Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)

by Sarah J. Maas

Aedion drawled, even as his relief began to crumble his mask of arrogant calmness, “The useless sentries in the watchtower are now all half in love with you,” he lied. “One said he wanted to marry you.” A low snarl. He yielded a foot but held eye contact with her as he grinned. “But you know what I told them? I said that they didn’t stand a chance in hell.” Aedion lowered his voice, holding her pained, exhausted stare. “Because I am going to marry you,” he promised her. “One day. I am going to marry you. I’ll be generous and let you pick when, even if it’s ten years from now. Or twenty. But one day, you are going to be my wife.” Those eyes narrowed—in what he could only call female outrage and exasperation. He shrugged. “Princess Lysandra Ashryver sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

“What the hell happened out there?” “I lost control,” Aelin said hoarsely. As if she couldn’t help it, her hand drifted to her chest. Where, through the white of her shirt, he could make out the Amulet of Orynth. He knew then. Knew precisely what Aelin carried. What would have snagged Rolfe’s interest on that map of his—similar enough to the Valg essence to get him to come running. Knew why it had been so important, so vital, she risk everything to get it from Arobynn Hamel. Knew that she had used a Wyrdkey today, and it had almost killed them all—

“Perhaps that’s why Mala appeared to me that morning, why she gave me her blessing.” “Because you’re the only one arrogant and insane enough to hunt a goddess?” Rowan shucked off his boots, tossing them onto the dry sand behind him. “Because I’m the only one arrogant and insane enough to ask Mala Fire-Bringer to let me stay with the woman I love.” Her flames turned to pure gold at the words—at that word. But she said, “Perhaps you’re just the only one arrogant and insane enough to love me.”

love you. There is no limit to what I can give to you, no time I need. Even when this world is a forgotten whisper of dust between the stars, I will love you.”

“Deanna and my father spoke true. I’d thought … I’d thought it was broken, but if they told you to find the Lock … ” She bit her lip. Aelin said, “Brannon said to go to the Stone Marshes of Eyllwe to find the Lock. Where, precisely, in the marshes?” “There was once a great city in the heart of the marshes,” Elena breathed. “It is now half drowned on the plain. In a temple at its center, we laid the remnants of the Lock. I didn’t … My father attained the Lock at terrible cost. The cost … of my mother’s body, her mortal life. A Lock for the Wyrdkeys—to seal shut the gate, and bind the keys inside them forever. I did not understand what it had been intended for; my father never told me about any of it until it was too late. All I knew was that the Lock was only able to be used once—its power capable of sealing anything we wished. So I stole it. I used it for myself, for my people. I have been paying for that crime since.” “You used it to seal Erawan in his tomb,” Aelin said quietly. The pleading faded from Elena’s face. “My friends died in the valley of the Black Mountains that day so I might have the chance to stop him. I heard their screaming, even in the heart of Erawan’s camp. I will not apologize for trying to end the slaughter so that the survivors could have a future. So you could have a future.” “So you used the Lock, then chucked it into a ruin?” “We placed it inside the holy city on the plain—to be a commemoration of the lives lost. But a great cataclysm rocked the ...

“My mother died to forge that Lock,” Elena snapped, eyes blazing bright. “She let go of her mortal body so that she could forge the Lock for my father. I was the one who broke the promise for how it was to be used.” Aelin blinked, and Dorian wondered if he should indeed be worried when even she was speechless. But Aelin only whispered, “Who was your mother?” Dorian ransacked his memory, all his history lessons on his royal house, but couldn’t recall. Elena made a sound that might have been a sob, her image fading into cobwebs and moonlight. “She who loved my father best. She who blessed him with such mighty gifts, and then bound herself in a mortal body and offered him the gift of her heart.” Aelin’s arms slackened at her sides. Aedion blurted, “Shit.” Elena laughed humorlessly as she said to Aelin, “Why do you think you burn so brightly? It is not just Brannon’s blood that is in your veins. But Mala’s.” Aelin breathed, “Mala Fire-Bringer was your mother.”

