Текст книги "Queen of Shadows"

Автор книги: Sarah J. Maas

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

35

Gods, he hated the smell of their blood.

But damn if it wasn’t a glorious thing to be covered in when two dozen Valg lay dead around him, and good people were finally safe.

Drenched in Valg blood from head to toe, Chaol Westfall searched for a clean bit of fabric with which to wipe down his black-stained blade, but came up empty. Across the hidden clearing, Nesryn was doing the same.

He’d killed four; she’d taken down seven. Chaol knew only because he’d been watching her the entire time; she’d paired off with someone else during the ambush. He’d apologized for snapping at her the other night, but she’d just nodded—and still teamed up with another rebel. But now … She gave up trying to wipe down her blade and looked toward him.

Her midnight eyes were bright, and even with her face splattered in black blood, her smile—relieved, a bit wild with the thrill of the fight, their victory—was … beautiful.

The word clanged through him. Chaol frowned, and the expression was instantly wiped from her face. His mind was always a jumble after a fight, as if it had been spun around and around and twisted upside down, and then given a heavy dose of liquor. But he strode toward her. They’d done this—together, they’d saved these people. More at once than they’d ever rescued before, and with no loss of life beyond the Valg.

Gore and blood were splattered on the grassy forest floor, the only remnants of the decapitated Valg bodies that had already been hauled away and dumped behind a boulder. When they left, they’d pay the bodies’ former owners the tribute of burning them.

Three of his group had set to unchaining the huddled prisoners now seated in the grass. The Valg bastards had stuffed so many of them into the two wagons that Chaol had nearly gagged at the smell. Each wagon had only a small, barred window high up on the wall, and a man had fainted inside. But all of them were safe now.

He wouldn’t stop until the others still hidden in the city were out of harm’s way as well.

A woman reached up with her filthy hands—her nails split and fingertips swollen as if she’d tried to claw her way out of whatever hellhole she’d been kept in. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. Probably from screaming that had gone unanswered.

Chaol’s throat tightened as he gave the woman’s hands a gentle squeeze, mindful of her near-broken fingers, and stepped to where Nesryn was now wiping her blade on the grass. “You fought well,” he told her.

“I know I did.” Nesryn looked over her shoulder at him. “We need to get them to the river. The boats won’t wait forever.”

Fine—he didn’t expect warmth or camaraderie after a battle, despite that smile, but … “Maybe once we’re back in Rifthold, we can go for a drink.” He needed one. Badly.

Nesryn rose from her crouch, and he fought the urge to wipe a splatter of black blood from her tan cheek. The hair she’d tied back had come loose, and the warm forest breeze set the strands floating past her face. “I thought we were friends,” she said.

“We are friends,” he said carefully.

“Friends don’t spend time with each other only when they’re feeling sorry for themselves. Or bite each other’s heads off for asking difficult questions.”

“I told you I was sorry for snapping the other night.”

She sheathed her blade. “I’m fine with distracting each other for whatever reason, Chaol, but at least be honest about it.”

He opened his mouth to object, but … maybe she was right. “I do like your company,” he said. “I wanted to go for a drink to celebrate—not … brood. And I’d like to go with you.”

She pursed her lips. “That was the most half-assed attempt at flattery I’ve ever heard. But fine—I’ll join you.” The worst part was that she didn’t even sound mad—she genuinely meant it. He could go drinking with or without her, and she wouldn’t particularly care. The thought didn’t sit well.

Personal conversation decidedly over, Nesryn surveyed the clearing, the wagon, and the carnage. “Why now? The king has had ten years to do this; why the sudden rush to get these people all down to Morath? What’s it building to?”

Some of the rebels turned their way. Chaol studied the bloody aftermath as if it were a map.

“Aelin Galathynius’s return might have started it,” Chaol said, aware of those who listened.

“No,” Nesryn said simply. “Aelin announced herself barely two months ago. Something this large … It’s been in the works for a long, long time.”

