Empire of Storms

At least Lorcan barely used it, as they’d hardly spoken while the caravan trudged through the mud-laden fields. The ground was so saturated with the daily afternoon summer rain that the wagons often became stuck. They’d barely covered any distance at all, and when Ombriel would catch Elide gazing northward, she’d ask—yet another recurring question—what lay in the North to draw her attention so frequently. Elide always lied, always evaded. The sleeping situation between Elide and her husband, fortunately, was more easily avoided.

With the sodden earth, sleeping on it was nearly impossible. So the women laid out wherever they could in the two wagons, leaving the men to draw straws each night for who would get any remaining space and who would sleep on the ground atop a makeshift floor of reeds. Lorcan, somehow, always got the short straw, either by his own devices, sleight of hand from Nik, who ran security and the nightly straw-drawing, or simply from sheer bad luck.

But at least it kept Lorcan far, far away from her, and kept their interactions to a minimum.

Those few conversations they’d had—held when he escorted her to draw water from a swollen stream or gather whatever firewood could be found on the plain—weren’t much to bother her, either. He pressed her for more details regarding Morath, more information about the guards’ clothes, the armies camped around it, the servants and witches.

She’d started at the top of the Keep—with the aeries and wyverns and witches. Then she’d descended, floor by floor. It had taken them these two weeks to work their way down to the sublevels, and their companions had no idea that while the young, married couple snuck off for more “firewood,” whispering sweet nothings was the last thing on their minds.

When the caravan stopped that night, Elide aimed for a copse of trees in the heart of the field to see what could be used at their large campfire. Lorcan trailed at her side, as quiet as the hissing grasses around them. The nickering of the horses and clamor of their companions readying for the evening meal faded behind, and Elide frowned as her boot sank deep into a pocket of mud. She yanked on it, ankle barking at bearing her weight, and gritted her teeth until—

Lorcan’s magic pushed against her leg, an invisible hand freeing her boot, and she tumbled into him. His arm and side were as hard and unyielding as the magic he’d used, and she rebounded away, tall grass crunching beneath her. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Lorcan stalked ahead and said without looking back, “We finished at the three dungeons and their entrances yesterday night. Tell me about what’s inside them.”

Her mouth went a bit dry as she recalled the cell she’d squatted in, the darkness and tight air…

“I don’t know what’s inside,” she lied, following him. “Suffering people, no doubt.”

Lorcan stooped, his dark head disappearing beneath a wave of grass. When he emerged, two sticks were gripped in his massive hands. He snapped them with little effort. “You described everything else with no problem. Yet your scent changed just now. Why?”

She strode past him, bending over and over to collect whatever scattered wood she could find. “They did horrible things down there,” she said over a shoulder. “You could sometimes hear people screaming.” She prayed Terrasen would be better. It had to be.

“Who did they keep down there? Enemy soldiers?” Potential allies, no doubt, for whatever he planned to do.

“Whoever they wanted to torture.” The hands of those guards, their sneers— “I assume you’re going to leave as soon as I finish describing the last pit of Morath?” She plucked up stick after stick, ankle objecting with each shift in her balance.

“Is there a problem if I do? That was our bargain. I’ve stayed longer than I intended.”

She turned, finding him with an armful of larger sticks. He unceremoniously dumped them into the small pile in her arms and thumbed free the hatchet at his side before prowling to the curving, fallen branch behind him. “So, am I just to play the abandoned wife, then?”

“You’re already playing the oracle, so what difference does another role make?” Lorcan brought his hatchet down upon the branch with a solid thwack! The blade sank unnervingly deep; wood groaned. “Describe the dungeons.”

It was only fair, and it had been their bargain, after all: his protection and help to get her out of harm’s way, in exchange for what she knew. And he’d been complacent in all the lies she’d spun to their company—quiet, but he’d gone along with it.

“The dungeons are gone,” Elide managed to say. “Or most of them should be. Along with the catacombs.”

Thwack, thwack, thwack. Lorcan severed the branch, the wood yielding with a splintering cry. He set to cutting another section apart. “Taken out in that blast?” He lifted his axe, the muscles in his powerful back shifting beneath his dark shirt, but paused. “You said you were near the courtyard when the blast happened—how do you know the dungeons are gone?”

Fine. She had lied about it. But … “The explosion came from the catacombs and took out some of the towers. One would assume the dungeons would be in its path, too.”

“I don’t make plans based on assumptions.” He resumed hacking apart the branch, and Elide rolled her eyes at his back. “Tell me the layout of the northern dungeon.”

Elide turned toward the sinking sun staining the fields with orange and gold beyond them. “Figure it out yourself.”

The thud of metal on wood halted. Even the wind in the grasses died down.

But she had endured death and despair and terror, and she had told him enough—turned over every horrible stone, looked around every dark corner at Morath for him. His rudeness, his arrogance … He could go to hell.

She had barely set one foot into the swaying grasses when Lorcan was before her, no more than a lethal shadow himself. Even the sun seemed to avoid the broad planes of his tan face, though the wind dared ruffle the silken black strands of his hair across it.

“We have a bargain, girl.”

Elide met that depthless gaze. “You did not specify when I had to tell you. So I may take as much time as I wish to recall details, if you desire to wring every last one of them from me.”

His teeth flashed. “Do not toy with me.”

“Or what?” She stepped around him as if he were no more than a rock in a stream. Of course, walking with temper was a bit difficult when every other step was limping, but she kept her chin high. “Kill me, hurt me, and you’ll still be out of answers.”

Faster than she could see, his arm lashed out—gripping her by the elbow. “Marion,” he growled.

That name. She looked up at his harsh, wild face—a face born in a different age, a different world. “Take your hand off me.”

Lorcan, to her surprise, did so immediately.

But his face did not change—not a flicker—as he said, “You will tell me what I wish to know—”

The thing in her pocket began thrumming and beating, a phantom heartbeat in her bones.

Lorcan yielded a step, his nostrils flaring delicately. As if he could sense that stone awakening. “What are you,” he said quietly.

“I am nothing,” she said, voice hollow. Maybe once she found Aelin and Aedion, she’d find some purpose, some way to be of use to the world. For now, she was a messenger, a courier of this stone—to Celaena Sardothien. However Elide might find one person in such an endless, vast world. She had to get north—and quickly.

“Why do you go to Aelin Galathynius?”

The question was too tense to be casual. No, every inch of Lorcan’s body seemed restrained. Leashed rage and predatory instincts.

“You know the queen,” she breathed.

He blinked. Not in surprise, but to buy himself time.

He did know—and he was considering what to tell her, how to tell her—

“Celaena Sardothien is in the queen’s service,” he said. “Your two paths are one. Find one and you’ll find the other.”

He paused, waiting.

Would this be her life, then? Wretched people, always looking out for themselves, every kindness coming at a cost? Would her own queen at least gaze at her with warmth in her eyes? Would Aelin even remember her?