Molly clicked her tongue. “You’re lucky,” she murmured as Lorcan hurled his sword high in the air and people gasped, “that he still looks at you the way he does.”

“What is it that you’re carrying that makes them hunt you so relentlessly? Not your royal blood, not your magic and use for breeding. The object you carry with you—what is it?” Perhaps it was a night for truth, perhaps death hovered close enough to make her a bit reckless, but Elide said, “It’s a gift—for Celaena Sardothien. From a woman kept imprisoned in Morath, who had waited a long time to repay her for a past kindness. More than that, I don’t know.” A gift for an assassin—not the queen. Perhaps nothing of note, but— “Let me see it.” “No.” They stared each other down again. And Lorcan knew that if he wanted, he could wait until she was asleep, take it for himself, and vanish. See what might make her so protective of it. But he knew … some small, stupid part of him knew that if he took from this woman who had already had too much stolen from her … He didn’t know if there was any coming back from that. He’d done such despicable, vicious things over the centuries and hadn’t thought twice. He’d reveled in them, relished them, the cruelty. But this … there was a line. Somehow … somehow there was a gods-damned line here.

Find somewhere safe, she’d told Abraxos. Had he somehow found the queen? Somehow known this was the only place she might stand a chance of surviving?

“So would you consider yourself more Valg than human, then?” “The Valg are my enemy—Erawan is my enemy.” “And does that make us allies?” She revealed no indication either way. “Is there a young woman in your company named Elide?” “No.” Who in hell was that? “We’ve never encountered anyone with that name.” Manon closed her eyes for a heartbeat. Her slender throat bobbed. “Have you heard news of my Thirteen?” “You’re the first rider and wyvern we’ve seen in weeks.” He contemplated why she’d asked, why she’d gone so still. “You don’t know if they’re alive.” And with those iron shavings in her gut … Manon’s voice was flat and cold as death. “Tell Aelin Galathynius not to bother using me for negotiations. The Blackbeak Matron will not acknowledge me, either as heir or witch, and all you will get out of it is revealing your precise location.” His magic flickered. “What happened after Rifthold?” Manon lay back down, angling her head away from him. Spindrift from the open porthole caught in her white hair and set it shimmering in the dim cabin. “Everything has a price.”

“Find out if my Thirteen are alive, princeling. Do that, and I am yours to command.” “Where did you last see them?” Nothing. She swallowed another spoonful. He pushed, “Were they present when your grandmother did that to you?” Her shoulders curved a bit, and she scooped another spoonful of cloudy liquid but didn’t sip. “The cost of Rifthold was the life of my Second. I refused to pay it. So I bought my Thirteen time to run. The moment I swung my sword at my grandmother, my title, my legion, was forfeit. I lost the Thirteen while I fled. I do not know if they are alive, or if they have been hunted down.” Her eyes snapped to his, bright from more than the steam of her stew. “Find them for me. Learn if they live or if they have returned to the Darkness.” “We’re in the middle of the ocean. There won’t be news of anything for a while.” She went back to eating. “They are all I have left.” “Then I suppose you and I are both heirs without crowns.” A humorless snort. Her white hair shifted in the sea breeze. Dorian rose and walked to the door. “I’ll do what I can.” “And—Elide.” Again, that name. “Who is she?” But Manon was back at her stew. “Just tell Aelin Galathynius that Elide Lochan is alive—and looking for her.”

She had not realized how impossible the survival of the Thirteen might indeed have been until she was practically begging Dorian Havilliard to find them for her. Until she had found herself desperate enough to sell her sword for any news of them. If they even wanted to serve her after everything. A Blackbeak—and a Crochan. And her parents … murdered by her grandmother. They had promised the world a child of peace. And she had let her grandmother hone her into a child of war.

And sometimes that dark, fell magic of his would brush up against whatever it was she carried—the gift from a dying woman to a hotheaded assassin—and recoil.

