Queen of Shadows
“Why not? I was young and angry, and my kingdom had just been conquered by that bastard king. I believed I could give you the tools you needed to survive, to someday defeat him. That is why you’ve come back, isn’t it? I’m surprised you and the captain haven’t killed him yet—isn’t that what he wants, why he tried to work with me? Or are you claiming that kill for yourself?”
“You honestly expect me to believe that your end goal was to have me avenge my family and reclaim my throne.”
“Who would you have become without me? Some pampered, quaking princess. Your beloved cousin would have locked you up in a tower and thrown away the key. I gave you your freedom—I gave you the ability to bring down men like Aedion Ashryver with a few blows. And all I get for it is contempt.”
She clenched her fingers, feeling the weight of the pebbles she’d carried that morning to Sam’s grave.
“So what else do you have in store for me, O Mighty Queen? Shall I save you the trouble and tell you how else you might continue to be a thorn in my side?”
“You know the debt isn’t anywhere near paid.”
“Debt? For what? For trying to free you from Endovier? And when that didn’t work, I did the best I could. I bribed those guards and officials with money from my own coffers so that they wouldn’t hurt you beyond repair. All the while, I tried to find ways to get you out—for a year straight.”
Lies and truth, as he’d always taught her. Yes, he’d bribed the officials and guards to ensure she would still be functioning when he eventually freed her. But Wesley’s letter had explained in detail just how little effort Arobynn had put forth once it became clear she was headed for Endovier. How he’d adjusted his plans—embracing the idea of her spirit being broken by the mines.
“And what about Sam?” she breathed.
“Sam was murdered by a sadist, whom my useless bodyguard got it into his head to kill. You know I couldn’t allow that to go unpunished, not when we needed the new Crime Lord to continue working with us.”
Truth and lies, lies and truth. She shook her head and looked toward the window, ever the confused and conflicted protégée falling for Arobynn’s poisoned words.
“Tell me what I need to do to make you understand,” he said. “Do you know why I had you capture that demon? So that we could attain its knowledge. So you and I could take on the king, learn what he knows. Why do you think I let you in that room? Together—we’ll bring that monster down together, before we’re all wearing those rings. Your friend the captain can even join in, free of charge.”
“You expect me to believe a word you say?”
“I have had a long, long while to think on the wretched things I’ve done to you, Celaena.”
“Aelin,” she snapped. “My name is Aelin. And you can start proving you’ve mended your ways by giving me back my family’s gods-damned amulet. Then you can prove it some more by giving me your resources—by letting me use your men to get what I need.”
She could see the wheels turning in that cold and cunning head. “In what capacity?”
No word about the amulet—no denying he had it.
“You want to take down the king,” she murmured, as if to keep the two Fae males outside the door from hearing. “Then let’s take down the king. But we do it my way. The captain and my court stay out of it.”
“What’s in it for me? These are dangerous times, you know. Why, just today, one of the top opiate dealers was caught by the king’s men and killed. Such a pity; he escaped the slaughter at the Shadow Market only to be caught buying dinner a few blocks away.”
More nonsense to distract her. She merely said, “I won’t send a tip to the king about this place—about how you operate and who your clients are. Or mention the demon in your dungeon, its blood now a permanent stain.” She smiled a little. “I’ve tried; their blood doesn’t wash away.”
“Threats, Aelin? And what if I make threats of my own? What if I mention to the king’s guard that his missing general and his Captain of the Guard are frequently visiting a certain warehouse? What if I let it slip that a Fae warrior is wandering his city? Or, worse, that his mortal enemy is living in the slums?”
“I suppose it’ll be a race to the palace, then. It’s too bad the captain has men stationed by the castle gates, messages in hand, ready for the signal to send them this very night.”
“You’d have to get out of here alive to give that signal.”
“The signal is us not returning, I’m afraid. All of us.”
Again, that cold stare. “How cruel and ruthless you’ve become, my love. But will you become a tyrant as well? Perhaps you should start slipping rings onto the fingers of your followers.”
He reached into his tunic. She kept her posture relaxed as a golden chain glinted around his long white fingers, and then a tinkling sounded, and then—
The amulet was exactly as she remembered it.
It had been with a child’s hands that she’d last held it, and with a child’s eyes that she’d last seen the cerulean blue front with the ivory stag and the golden star between its antlers. The immortal stag of Mala Fire-Bringer, brought over to these lands by Brannon himself and set free in Oakwald Forest. The amulet glinted in Arobynn’s hands as he removed it from his neck.
The third and final Wyrdkey.
It had made her ancestors mighty queens and kings; had made Terrasen untouchable, a powerhouse so lethal no force had ever breached its borders. Until she’d fallen into the Florine River that night—until this man had removed the amulet from around her neck, and a conquering army had swept through. And Arobynn had risen from being a local lord of assassins to crown himself this continent’s unrivaled king of their Guild. Perhaps his power and influence derived solely from the necklace—her necklace—that he’d worn all these years.
“I’ve become rather attached to it,” Arobynn said as he handed it over.
He’d known she would ask for it tonight, if he was wearing it. Perhaps he’d planned to offer it to her all along, just to win her trust—or get her to stop framing his clients and interrupting his business.
Keeping her face neutral was an effort as she reached for it.
Her fingers grazed the golden chain, and she wished then and there that she’d never heard of it, never touched it, never been in the same room with it. Not right, her blood sang, her bones groaned. Not right, not right, not right.
The amulet was heavier than it looked—and warm from his body, or from the boundless power dwelling inside of it.
The Wyrdkey.
Holy gods.
That quickly, that easily, he’d handed it over. How Arobynn hadn’t felt it, noticed it … Unless you needed magic in your veins to feel it. Unless it never … called to him as it did to her now, its raw power brushing up against her senses like a cat rubbing along her legs. How had her mother, her father—any of them—never felt it?
She almost walked out right then and there. But she slid the Amulet of Orynth around her neck, its weight becoming heavier still—a force pressing down on her bones, spreading through her blood like ink in water. Not right.
“Tomorrow morning,” she said coldly, “you and I are going to talk again. Bring your best men, or whoever is licking your boots these days. And then we’re going to plan.” She rose from the chair, her knees wobbling.
“Any other requests, Your Majesty?”
“You think I don’t realize you have the upper hand?” She willed calm to her veins, her heart. “You’ve agreed to help me far too easily. But I like this game. Let’s keep playing it.”
His answering smile was serpentine.
Each step toward the door was an effort of will as she forced herself not to think about the thing thudding between her breasts. “If you betray us tonight, Arobynn,” she added, pausing before the door, “I’ll make what was done to Sam seem like a mercy compared to what I do to you.”
“Learned some new tricks these past few years, have you?”
She smirked, taking in the details of how he looked at this exact moment: the sheen of his red hair, his broad shoulders and narrow waist, the scars on his hands, and those silver eyes, so bright with challenge and triumph. They’d probably haunt her dreams until the day she died.