Sen—one of the leaders with whom Chaol met regularly– said, “We should consider yielding the city. Move to other places where their foothold isn’t as secure; maybe try to establish a border somehow. If Aelin Galathynius is lingering near Rifthold, we should meet with her—maybe head for Terrasen, push Adarlan out, and hold the line.”

“We can’t abandon Rifthold,” Chaol said, glancing at the prisoners being helped to their feet.

“It might be suicide to stay,” Sen challenged. Some of the others nodded their agreement.

Chaol opened his mouth, but Nesryn said, “We need to head for the river. Fast.”

He gave her a grateful look, but she was already moving.

Aelin waited until everyone was asleep and the full moon had risen before climbing out of bed, careful not to jostle Rowan.

She slipped into the closet and dressed swiftly, strapping on the weapons she’d casually dumped there that afternoon. Neither male had commented when she’d plucked Damaris from the dining table, claiming she wanted to clean it.

She strapped the ancient blade onto her back along with Goldryn, the two hilts peeking over either shoulder as she stood in front of the closet mirror and hastily braided back her hair. It was short enough now that braiding had become a nuisance, and the front bits slipped out, but at least it wasn’t in her face.

She crept from the closet, a spare cloak in hand, past the bed where Rowan’s tattooed torso gleamed in the light of the full moon leaking in from the window. He didn’t stir as she snuck from the bedroom and out of the apartment, no more than a shadow.

36

It didn’t take long for Aelin to set her trap. She could feel the eyes monitoring her as she found the patrol led by one of the more sadistic Valg commanders.

Thanks to Chaol and Nesryn’s reports, she knew their new hideouts. What Chaol and Nesryn didn’t know—what she had spent these nights sneaking out to track on her own—was which sewer entrances the commanders used when going to speak to one of the Wyrdhounds.

They seemed to prefer the most ancient waterways to swimming through the filth of the more recent main tunnels. She’d been getting as close as she dared, which usually was not near enough to overhear anything.

Tonight, she slipped down into the sewers after the commander, her steps nearly silent on the slick stones, trying to stifle her nausea at the stench. She’d waited until Chaol, Nesryn, and their top lieutenants were out of the city, chasing down those prison wagons, if only so no one would get in her way again. She couldn’t risk it.

As she walked, keeping far enough behind the Valg commander that he wouldn’t hear, she began speaking softly.

“I got the key,” she said, a sigh of relief passing over her lips.

Twisting her voice just as Lysandra had showed her, she replied in a male tenor, “You brought it with you?”

“Of course I did. Now show me where you wanted to hide it.”

“Patience,” she said, trying not to smile too much as she turned down a corner, creeping along. “It’s just up this way.”

On she went, offering whispers of conversation, until she neared the crossroads where the Valg commanders liked to meet with their Wyrdhound overseer and fell silent. There, she dumped the spare cloak she’d brought, and then backtracked to a ladder leading up to the street.

Aelin’s breath caught as she pushed against the grate, and it mercifully gave.

She heaved herself onto the street, her hands unsteady. For a moment, she contemplated lying there on the filthy, wet cobblestones, savoring the free air around her. But he was too close. So she silently sealed the grate again.

It took only a minute before near-silent boots scraped on stone below, and a figure moved past the ladder, heading to where she’d left the cape, tracking her as he’d done all night.

As she’d let him do all night.

And when Lorcan walked right into that den of Valg commanders and the Wyrdhound that had come to retrieve their reports, when the clash of weapons and roar of dying filled her ears, Aelin merely sauntered down the street, whistling to herself.

Aelin was striding down an alley three blocks from the warehouse when a force akin to a stone wall slammed her face-first into the side of a brick building.

“You little bitch,” Lorcan snarled in her ear.

Both of her arms were somehow already pinned behind her back, his legs digging hard enough into hers that she couldn’t move them.