Lorcan’s nostrils flared. “If you have a problem with my killing someone who reeked of itching to betray us the moment he got the chance, then you are going to love your queen.” For a while now, he’d hinted that he knew of her, that he knew of her well enough to call her horrible things, but— “What do you mean?” Lorcan, gods above, looked as if his temper had at last slipped its leash as he said, “Celaena Sardothien is a nineteen-year-old assassin—who calls herself the best in the world.” A snort. “She killed and reveled and shopped her way through life and never once apologized for it. She gloried in it. And then this spring, one of my sentinels, Prince Rowan Whitethorn, was tasked to deal with her when she washed up on Wendlyn’s shores. Turns out, he fell in love with her instead, and she with him. Turns out, whatever they were doing up in the Cambrian Mountains got her to stop calling herself Celaena and start going by her true name again.” A brutal smile. “Aelin Galathynius.” Elide could barely feel her body. “What?” was about the only word she could manage. “Your fire-breathing queen? She’s a gods-damned assassin. Trained to be a killer from the moment your mother died defending her. Trained to be no better than the man who butchered your mother and your royal family.” Elide shook her head, her hands slackening. “What?” she said again. Lorcan laughed mirthlessly. “While you were locked in that tower for ten years, she was indulging in the riches of Rifthold, spoiled a...

Manon was sitting upright in bed, golden eyes darting between Rowan and Dorian and her. Fenrys slid in behind them, his attention going right to the witch. No doubt stunned by the beauty, the grace, the blah-blah-blah perfectness of her. Manon said, low and flat, “Who is this?” Dorian lifted a brow, following her gaze. “You’ve met him before. He’s Fenrys—sworn warrior of Queen Maeve.” It was the narrowing of Manon’s eyes that had some instinct pricking. The flare of the witch’s nostrils as she scented the male, his smell barely detectable in the cramped cabin— “No, he’s not,” Manon said. The witch’s iron nails flashed out a heartbeat before Fenrys struck.

The Bloodhound chucked a strap of black leather into the center of the room. Manon stopped dead. “Your Second screamed when Erawan broke her,” the Bloodhound said. “His Dark Majesty sends this to remember her by.” Aelin didn’t dare take her eyes off the creature. But she could have sworn Manon swayed. And then the Bloodhound said to the witch, “A gift from a King of the Valg … to the last living Crochan Queen.”

“Don’t you want to know what your Second said before she died? What she begged for?” Manon hesitated. “What a horrible brand on her stomach—unclean. Did you do that yourself, Blackbeak?” No. No, no, no— “A baby; she said she’d birthed a stillborn witchling.” Manon froze entirely.

Sleep was finally starting to tug at him when wood groaned a few feet behind, and he knew it did so only because she willed it, to keep from startling him. The ghost leopard sat beside him, tail twitching, and met his eyes for a moment before she laid her enormous head on his thigh. In silence, they watched the stars flicker over the calm waves, Lysandra nuzzling her head against his hip. The starlight stained her coat with muted silver, and a smile ghosted Aedion’s lips.

“You could have made her suffer—you went for a clean blow instead. Why?” “Because even with our enemies, there’s a line.” “Then you have your answer.” “I didn’t ask a question.” Manon snorted. “You’ve had that look in your eyes all night—if you’re becoming a monster like the rest of us. The next time you kill, remind yourself of that line.” “Where do you stand on that line, witchling?” She met his gaze, as if willing him to see a century of all that she’d done. “I am not mortal. I do not play by your rules. I have killed and hunted men for sport. Do not mistake me for a human woman, princeling.”

