He’d thought he’d known everything about the female body. How to make a woman purr with pleasure. He was half-tempted to find a tent and learn firsthand what certain things felt like.
Not an effective use of his time. Not with the camp readying for travel.
The Thirteen were on edge. They hadn’t yet decided where to go. And hadn’t been invited to travel with the Crochans to any of their home-hearths. Even Glennis’s.
None of them, however, had looked his way when they’d prowled past. None had recognized him.
Dorian had just completed another walking circuit in his little training area when Manon stalked by, silver hair flowing. He paused, no more than a wary Crochan sentinel, and watched her storm through snow and mud as if she were a blade through the world.
Manon had nearly passed his training area when she went rigid.
Slowly, she turned, nostrils flaring.
Those golden eyes swept over him, swift and cutting.
Her brows twitched toward each other. Dorian only gave her a lazy grin in return.
Then she prowled toward him. “I’m surprised you’re not groping yourself.”
“Who says I haven’t already?”
Another assessing stare. “I would have thought you’d pick a prettier form.”
He frowned down at himself. “I think she’s pretty enough.”
Manon’s mouth tightened. “I suppose this means you’re about to go to Morath.”
“Did I say anything of the sort?” He didn’t bother sounding pleasant.
Manon took a step toward him, her teeth flashing. In this body, he stood shorter than her. He hated the thrill that shot through his blood as she leaned down to growl at him. “We have enough to deal with today, princeling.”
“Do I look as if I’m standing in your way?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it.
Dorian let out a low laugh and made to turn away. An iron-tipped hand gripped his arm.
Strange, for that hand to feel large on his body. Large, and not the slender, deadly thing he’d become accustomed to.
Her golden eyes blazed. “If you want a softhearted woman who will weep over hard choices and ultimately balk from them, then you’re in the wrong bed.”
“I’m not in anyone’s bed right now.”
He hadn’t gone to her tent any of these nights. Not since that conversation in Eyllwe.
She took the retort without so much as a flinch. “Your opinion doesn’t matter to me.”
“Then why are you standing here?”
Again, she opened and closed her mouth. Then snarled, “Change out of that form.”
Dorian smiled again. “Don’t you have better things to do right now, Your Majesty?”
He honestly thought she might unsheathe those iron teeth and rip out his throat. Half of him wanted her to try. He even went so far as to run one of those phantom hands along her jaw. “You think I don’t know why you don’t want me to go to Morath?”
He could have sworn she trembled. Could have sworn she arched her neck, just a little bit, leaning into that phantom touch.
Dorian ran those invisible fingers down her neck, trailing them along her collarbones.
“Tell me to stay,” he said, and the words had no warmth, no kindness. “Tell me to stay with you, if that’s what you want.” His invisible fingers grew talons and scraped over her skin. Manon’s throat bobbed. “But you won’t say that, will you, Manon?” Her breathing turned jagged. He continued to stroke her neck, her jaw, her throat, caressing skin he’d tasted over and over. “Do you know why?”
When she didn’t answer, Dorian let one of those phantom talons dig in, just slightly.
She swallowed, and it was not from fear.
Dorian leaned in close, tipping his head back to stare into her eyes as he purred, “Because while you might be older, might be deadly in a thousand different ways, deep down, you’re afraid. You don’t know how to ask me to stay, because you’re afraid of admitting to yourself that you want it. You’re afraid. Of yourself more than anyone else in the world. You’re afraid.”
For several heartbeats, she just stared at him.
Then she snarled, “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” and stalked away.
His low laugh ripped after her. Her spine stiffened.
But Manon did not turn back.
Afraid. Of admitting that she felt any sort of attachment.
It was preposterous.
And it was, perhaps, true.
But it was not her problem. Not right now.
Manon stormed through the readying camp where tents were being taken down and folded, hearths being packed. The Thirteen were with the wyverns, supplies stowed in saddlebags.
Some of the Crochans had frowned her way. Not with anger, but something like disappointment. Discontent. As if they thought parting ways was a poor idea.
