Empire of Storms

Aelin clicked her tongue. “Even with Fae soldiers on those ships, she couldn’t be stupid enough to risk such catastrophic losses just to get into my good graces again.” No matter that Aelin knew she’d accept any offer of aid from Maeve, risk or no.

Fenrys’s edged smile flashed. “Oh, the losses of Fae lives would be of little concern to her. It likely just increases her excitement about it.”

“Careful,” Gavriel said. Gods, he nearly sounded identical to Aedion with that tone.

Aelin went on, “Regardless. You two know what we face with Erawan; you know what Maeve wanted from me in Doranelle. What Lorcan left to do.” Their faces had resumed their warrior-calm and didn’t so much as flicker as she asked, “Did Maeve give you an order to take those keys from Lorcan as well? And the ring? Or is it just his life you’ll be claiming?”

“If we say she gave us the order to take everything,” Fenrys drawled, bracing his hands behind him on the bed, “will you kill us, Heir of Fire?”

“It’ll depend on how useful you prove to be as an ally,” Aelin simply said.

The weight hanging between her breasts beneath her shirt rumbled as if in answer.

“Rolfe has weapons,” Gavriel said quietly. “Or will be receiving them.”

Aelin lifted a brow. “And will hearing about it cost me?”

Gavriel wasn’t stupid enough to ask for Aedion. The warrior just said, “They’re called firelances. Alchemists in the southern continent developed them for their own territory wars. More than that, we don’t know, but the device can be wielded by one man—to devastating effect.”

And with magic-users still so new to their returned gifts, or mostly dead thanks to Adarlan…

She would not be alone. Not the only fire-wielder on that battlefield.

But only if Rolfe’s armada became hers. If he did what she was carefully, so carefully, guiding him to do. Reaching out to the southern continent could take months she didn’t have. But if Rolfe had already ordered a supply … Aelin nodded at Rowan once more, and they pushed off the wall.

“That’s it?” Fenrys demanded. “Do we get to know what you plan to do with this information, or are we just your lackeys, too?”

“You don’t trust me; I don’t trust you,” Aelin said. “It’s easier that way.” She nudged open the window with her elbow. “But thank you for the information.”

Fenrys’s brows rose high enough that she wondered if Maeve had uttered those words in his hearing. And she honestly wished she’d melted her aunt that day in Doranelle.

She and Rowan leaped and climbed the rooftops of Skull’s Bay, the ancient shingles still slick from the day’s rain.

When the Ocean Rose glittered like a pale jewel a block ahead, Aelin paused in the shadows beside a chimney and murmured, “There is no room for error.”

Rowan laid a hand on her shoulder. “I know. We’ll make it count.”

Her eyes burned. “We’re playing a game against two monarchs who have ruled and schemed longer than most kingdoms have existed.” And even for her, the odds of outsmarting and outmaneuvering them … “Seeing the cadre, how Maeve contains them … She came so close to separating us this spring. So close.”

Rowan traced his thumb over her mouth. “Even if Maeve had kept me enslaved, I would have fought her. Every day, every hour, every breath.” He kissed her softly and said onto her lips, “I would have fought for the rest of my life to find a way to return to you again. I knew it the moment you emerged from the Valg’s darkness and smiled at me through your flames.”

She swallowed the tightness in her throat and raised a brow. “You were willing to do that before all this? So few benefits back then.”

Amusement and something deeper danced in his eyes. “What I felt for you in Doranelle and what I feel for you now are the same. I just didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to act on it.”

She knew why she needed to hear it—he knew, too. Darrow’s and Rolfe’s words danced around in her head, an endless chorus of bitter threats. But Aelin only smirked at him. “Then act away, Prince.”

Rowan let out a low laugh, and said nothing else as he claimed her mouth, nudging her back against the crumbling chimney. She opened for him, and his tongue swept in, thorough, lazy.

Oh, gods—this. This was what drove her out of her mind—this fire between them.

They could burn the entire world to ashes with it. He was hers and she was his, and they had found each other across centuries of bloodshed and loss, across oceans and kingdoms and war.

Rowan pulled back, breathing heavily, and whispered against her lips, “Even when you’re in another kingdom, Aelin, your fire is still in my blood, my mouth.” She let out a soft moan, arching into him as his hand grazed her backside, not caring if anyone spotted them in the streets below.

“You said you wouldn’t take me against a tree the first time,” she breathed, sliding her hands up his arms, across the breadth of his sculpted chest. “What about a chimney?”

Rowan huffed another laugh and nipped at her bottom lip. “Remind me again why I missed you.”

Aelin chuckled, but the sound was quickly silenced as Rowan claimed her mouth again and kissed her deeply in the moonlight.

32

Aedion had been up half the night, debating the merits of every possible place to meet his father. On the beach seemed like it was asking for a private conversation he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to have; in Rolfe’s headquarters felt too public; the inn courtyard felt too formal … He’d tossed and turned on his cot, nearly asleep when he heard Aelin and Rowan returning well past midnight. Not surprising they’d snuck out without telling anyone. But at least she’d gone with the Fae Prince.

Lysandra, sleeping like the dead, hadn’t stirred as their steps had creaked in the hall outside. She’d barely made it through the door hours earlier, Dorian already asleep on his cot, before she’d shifted back into her usual body and swayed on her feet.

Aedion had hardly noticed her nakedness—not when she teetered and he lunged to grab her before she ate carpet.

She’d blinked dazedly at him, her skin drained of color. So he’d gently set her on the edge of the bed, grabbed the throw across it, and draped it around her.

“You’ve seen naked women plenty,” she’d said, not bothering to hold it in place. “It’s too hot for wool.”

So the blanket slid off her back as she leaned forward, bracing her forearms on her knees and breathing deep. “Gods, it makes me so dizzy.”

Aedion put a hand on her bare back and gently stroked. She stiffened at the touch, but he made broad, light circles over that velvet-soft skin. After a moment, she let out a sound that might have been a purr.

The silence went on for long enough that Aedion realized she’d somehow fallen asleep. And not normal sleep, but the sleep that Aelin and Rowan sometimes went into in order to let their magic recover. So deep and thorough no training could pierce it, no instincts could override it. The body had claimed what it needed, at any cost, at any vulnerability.

Easing her into his arms before she could fall right onto her face, Aedion hauled her over a shoulder and carried her around to the head of the bed. He flipped back the crisp cotton sheets with one hand and then laid her down, her once-again long hair covering her high, firm breasts. So much smaller than the ones he’d first seen her with. He didn’t care what size they were—they were beautiful in both forms.

She hadn’t awoken again, and he’d drifted to his own cot. He only slept once the light had shifted to the watery gray trickle before dawn, awoke just past sunrise, and gave up on sleep entirely. He doubted any sort of rest would come until this meeting was past him.

So Aedion bathed and dressed, debating if it made him a fool to brush his hair for his father.

Lysandra was awake as he padded back into the room, the color mercifully returned to her cheeks, the king still asleep on his cot.

But the shifter looked Aedion over and said, “That’s what you’re wearing?”

Lysandra made him change out of his dirty travel clothes, barged into Aelin and Rowan’s room wearing no more than her own bedsheet, and took whatever she wanted from the Fae Prince’s armoire.