“Snap out of it,” Manon said. Aedion loosed a warning growl. Aelin slowly lifted her eyes to the witch, and Dorian braced himself. “So you miscalculated,” Manon said. “So they tracked you. Don’t get distracted with the minor defeats. This is war. Cities will be lost, people slaughtered. And if I were you, I would be more concerned about why they sent so few of the ilken.” “If you were me,” Aelin murmured in a tone that had Dorian’s magic rising, ice cooling his fingertips. Aedion’s hand slid to his sword. “If you were me.” A low, bitter laugh. Dorian had not heard that sound since … since a blood-soaked bedroom in a glass castle that no longer existed. “Well, you are not me, Blackbeak, so I’ll trust you to keep your musings on the matter to yourself.” “I am not a Blackbeak,” Manon said. They all stared at her. But the witch merely watched the queen. Aelin said with a wave of her scar-flecked hand, “Right. That matter of business. Let’s hear the story, then.” Dorian wondered if they would come to blows, but Manon simply waited a few heartbeats, looked toward the horizon again, and said, “When my grandmother stripped me of my title as heir and Wing Leader, she also stripped my heritage. She told me that my father was a Crochan Prince, and she had killed my mother and him for conspiring to end the feud between our peoples and break the curse on our lands.” Dorian glanced to Aedion. The Wolf of the North’s face was taut, his Ashryver eyes shining bright, churning at the possib...

“Maeve does not share power. She saw Adarlan as an inconvenience. Still does.” Aedion countered, “Everyone can be bought for a price.” “Nameless is the price of Maeve’s allegiance,” Fenrys snapped. “It can’t be purchased.” Aelin went utterly still at the warrior’s words. She blinked at him, her brows narrowing as her lips silently mouthed the words he’d said. “What is it?” Aedion demanded. Aelin murmured, “Nameless is my price.” Aedion opened his mouth, no doubt to ask what had snagged her interest, but Aelin frowned at Manon. “Can your kind see the future? See it as an oracle can?” “Some,” Manon admitted. “The Bluebloods claim to.” “Can other Clans?” “They say that for the Ancients, past and present and future bleed together.”

“An Ancient,” Dorian mused, then murmured to Manon, “Baba Yellowlegs.” They all turned to him. But Manon’s fingers brushed against her collarbone—where the necklace of Aelin’s scars from Yellowlegs still ringed her neck in stark white. “This winter, she was at your castle,” Manon said to him. “Working as a fortune-teller.” “And what—she said something to that degree?” Aedion crossed his arms. He’d known of the visit, Dorian recalled. Aedion had always kept an eye on the witches—on all the power players of the realm, he’d once said. Manon stared the general down. “Yellowlegs was a fortune-teller—a powerful oracle. I bet she knew who the queen was the moment she saw her. And saw things she planned to sell to the highest bidder.” Dorian tried not to flinch at the memory. Aelin had butchered Yellowlegs when she’d threatened to sell his secrets. Aelin had never implied a threat against her own. Manon continued, “Yellowlegs wouldn’t have told the queen anything outright, only in veiled terms. So it’d drive the girl mad when she figured it out.” A pointed glance at the door through which Aelin had vanished.

Elide was sobbing. In terror and despair. Each sound whetted his rage into something so lethal Lorcan could barely see straight. Then the ilken threw her into that iron box. And Elide proved she wasn’t bluffing in her claim to never return to Morath. He heard her nose break as she hit the rim of the box, heard her uncle’s cry of surprise as she rebounded and lunged for him— 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 his hatchet. As the tip of that dagger pierced the leather over her ribs, the wooden handle of his hatchet slammed into her wrist. Elide went down with a cry, the dagger flying wide—

“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.”

She wiped at the blood on her face, then winced at the tender wrist—and broken nose. He’d have to tend to that. Even then, it might very well be slightly crooked forever. He doubted she’d care. Knew she’d perhaps see that crooked nose as a sign that she’d fought and survived.

“Who is Manon?” He’d heard most of what Vernon had hissed inside that private dining room while he’d been setting his trap in the courtyard, but some details had evaded him. “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.” Elide reached into her jacket, her breathing thick with tears still sliding down her face. 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 … “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?” She pulled back the fold of cloth, revealing a dark sliver of stone. Every drop of b...

“Let’s clean you up first. Set that nose and wrist. I’ll tell you what I know while I do.” She nodded, gaze on the river. 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.”