Manon refrained from saying she agreed. Even if the Thirteen followed, the Crochans would find a way to lose them. Use their power to bind the wyverns long enough to disappear.
And she would not lower herself, lower the Thirteen, to become dogs chasing after their masters. They might be desperate for aid, might have promised it to their allies, but she would not debase herself any further.
Manon halted at Glennis’s camp, the only hearth with a fire still burning. A fire that would always remain kindled.
A reminder of the promise she’d made to honor the Queen of Terrasen. A single, solitary flame against the cold.
Manon rubbed at her face as she slumped onto one of the rocks lining the hearth.
A hand rested on her shoulder, warm and slight. She didn’t bother to slap it away.
Glennis said, “We’re departing in a few minutes. I thought I’d say good-bye.”
Manon peered up at the ancient witch. “Fly well.”
It was really all there was left to say. Manon’s failure was not due to Glennis, not due to anyone but herself, she supposed.
You’re afraid.
It was true. She had tried, but not really tried to win the Crochans. To let them see any part of her that meant something. To let them see what it had done to her, to learn she had a sister and that she had killed her. She didn’t know how, and had never bothered to learn.
You’re afraid.
Yes, she was. Of everything.
Glennis lowered her hand from Manon’s shoulder. “May your path carry you safely through war and back home at last.”
She didn’t feel like telling the crone there was no home for her, or the Thirteen.
Glennis turned her face toward the sky, sighing once.
Then her white brows narrowed. Her nostrils flared.
Manon leapt to her feet.
“Run,” Glennis breathed. “Run now.”
Manon drew Wind-Cleaver and did no such thing. “What is it.”
“They’re here.” How Glennis had scented them on the wind, Manon didn’t care.
Not as three wyverns broke from the clouds, spearing for their camp.
She knew those wyverns, almost as well as she knew the three riders who sent the Crochans into a frenzy of motion.
The Matrons of the Ironteeth Witch-Clans had found them. And come to finish what Manon had started that day in Morath.
CHAPTER 56
The three High Witches had come alone.
It didn’t stop the Crochans from rallying, brooms swiftly airborne—a few of them trembling with what could only be recognition.
Manon’s grip on Wind-Cleaver tightened at the slight tremor in her hand as the three witches landed at the edge of Glennis’s fire, their wyverns crushing tents beneath them.
Asterin and Sorrel were instantly beside her, her Second’s murmur swallowed by the crack of breaking tents. “The Shadows are airborne, but they signaled no sign of another unit.”
“None of their covens?”
“No. And no sign of Iskra or Petrah.”
Manon swallowed. The Matrons truly had come alone. Had flown in from wherever they’d been gathered, and somehow found them.
Or tracked them.
Manon didn’t let the thought settle. That she may have led the three Matrons right to this camp. The soft snarls of the Crochans around her, pointed at Manon, said enough of their opinion.
The wyverns settled, their long tails curling around them, those deadly poison-slick spikes ready to inflict death.
Rushing steps crunched through the icy snow, halting at Manon’s side just as Dorian’s scent wrapped around her. “Is that—”
“Yes,” she said quietly, heart thundering as the Matrons dismounted and did not raise their hands in request for parley. No, they only stalked closer to the hearth, to the precious flame still burning. “Don’t engage,” Manon warned him and the others, and strode to meet them.
It was not the king’s battle, no matter what power dwelled in his veins.
Glennis was already armed, an ancient sword in her withered hands. The woman was as old as the Yellowlegs Matron, yet she stood tall, facing the three High Witches.
Cresseida Blueblood spoke first, her eyes as cold as the iron-spiked crown digging into her freckled brow. “It has been an age, Glennis.”
But Glennis’s stare, Manon realized, was not on the Blueblood Matron. Or even on Manon’s own grandmother, her black robes billowing as she sneered at Manon.
It was on the Yellowlegs Matron, hunched and hateful between them. On the crown of stars atop the crone’s thinned white hair.
