and hated …

Is the male scent the king?

“Kaltain said to give this to Celaena—not to Aelin,” Elide said, shaking with her tears. “Because Celaena … she gave her a warm cloak in a cold dungeon. And they wouldn’t let Kaltain take the cloak with her when they brought her to Morath, but she managed to save this scrap. To remember to repay Celaena for that kindness. But … what sort of gift is this thing? What is this?”

Every drop of blood in his body went cold and hot, awake and dead. She was sobbing quietly. “Why is this payment? My very bones say to not touch it. My—a voice told me not to even think about it …”

It was wrong. The thing in her beautiful, filthy hand was wrong. It did not belong here, should not be here— The god who had watched over him his whole life had recoiled. Even death feared it.

Lorcan reached out, grasping her chin and forcing her to look at him. Hopeless, bleak eyes met his. He brushed away a stray tear with his thumb. “I made a promise to protect you. I will not break it, Elide.”

She made to pull away, but he gripped her a little harder, keeping her eyes on him. “I will always find you,” he swore to her. Her throat bobbed. Lorcan whispered, “I promise.”

When she awoke, clean strips of linen for her cycle were next to the bed. His own shirt, washed and dried overnight—now cut up for her to use as she would.

Lorcan’s shredded, dark soul tipped its head back and roared in unison to her power’s burning song.

If someone had told him that the drunken, brawling, bitter woman would become the one thing he could not live without … Rowan shut the door. This was all he could offer her.

If Rowan had been bred and built for battlefields, Enda was sculpted for intrigue and court machinations.

“When it comes to the right person, Prince, waiting a hundred years is worth it.”

Dorian saw that they each bore the same flag: A silver banner, with a screaming hawk. And where Maeve’s black flag of a perching owl had once flapped beside it … now that black flag lowered.

Now the dark queen’s flag vanished entirely, as Fae ships bearing the silver banner of the House of Whitethorn opened fire upon their own armada.

Every single one of his cousins had attacked. Every single one. As if they had all met, all decided to risk ruination together.

Rowan had not possessed an army of his own to give to Aelin. To give to Terrasen. So he had won an army for her. Through the only things Aelin had claimed were all she wanted from him. His heart. His loyalty. His friendship.

Rowan wished his Fireheart were there to see it as the House of Whitethorn slammed into Maeve’s fleet, and ice an...

Fools, and yet … Gavriel’s son was bellowing Whitethorn’s name. A gods-damned victory cry. Over and over, the men taking up the call. Then Fenrys’s voice lifted. And Gavriel’s. And that red-haired queen. The Havilliard king.

Maeve was allowing the battle to explode across the water because she had other games afoot. Because she was not on the seas at all. But on the shore.

Precisely where he had left Elide hours ago. And Lorcan did not care about the battle, about what he’d agreed to do for Whitethorn, the promise he’d made the prince. He had made a promise to her first.

But Anneith was sticking close, hovering behind her shoulder. See, she said, as she always did. See, see, see.

The voice became urgent. See, see, see. Then Anneith vanished entirely. No—fled.

Something was coming. Something that knew Aelin Galathynius drew strength from sunlight. From Mala.

Manon stepped closer, perhaps the only comfort the witch knew how to offer: solidarity.

Send them home … using the keys to open the Wyrdgate. And a new Lock to seal it forever. Nameless is my price.

Using her power, drained to the last drop, her life to forge that new Lock. To wield the power of the keys only once—just once, to banish them all, and then seal the gate forever.

Rhiannon Crochan. Manon started at the sight of her, and Aelin glanced between them. The face … it was the same. Manon’s face, and Rhiannon Crochan’s. The last Crochan Queens—of two separate eras.