Queen of Shadows

“What did they say?” Nesryn kept up with him, meeting him step for step.

“None of your business, so drop it. Just because we work together doesn’t mean you’re entitled to know everything that goes on in my life.”

Nesryn stiffened almost imperceptibly, and part of Chaol flinched, already yearning to take the words back.

But it was true. He’d destroyed everything the day he fled the castle—and maybe he’d taken to hanging around with Nesryn because there was no one else who didn’t look at him with pity in their eyes.

Maybe it had been selfish of him to do it.

Nesryn didn’t bother with a good-bye before vanishing down an alley.

At least he couldn’t hate himself any more than he already did.

Lying to Aedion about the blood oath was … awful.

She would tell him—she would find a way to tell him. When things were less new. When he stopped looking at her as though she were a gods-damned miracle and not a lying, cowardly piece of shit.

Maybe the Shadow Market had been her fault.

Crouched on a rooftop, Aelin shook off the cloak of guilt and temper that had been smothering her for hours and turned her attention to the alley below. Perfect.

She’d tracked several different patrols tonight, noting which of the commanders wore black rings, which seemed more brutal than the rest, which didn’t even try to move like humans. The man—or was he a demon now?—hauling open a sewer grate in the street below was one of the milder ones.

She’d wanted to shadow this commander to wherever he made his nest, so she could at least give Chaol that information—prove to him how invested she was in the welfare of this piss-poor city.

This commander’s men had headed for the glowing glass palace, the thick river fog casting the entire hillside in greenish light. But he had veered away, going deeper into the slums and to the sewers beneath them.

She watched him disappear through the sewer grate, then nimbly climbed off the roof, hurrying for the closest entrance that would connect to his. Swallowing that old fear, she quietly entered the sewers a block or two down from where he’d climbed in, and listened carefully.

Dripping water, the reek of refuse, the scurrying of rats …

And splashing steps ahead, around the next big intersection of tunnels. Perfect.

Aelin kept her blades concealed in her suit, not wanting them to rust in the sewer dampness. She clung to the shadows, her steps soundless as she neared the crossroads and peered around the corner. Sure enough, the Valg commander was striding down the tunnel, his back to her, headed deeper into the system.

When he was far enough ahead, she slipped around the corner, keeping to the darkness, avoiding the patches of light that shone through the overhead grates.

Tunnel after tunnel, she trailed him, until he reached a massive pool.

It was surrounded by crumbling walls covered in grime and moss, so ancient that she wondered if they’d been among the first built in Rifthold.

But it wasn’t the man kneeling before the pool, its waters fed by rivers snaking in from either direction, that made her breath catch and panic flood her veins.

It was the creature that emerged from the water.

27

The creature rose, its black stone body cutting through the water with hardly a ripple.

The Valg commander knelt before it, head down, not moving a muscle as the horror uncoiled to its full height.

Her heart leaped into a wild beat, and she willed it to calm as she took in the details of the creature that now stood waist-deep in the pool, water dripping off its massive arms and elongated, serpentine snout.

She’d seen it before.

One of eight creatures carved into the clock tower itself; eight gargoyles that she’d once sworn had … watched her. Smiled at her.

Was there currently one missing from the clock tower, or had the statues been molded after this monstrosity?

She willed strength to her knees. A faint blue light began pulsing from beneath her suit—shit. The Eye. Never a good sign when it flared—never, never, never.

She put a hand over it, smothering the barely perceptible glow.

“Report,” the thing hissed through a mouth of dark stone teeth. Wyrdhound—that’s what she would call it. Even if it didn’t look remotely like a dog, she had the feeling the gargoyle-thing could track and hunt as well as any canine. And obeyed its master well.

The commander kept his head lowered. “No sign of the general, or those who helped him get away. We received word that he’d been spotted heading down the southern road, riding with five others for Fenharrow. I sent two patrols after them.”

She could thank Arobynn for that.

“Keep looking,” the Wyrdhound said, the dim light glinting on the iridescent veins running through its obsidian skin. “The general was injured—he can’t have gotten far.”

The creature’s voice stopped her cold.

Not the voice of a demon, or a man.

But the king.

She didn’t want to know what sort of things he’d done in order to see through this thing’s eyes, speak through its mouth.

A shudder crawled down her spine as she backed down the tunnel. The water running beside the raised walkway was shallow enough that the creature couldn’t possibly swim there, but … she didn’t dare breathe too loudly.

Oh, she’d give Arobynn his Valg commander, all right. Then she’d let Chaol and Nesryn hunt them all into extinction.

But not until she had the chance to speak to one on her own.

It took Aelin ten blocks to stop the shaking in her bones, ten blocks to debate whether she would even tell them what she’d seen and what she had planned—but walking in the door and seeing Aedion pacing by the window was enough to set her on edge again.

“Would you look at that,” she drawled, throwing back her hood. “I’m alive and unharmed.”

“You said two hours—you were gone four.”

“I had things to do—things that only I can do. So to accomplish those things, I needed to go out. You’re in no shape to be in the streets, especially if there’s danger—”

“You swore there wasn’t any danger.”

“Do I look like an oracle? There is always danger—always.”

That wasn’t even the half of it.

“You reek of the gods-damned sewers,” Aedion snapped. “Want to tell me what you were doing there?”

No. Not really.

Aedion rubbed at his face. “Do you understand what it was like to sit on my ass while you were gone? You said two hours. What was I supposed to think?”

“Aedion,” she said as calmly as she could, and pulled off her filthy gloves before taking his broad, callused hand. “I get it. I do.”

“What were you doing that was so important it couldn’t wait a day or two?” His eyes were wide, pleading.

“Scouting.”

“You’re good at this, aren’t you—half truths.”

“One, just because you’re … you, it doesn’t entitle you to information about everything I do. Two—”

“There you go with the lists again.”

She squeezed his hand hard enough to shatter a lesser man’s bones. “If you don’t like my lists, then don’t pick fights with me.”

He stared at her; she stared right back.

Unyielding, unbreakable. They’d been cut from the same cloth.

Aedion loosed a breath and looked at their joined hands—then opened his to examine her scarred palm, crisscrossed with the marks of her vow to Nehemia and the cut she’d made the moment she and Rowan became carranam, their magic joining them in an eternal bond.

“It’s hard not to think all of your scars are my fault.”

Oh. Oh.

It took her a breath or two, but she managed to cock her chin at a devious angle and say, “Please. Half of these scars I rightly deserved.” She showed him a small scar down the inside of her forearm. “See that one? A man in a tavern sliced me open with a bottle after I cheated him in a round of cards and tried to steal his money.”

A choked sound came from him.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Oh, I believe you. I didn’t know you were so bad at cards that you had to resort to cheating.” Aedion chuckled quietly, but the fear lingered.