Текст книги "Queen of Shadows"
Автор книги: Sarah J. Maas
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Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 38 страниц)
“I want you to do lots of things to me,” the prince said, raking his eyes along the witch’s body.
The humanity was gone again. She’d imagined it. The way the king had acted … That was a man who held pure control over his son, confident that there was no struggle inside.
A soft, joyless laugh, and then the Wing Leader released Dorian’s collar. Her red cloak flowed around her on a phantom wind as she stepped back. “Come find me again, Prince, and we’ll see about that.”
A Valg prince inhabited Dorian—but Aelin’s nose did not bleed in its presence, and there was no creeping fog of darkness. Had the king muted its powers so his son could deceive the world around him? Or was that battle still being waged inside the prince’s mind?
Now—they had to move now, while the Matron and the king remained in that painted wagon.
Rowan cupped his hands to his mouth and signaled with a bird’s call, so lifelike that none of the guards shifted. But across the clearing, Aedion and Nesryn heard, and understood.
She didn’t know how they managed to accomplish it, but a minute later, the wyverns of the High Witch’s coven were roaring with alarm, the trees shuddering with the sound. Every guard and sentinel turned toward the racket, away from the prison wagon.
It was all the distraction Aelin needed.
She’d spent two weeks in one of those wagons. She knew the bars of the little window, knew the hinges and the locks. And Rowan, fortunately, knew exactly how to dispatch the three guards stationed at the back door without making a sound.
She didn’t dare breathe too loudly as she climbed the few steps to the back of the wagon, pulled out her lock-picking kit, and set to work. One look over here, one shift of the wind—
There—the lock sprang open, and she eased back the door, bracing for squeaky hinges. By some god’s mercy, it made no sound, and the wyverns went on bellowing.
Lysandra was curled against the far corner, bloody and dirty, her short nightgown torn and her bare legs bruised.
No collar. No ring on either hand.
Aelin bit back her cry of relief and flicked her fingers to tell the courtesan to hurry—
On near-silent feet, Lysandra hurtled past her, right into the speckled brown-and-green cloak Rowan was holding out. Two heartbeats later she was down the steps and into the brush. Another beat, and the dead guards were inside the wagon with the door locked. Aelin and Rowan slipped back into the forest amid the roars of the wyverns.
Lysandra was shivering where she knelt in the thicket, Chaol before her, inspecting her wounds. He mouthed to Aelin that she was fine and helped the courtesan rise to her feet before hauling her deeper into the woods.
It had taken less than two minutes—and thank the gods, because a moment later the painted wagon’s door was flung open and the Matron and king stormed out to see what the noise was about.
A few paces from Aelin, Rowan monitored every step, every breath their enemy took. There was a flash of movement beside her, and then Aedion and Nesryn were there, dirty and panting, but alive. The grin on Aedion’s face faltered as he peered back at the clearing behind them.
The king stalked to the heart of the clearing, demanding answers.
Butchering bastard.
And for a moment, they were again in Terrasen, at that dinner table in her family’s castle, where the king had eaten her family’s food, drunk their finest wine, and then he’d tried to shatter her mind.
Aedion’s eyes met hers, his body trembling with restraint—waiting for her order.
She knew she might live to regret it, but Aelin shook her head. Not here—not now. There were too many variables, and too many players on the board. They had Lysandra. It was time to go.
The king told his son to get onto his horse and barked orders to the others as the Wing Leader backed away from the prince with a casual, lethal grace. The Matron waited across the clearing, her voluminous black robes billowing despite her stillness.
Aelin prayed that she and her companions would never run into the Matron—at least not without an army behind them.
Whatever the king had seen inside the painted wagon had been important enough that they hadn’t risked letters about its specific details.
Dorian mounted his horse, his face cold and empty.
I’ll come back for you, she’d promised him. She had not thought it would be in this way.