“Hello, Lorcan,” she said sweetly, turning her throbbing face as much as she could.

From the corner of her eye, she could make out cruel features beneath his dark hood, along with onyx eyes and matching shoulder-length hair, and—damn. Elongated canines shone far too near her throat.

One hand gripped her arms like a steel vise; Lorcan used the other to push her head against the damp brick so hard her cheek scraped. “You think that was funny?”

“It was worth a shot, wasn’t it?”

He reeked of blood—that awful, otherworldly Valg blood. He pushed her face a little harder into the wall, his body an immovable force against her. “I’m going to kill you.”

“Ah, about that,” she said, and shifted her wrist just enough for him to feel the blade she’d flicked free in the moment before she’d sensed his attack—the steel now resting against his groin. “Immortality seems like a long, long time to go without your favorite body part.”

“I’ll rip out your throat before you can move.”

She pressed the blade harder against him. “Big risk to take, isn’t it?”

For a moment, Lorcan remained unmoving, still shoving her into the wall with the force of five centuries of lethal training. Then cool air nipped at her neck, her back. By the time she whirled, Lorcan was several paces away.

In the darkness, she could barely make out the granite-hewn features, but she remembered enough from that day in Doranelle to guess that beneath his hood, the unforgiving face was livid. “Honestly,” she said, leaning against the wall, “I’m a little surprised you fell for it. You must think I’m truly stupid.”

“Where’s Rowan?” he sneered. His close-fitting dark clothes, armored with black metal at the forearms and shoulders, seemed to gobble up the dim light. “Still warming your bed?”

She didn’t want to know how Lorcan knew that. “Isn’t that all you pretty males are good for?” She looked him up and down, marking the many weapons both visible and concealed. Massive—as massive as Rowan and Aedion. And utterly unimpressed by her. “Did you kill all of them? There were only three by my count.”

“There were six of them, and one of those stone demons, you bitch, and you knew it.”

So he had found a way to kill one of the Wyrdhounds. Interesting—and good. “You know, I’m really rather tired of being called that. You’d think five centuries would give you enough time to come up with something more creative.”

“Come a little closer, and I’ll show you just what five centuries can do.”

“Why don’t I show you what happens when you whip my friends, you spineless prick?”

Violence danced across those brutal features. “Such a big mouth for someone without her fire tricks.”

“Such a big mouth for someone who needs to mind his surroundings.”

Rowan’s knife was angled along Lorcan’s throat before he could so much as blink.

She’d been wondering how long it would take him to find her. He’d probably awakened the moment she pushed back the covers. “Start talking,” Rowan ordered Lorcan.

Lorcan gripped his sword—a mighty, beautiful weapon that she had no doubt had ended many lives on killing fields in distant lands. “You don’t want to get into this fight right now.”

“Give me a good reason not to spill your blood,” Rowan said.

“If I die, Maeve will offer aid to the King of Adarlan against you.”

“Bullshit,” Aelin spat.

“Friends close but enemies closer, right?” Lorcan said.

Slowly, Rowan let go of him and stepped away. All three of them monitored every movement the others made, until Rowan was at Aelin’s side, his teeth bared at Lorcan. The aggression pouring off the Fae Prince was enough to make her jumpy.

“You made a fatal mistake,” Lorcan said to her, “the moment you showed my queen that vision of you with the key.” He flicked his black eyes to Rowan. “And you. You stupid fool. Allying yourself—binding yourself to a mortal queen. What will you do, Rowan, when she grows old and dies? What about when she looks old enough to be your mother? Will you still share her bed, still—”

“That’s enough,” Rowan said softly. She didn’t let one flicker of the emotions that shot through her show, didn’t dare to even think about them for fear Lorcan could smell them.

Lorcan just laughed. “You think you beat Maeve? She allowed you to walk out of Doranelle—both of you.”

Aelin yawned. “Honestly, Rowan, I don’t know how you put up with him for so many centuries. Five minutes and I’m bored to tears.”