She didn’t know why she said it, why she felt a need or like it was worth anything to him at all, but Elide stood on her toes, kissed his stubble-rough cheek, and said, “I will always find you, too, Lorcan.” She felt him staring at her, even when she’d climbed into bed minutes later. 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.

“You need to lie low somewhere.” A warm, sorrowful huff into her palm. “Don’t whine about it,” Manon said, even as something twisted and roiled in her belly. “Stay out of sight, keep alert, and come back in four days’ time.” She allowed herself to lean forward, resting her brow against his snout. His growl rumbled her bones. “We’ve been a pair, you and I. A few days is nothing, my friend.” He nudged her head with his own. Manon swallowed hard. “You saved my life. Many times. I never thanked you for it.” Abraxos let out another low whine. “You and me,” she promised him. “From now until the Darkness claims us.” She made herself pull away. Made herself stroke his snout just once more. Then backed a step. Then another. “Go.” He didn’t move. She bared her iron teeth. “Go.” Abraxos gave her a look full of reproach, but his body tensed, wings lifting. And Manon decided she had never hated anyone more than she hated the Queen of Terrasen and her friends. For making him leave. For causing this parting, when so many dangers had not been able to cleave them. But Abraxos was airborne, the sails groaning in the wind of his wings, and Manon watched until he was a speck on the horizon, until the longboats were being readied to bring them to the high grasses and stagnant gray water of the marshes beyond.

The queen and her court readied, donning weapons like some people adorned themselves with jewelry, moving about in question and answer to one another. So similar, to her Thirteen—similar enough that she had to turn away, ducking into the shadows of the foremast and schooling her breathing into an even rhythm. Her hands trembled. Asterin was not dead. The Thirteen were not dead. She’d kept the thoughts about it at bay. But now, with that flower-smelling wyvern vanishing over the horizon … The last piece of the Wing Leader had vanished with him.

Manon unfastened the brooch clasping the cloak at her shoulders. She weighed the thick bolt of red fabric in her hands. A few easy swipes of her nails had her clutching a long, thin strip of the cloak. A few more motions had her tying it around the end of her braid, the red stark against the moon white of her hair. Manon stepped out of the shadows behind the foremast and peered over the edge of the ship. No one commented when she dumped her half sister’s cloak into the sea. The wind carried it a few feet over the waves before it fluttered like a dying leaf to land atop the swells. A pool of blood—that’s how it looked from the distance as the tide carried it out, out, out into the ocean. She found the King of Adarlan and Queen of Terrasen waiting at the railing of the main deck, their companions climbing into the awaiting longboat bobbing on the waves. She met eyes of sapphire, then those of turquoise and gold. She knew they’d seen it. Perhaps not understood what the cloak had meant, but … understood the gesture for what it was. Manon flicked her iron teeth and nails back into their slits as she approached them. Aelin Galathynius said quietly, “You never stop seeing their faces.” It was only when they were rowing for the shore, spindrift soaking them, that Manon realized the queen hadn’t meant the Thirteen. And Manon wondered if Aelin, too, had watched that cloak floating out to sea and thought it looked like spilled blood.

“Rhiannon Crochan said there was one way—only one—to break the curse.” Manon swallowed and recited in a cold, tight voice, “Blood to blood and soul to soul, together this was done, and only together it can be undone. Be the bridge, be the light. When iron melts, when flowers spring from fields of blood—let the land be witness, and return home.” Manon toyed with the end of her braid, the scrap of red cloak she’d tied around it. “Every Ironteeth witch in the world has pondered that curse. For five centuries, we have tried to break it.” “And your parents … their union was made in order to break this curse?” Aelin pushed—carefully. A sharp nod. “I did not know—that Rhiannon’s bloodline survived.” And now ran through Manon’s blue veins.