The king’s party departed with eerie silence and efficiency, seemingly unaware that they were now missing three of their own. The stench of the Valg faded as they vanished, cleared away by a brisk wind as if Oakwald itself wanted to wipe away any trace.
Headed in the opposite direction, the witches prowled into the trees, lugging the wagon behind them with inhuman strength, until only the Wing Leader and her horrifying grandmother remained in the clearing.
The blow happened so fast that Aelin couldn’t detect it. Even Aedion flinched.
The smack reverberated through the forest, and the Wing Leader’s face snapped to the side to reveal four lines of blue blood now running down her cheek.
“Insolent fool,” the Matron hissed. Lingering near the trees, the beautiful, golden-haired lieutenant observed every movement the Matron made—so intensely that Aelin wondered if she would go for the Matron’s throat. “Do you wish to cost me everything?”
“Grandmother, I sent you letters—”
“I received your whining, sniveling letters. And I burned them. You are under orders to obey. Did you think my silence was not intentional? Do as the duke says.”
“How can you allow these—”
Another strike—four more lines bleeding down the witch’s face. “You dare question me? Do you think yourself as good as a High Witch, now that you’re Wing Leader?”
“No, Matron.” There was no sign of that cocky, taunting tone of minutes before; only cool, lethal rage. A killer by birth and training. But the golden eyes turned toward the painted wagon—a silent question.
The Matron leaned in, her rusted iron teeth within shredding distance of her granddaughter’s throat. “Ask it, Manon. Ask what’s inside that wagon.”
The golden-haired witch by the trees was ramrod straight.
But the Wing Leader—Manon—bowed her head. “You’ll tell me when it’s necessary.”
“Go look. Let’s see if it meets my granddaughter’s standards.”
With that, the Matron strode into the trees, the second coven of witches now waiting for her.
Manon Blackbeak didn’t wipe away the blue blood sliding down her face as she walked up the steps of the wagon, pausing on the landing for only a heartbeat before entering the gloom beyond.
It was as good a sign as any to get the hell out. With Aedion and Nesryn guarding their backs, Aelin and Rowan hurried for the spot where Chaol and Lysandra would be waiting. Not without magic would she take on the king and Dorian. She didn’t have a death wish—either for herself or her friends.
She found Lysandra standing with a hand braced against a tree, wide-eyed, breathing hard.
Chaol was gone.
59 
The demon seized control the moment the man who wielded the collar returned. It shoved him back into that pit of memory until he was the one screaming again, until he was small and broken and fragmented.
But those golden eyes lingered.
Come find me again, Prince.
A promise—a promise of death, of release.
Come find me again.
The words soon faded, swallowed up by screaming and blood and the demon’s cold fingers running over his mind. But the eyes lingered—and that name.
Manon.
Manon.
Chaol couldn’t let the king take Dorian back to the castle. He might never get this chance again.
He had to do it now. Had to kill him.
Chaol hurtled through the brush as quietly as he could, sword out, bracing himself.
A dagger through the eye—a dagger, and then—
Talking from ahead, along with the rustling of leaves and wood.
Chaol neared the party, beginning to pray, beginning to beg for forgiveness—for what he was about to do and for how he had run. He’d kill the king later; let that kill be his last. But this would be the kill that broke him.
He drew his dagger, cocking his arm. Dorian had been directly behind the king. One throw, to knock the prince off the horse, then a sweep of his sword, and it could be over. Aelin and the others could deal with the aftermath; he’d already be dead.
Chaol broke through the trees into a field, the dagger a burning weight in his hand.
It was not the king’s party that stood there in the tall grass and sunlight.
Thirteen witches and their wyverns turned to him.
And smiled.
Aelin ran through the trees as Rowan tracked Chaol by scent alone.
If he got them killed, if he got them hurt—
They’d left Nesryn to guard Lysandra, ordering them to head for the forest across the nearby temple ravine and to wait under an outcropping of stones. Before herding Lysandra between the trees, Nesryn had tightly grabbed Aelin’s arm and said, “Bring him back.”