Glennis’s sword shook slightly. And just as Manon realized what the Matron had worn here, Bronwen appeared at Glennis’s side and breathed, “Rhiannon’s crown.”
Worn by the Yellowlegs Matron to mock these witches. To spit on them.
A dull roaring began in Manon’s ears.
“What company you keep these days, granddaughter,” said Manon’s grandmother, her silver-streaked dark hair braided back from her face.
A sign enough of their intentions, if her grandmother’s hair was in that plait.
Battle. Annihilation.
The weight of the three High Witches’ attention pressed upon her. The Crochans gathered behind her shifted as they waited for her response.
Yet it was Glennis who snarled, in a voice Manon had not yet heard, “What is it that you want?”
Manon’s grandmother smiled, revealing rust-flecked iron teeth. The true sign of her age. “You made a grave error, Manon Kin-Slayer, when you sought to turn our forces against us. When you sowed such lies amongst our sentinels regarding our plans—my plans.”
Manon kept her chin high. “I spoke only truth. And it must have frightened you enough that you gathered these two to hunt me down and prove your innocence in scheming against them.”
The other two Matrons didn’t so much as blink. Her grandmother’s claws had to have sunk deep, then. Or they simply did not care.
“We came,” Cresseida seethed, the opposite in so many ways of the daughter who had given Manon the chance to speak, “to at last rid us of a thorn in our sides.”
Had Petrah been punished for letting Manon walk out of the Omega alive? Did the Blueblood Heir still breathe? Cresseida had once screamed in a mother’s terror and pain when Petrah had nearly plunged to her death. Did that love, so foreign and strange, still hold true? Or had duty and ancient hatred won out?
The thought was enough to steel Manon’s spine. “You came because we pose a threat.”
Because of the threat you pose to that monster you call grandmother.
“You came,” Manon went on, Wind-Cleaver rising a fraction, “because you are afraid.”
Manon took a step beyond Glennis, her sword lifting farther.
“You came,” Manon said, “because you have no true power beyond what we give you. And you are scared to death that we’re about to take it away.” Manon flipped Wind-Cleaver in her hand, angling the sword downward, and drew a line in the snow between them. “You came alone for that fear. That others might see what we are capable of. The truth that you have always sought to hide.”
Her grandmother tutted. “Listen to you. Sounding just like a Crochan with that preachy nonsense.”
Manon ignored her. Ignored her and pointed Wind-Cleaver directly at the Yellowlegs Matron as she snarled, “That is not your crown.”
Something like hesitation rippled over Cresseida Blueblood’s face. But the Yellowlegs Matron beckoned to Manon with iron nails so long they curved downward. “Then come and fetch it from me, traitor.”
Manon stepped beyond the line she’d drawn in the snow.
No one spoke behind her. She wondered if any of them were breathing.
She had not won against her grandmother. Had barely survived, and only thanks to luck.
That fight, she had been ready to meet her end. To say farewell.
Manon angled Wind-Cleaver upward, her heart a steady, raging beat.
She would not greet the Darkness’s embrace today.
But they would.
“This seems familiar,” her grandmother drawled, legs shifting into attacking position. The other two Matrons did the same. “The last Crochan Queen. Holding the line against us.”
Manon cracked her jaw, and iron teeth descended. A flex of her fingers had her iron nails unsheathing. “Not just a Crochan Queen this time.”
There was doubt in Cresseida’s blue eyes. As if she’d realized what the other two Matrons had not.
There—it was there that Manon would strike first. The one who now wondered if they had somehow made a grave mistake in coming here.
A mistake that would cost them what they had come to protect.
A mistake that would cost them this war.
And their lives.
For Cresseida saw the steadiness of Manon’s breathing. Saw the clear conviction in her eyes. Saw the lack of fear in her heart as Manon advanced another step.
Manon smiled at the Blueblood Matron as if to say yes.
“You did not kill me then,” Manon said to her grandmother. “I do not think you will be able to now.”
“We’ll see about that,” her grandmother hissed, and charged.
Manon was ready.