“Your beloved’s life and the witch’s are entwined. They have been led here, by forces even we cannot understand.” “Think about it,” Fenrys pushed. “Two females whose paths crossed tonight in a way we’ve rarely witnessed. Two queens, who might control either half of this continent, two sides of one coin. Both half-breeds. Manon, an Ironteeth and a Crochan. Aelin …” “Human and Fae,” Rowan finished for him. “Between them, they cover the three main races of this earth. Between the two of them, they are mortal and immortal; one worships fire, the other Darkness. Do I need to go on? It feels as if we’re playing right into the hands of whoever has been running this game—for eons.” Rowan gave Fenrys a stare that usually had men backing away. Even as he considered it. Gavriel interrupted to say, “Maeve has been waiting, Rowan. Since Brannon. For someone who would lead her to the keys. For your Aelin.”

Rowan pushed off the wall, more than ready to join his queen. But he found Fenrys staring at her as well, his face tight and drawn. Fenrys’s voice was a broken whisper as he said, “Kill me. If that order is given. Kill me, Rowan, before I have to do it.” “You’ll be dead before you can get within a foot of her.” Not a threat—a promise and a plain statement of fact. Fenrys’s shoulders slumped in thanks. “I’m glad, you know,” Fenrys said with unusual graveness, “that I got this time. That Maeve unintentionally gave me that. That I got to know what it was like—to be here, as a part of this.” Rowan didn’t have words, so he looked to Gavriel. But the Lion was merely nodding as he stared down at the little camp below. At his sleeping son.

“I won’t be his prisoner again.” Aelin tried to shut out what he’d meant by it. But Manon said from the wall above them, an arrow now nocked loosely in her bow, “If it comes to that, princeling, I’ll kill you before they can.” Aelin hissed, “You will do no such thing.” Both of them ignored her as Dorian said, “Thank you.” “None of you are being taken prisoner,” Aelin growled, and walked away.

The strong, unyielding bones of his face were set with that warrior’s brutality. But his pine-green eyes were bright—almost soft—as he said, “Remember who you are. Every step of the way down, and every step of the way back. Remember who you are. And that you’re mine.”

Elide was gasping for breath, weaving on her feet as Lorcan halted on the outskirts of a massive, flooded plain. She pushed back a stray strand of hair from her face, Athril’s ring glinting on her finger. She hadn’t questioned where it had come from or what it did when he’d slipped it onto her finger this morning. He’d only warned her to never take it off, that it might be the one thing to keep her safe from the ilken, from Morath.

Whitethorn knew—even at Mistward—that the queen hadn’t yet stepped into her birthright. Knew that this sort of power came around once in an eon, and to serve it, to serve her … A court that wouldn’t just change the world. It would start the world over. A court that could conquer this world—and any other it wished. If it wished. If that woman on the plain desired to. And that was the question, wasn’t it? “Lorcan,” Elide whispered, her voice breaking in longing for the queen, or terror of her, he didn’t know.

Still Aelin kept burning. Aedion couldn’t even see her in the heart of that power. There was a cost—there had to be a cost to such power. She had been born knowing the weight of her crown, her magic. Had felt its isolation long before she’d reached adolescence. And that seemed like punishment enough, but … there had to be a price. Nameless is my price. That was what the witch had said. Understanding glimmered at the edge of Aedion’s mind, just out of grasp. He fired his second-to-last arrow, straight between the eyes of a frantic ilken.

Embers stirred her unbound hair as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed close. A golden crown of flame flickered to life atop Rowan’s head—the twin to the one Lorcan had seen burning that day at Mistward. He knew Whitethorn. He knew the prince wasn’t ambitious—not in the way that immortals could be. He likely would have loved the woman if she’d been ordinary. But this power … In his wasteland of a soul, Lorcan felt that tug. Hated it. It was why Whitethorn had strode to her—why Fenrys was now halfway across the plain, dazed, attention wholly fixed on where they stood, tangled in each other.

