Текст книги "Queen of Shadows"
Автор книги: Sarah J. Maas
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Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 38 страниц)
69 
Aelin’s black cloak flowed behind her as she led the fallen Captain of the Guard through the shining halls of the palace. Hidden at her back was her father’s sword, its pommel wrapped in black cloth. None of their ten-guard escort bothered to take her weapons.
Why would they, when Celaena Sardothien was weeks early for her expected return, and still loyal to king and crown?
The halls were so quiet. Even the queen’s court was sealed and silent. Rumor had it the queen had been cloistered in the mountains since Aedion’s rescue and had taken half her court with her. The rest had vanished as well, to escape either the rising summer heat—or the horrors that had come to rule their kingdom.
Chaol said nothing, though he put on a good show of looking furious, like a pursued man desperate to find a way back to freedom. No sign of the devastation that had been on his face upon finding his men hanging from the gates.
He jerked against the chains, and she leaned in close. “I don’t think so, Captain,” she purred. Chaol didn’t deign a response.
The guards glanced at her. Wyrdmarks written in Chaol’s blood covered her beneath her clothes, its human scent hopefully masking any hints of her heritage that the Valg might otherwise pick up. There were only two demons in this group—a small mercy.
So they went, up and up, into the glass castle itself.
The halls seemed too bright to contain such evil. The few servants they passed averted their eyes and scurried along. Had everyone fled since Aedion’s rescue?
It was an effort to not look too long at Chaol as they neared the massive red-and-gold glass doors, already open to reveal the crimson-marbled floor of the king’s council room.
Already open to reveal the king, seated on his glass throne.
And Dorian standing beside him.
Their faces.
They were faces that tugged at him.
Human filth, the demon hissed.
The woman—he recognized that face as she yanked back her dark hood and knelt before the dais on which he stood.
“Majesty,” she said. Her hair was shorter than he remembered.
No—he did not remember. He did not know her.
And the man in chains beside her, bloodied and filthy …
Screaming, wind, and—
Enough, the demon snapped.
But their faces—
He did not know those faces.
He did not care.
The King of Adarlan, the murderer of her family, the destroyer of her kingdom, lounged in his glass throne. “Isn’t this an interesting turn of events, Champion.”
She smiled, hoping the cosmetics she’d dabbed around her eyes would mute the turquoise and gold of her irises, and that the drab shade of blond she’d dyed her hair would disguise its near-identical hue with Aedion’s. “Do you want to hear an interesting story, Your Majesty?”
“Does it involve my enemies in Wendlyn being dead?”
“Oh, that, and much, much more.”
“Why has word not arrived, then?”
The ring on his finger seemed to suck in the light. But she could spy no sign of the Wyrdkeys, couldn’t feel them here, as she’d felt the presence of the one in the amulet.
Chaol was pale, and kept glancing at the floor of the room.
This was where everything had happened. Where they’d murdered Sorscha. Where Dorian had been enslaved. Where, once upon a time, she’d signed her soul away to the king under a fake name, a coward’s name.
“Don’t blame me for the piss-poor messengers,” she said. “I sent word the day before I left.” She pulled out two objects from her cloak and looked over her shoulder at the guards, jerking her chin at Chaol. “Watch him.”
She strode to the throne and extended her hand to the king. He reached forward, the reek of him—
Valg. Human. Iron. Blood.
She dropped two rings into his palm. The clink of metal on metal was the only sound.
“The seal rings of the King and Crown Prince of Wendlyn. I’d have brought their heads, but … Immigration officials can get so pissy.”
The king plucked up one of the rings, his face stony. Lysandra’s jeweler had yet again done a stunning job of re-creating the royal crest of Wendlyn and then wearing down the rings until they looked ancient, like heirlooms. “And where were you during Narrok’s attack on Wendlyn?”
“Was I supposed to be anywhere but hunting my prey?”
The king’s black eyes bored into hers.
“I killed them when I could,” she went on, crossing her arms, careful of the hidden blades in the suit. “Apologies for not making it the grand statement you wanted. Next time, perhaps.”
Dorian hadn’t moved a muscle, his features stone-cold above the collar around his neck.
“And how did you wind up with my Captain of the Guard in chains?”
Chaol was only gazing at Dorian, and she didn’t think his distraught, pleading face was an act.
“He was waiting for me at the docks, like a good dog. When I saw that he was without his uniform, I got him to confess to everything. Every last little conspiratorial thing he’s done.”
The king eyed the captain. “Did he, now.”
Aelin avoided the urge to check the grandfather clock ticking in the far corner of the room, or the position of the sun beyond the floor-to-ceiling window. Time. They needed to bide their time a bit longer. But so far, so good.
“I do wonder,” the king mused, leaning back on his throne, “who has been conspiring more: the captain, or you, Champion. Or should I call you Aelin?”
70
This place smelled like death, like hell, like the dark spaces between the stars.
