Kingdom of Ash

Maeve was not here. They had that in their favor, at least. Whether it was luck or due to their own scheming, she didn’t care. But Cairn … She’d learn nothing more from these females. So Elide bowed her head. “Th-thank you.”

She backed away before the females could say more, and made a good show of waiting by the fountain for five minutes. Fifteen. The clock on the square struck the hour, and she knew they were still watching as she did her best attempt at a dejected walk to the other entrance to the square.

She kept it up for a few blocks, wandering with no direction, until she ducked into a narrow pass-through and heaved a breath.

Maeve was not in Doranelle. How long would that remain true?

She had to find Cairn—swiftly. Had to make her next performance count.

She’d need to be less pathetic, less needy, less weepy. Perhaps she’d added too much redness around her eyes.

Elide fished out the mirror. Swiping her pinky under one eye, she rubbed at some of the red stain. It didn’t budge. Moistening the tip of her pinky with her tongue, she ran her finger across her lower lid again. It lessened—slightly.

She was about to do it again when movement flashed in the mirror.

Elide whirled, but too late.

The dark-haired beauty from the tavern was standing behind her.

 

Lorcan had never felt the weight of the hours so heavily upon him.

While he scouted the southern border of that army, watching the soldiers on their rotations, noting the main arteries of the camp, he kept one eye upon the city.

His city—or it had been. He’d never imagined, even during the childhood he’d spent surviving in its shadows, that it would become an enemy stronghold. That Maeve, while she’d whipped and punished him for any defiance or for her own amusement, would become as great a foe as Erawan. And to send Elide into Maeve’s clutches—it had taken all of his will to let her walk away.

If Elide was captured, if she was found out, he wouldn’t hear of it, know of it. She had no magic to wield, save for the keen eyes of the goddess at her shoulder and an uncanny ability to remain unnoticed, to play into expectations. There would be no flash of power, no signal to alert him that she was in danger.

But he stayed away. Had watched her cross that bridge earlier, his breath tight in his chest, and pass unquestioned and unnoticed by the guards posted at either end. While Maeve did not allow demi-Fae or humans to live within Doranelle’s borders without proving their worth, they could still visit—briefly.

Then he’d gone about scouting. He knew Whitethorn had ordered him to study the southern edge, this edge, because it was precisely where she’d emerge. If she emerged.

Whitethorn and Gavriel had divided up the other camps, the prince claiming the west and north, the Lion taking the eastern camp above the waterfall’s basin.

The afternoon sun was sinking toward the distant sea when they returned to their little base.

“Anything?” Rowan’s question rumbled to them.

Lorcan shook his head. “Not from Elide, not from my scouting. The sentries’ rotations are strict, but not impenetrable. They posted scouts in the trees six miles up.” He knew some of them. Had commanded them. Were they now his enemy?

Gavriel shifted and slumped onto a boulder, equally out of breath. “They’ve got aerial patrols on the eastern camp. And sentries out by the forest’s border.”

Rowan leaned against a towering pine and crossed his arms. “What manner of birds?”

“Raptors, mostly,” Gavriel said. Highly trained soldiers, then. They’d always been the sharpest of the scouts. “I didn’t recognize any from your House.”

They either had all been in that armada, now in Terrasen, or Maeve had put them down.

Rowan ran a hand over his jaw. “The western plain camp is as tightly guarded. The northern one less so, but the wolves in the passes are likely doing half the work for them.”

They didn’t bother to discuss what that army might have been gathered to do. Where it might be headed. If Maeve’s defeat off the Eyllwe coast might be enough to lead her into an alliance with Morath—and to bring this army to crush Terrasen at last.

Lorcan gazed down the wooded hillside, ears straining for any cracking branches or leaves.

A half hour. He’d wait a half hour before going down that hill.

He forced himself to listen to Whitethorn and Gavriel lay out entry points and exit strategies for each camp, forced himself to join in that debate. Forced himself to also discuss the possible entrances and exits from Doranelle itself, where they might go in the city, how they might get over and back across without bringing down the wrath of that army. An army they’d once overseen and commanded. None of them mentioned it, though Gavriel kept glancing to the tattoos inked on his hands. How many more lives would he need to add before they were through? His soldiers not felled by enemy blows, but by his own blade?

The sun inched closer to the horizon. Lorcan began pacing.

Too long. It had taken too long.

The others had fallen silent, too. Gazing down the hill. Waiting.

A slight tremor rocked Lorcan’s hands, and he balled them into fists, squeezing hard. Five minutes. He’d go in five minutes, Aelin Galathynius and their plan be damned.

Aelin had been trained to endure torture. Elide … He could see those scars on her from the shackles. See her maimed foot and ankle. She had endured too much suffering and terror already. He couldn’t allow her to face another heartbeat of it—

Twigs snapped under light feet, and Lorcan shot upright, a hand going to his sword.

Whitethorn thumbed free the hatchet at his side, a knife appearing in his other hand, and Gavriel drew his sword.

But then a two-note whistle echoed, and Lorcan’s legs wobbled so violently he sat back onto the rock where he’d been perched.

Gavriel whistled back, and Lorcan was grateful for it. He wasn’t sure he had the breath.

Then she was there, panting from the climb, her cheeks rosy in the cool night air.

“What happened?” Whitethorn asked.

Lorcan scanned her face, her posture.

She was fine. She was unhurt. There was no enemy on her tail.

Elide’s eyes met his. Wary and uncertain. “I met someone.”

 

Elide had thought she was about to die.

Or had at least believed that she was going to be sold out to Maeve when she’d faced the dark-haired beauty in the shadowed alley.

She’d told herself, in those heartbeats, that she’d do her best to withstand the torture sure to come, to keep her companions’ location secret even if they broke apart her body. But the prospect of what they’d do to her …

The female held up a delicate hand. “I only wish to talk. In private.” She gestured farther down the alley, to a doorstop covered with a metal awning. To shield them from any eyes—those on the ground and above.

Elide followed her, a hand sliding to the knife in her pocket. The female led the way, no weapons to be seen, her gait unhurried.

But when they halted in the shadows beneath the awning, the female held up a hand once more.

Golden flame danced between her fingers.

Elide recoiled, and the fire vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “My name is Essar,” the female said softly. “I am a friend—of your friends, I believe.”