“Watch yourself, girl,” Lorcan said. “Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in a week, but someday you will trip up. And I’ll be waiting.”

“Really—you Fae males and your dramatic speeches.” She turned to walk away, a move she could make only because of the prince standing between them. But she looked back over her shoulder, dropping all pretense of amusement, of boredom. Let that killing calm rise close enough to the surface that she knew there was nothing human in her eyes as she said to Lorcan, “I will never forget, not for one moment, what you did to him that day in Doranelle. Your miserable existence is at the bottom of my priority list, but one day, Lorcan …” She smiled a little. “One day, I’ll come to claim that debt, too. Consider tonight a warning.”

Aelin had just unlocked the warehouse door when Rowan’s deep voice purred from behind, “Busy night, Princess?”

She hauled open the door, and the two of them slipped into the near-black warehouse, illuminated only by a lantern near the back stairs. She took her time locking the sliding door behind her. “Busy, but enjoyable.”

“You’re going to have to try a lot harder to sneak past me,” Rowan said, the words laced with a growl.

“You and Aedion are insufferable.” Thank the gods Lorcan hadn’t seen Aedion—hadn’t scented his heritage. “I was perfectly safe.” Lie. She hadn’t been sure whether Lorcan would even show up—or whether he would fall for her little trap.

Rowan poked her cheek gently, and pain rippled. “You’re lucky scraping you is all he did. The next time you sneak out to pick a fight with Lorcan, you will tell me beforehand.”

“I will do no such thing. It’s my damn business, and—”

“It’s not just your business, not anymore. You will take me along with you the next time.”

“The next time I sneak out,” she seethed, “if I catch you following me like some overprotective nursemaid, I will—”

“You’ll what?” He stepped up close enough to share breath with her, his fangs flashing.

In the light of the lantern, she could clearly see his eyes—and he could see hers as she silently said, I don’t know what I’ll do, you bastard, but I’ll make your life a living hell for it.

He snarled, and the sound stroked down her skin as she read the unspoken words in his eyes. Stop being stubborn. Is this some attempt to cling to your independence?

And so what if it is? she shot back. Just—let me do these things on my own.

“I can’t promise that,” he said, the dim light caressing his tan skin, the elegant tattoo.

She punched him in the bicep—hurting herself more than him. “Just because you’re older and stronger doesn’t mean you’re entitled to order me around.”

“It’s exactly because of those things that I can do whatever I please.”

She let out a high-pitched sound and went to pinch his side, and he grabbed her hand, squeezing it tightly, dragging her a step closer to him. She tilted her head back to look at him.

For a moment, alone in that warehouse with nothing but the crates keeping them company, she allowed herself to take in his face, those green eyes, the strong jaw.

Immortal. Unyielding. Blooded with power.

“Brute.”

“Brat.”

She loosed a breathy laugh.

“Did you really lure Lorcan into a sewer with one of those creatures?”

“It was such an easy trap that I’m actually disappointed he fell for it.”

Rowan chuckled. “You never stop surprising me.”

“He hurt you. I’m never going to forgive that.”

“Plenty of people have hurt me. If you’re going to go after every one, you’ll have a busy life ahead of you.”

She didn’t smile. “What he said—about me getting old—”

“Don’t. Just—don’t start with that. Go to sleep.”

“What about you?”

He studied the warehouse door. “I wouldn’t put it past Lorcan to return the favor you dealt him tonight. He forgets and forgives even less easily than you do. Especially when someone threatens to cut off his manhood.”

“At least I said it would be a big mistake,” she said with a fiendish grin. “I was tempted to say ‘little.’”

Rowan laughed, his eyes dancing. “Then you definitely would have been dead.”

37

There were men screaming in the dungeons.

He knew because the demon had forced him to take a walk there, past every cell and rack.