Lorcan tensed as if sensing the oblivion that threatened. “You heal her,” he said to the gentle-eyed male, “and then we continue—” “No,” she got out. Not for this, not for her— Lorcan’s onyx eyes were unreadable as he scanned her face. And then he said quietly, “I wanted to go to Perranth with you.” Lorcan dropped the shield. It was not a hard choice. And it did not frighten him. Not nearly as much as the fatal wound in her arm did. Fenrys had hit an artery. She’d bleed out in minutes. Lorcan had been born from and gifted with darkness. Returning to it was not a difficult task. But letting that glimmering, lovely light before him die out … In his ancient, bitter bones, he could not accept it. She had been forgotten—by everyone and everything. And still she had hoped. And still she had been kind to him. And still she had offered him a glimpse of peace in the time he’d known her. She had offered him a home.

“Your mother told me to tell you that she loves you—very much. Those were her last words to me. ‘Tell my Elide I love her very much.’ ” For over ten years, Aelin had been the sole bearer of those final words. Ten years, through death and despair and war, Aelin had carried them across kingdoms. And here, at the edge of the world, they had found each other again. Here at the edge of the world, just for a heartbeat, Elide felt the warm hand of her mother brush her shoulder. Tears stung Elide’s eyes as they slipped free. But then the grass crunched behind them. She saw the white hair first. Then the golden eyes. And Elide sobbed as Manon Blackbeak emerged, smiling faintly. As Manon Blackbeak saw her and Aelin, knee-to-knee in the grass, and mouthed one word. Hope. Not dead. None of them were dead.

But Aelin was again sizing up Lorcan, bristling, that wicked grin returning. Elide said softly, “I survived, Majesty, because of him.” She pointed with her chin to Manon. “And because of her. I am here because of both of them.” Manon nodded, focus going to the pocket where she’d seen Elide hide that scrap of stone. The confirmation she’d been looking for. The reminder of the third part of the triangle. “I’m here,” Elide said as Aelin fixed those unnervingly vivid eyes on her, “because of Kaltain Rompier.” Her throat clogged, but she pushed past it as her trembling fingers fished out the little bit of cloth from her inside pocket. The otherworldly feel of it pulsed in her palm. “She said to give this to you. To Celaena Sardothien, I mean. She didn’t know they … you were the same. She said it was payment for … for a warm cloak offered in a cold dungeon.” She wasn’t ashamed of the tears that fell, not in honor of what that woman had done. Aelin studied the scrap of cloth in Elide’s shaking palm. “I think she kept this as a reminder of kindness,” Elide said hoarsely. “They … they broke her, and hurt her. And she died alone in Morath. She died alone, so I wouldn’t … so they couldn’t …” None of them spoke or moved. She couldn’t tell if it made it worse. If the hand that Lorcan laid on her back made her cry harder. The words tumbled out of Elide’s shaking mouth. “She said t-to remember your promise to punish them all. And s-said that you can unlock any door, if you only have the ...

“Do you know what it is you carry, Elide?” “Y-yes, Majesty.” Turquoise eyes, haunted and weary, lifted to her own. Then slid to Lorcan. “Why didn’t you take it?” The voice was hollow and hard. Elide suspected she’d be lucky if it was never used on her. Lorcan met her gaze without flinching. “It wasn’t mine to take.” Aelin now glanced between them, seeing too much. And there was no warmth on the queen’s face, but she said to Lorcan, “Thank you—for bringing her to me.” The others seemed to be trying not to look too shocked at the words. But Aelin turned to Manon. “I lay claim to her. Witch-blood in her veins or no, she is Lady of Perranth, and she is mine.” Gold eyes gleamed with the thrill of challenge. “And if I claim her for the Blackbeaks?” “Blackbeaks—or the Crochans?” Aelin purred. Elide blinked. Manon—and the Crochans? What was the Wing Leader doing here? Where was Abraxos? The witch said, “Careful, Majesty. With your power reduced to embers, you’ll have to fight me the old-fashioned way again.” That dangerous grin returned. “You know, I’ve been hoping for round two.”