Aelin had only nodded before bolting.
Rowan was a streak of lightning through the trees, so much faster than her when she was stuck in this body. Aedion sprinted close behind him. She ran as quickly as she could, but—
The path veered away, and Chaol had taken the wrong fork. Where the hell had Chaol even been going?
She could scarcely draw breath fast enough. Then light flooded in through a break in the trees—the other side of the wide meadow.
Rowan and Aedion stood a few feet into the swaying grass, their swords out—but downcast.
She saw why a heartbeat later.
Not thirty feet from them, Chaol’s lip bled down his chin as the white-haired witch held him against her, iron nails digging into his throat. The prison wagon was open beyond them to reveal the three dead soldiers inside.
The twelve witches behind the Wing Leader were all grinning with anticipatory delight as they took in Rowan and Aedion, then her.
“What’s this?” the Wing Leader said, a killing light in her golden eyes. “Spies? Rescuers? Where did you take our prisoner?”
Chaol struggled, and she dug her nails in farther. He stiffened. A trickle of blood leaked down his neck and onto his tunic.
Oh, gods. Think—think, think, think.
The Wing Leader shifted those burnt-gold eyes to Rowan.
“Your kind,” the Wing Leader mused, “I have not seen for a time.”
“Let the man go,” Rowan said.
Manon’s smile revealed a row of flesh-shredding iron teeth, far, far too close to Chaol’s neck. “I don’t take orders from Fae bastards.”
“Let him go,” Rowan said too softly. “Or it will be the last mistake you make, Wing Leader.”
In the field behind them, the wyverns were stirring, their tails lashing, wings shifting.
The white-haired witch peered at Chaol, whose breathing had turned ragged. “The king is not too far down the road. Perhaps I should hand you over to him.” The cuts on her cheeks, scabbed in blue, were like brutal war paint. “He’ll be furious to learn you stole his prisoner from me. Maybe you’ll appease him, boy.”
Aelin and Rowan shared all of one look before she stepped up to his side, drawing Goldryn. “If you want a prize to give to the king,” Aelin said, “then take me.”
“Don’t,” Chaol gasped out.
The witch and all twelve of her sentinels now fixed their immortal, deadly attention on Aelin.
Aelin dropped Goldryn into the grass and lifted her hands. Aedion snarled in warning.
“Why should I bother?” the Wing Leader said. “Perhaps we’ll take you all to the king.”
Aedion’s sword lifted slightly. “You can try.”
Aelin carefully approached the witch, her hands still up. “You enter into a fight with us, and you and your companions will die.”
The Wing Leader looked her up and down. “Who are you.” An order—not a question.
“Aelin Galathynius.”
Surprise—and perhaps something else, something Aelin couldn’t identify—sparked in the Wing Leader’s golden eyes. “The Queen of Terrasen.”
Aelin bowed, not daring to take her attention off the witch. “At your service.”
Only three feet separated her from the Blackbeak heir.
The witch sliced a glance at Chaol, and then at Aedion and Rowan. “Your court?”
“What’s it to you?”
The Wing Leader studied Aedion again. “Your brother?”
“My cousin, Aedion. Almost as pretty as me, wouldn’t you say?”
The witch didn’t smile.
But Aelin was now near enough, so close that the spatters of Chaol’s blood lay in the grass before the tip of her boots.
The Queen of Terrasen.
Elide’s hope had not been misplaced.
Even if the young queen was now toeing the dirt and grass, unable to keep still while she bargained for the man’s life.
Behind her, the Fae warrior observed every flicker of movement.
He’d be the deadly one—the one to look out for.
It had been fifty years since she’d fought a Fae warrior. Bedded him, then fought him. He’d left the bones of her arm in pieces.
She’d just left him in pieces.
But he had been young, and arrogant, and barely trained.
This male … He might very well be capable of killing at least a few of her Thirteen if she so much as harmed a hair on the queen’s head. And then there was the golden-haired one—as large as the Fae male, but possessing his cousin’s bright arrogance and honed wildness. He might be problematic, if left alive too long.