He thought he might know some of the prisoners, but he couldn’t remember their names; he could never remember their names when the man on the throne ordered the demon to watch their interrogation. The demon was happy to oblige. Day after day after day.

The king never asked them any questions. Some of the men cried, some screamed, and some stayed silent. Defiant, even. Yesterday, one of them—young, handsome, familiar—had recognized him and begged. He’d begged for mercy, insisted he knew nothing, and wept.

But there was nothing he could do, even as he watched them suffer, even as the chambers filled with the reek of burning flesh and the coppery tang of blood. The demon savored it, growing stronger each day it went down there and breathed in their pain.

He added their suffering to the memories that kept him company, and let the demon take him back to those dungeons of agony and despair the next day, and the next.

38

Aelin didn’t dare to go back to the sewers—not until she was certain Lorcan was out of the area and the Valg weren’t lurking about.

The next night, they were all eating a dinner Aedion had scraped together from whatever was lying around the kitchen when the front door opened and Lysandra breezed in with a chirped hello that had them all releasing the weapons they’d grabbed.

“How do you do that?” Aedion demanded as she paraded into the kitchen.

“What a miserable-looking meal,” was all Lysandra said, peering over Aedion’s shoulder at the spread of bread, pickled vegetables, cold eggs, fruit, dried meat, and leftover breakfast pastries. “Can’t any of you cook?”

Aelin, who’d been swiping grapes off Rowan’s plate, snorted. “Breakfast, it seems, is the only meal any of us are decent at. And this one”—she jabbed a thumb in Rowan’s direction—“only knows how to cook meat on a stick over a fire.”

Lysandra nudged Aelin down the bench and squeezed onto the end, her blue dress like liquid silk as she reached for some bread. “Pathetic—utterly pathetic for such esteemed and mighty leaders.”

Aedion braced his arms on the table. “Make yourself at home, why don’t you.”

Lysandra kissed the air between them. “Hello, General. Good to see you’re looking well.”

Aelin would have been content to sit back and watch—until Lysandra turned those uptilted green eyes toward Rowan. “I don’t think we were introduced the other day. Her Queenliness had something rather urgent to tell me.”

A sly cat’s glance in Aelin’s direction.

Rowan, seated on Aedion’s right, cocked his head to the side. “Do you need an introduction?”

Lysandra’s smile grew. “I like your fangs,” she said sweetly.

Aelin choked on her grape. Of course Lysandra did.

Rowan gave a little grin that usually sent Aelin running. “Are you studying them so you can replicate them when you take my form, shape-shifter?”

Aelin’s fork froze in midair.

“Bullshit,” Aedion said.

All amusement had vanished from the courtesan’s face.

Shape-shifter.

Holy gods. What was fire magic, or wind and ice, compared to shape-shifting? Shifters: spies and thieves and assassins able to demand any price for their services; the bane of courts across the world, so feared that they’d been hunted nearly to extinction even before Adarlan had banned magic.

Lysandra plucked up a grape, examined it, and then flicked her eyes to Rowan. “Perhaps I’m just studying you to know where to sink my fangs if I ever get my gifts back.”

Rowan laughed.

It explained so much. You and I are nothing but beasts wearing human skins.

Lysandra turned her attention to Aelin. “No one knows this. Not even Arobynn.” Her face was hard. A challenge and a question lay in those eyes.

Secrets—Nehemia had kept secrets from her, too. Aelin didn’t say anything.

Lysandra’s mouth tightened as she turned to Rowan. “How’d you know?”

A shrug, even as Aelin felt his attention on her and knew he could read the emotions biting at her. “I met a few shifters, centuries ago. Your scents are the same.”

Lysandra sniffed at herself, but Aedion murmured, “So that’s what it is.”

Lysandra looked at Aelin again. “Say something.”

Aelin held up a hand. “Just—just give me a moment.” A moment to sort out one friend from another—the friend she had loved and who had lied to her at every chance, and the friend she had hated and who she had kept secrets from herself … hated, until love and hate had met in the middle, fused by loss.