An upward swing of Wind-Cleaver met her grandmother’s first two blows, and Manon ducked the third. Turning right into the onslaught of the Yellowlegs Matron, who swept up with unnatural speed, feet almost flying over the snow, and slashed for Manon’s exposed back.
Manon deflected the crone’s assault, sending the witch darting back. Just as Cresseida launched herself at Manon.
Cresseida was not a trained fighter. Not as the Blackbeak and Yellowlegs Matrons were. Too many years spent reading entrails and scanning the stars for the answers to the Three-Faced Goddess’s riddles.
A duck to the left had Manon easily evading the sweep of Cresseida’s nails, and a countermove had Manon driving her elbow into the Blueblood Matron’s nose.
Cresseida stumbled. The Yellowlegs Matron and her grandmother attacked again.
So fast. Their three assaults had happened in the span of a few blinks.
Manon kept her feet under her. Saw where one Matron moved and the other left a dangerous gap exposed.
She was not a broken-spirited Wing Leader unsure of her place in the world.
She was not ashamed of the truth before her.
She was not afraid.
Manon’s grandmother led the attack, her maneuvers the deadliest.
It was from her that the first slice of pain appeared. A rip of iron nails through Manon’s shoulder.
But Manon swung her sword, again and again, iron on steel ringing out across the icy peaks.
No, she was not afraid at all.
Dorian had never seen fighting like what unfolded before him. Had never seen anything that fast, that lethal.
Had never seen anyone move like Manon, a whirlwind of steel and iron.
Three against one—the odds weren’t in her favor. Not when standing against one of them had left Manon on death’s threshold months earlier.
Yet where they struck, she was already gone. Already parrying.
She did not land many blows, but rather kept them at bay.
Yet they did not land many, either.
Dorian’s magic writhed, seeking a way out, to stop this. But she had ordered him to stand down. And he’d obey.
Around him, the Crochans thrummed with fear and dread. Either for the fight unfolding or the three Matrons who had found them.
But Glennis did not tremble. At her side Bronwen hummed with the energy of one eager to leap into the fight.
Manon and the High Witches sprang apart, breathing heavily. Blue blood leaked down Manon’s shoulder, and small slices peppered the three Matrons.
Manon still remained on the far side of the line she’d drawn. Still held it.
The dark-haired witch in voluminous black robes spat blue blood onto the snow. Manon’s grandmother. “Pathetic. As pathetic as your mother.” A sneer toward Glennis. “And your father.”
The snarl that ripped from Manon’s throat rang across the mountains themselves.
Her grandmother let out a crow’s caw of a laugh. “Is that all you can do, then? Snarl like a dog and swing your sword like some human filth? We will wear you down eventually. Better to kneel now and die with some honor intact.”
Manon only flung out an iron-tipped hand behind her, fingers splaying in demand as her eyes remained fixed on the Matrons.
Dorian reached for Damaris, but Bronwen moved first.
The Crochan tossed her sword, steel flashing over snow and sun.
Manon’s fingers closed on the hilt, the blade singing as she whipped it around to face the High Witches again. “Rhiannon Crochan held the gates for three days and three nights, and she did not kneel before you, even at the end.” A slash of a smile. “I think I shall do the same.”
Dorian could have sworn the sacred flame burning to their left flared brighter. Could have sworn Glennis sucked in a breath. That every Crochan watching did the same.
Manon’s knees bent, swords rising. “Let us finish what was started then, too.”
She attacked, blades flashing. Her grandmother conceded step after step, the other two Matrons failing to break past her defenses.
Gone was the witch who had slept and wished for death. Gone was the witch who had raged at the truth that had torn her to shreds.
And in her place, fighting as if she were the very wind, unfaltering against the Matrons, stood someone Dorian had not yet met.
Stood a queen of two peoples.
The Yellowlegs Matron launched an offensive that had Manon yielding a step, then another, swords rising against each slashing blow.
Yielding only those few steps, and nothing more.
Because Manon with conviction in her heart, with utter fearlessness in her eyes, was wholly unstoppable.