The queen kept fidgeting her foot in the grass. She couldn’t be more than twenty. And yet, she moved like a warrior, too—or she had, until the incessant shifting around. But she halted the movement, as if realizing that it gave away her nerves, her inexperience. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction for Manon to detect the queen’s true level of fear. “Well, Wing Leader?”
Would the king put a collar around her fair neck, as he had the prince’s? Or would he kill her? It made no difference. She would be a prize the king would welcome.
Manon shoved away the captain, sending him stumbling toward the queen. Aelin reached out with an arm, nudging him to the side—behind her. Manon and the queen stared at each other.
No fear in her eyes—in her pretty, mortal face.
None.
It’d be more trouble than it was worth.
Manon had bigger things to consider, anyway. Her grandmother approved. Approved of the breeding, the breaking of the witches.
Manon needed to get into the sky, needed to lose herself in cloud and wind for a few hours. Days. Weeks.
“I have no interest in prisoners or battling today,” Manon said.
The Queen of Terrasen gave her a grin. “Good.”
Manon turned away, barking at her Thirteen to get to their mounts.
“I suppose,” the queen went on, “that makes you smarter than Baba Yellowlegs.”
Manon stopped, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing of the grass or sky or trees.
Asterin whirled. “What do you know of Baba Yellowlegs?”
The queen gave a low chuckle, despite the warning growl from the Fae warrior.
Slowly, Manon looked over her shoulder.
The queen tugged apart the lapels of her tunic, revealing a necklace of thin scars as the wind shifted.
The scent—iron and stone and pure hatred—hit Manon like a rock to the face. Every Ironteeth witch knew the scent that forever lingered on those scars: Witch Killer.
Perhaps Manon would lose herself in blood and gore instead.
“You’re carrion,” Manon said, and lunged.
Only to slam face-first into an invisible wall.
And then freeze entirely.
“Run,” Aelin breathed, snatching up Goldryn and bolting for the trees. The Wing Leader was frozen in place, her sentinels wide-eyed as they rushed to her.
Chaol’s human blood wouldn’t hold the spell for long.
“The ravine,” Aedion said, not looking back from where he sprinted ahead with Chaol toward the temple.
They hurtled through the trees, the witches still in the meadow, still trying to break the spell that had trapped their Wing Leader.
“You,” Rowan said as he ran beside her, “are one very lucky woman.”
“Tell me that again when we’re out of here,” she panted, leaping over a fallen tree.
A roar of fury set the birds scattering from the trees, and Aelin ran faster. Oh, the Wing Leader was pissed. Really, really pissed.
Aelin hadn’t believed for one moment that the witch would have let them walk away without a fight. She had needed to buy whatever time they could get.
The trees cleared, revealing a barren stretch of land jutting toward the deep ravine and the temple perched on the spit of rock in the center. On the other side, Oakwald sprawled onward.
Connected only by two chain-and-wood bridges, it was the sole way across the ravine for miles. And with the dense foliage of Oakwald blocking the wyverns, it was the only way to escape the witches, who would no doubt pursue on foot.
“Hurry,” Rowan shouted as they made for the crumbling temple ruins.
The temple was small enough that not even the priestesses had dwelled here. The only decorations on the stone island were five weather-stained pillars and a crumbling, domed roof. Not even an altar—or at least one that had survived the centuries.
Apparently, people had given up on Temis long before the King of Adarlan came along.
She just prayed that the bridges on either side—
Aedion hurled himself to a stop before the first footbridge, Chaol thirty paces behind, Aelin and Rowan following. “Secure,” Aedion said. Before she could bark a warning, he thundered across.
The bridge bounced and swayed, but held—held even as her damn heart stopped. Then Aedion was at the temple island, the single, thin pillar of rock carved out by the rushing river flowing far, far below. He waved Chaol on. “One at a time,” he ordered. Beyond him the second bridge waited.