Aedion asked, “How old were you when you found out?”

“Young—five or six. I knew even then to hide it from everyone. It wasn’t my mother, so my father must have had the gift. She never mentioned him. Or seemed to miss him.”

Gift—interesting choice of words. Rowan said, “What happened to her?”

Lysandra shrugged. “I don’t know. I was seven when she beat me, then threw me out of the house. Because we lived here—in this city—and that morning, for the first time, I’d made the mistake of shifting in her presence. I don’t remember why, but I remember being startled enough that I changed into a hissing tabby right in front of her.”

“Shit,” Aedion said.

“So you’re a full-powered shifter,” Rowan said.

“I’d known what I was for a long time. From even before that moment, I knew that I could change into any creature. But magic was outlawed here. And everyone, in every kingdom, was distrustful of shape-shifters. How could they not be?” A low laugh. “After she kicked me out, I was left on the streets. We were poor enough that it was hardly different, but—I spent the first two days crying on the doorstep. She threatened to turn me in to the authorities, so I ran, and I never saw her again. I even went back to the house months later, but she was gone—moved away.”

“She sounds like a wonderful person,” Aedion said.

Lysandra hadn’t lied to her. Nehemia had lied outright, kept things that were vital. What Lysandra was … They were even: after all, she hadn’t told Lysandra she was queen.

“How’d you survive?” Aelin asked at last, her shoulders relaxing. “A seven-year-old on the streets of Rifthold doesn’t often meet a happy end.”

Something sparked in Lysandra’s eyes, and Aelin wondered if she had been waiting for the blow to fall, waiting for the order to get out. “I used my abilities. Sometimes I was human; sometimes I wore the skins of other street children with high standing in their packs; sometimes I became an alley cat or a rat or a gull. And then I learned that if I made myself prettier—if I made myself beautiful—when I begged for money, it came far faster. I was wearing one of those beautiful faces the day magic fell. And I’ve been stuck in it ever since.”

“So this face,” Aelin said, “isn’t your real face? Your real body?”

“No. And what kills me is that I can’t remember what my real face was. That was the danger of shifting—that you would forget your real form, because it’s the memory of it that guides the shifting. I remember being plain as a dormouse, but … I don’t remember if my eyes were blue or gray or green; I can’t remember the shape of my nose or my chin. And it was a child’s body, too. I don’t know what I would look like now, as a woman.”

Aelin said, “And this was the form that Arobynn spotted you in a few years later.”

Lysandra nodded and picked at an invisible fleck of lint on her dress. “If magic is free again—would you be wary of a shape-shifter?”

So carefully phrased, so casually asked, as if it weren’t the most important question of all.

Aelin shrugged and gave her the truth. “I’d be jealous of a shape-shifter. Shifting into any form I please would come in rather handy.” She considered it. “A shape-shifter would make a powerful ally. And an even more entertaining friend.”

Aedion mused, “It would make a difference on a battlefield, once magic is freed.”

Rowan just asked, “Did you have a favorite form?”

Lysandra’s grin was nothing short of wicked. “I liked anything with claws and big, big fangs.”

Aelin swallowed her laugh. “Is there a reason behind this visit, Lysandra, or are you here just to make my friends squirm?”

All amusement faded as Lysandra held up a velvet sack that sagged with what looked to be a large box. “What you requested.” The box thumped as she set the sack onto the worn wooden table.

Aelin slid the sack toward herself, even as the males raised their brows and subtly sniffed at the box within. “Thank you.”

Lysandra said, “Arobynn is going to call in your favor tomorrow, to be delivered the following night. Be ready.”

“Good.” It was an effort to keep her face blank.

Aedion leaned forward, glancing between them. “Does he expect only Aelin to deliver it?”

“No—all of you, I think.”

Rowan said, “Is it a trap?”