The Yellowlegs Matron pushed Manon close enough to the line that her heels nearly touched it. The other two witches had fallen back, as if waiting to see what might happen.
For a hunched crone, the Yellowlegs witch was the portrait of nightmares. Worse than Baba Yellowlegs had ever been. Her feet barely seemed to touch the ground, and her curved iron nails drew blood wherever they slashed.
Manon’s swords blocked blow after blow, but she made no move to advance. To push back, though Dorian saw several chances to do so.
Manon took the slashings that left her arm and side bleeding. But she yielded no further ground. A wall against which the Yellowlegs Matron could not advance. The crone let out a snarl, attacking again and again, senseless and raging.
Dorian saw the trap the moment it happened.
Saw the side that Manon left open, the bait laid on a silver platter.
Worked into a fury, the Yellowlegs Matron didn’t think twice before she lunged, claws out.
Manon was waiting.
Lost in her bloodlust, the Yellowlegs Matron’s horrible face lit with triumph as she went for the easy killing blow that would rip out Manon’s heart.
The Blackbeak Matron barked in warning, but Manon was already moving.
Just as those curved claws tore through leather and skin, Manon twisted to the side and brought down Wind-Cleaver upon the Yellowlegs Matron’s outstretched neck.
Blue blood sprayed upon the snow.
Dorian did not look away this time at the head that tumbled to the ground. At the brown-robed body that fell with it.
The two remaining Matrons halted. None of the Crochans behind Dorian so much as spoke as Manon stared down pitilessly at the bleeding torso of the Yellowlegs Matron.
No one seemed to breathe at all as Manon plunged Bronwen’s sword into the icy earth beneath and bent to take the crown of stars from the Yellowlegs witch’s fallen head.
He had never seen a crown like it.
A living, glowing thing that glittered in her hand. As if nine stars had been plucked from the heavens and set to shine along the simple silver band.
The crown’s light danced over Manon’s face as she lifted it above her head and set it upon her unbound white hair.
Even the mountain wind stopped.
Yet a phantom breeze shifted the strands of Manon’s hair as the crown glowed bright, the white stars shining with cores of cobalt and ruby and amethyst.
As if it had been asleep for a long, long time. And now awoke.
That phantom wind pulled Manon’s hair to the side, silver strands brushing across her face.
And beside him, around him, the Thirteen touched two fingers to their brow in deference.
In allegiance to the queen who stared down the two remaining High Witches.
The Crochan Queen, crowned anew.
The sacred fire leaped and danced, as if in joyous welcome.
Manon scooped up Bronwen’s sword, lifting it and Wind-Cleaver, and said to the Blueblood Matron, the witch appearing barely a few years older than Manon herself, “Go.”
The Blueblood witch blinked, eyes wide with what could only be fear and dread.
Manon jerked her chin toward the wyvern waiting behind the witch. “Tell your daughter all debts between us are paid. And she may decide what to do with you. Take that other wyvern out of here.”
Manon’s grandmother bristled, iron teeth flashing as if she’d bark a counter-command to the Blueblood Matron, but the witch was already running for her wyvern.
Spared by the Crochan Queen on behalf of the daughter who had given Manon the gift of speaking to the Ironteeth.
Within seconds, the Blueblood Matron was in the skies, the Yellowlegs witch’s wyvern soaring beside her.
Leaving Manon’s grandmother alone. Leaving Manon with swords raised and a crown of stars glowing upon her brow.
Manon was glowing, as if the stars atop her head pulsed through her body. A wondrous and mighty beauty, like no other in the world. Like no one had ever been, or would be again.
And slowly, as if savoring each step, Manon stalked toward her grandmother.
Manon’s lips curved into a small smile while she advanced on her grandmother.
Warm, dancing light flowed through her, as unfaltering as what had poured into her heart these past few bloody minutes.
She did not balk. Did not fear.
The crown’s weight was slight, like it had been crafted of moonlight. Yet its joyous strength was a song, undimming before the sole High Witch left standing.
So Manon kept walking.