Chaol hurried through the stone pillars that flanked the entrance to the first bridge, the thin iron chains on the sides writhing as the bridge bounced. He kept upright, flying toward the temple, faster than she’d ever seen him run during all those morning exercises through the castle grounds.
Then Aelin and Rowan were at the columns, and– “Don’t even try to argue,” Rowan hissed, shoving her ahead of him.
Gods above, that was a wicked drop beneath them. The roar of the river was barely a whisper.
But she ran—ran because Rowan was waiting, and there were the witches breaking through the trees with Fae swiftness. The bridge bucked and swayed as she shot over the aging wooden planks. Ahead, Aedion had cleared the second bridge to the other side, and Chaol was now sprinting across it. Faster—she had to go faster. She leaped the final few feet onto the temple rock.
Ahead, Chaol exited the second bridge and drew his blade as he joined Aedion on the grassy cliff beyond, an arrow nocked in her cousin’s bow—aimed at the trees behind her. Aelin lunged up the few stairs onto the bald temple platform. The entire circular space was barely more than thirty feet across, bordered on all sides by a sheer plunge—and death.
Temis, apparently, was not the forgiving sort.
She twisted to look behind. Rowan was running across the bridge, so fast that the bridge hardly moved, but—
Aelin swore. The Wing Leader had reached the posts, flinging herself over and jumping through the air to land a third of the way down the bridge. Even Aedion’s warning shot went long, the arrow imbedding where any mortal should have landed. But not a witch. Holy burning hell.
“Go,” Rowan roared at Aelin, but she palmed her fighting knives, bending her knees as—
As an arrow fired by the golden-haired lieutenant shot for Aelin from the other side of the ravine.
Aelin twisted to avoid it, only to find a second arrow from the witch already there, anticipating her maneuver.
A wall of muscle slammed into her, shielding her and shoving her to the stones.
And the witch’s arrow went clean through Rowan’s shoulder.
60
For a moment, the world stopped.
Rowan slammed onto the temple stones, his blood spraying on the aging rock.
Aelin’s scream echoed down the ravine.
But then he was up again, running and bellowing at her to go. Beneath the dark arrow protruding through his shoulder, blood already soaked his tunic, his skin.
If he had been one inch farther behind, it would have hit his heart.
Not forty paces down the bridge, the Wing Leader closed in on them. Aedion rained arrows on her sentinels with preternatural precision, keeping them at bay by the tree line.
Aelin wrapped an arm around Rowan and they raced across the temple stones, his face paling as the wound gushed blood. She might have still been screaming, or sobbing—there was such a roaring silence in her.
Her heart—it had been meant for her heart.
And he had taken that arrow for her.
The killing calm spread through her like hoarfrost. She’d kill them all. Slowly.
They reached the second bridge just as Aedion’s barrage of arrows halted, his quiver no doubt emptied. She shoved Rowan onto the planks. “Run,” she said.
“No—”
“Run.”
It was a voice that she’d never heard herself use—a queen’s voice—that came out, along with the blind yank she made on the blood oath that bound them together.
His eyes flashed with fury, but his body moved as though she’d compelled him. He staggered across the bridge, just as—
Aelin whirled, drawing Goldryn and ducking just as the Wing Leader’s sword swiped for her head.
It hit stone, the pillar groaning, but Aelin was already moving—not toward the second bridge but back toward the first one, on the witches’ side.
Where the other witches, without Aedion’s arrows to block them, were now racing from the cover of the woods.
“You,” the Wing Leader growled, attacking again. Aelin rolled—right through Rowan’s blood—again dodging the fatal blow. She uncurled to her feet right in front of the first bridge, and two swings of Goldryn had the chains snapping.
The witches skidded to a stop at the lip of the ravine as the bridge collapsed, cutting them off.
The air behind her shifted, and Aelin moved—but not fast enough.
Cloth and flesh tore in her upper arm, and she barked out a cry as the witch’s blade sliced her.