“Probably, in some way or another,” Lysandra said. “He wants you to deliver it and then join him for dinner.”

“Demons and dining,” Aelin said. “A delightful combination.”

Only Lysandra smiled.

“Will he poison us?” Aedion asked.

Aelin scratched at a piece of dirt on the table. “Poison isn’t Arobynn’s style. If he were to do anything to the food, it would be to add some drug that would incapacitate us while he had us moved wherever he wanted. It’s the control that he loves,” she added, still staring at the table, not quite feeling like seeing what was written on Rowan’s or Aedion’s face. “The pain and fear, yes—but the power is what he really thrives on.” Lysandra’s face had lost its softness, her eyes cold and sharp—a reflection of Aelin’s own, no doubt. The only person who could understand, who had also learned firsthand exactly how far that lust for control went. Aelin rose from her seat. “I’ll walk you to your carriage.”

She and Lysandra paused among the stacks of crates in the warehouse.

“Are you ready?” Lysandra asked, crossing her arms.

Aelin nodded. “I’m not sure the debt could ever be paid for what he … what they all did. But it will have to be enough. I’m running out of time.”

Lysandra pursed her lips. “I won’t be able to risk coming here again until afterward.”

“Thank you—for everything.”

“He could still have a few tricks up his sleeve. Be on your guard.”

“And you be on yours.”

“You’re not … mad that I didn’t tell you?”

“Your secret could get you killed just as easily as mine, Lysandra. I just felt … I don’t know. If anything, I wondered if I’d done something wrong, something to make you not trust me enough to tell me.”

“I wanted to—I’ve been dying to.”

Aelin believed her. “You risked those Valg guards for me—for Aedion that day we rescued him,” Aelin said. “They’d probably be beside themselves if they learned there was a shifter in this city.” And that night at the Pits, when she’d kept turning away from the Valg and hiding behind Arobynn … It had been to avoid their notice. “You have to be insane.”

“Even before I knew who you were, Aelin, I knew that what you were working toward … It was worth it.”

“What is?” Her throat tightened.

“A world where people like me don’t have to hide.” Lysandra turned away, but Aelin grabbed her by the hand. Lysandra smiled a bit. “Times like these, I wish I had your particular skill set instead.”

“Would you do it if you could? About two nights from now, I mean.”

Lysandra gently let go of her hand. “I’ve thought about it every single day since Wesley died. I would do it, and gladly. But I don’t mind if you do it. You won’t hesitate. I find that comforting, somehow.”

The invitation arrived by street urchin at ten o’clock the next morning.

Aelin stared at the cream-colored envelope on the table before the fireplace, its red wax seal imprinted with crossed daggers. Aedion and Rowan, peering over her shoulders, studied the box it had come with. Both males sniffed—and frowned.

“It smells like almonds,” Aedion said.

She pulled out the card. A formal invitation for dinner tomorrow at eight—for her and two guests—and a request for the favor owed to him.

His patience was at an end. But in typical Arobynn fashion, dumping the demon at his doorstep wouldn’t be enough. No—she’d deliver it on his terms.

The dinner was late enough in the day to give her time to stew.

There was a note at the end of the invitation, in an elegant yet efficient scrawl.

A gift—and one I hope you’ll wear tomorrow night.

She chucked the card onto the table and waved a hand to Aedion or Rowan to open the box as she walked to the window and looked out toward the castle. It was blindingly bright in the morning sun, glimmering as though it had been crafted from pearl and gold and silver.

The slither of ribbon, the thud of the box lid opening, and—

“What the hell is that?”

She glanced over her shoulder. Aedion held a large glass bottle in his hands, full of amber liquid.

She said flatly, “Perfumed skin oil.”

“Why does he want you to wear it?” Aedion asked too quietly.

She looked out the window again. Rowan stalked over and perched on the armchair behind her, a steady force at her back. Aelin said, “It’s just another move in the game we’ve been playing.”