Head after head tumbled away.

Then she leaned against the wall, waiting. Counting.

They did not rise.

Aelin stalked from the alley, kicking shut the sewer grate, and vanished into the rainy night.

Dawn broke, the day clear and warm. Aelin had been up half the night scouring the books Chaol had saved, including her old friend The Walking Dead.

Reciting what she’d learned in the quiet of her apartment, Aelin donned the clothes Arobynn had sent over, checking and rechecking that there were no surprises and everything was where she needed it to be. She let each step, each reminder of her plan anchor her, keep her from dwelling too long on what would come when the festivities began.

And then she went to save her cousin.

15

Aedion Ashryver was ready to die.

Against his will, he’d recovered over the past two days, the fever breaking after sunset last night. He was strong enough to walk—albeit slowly—as they escorted him to the dungeon’s washroom, where they chained him down to wash and scrub him, and even risked shaving him, despite his best efforts to slit his own throat on the razor.

It appeared that they wanted him presentable for the court when they cut off his head with his own blade, the Sword of Orynth.

After cleaning his wounds, they shoved him into pants and a loose white shirt, yanked back his hair, and dragged him up the stairs. Guards with dark uniforms flanked him three deep on both sides, four in front and behind, and every door and exit had one of the bastards posted by it.

He was too drained from dressing to provoke them into putting a sword through him, so he let them lead him through the towering doors into the ballroom. Red and gold banners hung from the rafters, springtime blossoms covered every table, and an archway of hothouse roses had been crafted over the dais from which the royal family would watch the festivities before his execution. The windows and doors beyond the platform where he would be killed opened onto one of the gardens, a guard stationed every other foot, others positioned in the garden itself. If the king wanted to set a trap for Aelin, he certainly hadn’t bothered to be very subtle about it.

It was civilized of them, Aedion realized as he was shoved up the wooden steps of the platform, to give him a stool to sit on. At least he wouldn’t have to lounge on the floor like a dog while he watched them all pretend that they weren’t here just to see his head roll. And a stool, he realized with grim satisfaction, would make a good-enough weapon when the time came.

So Aedion let them chain him in the shackles anchored to the floor of the platform. Let them put the Sword of Orynth on display a few feet behind him, its scarred bone pommel glinting in the morning light.

It was just a matter of finding the right moment to meet the end of his own choosing.

16

The demon made him sit on a dais, on a throne beside a crowned woman who had not noticed that the thing using his mouth wasn’t the person who had been born of her flesh. To his other side lounged the man who controlled the demon inside him. And in front of him, the ballroom was full of tittering nobility who could not see that he was still in here, still screaming.

The demon had broken a little farther through the barrier today, and it now looked through his eyes with an ancient, glittering malice. It was starved for this world.

Perhaps the world deserved to be devoured by the thing.

Maybe it was that traitorous thought alone that had caused such a hole to rip in the barrier between them. Maybe it was winning. Maybe it had already won.

So he was forced to sit on that throne, and speak with words that were not his own, and share his eyes with something from another realm, who gazed at his sunny world with ravenous, eternal hunger.

The costume itched like hell. The paint all over her didn’t help.

Most of the important guests had arrived in the days preceding the party, but those who dwelled inside the city or in the outlying foothills now formed a glittering line stretching through the massive front doors. Guards were posted there, checking invitations, asking questions, peering into faces none too keen to be interrogated. The entertainers, vendors, and help, however, were ordered to use one of the side entrances.

That was where Aelin had found Madam Florine and her troupe of dancers, clad in costumes of black tulle and silk and lace, like liquid night in the midmorning sun.

Shoulders back, core tight, arms loose at her sides, Aelin eased into the middle of the flock. With her hair dyed a ruddy shade of brown and her face coated in the heavy cosmetics the dancers all wore, she blended in well enough that none of the others looked her way.

She focused entirely on her role of trembling novice, on looking more interested in how the other dancers perceived her than in the six guards stationed at the small wooden door in the side of the stone wall. The castle hallway beyond was narrow—good for daggers, bad for swords, and deadly for these dancers if she got into trouble.

If Arobynn had indeed betrayed her.

Head down, Aelin subtly monitored the first test of trust.

The chestnut-haired Florine walked along her line of dancers like an admiral aboard a ship.

Aging but beautiful, Florine’s every movement was layered with a grace that Aelin herself had never been able to replicate, no matter how many lessons she’d had with her while growing up. The woman had been the most celebrated dancer in the empire—and since her retirement, she remained its most valued teacher. Instructor Overlord, Aelin had called her in the years that she’d trained under the woman, learning the most fashionable dances and ways to move and hone her body.

Florine’s hazel eyes were on the guards ahead as she paused beside Aelin, a frown on her thin lips. “You still need to work on your posture,” the woman said.

Aelin met Florine’s sidelong gaze. “It’s an honor to be an understudy for you, Madam. I do hope Gillyan soon recovers from her illness.”

The guards waved through what looked to be a troupe of jugglers, and they inched forward.

“You look in good-enough spirits,” Florine murmured.

Aelin made a show of ducking her head, curling in her shoulders, and willing a blush to rise to her cheeks—the new understudy, bashful at the compliments of her mistress. “Considering where I was ten months ago?”

Florine sniffed, and her gaze lingered on the thin bands of scars across Aelin’s wrists that even the painted whorls couldn’t conceal. They’d raised the top of the dancers’ open-backed costumes, but even so, and even with the body paint, the upper ends of her tattoo-covered scars peeked through.

“If you think I had anything to do with the events that led up to that—”

Aelin’s words were barely louder than the crunch of silk shoes on gravel as she said, “You’d already be dead if you had.” It wasn’t a bluff. When she’d written her plans on that ship, Florine’s name had been one that she’d written down—and then crossed out, after careful consideration.

Aelin continued, “I trust you made the proper adjustments?” Not just the slight change in the costumes to accommodate the weapons and supplies Aelin would need to smuggle in—all paid for by Arobynn, of course. No, the big surprises would come later.

“A bit late to be asking that, isn’t it?” Madam Florine purred, the dark jewels at her neck and ears glimmering. “You must trust me a great deal to have even appeared.”

“I trust that you like getting paid more than you like the king.” Arobynn had given a massive sum to pay off Florine. She kept an eye on the guards as she said, “And since the Royal Theater was shut down by His Imperial Majesty, I trust we both agree that what was done to those musicians was a crime as unforgivable as the massacres of the slaves in Endovier and Calaculla.”

She knew she’d gambled correctly when she saw agony flicker in Florine’s eyes.

“Pytor was my friend,” Florine whispered, the color leeching from her tan cheeks. “There was no finer conductor, no greater ear. He made my career. He helped me establish all this.” She waved a hand to encompass the dancers, the castle, the prestige she’d acquired. “I miss him.”

There was nothing calculated, nothing cold, when Aelin put a hand over her own heart. “I will miss going to hear him conduct the Stygian Suite every autumn. I will spend the rest of my life knowing that I may never again hear finer music, never again experience a shred of what I felt sitting in that theater while he conducted.”