Empire of Storms

But Maeve—Maeve was in that armada somewhere.

She would retaliate. She would strike back, make them all suffer—

Rowan slammed their armada into Maeve’s front lines, unleashing the fury of his ice and wind alongside their arrows.

And where Rowan’s power paused, Dorian’s magic leaped out.

Not a chance in hell of winning had now become a fool’s chance. If Whitethorn and the others could hold their lines, keep themselves steady.

Lorcan found himself scanning for Fenrys and Gavriel across ship and soldier.

And he knew Maeve’s answer had come when he spied them, one after the other, go rigid. Spied Fenrys take a running leap and vanish into thin air. The White Wolf of Doranelle instantly appeared at Gavriel’s side, men shouting at his appearance out of a pocket of nothing.

But he gripped Gavriel’s arm, and then they were both gone again, their faces taut. Only Gavriel managed to look toward Lorcan before they vanished—his eyes wide in warning. Gavriel pointed, then they were nothing but sunlight and spindrift.

Lorcan stared at where Gavriel had managed to point, that bit of defiance that had likely cut deep.

Lorcan’s blood went cold.

Maeve was allowing the battle to explode across the water because she had other games afoot. Because she was not on the seas at all.

But on the shore.

Gavriel had pointed to it. Not to the distant beach, but up the shore—westward.

Precisely where he had left Elide hours ago.

And Lorcan did not care about the battle, about what he’d agreed to do for Whitethorn, the promise he’d made the prince.

He had made a promise to her first.

The soldiers weren’t stupid enough to try to stop him as Lorcan ordered one of them in charge, and seized a longboat.

Elide couldn’t view the battle from where she waited among the sand dunes, the seagrasses hissing around her. But she could hear it, the shouting and the booming.

She tried not to listen to the din of battle, tried to instead beg Anneith to give her friends guidance. To keep Lorcan alive, and Maeve far from him.

But Anneith was sticking close, hovering behind her shoulder.

See, she said, as she always did. See, see, see.

There was nothing but sand and grass and water and blue sky. Nothing but the eight guards Lorcan had commanded to stay with her, lounging on the dunes, looking either relieved or put-out to miss the battle raging on the waves around the bend in the coast.

The voice became urgent. See, see, see.

Then Anneith vanished entirely. No—fled.

Clouds gathered, sweeping from the marshes. Heading toward the sun beginning its ascent.

Elide got to her feet, sliding a bit on the steep dune.

The wind whipped and hissed through the grasses—and warm sand turned gray and muted as those clouds passed over the sun. Blotting it out.

Something was coming.

Something that knew Aelin Galathynius drew strength from sunlight. From Mala.

Elide’s mouth dried. If Vernon found her here … there would be no escaping him now.

The guards on the dunes behind her stirred, noticing the strange wind, the clouds. Sensing that approaching storm was not of natural origin. Would they stand against the ilken long enough for help to come? Or would Vernon bring more of them this time?

But it was not Vernon who appeared on the beach, as if walking out of a passing breeze.

68

It was an agony.

An agony, to see Nehemia, young and strong and wise. Speaking to Elena in the marshes, among those same ruins.

And then there was the other agony.

That Elena and Nehemia had known each other. Worked together.

That Elena had laid these plans a thousand years ago.

That Nehemia had gone to Rifthold knowing she’d die.

Knowing she’d need to break Aelin—use her death to break her, so she could walk away from the assassin and ascend her throne.

Aelin and Manon were shown another scene. Of a whispered conversation at midnight, deep beneath the glass castle.

A queen and a princess, meeting in secret. As they had for months.

The queen asking the princess to pay that price she’d offered back in the marshes. To arrange for her own death—to set this all in motion. Nehemia had warned Elena that she—that Aelin—would be broken. Worse, that she would go so far into an abyss of rage and despair that she wouldn’t be able to get out. Not as Celaena.

Nehemia had been right.

Aelin was shaking—shaking in her half-invisible body, shaking so badly she thought her skin would ripple off her bones. Manon stepped closer, perhaps the only comfort the witch knew how to offer: solidarity.

They stared into the swirling mist again, where the scenes—the memories—had unfolded.

Aelin wasn’t sure she could stomach another truth. Another revelation of just how thoroughly Elena had sold her and Dorian to the gods, for the fool’s mistake she’d made, not understanding the Lock’s true purpose, to seal Erawan in his tomb rather than let Brannon finally end it—and send the gods to wherever they called home, dragging Erawan with them.

Send them home … using the keys to open the Wyrdgate. And a new Lock to seal it forever.

Nameless is my price.

Using her power, drained to the last drop, her life to forge that new Lock. To wield the power of the keys only once—just once, to banish them all, and then seal the gate forever.

Memories flickered by.

Elena and Brannon, screaming at each other in a room Aelin had not seen for ten years—the king’s suite in the palace at Orynth. Her suite—or it would have been. A necklace glittered at Elena’s throat: the Eye. The first and now-broken Lock, that Elena, now the Queen of Adarlan, seemed to wear as some sort of reminder of her foolishness, her promise to those furious gods.

Her argument with her father raged and raged—until the princess walked out. And Aelin knew Elena had never returned to that shining palace in the North.

Then the reveal of that witch mirror in some nondescript stone chamber, a black-haired beauty with a crown of stars standing before Elena and Gavin, explaining how the witch mirror worked—how it would contain these memories. Rhiannon Crochan. Manon started at the sight of her, and Aelin glanced between them.

The face … it was the same. Manon’s face, and Rhiannon Crochan’s. The last Crochan Queens—of two separate eras.

Then an image of Brannon alone—head in his hands, weeping before a shrouded body atop a stone altar. A crone’s bent shape lay beneath.

Elena, her immortal grace yielded in order to live out a human life span with Gavin. Brannon still looked no older than thirty.

Brannon, the heat of a thousand forges shining on his red-gold hair, his teeth bared in a snarl as he pounded a metal disk on an anvil, the muscles of his back rippling beneath golden skin as he struck and struck and struck.

As he forged the Amulet of Orynth.

As he placed a sliver of black stone within either side, then sealed it, defiance written in every line of his body.

Then wrote the message in Wyrdmarks on the back.

One message.

For her.

For his true heir, should Elena’s punishment and promise to the gods hold true. The punishment and promise that had cleaved them. That Brannon could not and would not accept. Not while he had strength left.

Nameless is my price. Written right there—in Wyrdmarks. The one who bore Brannon’s mark, the mark of the bastard-born nameless … She would be the cost to end this.

The message on the back of the Amulet of Orynth was the only warning he could offer, the only apology for what his daughter had done, even as it contained a secret inside so deadly no one must know, no one could ever be told.

But there would be clues. For her. To finish what they’d started.

Brannon built Elena’s tomb with his own hands. Carved the messages in there for Aelin, too.

The riddles and the clues. The best he could offer to explain the truth while keeping those keys hidden from the world, from powers who would use them to rule, to destroy.

Then he made Mort, the metal for the door knocker gifted by Rhiannon Crochan, who brushed a hand over the king’s cheek before she left the tomb.

Rhiannon was not present when Brannon hid the sliver of black stone beneath the jewel in Elena’s crown—the second Wyrdkey.