Centuries of training kept Rowan’s steps light, kept him focused on the lethal weight he carried as he and the general crept through the dry, ancient passageway.
The ascending stone path had been gouged by brutal claws, the space so dark that even Rowan’s eyes were failing him. The general trailed close behind, making no sound save for the occasional pebble skittering from beneath his boots.
Aelin would be in the castle by now, the captain in tow as her ticket into the throne room.
Only a few minutes more, if they’d calculated right, and then they could ignite their deadly burden and get the hell out.
Minutes after, he’d be at her side, rife with magic that he’d use to choke the air clean out of the king’s lungs. And then he’d enjoy watching as she burned him alive. Slowly.
Though he knew his satisfaction would pale in comparison to what the general would feel. What every child of Terrasen would feel.
They passed through a door of solid iron that had been peeled back as if massive, clawed hands had ripped it off its hinges. The walkway beyond was smooth stone.
Aedion sucked in a breath at the same moment the pounding struck Rowan’s brain, right between his eyes.
Wyrdstone.
Aelin had warned him of the tower—that the stone had given her a headache, but this …
She had been in her human body then.
It was unbearable, as if his very blood recoiled at the wrongness of the stone.
Aedion cursed, and Rowan echoed it.
But there was a wide sliver in the stone wall ahead, and open air beyond it.
Not daring to breathe too loudly, Rowan and Aedion eased through the crack.
A large, round chamber greeted them, flanked by eight open iron doors. The bottom of the clock tower, if their calculations were correct.
The darkness of the chamber was nearly impenetrable, but Rowan didn’t dare light the torch he’d brought with them. Aedion sniffed, a wet sound. Wet, because—
Blood dribbled down Rowan’s lip and chin. A nosebleed.
“Hurry,” he whispered, setting down his vat at the opposite end of the chamber.
Just a few more minutes.
Aedion stationed his vat of hellfire across from Rowan’s at the chamber entrance. Rowan knelt, his head pounding, worse and worse with each throb.
He kept moving, shoving the pain down as he set the fuse wire and led it over to where Aedion crouched. The dripping of their nosebleeds on the black stone floor was the only sound.
“Faster,” Rowan ordered, and Aedion snarled softly—no longer willing to be annoyed with warnings as a distraction. He didn’t feel like telling the general he’d stopped doing it minutes ago.
Rowan drew his sword, making for the doorway through which they’d entered. Aedion backed toward him, unspooling the joined fuses as he went. They had to be far enough away before they could light it, or else they’d be turned to ash.
He sent up a silent prayer to Mala that Aelin was biding her time—and that the king was too focused on the assassin and the captain to consider sending anyone below.
Aedion reached him, unrolling inch after inch of fuse, the line a white streak through the dark. Rowan’s other nostril began bleeding.
Gods, the smell of this place. The death and reek and misery of it. He could hardly think. It was like having his head in a vise.
They retreated into the tunnel, that fuse their only hope and salvation.
Something dripped onto his shoulder. An ear bleed.
He wiped it away with his free hand.
But it was not blood on his cloak.
Rowan and Aedion went rigid as a low growling filled the passage.
Something on the ceiling moved, then.
Seven somethings.
Aedion dropped the spool and drew his sword.
A piece of fabric—gray, small, worn—dropped from the maw of the creature clinging to the stone ceiling. His cloak—the missing corner of his cloak.
Lorcan had lied.
He hadn’t killed the remaining Wyrdhounds.
He’d just given them Rowan’s scent.
Aelin Ashryver Galathynius faced the King of Adarlan.
“Celaena, Lillian, Aelin,” she drawled, “I don’t particularly care what you call me.”
None of the guards behind them stirred.
She could feel Chaol’s eyes on her, feel the relentless attention of the Valg prince inside Dorian.
“Did you think,” the king said, grinning like a wolf, “that I could not peer inside my son’s mind and ask what he knows, what he saw the day of your cousin’s rescue?”
She hadn’t known, and she certainly hadn’t planned on revealing herself this way. “I’m surprised it took you this long to notice who you’d let in by the front door. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed.”
“So your people might say of you. What was it like, Princess, to climb into bed with my son? Your mortal enemy?” Dorian didn’t so much as blink. “Did you end it with him because of the guilt—or because you’d gained a foothold in my castle and no longer needed him?”
“Is that fatherly concern I detect?”
A low laugh. “Why doesn’t the captain stop pretending that he’s stuck in those manacles and come a bit closer.”
Chaol stiffened. But Aelin gave him a subtle nod.
The king didn’t bother glancing at his guards as he said, “Get out.”
As one, the guards left, sealing the door behind them. The heavy glass groaned shut, the floor shuddering. Chaol’s shackles clattered to the ground, and he flexed his wrists.