She left Bronwen’s sword a few feet away. Left Wind-Cleaver several feet past that.
Iron nails out, teeth ready, Manon paused barely five steps from her grandmother.
A hateful, wasted scrap of existence. That’s what her grandmother was.
She had never realized how much shorter the Matron stood. How narrow her shoulders were, or how the years of rage and hate had withered her.
Manon’s smile grew. And she could have sworn she felt two people standing at her shoulder.
She knew no one would be there if she looked. Knew no one else could see them, sense them, standing with her. Standing with their daughter against the witch who had destroyed them.
Her grandmother spat on the ground, baring her rusted teeth.
This death, though …
It was not her death to claim.
It did not belong to the parents whose spirits lingered at her side, who might have been there all along, leading her toward this. Who had not left her, even with death separating them.
No, it did not belong to them, either.
She looked behind her. Toward the Second waiting beside Dorian.
Tears slid down Asterin’s face. Of pride—pride and relief.
Manon beckoned to Asterin with an iron-tipped hand.
Snow crunched, and Manon whirled, angling to take the brunt of the attack.
But her grandmother had not charged. Not at her.
No, the Blackbeak Matron sprinted for her wyvern. Fleeing.
The Crochans tensed, fear giving way to wrath as her grandmother hauled herself into the saddle.
Manon raised a hand. “Let her go.”
A snap of the reins, and her grandmother was airborne, the great wyvern’s wings blasting them with foul wind.
Manon watched as the wyvern rose higher and higher.
Her grandmother did not look back before she vanished into the skies.
When there was no trace of the Matrons left but blue blood and a headless corpse staining the snow, Manon turned toward the Crochans.
Their eyes were wide, but they made no move.
The Thirteen remained where they were, Dorian with them.
Manon scooped up both swords, sheathing Wind-Cleaver across her back, and stalked toward where Glennis and Bronwen stood, monitoring her every breath.
Wordlessly, Manon handed Bronwen her sword, nodding in thanks.
Then she removed the crown of stars and extended it toward Glennis. “This belongs to you,” she said, her voice low.
The Crochans murmured, shifting.
Glennis took the crown, and the stars dimmed. A small smile graced the crone’s face. “No,” she said, “it does not.”
Manon didn’t move as Glennis lifted the crown and set it again on Manon’s head.
Then the ancient witch knelt in the snow. “What was stolen has been restored; what was lost has come home again. I hail thee, Manon Crochan, Queen of Witches.”
Manon stood fast against the tremor that threatened to buckle her legs.
Stood fast as the other Crochans, Bronwen with them, dropped to a knee. Dorian, standing amongst them, smiled, brighter and freer than she’d ever seen.
And then the Thirteen knelt, two fingers going to their brows as they bowed their heads, fierce pride lighting their faces.
“Queen of Witches,” Crochan and Blackbeak declared as one voice.
As one people.
CHAPTER 57
An hour before dawn, the keep and two armies beyond it were stirring.
Rowan had barely slept, and instead lain awake beside Aelin, listening to her breathing. That the rest of them slumbered soundly was testament to their exhaustion, though Lorcan had not found them again. Rowan was willing to bet it was by choice.
It was not fear or anticipation of battle that had kept Rowan up—no, he’d slept well enough during other wars. But rather the fact that his mind would not stop looping him from thought to thought to thought.
He’d seen the numbers camped outside. Valg, human men loyal to Erawan, some fell beasts, yet nothing like the ilken or the Wyrdhounds, or even the witches.
Aelin could wipe them away before the sun had fully risen. A few blasts of her power, and that army would be gone.
Yet she had not presented it as an option in their planning last night.
He’d seen the hope shining in the eyes of the people in the keep, the awe of the children as she’d passed. The Fire-Bringer, they’d whispered. Aelin of the Wildfire.
How soon would that awe and hope crumble today when not a spark of that fire was unleashed? How soon would the men’s fear turn rank when the Queen of Terrasen did not wipe away Morath’s legions?
