Queen of Shadows

Tern leaned against the bar, flashing her a too-bright smile. “If memory serves, you were always his favorite bitch.”

She chuckled, facing him fully. They were nearly equal in height— and with his slim build, Tern had been unnervingly good at getting into even the most well-guarded places. The barkeep, spotting Tern, kept well away.

Tern inclined his head over a shoulder, gesturing to the shadowy back of the cavernous space. “Last banquette against the wall. He’s finishing up with a client.”

She flicked her gaze in the direction Tern indicated. Both sides of the Vaults were lined with alcoves teeming with whores, barely curtained off from the crowds. She skipped over the writhing bodies, over the gaunt-faced, hollow-eyed women waiting to earn their keep in this festering shit-hole, over the people who monitored the proceedings from the nearest tables—guards and voyeurs and fleshmongers. But there, tucked into the wall adjacent to the alcoves, were several wooden booths.

Exactly the ones she’d been discreetly monitoring since her arrival.

And in the one farthest from the lights … a gleam of polished leather boots stretched out beneath the table. A second pair of boots, worn and muddy, were braced on the floor across from the first, as if the client were ready to bolt. Or, if he were truly stupid, to fight.

He was certainly stupid enough to have let his personal guard stay visible, a beacon alerting anyone who cared to notice that something rather important was happening in that last booth.

The client’s guard—a slender, hooded young woman armed to the teeth—was leaning against a wooden pillar nearby, her silky, shoulder-length dark hair shining in the light as she carefully monitored the pleasure hall. Too stiff to be a casual patron. No uniform, no house colors or sigils. Not surprising, given the client’s need for secrecy.

The client probably thought it was safer to meet here, when these sorts of meetings were usually held at the Assassins’ Keep or one of the shadowy inns owned by Arobynn himself. He had no idea that Arobynn was also a major investor in the Vaults, and it would take only a nod from Aelin’s former master for the metal doors to lock—and the client and his guard to never walk out again.

It still left the question of why Arobynn had agreed to meet here.

And still left Aelin looking across the hall toward the man who had shattered her life in so many ways.

Her stomach tightened, but she smiled at Tern. “I knew the leash wouldn’t stretch far.”

Aelin pushed off the bar, slipping through the crowd before the assassin could say anything else. She could feel Tern’s stare fixed right between her shoulder blades, and knew he was aching to plunge his cutlass there.

Without bothering to glance back, she gave him an obscene gesture over her shoulder.

His barked string of curses was far better than the bawdy music being played across the room.

She noted each face she passed, each table of revelers and criminals and workers. The client’s personal guard now watched her, a gloved hand slipping to the ordinary sword at her side.

Not your concern, but nice try.

Aelin was half tempted to smirk at the woman. Might have done so, actually, if she wasn’t focused on the King of the Assassins. On what waited for her in that booth.

But she was ready—or as ready as she could ever be. She’d spent long enough planning.

Aelin had given herself a day at sea to rest and to miss Rowan. With the blood oath now eternally binding her to the Fae Prince—and him to her—his absence was like a phantom limb. She still felt that way, even when she had so much to do, even though missing her carranam was useless and he’d no doubt kick her ass for it.

The second day they’d been apart, she’d offered the ship’s captain a silver coin for a pen and a stack of paper. And after locking herself in her cramped stateroom, she’d begun writing.

There were two men in this city responsible for destroying her life and the people she’d loved. She would not leave Rifthold until she’d buried them both.

So she’d written page after page of notes and ideas, until she had a list of names and places and targets. She’d memorized every step and calculation, and then she’d burned the pages with the power smoldering in her veins, making sure every last scrap was nothing more than ash floating out the porthole window and across the vast, night-darkened ocean.

Though she had braced herself, it had still been a shock weeks later when the ship had passed some unseen marker just off the coast and her magic vanished. All that fire she’d spent so many months carefully mastering … gone as if it had never existed, not even an ember left flickering in her veins. A new sort of emptiness—different from the hole Rowan’s absence left in her.

Stranded in her human skin, she’d curled up on her cot and recalled how to breathe, how to think, how to move her damn body without the immortal grace she’d become so dependent on. She was a useless fool for letting those gifts become a crutch, for being caught unguarded when they were again ripped from her. Rowan definitely would have kicked her ass for that—once he’d recovered himself. It was enough to make her glad she’d asked him to stay behind.

So she had breathed in the brine and the wood, and reminded herself that she’d been trained to kill with her bare hands long before she’d ever learned to melt bones with her fire. She did not need the extra strength, speed, and agility of her Fae form to bring down her enemies.

The man responsible for that initial brutal training—the man who had been savior and tormentor, but never declared himself father or brother or lover—was now steps away, still speaking with his oh-so-important client.

Aelin pushed against the tension threatening to lock up her limbs and kept her movements feline-smooth as she closed the final twenty feet between them.

Until Arobynn’s client rose to his feet, snapping something at the King of the Assassins, and stormed toward his guard.

Even with the hood, she knew the way he moved. She knew the shape of the chin poking from the shadows of the cowl, the way his left hand tended to brush against his scabbard.

But the sword with the eagle-shaped pommel was not hanging at his side.

And there was no black uniform—only brown, nondescript clothes, spotted with dirt and blood.

She grabbed an empty chair and pulled it up to a table of card players before the client had taken two steps. She slid into the seat and focused on breathing, on listening, even as the three people at the table frowned at her.

She didn’t care.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the guard jerk her chin toward her.

“Deal me in,” Aelin muttered to the man beside her. “Right now.”

“We’re in the middle of a game.”

“Next round, then,” she said, relaxing her posture and slumping her shoulders as Chaol Westfall cast his gaze in her direction.

3

Chaol was Arobynn’s client.

Or he wanted something from her former master badly enough to risk meeting here.

What the hell had happened while she was away?

She watched the cards being slapped down on the ale-damp table, even as the captain’s attention fixed on her back. She wished she could see his face, see anything in the gloom underneath that hood. Despite the splattering of blood on his clothes, he moved as though no injuries plagued him.

Something that had been coiled tightly in her chest for months slowly loosened.

Alive—but where had the blood come from?

He must have deemed her nonthreatening, because he merely motioned to his companion to go, and they both strolled toward the bar—no, toward the stairs beyond. He moved at a steady, casual pace, though the woman at his side was too tense to pass for unconcerned. Fortunately for them all, no one looked his way as he left, and the captain didn’t glance in her direction again.

She’d moved fast enough that he likely hadn’t been able to detect that it was her. Good. Good, even if she would have known him moving or still, cloaked or bare.

There he went, up the stairs, not even glancing down, though his companion continued watching her. Who the hell was that? There hadn’t been any female guards at the palace when she’d left, and she had been fairly certain the king had an absurd no-women rule.

Seeing Chaol changed nothing—not right now.