She whirled, bringing Goldryn up for the second blow.
Steel met steel and sparked.
Rowan’s blood was at her feet, smeared across the temple stones.
Aelin Galathynius looked at Manon Blackbeak over their crossed swords and let out a low, vicious snarl.
Queen, savior, enemy, Manon didn’t give a shit.
She was going to kill the woman.
Their laws demanded it; honor demanded it.
Even if she hadn’t slaughtered Baba Yellowlegs, Manon would have killed her just for that spell she’d used to freeze her in place.
That was what she’d been doing with her feet. Etching some foul spell with the man’s blood.
And now she was going to die.
Wind-Cleaver pressed against the queen’s blade. But Aelin held her ground and hissed, “I’m going to rip you to shreds.”
Behind them, the Thirteen gathered on the ravine’s edge, cut off. One whistle from Manon had half of them scrambling for the wyverns. She didn’t get to sound the second whistle.
Faster than a human had a right to be, the queen swept out a leg, sending Manon tripping back. Aelin didn’t hesitate; she flipped the sword in her hand and lunged.
Manon deflected the blow, but Aelin got past her guard and pinned her, slamming her head against stones that were damp with the Fae warrior’s blood. Splotches of dark bloomed in her vision.
Manon drew in breath for the second whistle—the one to call off Asterin and her arrows.
She was interrupted by the queen slamming her fist into Manon’s face.
Black splintered further across her vision—but she twisted, twisted with every bit of her immortal strength, and they went flipping across the temple floor. The drop loomed, and then—
An arrow whizzed right for the queen’s exposed back as she landed atop Manon.
Manon twisted again, and the arrow bounced off the pillar instead. She threw Aelin from her, but the queen was instantly on her feet again, nimble as a cat.
“She’s mine,” Manon barked across the ravine to Asterin.
The queen laughed, hoarse and cold, circling as Manon got to her feet.
Across the other side of the ravine, the two males were helping the wounded Fae warrior off the bridge, and the golden-haired warrior charged—
“Don’t you dare, Aedion,” Aelin said, throwing out a hand in the male’s direction.
He froze halfway across the bridge. Impressive, Manon admitted, to have them under her command so thoroughly.
“Chaol, keep an eye on him,” the queen barked.
Then, holding Manon’s gaze, Aelin sheathed her mighty blade across her back, the giant ruby in the pommel catching in the midday light.
“Swords are boring,” the queen said, and palmed two fighting knives.
Manon sheathed Wind-Cleaver along her own back. She flicked her wrists, the iron nails shooting out. She cracked her jaw, and her fangs descended. “Indeed.”
The queen looked at the nails, the teeth, and grinned.
Honestly—it was a shame that Manon had to kill her.
Manon Blackbeak lunged, as swift and deadly as an adder.
Aelin darted back, dodging each swipe of those lethal iron nails. For her throat, for her face, for her guts. Back, and back, circling around the pillars.
It was only a matter of minutes before the wyverns arrived.
Aelin jabbed with her daggers, and the witch sidestepped her, only to slash with her nails, right at Aelin’s neck.
Aelin spun aside, but the nails grazed her skin. Blood warmed her neck and shoulders.
The witch was so damn fast. And one hell of a fighter.
But Rowan and the others were across the second bridge.
Now she just had to get there, too.
Manon Blackbeak feinted left and slashed right.
Aelin ducked and rolled aside.
The pillar shuddered as those iron claws gouged four lines deep into the stone.
Manon hissed. Aelin made to drive her dagger into her spine; the witch lashed out with a hand and wrapped it clean around the blade.
Blue blood welled, but the witch bore down on the blade until it snapped into three pieces in her hand.
Gods above.
Aelin had the sense to go in low with her other dagger, but the witch was already there—and Aedion’s shout rang in her ears as Manon’s knee drove up into her gut.
The air knocked from her in a whoosh, but Aelin kept her grip on the dagger, even as the witch threw her into another pillar.