He hadn’t been able to ask her. Had told himself to, had roared at himself to ask these past few weeks, when even their training hadn’t summoned an ember.
But he couldn’t bring himself to demand why she wouldn’t or couldn’t use her power, why they had seen or felt nothing of it after those initial few days of freedom. Couldn’t ask what Maeve and Cairn had done to possibly make her fear or hate her magic enough that she didn’t touch it.
Worry and dread gnawing at him, Rowan slipped from the room, the din of preparations greeting him the moment he entered the hall. A heartbeat later, the door opened behind him, and steps fell into sync with his own, along with a familiar, wicked scent.
“They burned her.”
Rowan glanced sidelong at Fenrys. “What?”
But Fenrys nodded to a passing healer. “Cairn—and Maeve, through her orders.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Fenrys, blood oath or no, what he’d done for Aelin or no, was not privy to these matters. No, it was between him and his mate, and no one else.
Fenrys threw him a grin that didn’t meet his eyes. “You were staring at her half the night. I could see it on your face. You’re all thinking it—why doesn’t she just burn the enemy to hell?”
Rowan aimed for the washing station down the hall. A few soldiers and healers stood along the metal trough, scrubbing their faces to shake the sleep or nerves.
Fenrys said, “He put her in those metal gauntlets. And one time, he heated them over an open brazier. There …” He stumbled for words, and Rowan could barely breathe. “It took the healers two weeks to fix what he did to her hands and wrists. And when she woke up, there was nothing but healed skin. She couldn’t tell what had been done and what was a nightmare.”
Rowan reached for one of the ewers that some of the children refilled every few moments and dumped it over his head. Icy water bit into his skin, drowning out the roaring in his ears.
“Cairn did many things like that.” Fenrys took up a ewer himself, and splashed some into his hands before rubbing them over his face. Rowan’s hands shook as he watched the water funnel toward the basin set beneath the trough. “Your claiming marks, though.” Fenrys wiped his face again. “No matter what they did to her, they remained. Longer than any other scar, they stayed.”
Yet her neck had been smooth when he’d found her.
Reading that thought, Fenrys said, “The last time they healed her, right before she escaped. That’s when they vanished. When Maeve told her that you had gone to Terrasen.”
The words hit like a blow. When she had lost hope that he was coming for her. Even the greatest healers in the world hadn’t been able to take that from her until then.
Rowan wiped his face on the arm of his jacket. “Why are you telling me this?” he repeated.
Fenrys rose from the trough, drying his face with the same lack of ceremony. “So you can stop wondering what happened. Focus on something else today.” The warrior kept pace beside him as they headed for where they’d been told a meager breakfast would be laid out. “And let her come to you when she’s ready.”
“She’s my mate,” Rowan growled. “You think I don’t know that?” Fenrys could shove his snout into someone else’s business.
Fenrys held up his hands. “You can be brutal, when you want something.”
“I’d never force her to tell me anything she wasn’t ready to say.” It had been their bargain from the start. Part of why he’d fallen in love with her.
He should have known then, during those days in Mistward, when he found himself sharing parts of himself, his history, that he’d never told anyone. When he found himself needing to tell her, in fragments and pieces, yes, but he’d wanted her to know. And Aelin had wanted to hear it. All of it.
They discovered Aelin and Elide already at the buffet table, grim-faced as they plucked up pieces of bread and cheese and dried fruit. No sign of Gavriel or Lorcan.
Rowan came up behind his mate and pressed a kiss to her neck. Right to where his new claiming marks lay.
She hummed, and offered him a bite of the bread she’d already dug into while gathering the rest of her food. He obliged, the bread thick and hearty, then said, “You were asleep when I left a few minutes ago, yet you somehow beat me to the breakfast table.” Another kiss to her neck. “Why am I not surprised?”
Elide laughed beside Aelin, piling food onto her own plate. Aelin only elbowed him as he fell into line beside her.
The four of them ate quickly, refilled their waterskins at the fountain in an interior courtyard, and set about finding armor. There was little on the upper levels that was fit for wearing, so they descended into the keep, deeper and deeper, until they came across a locked room.
