Queen of Shadows

She felt the eyes of her Thirteen on her, waiting for the signal.

Manon dug her heels into Abraxos’s side, and they free-fell into the air.

The scar on her arm ached.

It always ached—more than the collar, more than the cold, more than the duke’s hands on her, more than anything that had been done to her. Only the shadowfire was a comfort.

She had once believed that she’d been born to be queen.

She had since learned that she’d been born to be a wolf.

The duke had even put a collar on her like a dog, and had shoved a demon prince inside her.

She’d let it win for a time, curling up so tightly inside herself that the prince forgot she was there.

And she waited.

In that cocoon of darkness, she bided her time, letting him think her gone, letting them do what they wanted to the mortal shell around her. It was in that cocoon where the shadowfire began to flicker, fueling her, feeding her. Long ago, when she was small and clean, flames of gold had crackled at her fingers, secret and hidden. Then they had vanished, as all good things had vanished.

And now they had returned—reborn within that dark shell as phantom fire.

The prince inside her did not notice when she began to nibble at him.

Bit by bit, she stole morsels of the otherworldly creature that had taken her body for its skin, who did such despicable things with it.

The creature noticed the day she took a bigger bite—big enough that it screamed in agony.

Before it could tell anyone, she leaped upon it, tearing and ripping with her shadowfire until only ashes of malice remained, until it was no more than a whisper of thought. Fire—it did not like fire of any kind.

For weeks now, she had been here. Waiting again. Learning about the flame in her veins—how it bled into the thing in her arm and reemerged as shadowfire. The thing spoke to her sometimes, in languages she had never heard, that had maybe never existed.

The collar remained around her neck, and she let them order her around, let them touch her, hurt her. Soon enough—soon enough she would find true purpose, and then she would howl her wrath at the moon.

She’d forgotten the name she’d been given, but it made no difference. She had only one name now:

Death, devourer of worlds.

55

Aelin fully believed in ghosts.

She just didn’t think they usually came out during the day.

Rowan’s hand clamped onto her shoulder right before sunrise. She took one look at his tight face and braced herself. “Someone’s broken into the warehouse.”

Rowan was out of the room, armed and fully ready to shed blood before Aelin could grab her own weapons. Gods above—he moved like the wind, too. She could still feel his canines at her throat, rasping against her skin, pressing down lightly—

On near-silent feet, she went after him, finding him and Aedion standing before the apartment door, blades in hand, their muscled, scarred backs rigid. The windows—they were their best options for escape if it was an ambush. She reached the two males just as Rowan eased open the door to reveal the gloom of the stairwell.

Collapsed in a heap, Evangeline was sobbing on the stair landing, her scarred face deathly pale and those citrine eyes wide with terror as she peered up at Rowan and Aedion. Hundreds of pounds of lethal muscle and bared teeth—

Aelin shoved past them, taking the stairs by twos and threes until she reached the girl. She was clean—not a scratch on her. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, her red-gold hair catching the light of the candle that Rowan brought down. The staircase shuddered with every step he and Aedion took.

“Tell me,” Aelin panted, silently praying it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. “Tell me everything.”

“They took her, they took her, they took her.”

“Who?” Aelin said, brushing back the girl’s hair, wondering whether she would panic if she held her.

“The king’s men,” Evangeline whispered. “They came with a letter from Arobynn. Said it was in Arobynn’s will that they be told about Lysandra’s b-b-bloodline.”

Aelin’s heart stopped dead. Worse—far worse than what she’d braced for—

“They said she was a shape-shifter. They took her, and they were going to take me, too, but she fought them, and she made me run, and Clarisse wouldn’t help—”

“Where did they take her?”

Evangeline sobbed. “I don’t know. Lysandra said I was to come here if anything ever happened; she told me to tell you to run—”

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Rowan knelt down beside them and slid his arms around the girl, scooping her up, his hand so big that it nearly enveloped the entire back of her head. Evangeline buried her face in his tattooed chest, and Rowan murmured wordless sounds of comfort.

He met Aelin’s eyes over the girl’s head. We need to be out of this house in ten minutes—until we figure out if he betrayed you, too.

As if he’d heard it, Aedion edged past them, going to the warehouse window that Evangeline had somehow slipped in through. Lysandra, it seemed, had taught her charge a few things.

Aelin scrubbed at her face and braced a hand on Rowan’s shoulder as she stood, his skin warm and soft beneath her callused fingers. “Nesryn’s father. We’ll ask him to look after her today.”

Arobynn had done this. A final card up his sleeve.

He’d known. About Lysandra—about their friendship.

He didn’t like to share his belongings.

Chaol and Nesryn burst into the warehouse a level below, and Aedion was halfway to them before they even realized he was there.

They had more news. One of Ren’s men had contacted them moments ago: a meeting was to take place tomorrow in Oakwald, between the king, Dorian, and the Wing Leader of his aerial cavalry.

With a delivery of one new prisoner headed for Morath.

“You have to get her out of the tunnels,” Aelin said to Chaol and Nesryn, as she stormed down the stairs. “Right now. You’re human; they won’t notice you at first. You’re the only ones who can go into that darkness.”

Chaol and Nesryn exchanged glances.

Aelin stalked up to them. “You have to get her out right now.”

For a heartbeat, she wasn’t in the warehouse. For a heartbeat, she was standing in a beautiful bedroom, before a bloody bed and the wrecked body splayed upon it.

Chaol held out his hands. “We’re better off spending the time setting up an ambush.”

The sound of his voice … The scar on his face was stark in the dim light. Aelin clenched her fingers into a fist, her nails—the nails that had shredded his face—digging in. “They could be feeding on her,” she managed to say.

Behind her, Evangeline let out a sob. If they made Lysandra endure what Aelin had endured when she fought the Valg prince … “Please,” Aelin said, her voice breaking on the word.

Chaol noticed, then, where her eyes had focused on his face. He paled, his mouth opening.

But Nesryn reached for her hand, her slim, tan fingers cool against Aelin’s clammy palms. “We will get her back. We will save her. Together.”

Chaol just held Aelin’s gaze, his shoulders squaring as he said, “Never again.”

She wanted to believe him.

56

A few hours later, seated on the floor of a ramshackle inn on the opposite side of Rifthold, Aelin peered at a map they’d marked with the meeting’s location spot—about half a mile from the temple of Temis. The tiny temple was just inside the cover of Oakwald, perched atop a towering slice of rock in the middle of a deep ravine. It was accessible only via two dangling footbridges attached to either side of the ravine, which had spared it from invading armies over the years. The surrounding forest would likely be empty, and if wyverns were flying in, they would no doubt arrive under cover of darkness the night before. Tonight.

Aelin, Rowan, Aedion, Nesryn, and Chaol sat around the map, sharpening and polishing their blades as they talked over their plan. They’d given Evangeline to Nesryn’s father, along with more letters for Terrasen and the Bane—and the baker hadn’t asked any questions. He’d only kissed his youngest daughter on the cheek and announced that he and Evangeline would bake special pies for their return.