The stone column rocked against the blow, and Aelin’s head cracked, agony arcing through her, but—
A slash, directly for her face.
Aelin ducked.
Again, the stone shuddered beneath the impact.
Aelin squeezed air into her body. Move—she had to keep moving, smooth as a stream, smooth as the wind of her carranam, bleeding and hurt across the way.
Pillar to pillar, she retreated, rolling and ducking and dodging.
Manon swiped and slashed, slamming into every column, a force of nature in her own right.
And then back around, again and again, pillar after pillar absorbing the blows that should have shredded her face, her neck. Aelin slowed her steps, let Manon think she was tiring, growing clumsy—
“Enough, coward,” Manon hissed, making to tackle Aelin to the ground.
But Aelin swung around a pillar and onto the thin lip of bare rock beyond the temple platform, the drop looming, just as Manon collided with the column.
The pillar groaned, swayed—and toppled to the side, hitting the pillar beside it, sending them both cracking to the ground.
Along with the domed roof.
Manon didn’t even have time to lunge out of the way as the marble crashed down on her.
One of the few remaining witches on the other side of the ravine screamed.
Aelin was already running, even as the rock island itself began trembling, as if whatever ancient force held this temple together had died the moment the roof crumbled.
Shit.
Aelin sprinted for the second bridge, dust and debris burning her eyes and lungs.
The island jolted with a thunderous crack, so violent that Aelin stumbled. But there were the posts and the bridge beyond, Aedion waiting on the other side—an arm held out, beckoning.
The island swayed again—wider and longer this time.
It was going to collapse beneath them.
There was a flicker of blue and white, a flash of red cloth, a glimmer of iron—
A hand and a shoulder, grappling with a fallen column.
Slowly, painfully, Manon heaved herself onto a slab of marble, her face coated in pale dust, blue blood leaking down her temple.
Across the ravine, cut off entirely, the golden-haired witch was on her knees. “Manon!”
I don’t think you’ve ever groveled for anything in your life, Wing Leader, the king had said.
But there was a Blackbeak witch on her knees, begging whatever gods they worshipped; and there was Manon Blackbeak, struggling to rise as the temple island crumbled away.
Aelin took a step onto the bridge.
Asterin—that was the golden-haired witch’s name. She screamed for Manon again, a plea to rise, to survive.
The island jolted.
The remaining bridge—the bridge to her friends, to Rowan, to safety—still held.
Aelin had felt it before: a thread in the world, a current running between her and someone else. She’d felt it one night, years ago, and had given a young healer the money to get the hell out of this continent. She’d felt the tug—and had decided to tug back.
Here it was again, that tug—toward Manon, whose arms buckled as she collapsed to the stone.
Her enemy—her new enemy, who would have killed her and Rowan if given the chance. A monster incarnate.
But perhaps the monsters needed to look out for each other every now and then.
“Run!” Aedion roared from across the ravine.
So she did.
Aelin ran for Manon, leaping over the fallen stones, her ankle wrenching on loose debris.
The island rocked with her every step, and the sunlight was scalding, as if Mala were holding that island aloft with every last bit of strength the goddess could summon in this land.
Then Aelin was upon Manon Blackbeak, and the witch lifted hate-filled eyes to her. Aelin hauled off stone after stone from her body, the island beneath them buckling.
“You’re too good a fighter to kill,” Aelin breathed, hooking an arm under Manon’s shoulders and hauling her up. The rock swayed to the left—but held. Oh, gods. “If I die because of you, I’ll beat the shit out of you in hell.”
She could have sworn the witch let out a broken laugh as she got to her feet, nearly a dead weight in Aelin’s arms.
“You—should let me die,” Manon rasped as they limped over the rubble.
“I know, I know,” Aelin panted, her sliced arm aching with the weight of the witch it supported. They hurried over the second bridge, the temple rock swaying to the right—stretching the bridge behind them tightly over the drop and the shining river far, far below.
