Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)

by Sarah J. Maas

The Sea Dragon. Rolfe’s own headquarters, named after his ship, from Aelin’s reports.

Ship-Breaker, the chain was called. Crusted with barnacles and draped in scarves of seaweed, it was connected to a watchtower on either side of the bay, where guards would raise and lower the chain to let ships out. Or keep ships in until they’d paid the hefty tolls.

A map, rumor claimed, that had revealed where enemies, treasure, and storms awaited him. The cost: his eternal soul.

Twin tattoos of roaring gray sea dragons snaked around her tan forearms, the beasts seeming to slither as her muscles shifted with the movement. Their scales, he realized, matched her eyes perfectly as she flicked her stare over Dorian and Rowan once more and said coolly, “Don’t keep him waiting.”

“According to the messengers who arrived yesterday,” Rolfe said, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. “Duke Perrington—or should I call him King Perrington now?—issued a decree, signed by the majority of Adarlan’s lords and ladies, naming you, Majesty, an enemy to your kingdom, and claiming that he liberated Rifthold from your claws after you and the Queen of Terrasen slaughtered so many innocents this spring. It also claims that any ally”—a nod toward Rowan—“is an enemy. And that you will be crushed under his armies if you do not yield.”

“Your brother has been named Perrington’s heir and Crown Prince.”

The condescension snapped something loose in Dorian’s temper. “I have walked through more nightmares than you realize, Captain.”

“Sea-wyverns. Witches rule the skies with their wyverns—but these waters are now ruled by beasts bred for naval battle, foul corruptions of an ancient template. Imagine a creature half the size of a first-rate ship—faster than a racing dolphin—and the damage it can cause with tooth and claw and a poisoned tail big as a mast. Worse, if you kill one of their vicious offspring, the adults will hunt you to the ends of the earth.”

“My Hand is currently in the southern continent—in Antica itself. He will persuade them to send a fleet.” Chaol would do nothing less for him, for Adarlan.

Two golden-haired males appeared in the doorway.

The two strangers, the source of that power … They were Fae. The one with night-dark eyes and an edged grin looked Rowan over and drawled, “I liked your hair longer.”

But the dark-eyed, bronze-skinned male—so handsome that Dorian blinked—smirked at the dagger shivering beside his head. “Was your aim that shitty when you cut your own hair?”

The other male beside him—tan, tawny-eyed, with a steady sort of quiet to him—lifted his broad, tattooed hands. “Rowan, put your blades down. We’re not here for you.”

The solemn, golden-eyed one nodded, his pale clothes so like the ones Rowan favored: layered, efficient fabric, fit for battlefields. A band of black tattoos encircled the male’s muscled neck. Dorian’s stomach lurched. From a distance, it might very well have been another sort of black collar.

“She’s never contained information like that.” Fenrys’s dark eyes flickered. “That was before you humiliated her by leaving her for Aelin of the Wildfire. And before Lorcan abandoned her as well. She trusts none of us now.”

Eyllwe … Maeve had to know how dear the kingdom was to Aelin. But to launch an armada … There had to be something there, something worth her while.

Rowan lit a few candles. The act alone left a hole in his chest.

A low laugh escaped Dorian—the first sound like it Rowan had witnessed from the king.

“How did you keep your scents hidden?” Gavriel’s tawny eyes darkened. “A new trick of Maeve’s—to keep us nearly invisible in a land that does not receive our kind warmly.”

Fenrys had always been a pain in his ass. And Rowan had not forgotten that it was Fenrys who had wanted the task of handling Aelin Galathynius this past spring. Fenrys loved anything that was wild and beautiful, and to dangle Aelin before him … Maeve had known it was torture.

if Fenrys never came back … Connall would be punished in unspeakable ways. It was how the queen had ensnared them in the first place: offspring were rare among the Fae—but twins? Even rarer. And for twins to be born gifted with strength, to grow into males whose dominance rivaled that of warriors centuries older than them …

Maeve had coveted them. Fenrys had refused the offer to join her service. So she’d gone after Connall—the dark to Fenrys’s gold, quiet to Fenrys’s roar, thoughtful to Fenrys’s recklessness.

Fenrys got what he wanted: women, glory, wealth. Connall, though skilled, was forever in his twin’s shadow. So when the queen approached him about the blood oath, at a time when Fenrys, not Connall, had been selected to ...

when Fenrys returned to find his brother bound to the queen, and learned what Maeve forced him to do behind closed doors … Fenrys had bargained: he’d swear the oath, but only to get Maeve to back off his brother. For over a century now, Fenrys had served in the queen’s...