“Should we, or is it rude?” Aelin mused, peering at the wooden door.
Rowan sent a spear of his wind aiming for the lock and splintered it apart. “Looks like it was already open when we got here,” he said mildly.
Aelin gave him a wicked grin, and Fenrys pulled a torch off its bracket in the narrow stone hallway to illuminate the room beyond.
“Well, now we know why the rest of the keep is a piece of shit,” Aelin said, surveying the trove. “He’s kept all the gold and fun things down here.”
Indeed, his mate’s idea of fun things was the same as Rowan’s: armor and swords, spears and ancient maces.
“He couldn’t have distributed this?” Elide frowned at the racks of swords and daggers.
“It’s all heirlooms,” said Fenrys, approaching one such rack and studying the hilt of a sword. “Ancient, but still good. Really good,” he added, pulling a blade from its sheath. He glanced at Rowan. “This was forged by an Asterion blacksmith.”
“From a different age,” Rowan mused, marveling at the flawless blade, its impeccable condition. “When Fae were not so feared.”
“Are we just going to take it? Without even Chaol’s permission?” Elide chewed on her lip.
Aelin snickered. “Let’s consider ourselves swords-for-hire. And as such, we have fees that need to be paid.” She hefted a round, golden shield, its edges beautifully engraved with a motif of waves. Also Asterion-made, judging by the craftsmanship. Likely for the Lord of Anielle—the Lord of the Silver Lake. “So, we’ll take what we’re owed for today’s battle, and spare His Lordship the task of having to come down here himself.”
Gods, he loved her.
Fenrys winked at Elide. “I won’t tell if you don’t, Lady.”
Elide blushed, then waved them onward. “Collect your earnings, then.”
Rowan did. He and Fenrys found armor that could fit them—in certain areas. They had to forgo the entire suit, but took pieces to enforce their shoulders, forearms, and shins. Rowan had just finished strapping greaves on his legs when Fenrys said, “We should bring some of this up for Lorcan and Gavriel.”
Indeed they should. Rowan eyed other pieces, and began collecting extra daggers and blades, then sections from another suit that might fit Lorcan, Fenrys doing the same for Gavriel.
“You must charge a great deal for your services,” Elide muttered. Even while the Lady of Perranth tied a few daggers to her own belt.
“I need some way to pay for my expensive tastes, don’t I?” Aelin drawled, weighing a dagger in her hands.
But she hadn’t donned any armor yet, and when Rowan gave her an inquiring glance, Aelin jerked her chin toward him. “Head upstairs—track down Lorcan and Gavriel. I’ll find you soon.”
Her face was unreadable for once. Perhaps she wanted a moment alone before battle. And when Rowan tried to find any words in her eyes, Aelin turned toward the shield she’d claimed. As if contemplating it.
So Rowan and Fenrys headed upstairs, Elide helping to haul their stolen gear. No one stopped them. Not with the sky turning to gray, and soldiers rushing to their positions on the battlements.
Rowan and Fenrys didn’t have far to go. They’d be stationed by the gates at the lower level, where the battering rams might come flying through if Morath got desperate enough.
On the level above them, Chaol sat astride his magnificent black horse, the mare’s breath curling from her nostrils. Rowan lifted a hand in greeting, and Chaol saluted back before gazing toward the enemy army.
The khaganate would make the first maneuver, the initial push to get Morath moving.
“I always forget how much I hate this part,” Fenrys muttered. “The waiting before it begins.”
Rowan grunted his agreement.
Gavriel prowled up to them, Lorcan a dark storm behind him. Rowan wordlessly handed the latter the armor he’d gathered. “Courtesy of the Lord of Anielle.”
Lorcan gave him a look that said he knew Rowan was full of shit, but began efficiently donning the armor, Gavriel doing the same. Whether the soldiers around them marked that armor, whether Chaol recognized it, no one said a word.
Far out, the gray sky lightening further, Morath stirred to discover the khaganate’s golden army already in place.
