Aedion didn’t let himself often remember that fact, either.

Evangeline continued pulling Lysandra away, oblivious to the conversation. “Why didn’t you wake me when you arrived?”

Aedion didn’t hear Lysandra’s answer as she let herself be led from the hall. Not as the shifter’s gaze met his own.

She had tried to speak with him these past two months. Many times. Dozens of times. He’d ignored her. And when they’d at last reached Terrasen’s shores, she’d given up.

She had lied to him. Deceived him so thoroughly that any moment between them, any conversation … he didn’t know what had been real. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to know if she’d meant any of it, when he’d so stupidly left everything laid out before her.

He’d believed this was his last hunt. That he’d be able to take his time with her, show her everything Terrasen had to offer. Show her everything he had to offer, too.

Lying bitch, he’d called her. Screamed the words at her.

He’d mustered enough clarity to be ashamed of it. But the rage remained.

Lysandra’s eyes were wary, as if asking him, Can we not, in this rare moment of happiness, speak as friends?

Aedion only returned to the fire, blocking out her emerald eyes, her exquisite face.

Ren could have her. Even if the thought made him want to shatter something.

Lysandra and Evangeline vanished from the hall, the girl still chirping away.

The weight of Lysandra’s disappointment lingered like a phantom touch.

Ren cleared his throat. “You want to tell me what’s going on between you two?”

Aedion cut him a flat stare that would have sent lesser men running. “Get a map. I want to go over the passes again.”

Ren, to his credit, went in search of one.

Aedion gazed at the fire, so pale without his queen’s spark of magic.

How long would it be until the wind howling outside the castle was replaced by the baying of Erawan’s beasts?

 

Aedion got his answer at dawn the next day.

Seated at one end of the long table in the Great Hall, Lysandra and Evangeline having a quiet breakfast at the other, Aedion mastered the shake in his fingers as he opened the letter the messenger had delivered moments before. Ren and Murtaugh, seated around him, had refrained from demanding answers while he read. Once. Twice.

Aedion at last set down the letter. Took a long breath as he frowned toward the watery gray light leaking through the bank of windows high on the wall.

Down the table, the weight of Lysandra’s stare pressed on him. Yet she remained where she was.

“It’s from Kyllian,” Aedion said hoarsely. “Morath’s troops made landfall at the coast—at Eldrys.”

Ren swore. Murtaugh stayed silent. Aedion kept seated, since his knees seemed unlikely to support him. “He destroyed the city. Turned it to rubble without unleashing a single troop.”

Why the dark king had waited this long, Aedion could only guess.

“The witch towers?” Ren asked. Aedion had told him all Manon Blackbeak had revealed on their trek through the Stone Marshes.

“It doesn’t say.” It was doubtful Erawan had wielded the towers, since they were massive enough to require being transported by land, and Aedion’s scouts surely would have noticed a one-hundred-foot tower hauled through their territory. “But the blasts leveled the city.”

“Aelin?” Murtaugh’s voice was a near-whisper.

“Fine,” Aedion lied. “On her way back to the Orynth encampment the day before it happened.” Of course, there was no mention of her whereabouts in Kyllian’s letter, but his top commander had speculated that since there was no body or celebrating enemy, the queen had gotten out.

Murtaugh went boneless in his seat, and Fleetfoot laid her golden head atop his thigh. “Thank Mala for that mercy.”

“Don’t thank her yet.” Aedion shoved the letter into the pocket of the thick cloak he wore against the draft in the hall. Don’t thank her at all, he almost added. “On their way to Eldrys, Morath took out ten of Wendlyn’s warships near Ilium, and sent the rest fleeing back up the Florine, along with our own.”

Murtaugh rubbed his jaw. “Why not give chase—follow them up the river?”

“Who knows?” Aedion would think on it later. “Erawan set his sights on Eldrys, and so he has now taken the city. He seems inclined to launch some of his troops from there. If unchecked, they’ll reach Orynth in a week.”

“We have to return to the camp,” Ren said, face dark. “See if we can get our fleet back down the Florine and strike with Rolfe from the sea. While we hammer from the land.”

Aedion didn’t feel like reminding them that they hadn’t heard from Rolfe beyond vague messages about his hunt for the scattered Mycenians and their legendary fleet. The odds of Rolfe emerging to save their asses were as slim as the fabled Wolf Tribe at the far end of the Anascaul Mountains riding out of the hinterland. Or the Fae who’d fled Terrasen a decade ago returning from wherever they’d gone to join Aedion’s forces.

The calculating calm that had guided Aedion through battle and butchering settled into him, as solid as the fur cloak he wore. Speed would be their ally now. Speed and clarity.

The lines have to hold, Rowan ordered before they’d parted. Buy us whatever time you can.

He’d make good on that promise.

Evangeline fell silent as Aedion’s attention slid to the shifter down the table. “How many can your wyvern form carry?”

 

 

CHAPTER 2

Elide Lochan had once hoped to travel far and wide, to a place where no one had ever heard of Adarlan or Terrasen, so distant that Vernon didn’t stand a chance of finding her.

She hadn’t anticipated that it might actually happen.

Standing in the dusty, ancient alley of an equally dusty, ancient city in a kingdom south of Doranelle, Elide marveled at the noontime bells ringing across the clear sky, the sun baking the pale stones of the buildings, the dry wind sweeping through the narrow streets between them. She’d learned the name of this city thrice now, and still couldn’t pronounce it.

She supposed it didn’t matter. They wouldn’t be here long. Just as they had not lingered in any of the cities they’d swept through, or the forests or mountains or lowlands. Kingdom after kingdom, the relentless pace set by a prince who seemed barely able to remember to speak, let alone feed himself.

Elide grimaced at the weathered witch leathers she still wore, her fraying gray cloak and scuffed boots, then glanced at her two companions in the alley. Indeed, they’d all seen better days.

“Any minute now,” Gavriel murmured, a tawny eye on the alley’s entrance. A towering, dark figure blended into the scant shadows at the half-crumbling archway, monitoring the bustling street beyond.

Elide didn’t look too long toward that figure. She’d been unable to stomach it these endless weeks. Unable to stomach him, or the unbearable ache in her chest.

Elide frowned at Gavriel. “We should have stopped for lunch.”

He jerked his chin to the worn bag sagging against the wall. “There’s an apple in my pack.”

Glancing toward the building rising above them, Elide sighed and reached for the pack, riffling through the spare clothes, rope, weapons, and various supplies until she yanked out the fat red-and-green apple. The last of the many they’d plucked from an orchard in a neighboring kingdom. Elide wordlessly extended it to the Fae lord.