You already know the crime he committed.” An act of love—though only in the twisted way that Lorcan could love things. Only in the twisted way he loved Maeve.

“So you’ve been sent here to bring Lorcan back?” Those tattoos on Gavriel’s throat—marks Rowan himself had inked—bobbed with each word as he said, “We’ve been sent here to kill him.”

Vaughan left yesterday afternoon to fly north—while we take the South.” Vaughan, with his osprey form, could cover the far harsher terrain more easily.

“Warning Rolfe about Maeve’s armada was part of convincing the bastard to help us. We’re to make our way onto the continent from here—start our hunt in the South.

“Ten years ago, we did nothing to stop this. If Maeve had sent a force, we might have kept it from growing so out of control. Our brethren were hunted and killed and tortured. Maeve let it happen for spite, because Aelin’s mother would not yield to her wishes.

my Fireheart is one flame in the sea of darkness. But she is willing to fight, Fenrys. She is willing to take on Erawan, take on Maeve and the gods themselves, if it means peace can be had.”

“But Aelin is one person,” Rowan went on. “And even her gifts might not be enough to win. Alone,” he breathed, meeting Fenrys’s stare, then Gavriel’s, “she will die. And once that flame goes out, it is done. There is no second chance. Once that fire extinguishes, we are all doomed, in every land and every world.”

There was one card Rowan had to play to convince them—to convince Gavriel.

“If you do not fight in this war, Gavriel, then you doom your son to die.”

him.” “Who …” Rowan wasn’t sure Gavriel was breathing properly. The warrior’s hands were clenched so tightly the scars over his knuckles were moon white. “I have a son?”

If Maeve had learned first, she might have schemed to ensnare Aedion—might have sent the cadre to kill or steal him. But now, Rowan supposed, he’d ensnared the cadre himself. It was only a matter of how desperately Gavriel wanted to meet his son … and how afraid they were of failing Maeve should they not find Lorcan.

Yes—at first glance, Aedion and Aelin looked like siblings, but it was Aedion’s smile that gave away his heritage. Gavriel would know in a heartbeat … if Aedion’s scent didn’t give it away first.

For both Rowan and Fenrys, Gavriel had always been their sounding board. Never each other—no, he and Fenrys … it was easier to be at each other’s throats instead.

The people you love are just weapons that will be used against you, Rowan had once told her.

“Theralis is the battlefield I see the most—in my dreams.” He scratched at a fleck on the rail. “Darrow made sure I stayed out of the thick of it, but we were overwhelmed. It was unavoidable.” He’d never told her—that Darrow had tried to shield him.

“My life as a warrior was chosen long before that battlefield.” Indeed, she couldn’t imagine him without that sword and shield—both currently strapped across his back. She couldn’t decide if it was a good thing.

Find the Lock. Good thing Skull’s Bay was on their way to the Stone Marshes of Eyllwe.

A large head nudged at her knee, and she found Abraxos there, neck stretched—his head just below her feet, the offer in his eyes. Not trusting consciousness to keep its grip much longer, Manon slid onto his wide, broad head, breathing through the ripples of fiery pain. His breath warmed her chilled skin as he gently lowered her onto the grassy clearing.

Powerful jaws closed around the collar of her tunic, hoisting her up with such gentleness Manon’s chest tightened.

The young woman cocked her head—a robin studying a writhing worm. “The Dark King calls me his Bloodhound.”

Something too dark to be blood slithered under the cream-colored skin of the woman’s abdomen, then vanished.

“You would not have heard of me. Until your treachery, I was kept beneath those other mountains. But when he honed the power within my own blood …” Those blue eyes pierced Manon, and it was madness that glittered there. “He could do much with you, Blackbeak. So much. He sent me to bring his crowned rider to his side once more …”

The body and face were vaguely human. But—Bloodhound. Yes, that was fitting. The nostrils were enormous, the eyes so large and lidless she wondered if Erawan himself had spread her eyelids apart, and her mouth … The teeth were black stumps, the tongue thick and red—for tasting the air. And spreading from that white body—the method of Manon’s transportation: wings.

Maybe the Mother was watching over her.

“To the coast,” Manon said over the wind as the sky bled crimson into a final blackness. “Somewhere safe.”

Honestly, Dorian had no idea how Aelin had survived months of this—let alone fallen in love with the warrior while she did. Though he supposed both the queen and prince possessed a sadistic streak that made them compatible.