There was no Lock. Not in the way that they had expected, not in the way the queen had been promised and instructed to find it. The stone chest held only one thing: An iron-bound mirror, the surface near-golden with age, speckled, and covered in grime. And along the twining, intricately carved border, tucked into the upper right corner … The marking of the Eye of Elena. A witch symbol.

“You can see the future, past, present. You can speak between mirrors, if someone possesses the sister-glass. And then there are the rare silvers—whose forging demands something vital from the maker.” Manon’s voice dropped low. Dorian wondered if even among the Blackbeaks, these tales had only been whispered at their campfires. “Other mirrors amplify and hold blasts of raw power, to be unleashed if the mirror is aimed at something.” “A weapon,” Aedion said, eliciting a nod from Manon. The general must have been piecing things together as well because he asked before Dorian could, “Yellowlegs met with him about those weapons, didn’t she?”

Finally, the witch said, “They’ve been making towers. Enormous, yet capable of being hauled across battlefields, lined with those mirrors. For Erawan to use with his powers—to incinerate your armies in a few blasts.” Aelin closed her eyes. Rowan laid a hand on her shoulder. Dorian asked, “Is this …” He gestured to the chest, the mirror inside. “One of the mirrors they plan to use?” “No,” Manon said, studying the witch mirror within the chest. “Whatever this mirror is … I’m not sure what it was meant for. What it can even do. But it surely isn’t that Lock you sought.”

Aelin chuckled. Even as she sensed her companions’ shock turning into something red-hot. Manon stepped forward, the sea breeze whipping strands of her white hair over her face, and said to Aelin, “Melisande’s fleet bows to Morath. You might as well be signing an alliance with Erawan, too, if you’re working with this … person.” Ansel’s face drained of color at the iron teeth, the nails. And Aelin remembered the story the assassin-turned-queen had once told her, whispered atop rolling desert sands and beneath a carpet of stars. A childhood friend—eaten alive by an Ironteeth witch. Then Ansel herself, after the slaughter of her family, had been spared when she’d stumbled into an Ironteeth witch’s camp. Aelin said to Manon, “She is not from Melisande. The Wastes are allied with Terrasen.” Aedion started, now sizing up the ships, the woman before them. Manon Blackbeak said in a voice like death, “Who is she to speak for the Wastes?” Oh, gods above. Aelin schooled her face into bland irreverence and gestured between the two women. “Manon Blackbeak, Heir to the Blackbeak Witch-Clan and now the last Crochan Queen … meet Ansel of Briarcliff, assassin and Queen of the Western Wastes.”

Manon stormed around her. “Ansel of Briarcliff does not speak for the Wastes.” Where was Abraxos— “But you do?” And Manon had to wonder if she’d somehow … somehow become tangled in whatever plans the queen had woven. Especially as Manon found herself forced to halt again, forced to turn back to the smirking queen and say, “Yes. I do.” Even Rowan blinked at Manon Blackbeak’s tone—the voice that was not witch or warrior or predator. Queen. The last Crochan Queen. Rowan sized up the potentially explosive fight brewing between Ansel of Briarcliff and Manon Blackbeak.

From Aelin. She sent me a message loud and clear from Rifthold. Pit fighting.” She chuckled, shaking her head. “And I knew to get ready. To move my army to the edge of the Anascaul Mountains.” Aedion’s breathing snagged. Only centuries of training kept Rowan’s from doing the same. His cadre remained stalwart behind them all, positions they’d taken hundreds of times over the centuries. Ready for bloodshed—or to fight their way out of it. Ansel smiled, a winning grin. “Half of them are on their way there now. Ready to join with Terrasen. The country of my friend Celaena Sardothien, who did not forget it, even when she was in the Red Desert; and who did not stop looking north every night that we could see the stars. There was no greater gift I could offer to repay her than saving the kingdom she did not forget. And that was before I got her letter months ago, telling me who she was and that she’d gut me if I didn’t assist in her cause. I was on my way with my army already, but … then the next letter arrived. Telling me to go to the Gulf of Oro. To meet her here and follow a specific set of instructions.”