“Such traitorous filth, dwelling in my own home. And to think I once had you in chains—once had you so close to execution, and had no idea what prize I instead sentenced to Endovier. The Queen of Terrasen—slave and my Champion.” The king unfurled his fist to look at the two rings in his palm. He chucked them aside. They bounced on the red marble, pinging faintly. “Too bad you don’t have your flames now, Aelin Galathynius.”
Aelin tugged the cloth from the pommel of her father’s blade and drew the Sword of Orynth.
“Where are the Wyrdkeys?”
“At least you’re direct. But what shall you do to me, heir of Terrasen, if I do not tell you?” He gestured to Dorian, and the prince descended the steps of the dais, stopping at the bottom.
Time—she needed time. The tower wasn’t down yet. “Dorian,” Chaol said softly.
The prince didn’t respond.
The king chuckled. “No running today, Captain?”
Chaol leveled his stare at the king, and drew Damaris—Aelin’s gift to him.
The king tapped a finger on the arm of his throne. “What would the noble people of Terrasen say if they knew Aelin of the Wildfire had such a bloody history? If they knew that she had signed her services over to me? What hope would it give them to know that even their long-lost princess was corrupted?”
“You certainly like to hear yourself speak, don’t you?”
The king’s finger stilled on the throne. “I’ll admit that I don’t know how I didn’t see it. You’re the same spoiled child who strutted about her castle. And here I was, thinking I’d helped you. I saw into your mind that day, Aelin Galathynius. You loved your home and your kingdom, but you had such a wish to be ordinary, such a wish for freedom from your crown, even then. Have you changed your mind? I offered you freedom on a platter ten years ago, and yet you wound up a slave anyway. Funny.”
Time, time, time. Let him talk …
“You had the element of surprise then,” Aelin said. “But now we know what power you wield.”
“Do you? Do you understand the cost of the keys? What you must become to use one?”
She tightened her grip on the Sword of Orynth.
“Would you like to go head-to-head with me, then, Aelin Galathynius? To see if the spells you learned, the books you stole from me, will hold out? Little tricks, Princess, compared to the raw power of the keys.”
“Dorian,” Chaol said again. The prince remained fixated on her, a hungry smile now on those sensuous lips.
“Let me demonstrate,” the king said. Aelin braced herself, her gut clenching.
He pointed at Dorian. “Kneel.”
The prince dropped to his knees. She hid her wince at the impact of bone on marble. The king’s brows knotted. A darkness began to build, cracking from the king like forks of lightning.
“No,” Chaol breathed, stepping forward. Aelin grabbed the captain by the arm before he could do something incredibly stupid.
A tendril of night slammed into Dorian’s back and he arched, groaning.
“I think there is more that you know, Aelin Galathynius,” the king said, that too-familiar blackness growing. “Things that perhaps only the heir of Brannon Galathynius might have learned.”
The third Wyrdkey.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Aelin said. The prince’s neck was taut as he panted, as the darkness whipped him.
Once—twice. Lashings.
She knew that pain. “He’s your son—your heir.”
“You forget, Princess,” the king said, “that I have two sons.”
Dorian screamed as another whip of darkness slashed his back. Black lightning flitted across his exposed teeth.
She lunged—and was thrown back by the very wards she’d drawn on her body. An invisible wall of that black pain lay around Dorian now, and his screams became unending.
Like a beast snapped from its leash, Chaol flung himself against it, roaring Dorian’s name, the blood crumbling from the cuff of his jacket with each attempt.
Again. Again. Again.
Dorian was sobbing, darkness pouring out of his mouth, shackling his hands, branding his back, his neck—
Then it vanished.
The prince sagged to the floor, chest heaving. Chaol halted midstrike, his breathing ragged, face drawn.
“Rise,” the king said.
Dorian got to his feet, his black collar gleaming as his chest heaved. “Delicious,” the thing inside the prince said. Bile burned Aelin’s throat.
“Please,” Chaol said hoarsely to the king, and her heart cracked at the word, at the agony and desperation. “Free him. Name your price. I’ll give you anything.”
“Would you hand over your former lover, Captain? I see no use in losing a weapon if I don’t gain one in return.” The king waved a hand toward her. “You destroyed my general and three of my princes. I can think of a few other Valg who are aching to get their claws into you for that—who would very much enjoy the chance to slip into your body. It’s only fair.”
Aelin dared a glance toward the window. The sun climbed higher.
“You came into my family’s home and murdered them in their sleep,” Aelin said. The grandfather clock began chiming twelve. A heartbeat later, the miserable, off-kilter clanging of the clock tower sounded. “It’s only fair,” she said to the king as she backed a step toward the doors, “that I destroy you in return.”
She tugged the Eye of Elena from under her suit. The blue stone glowed like a small star.
Not just a ward against evil.
But a key in its own right, that could be used to unlock Erawan’s tomb.
The king’s eyes went wide and he rose from his throne. “You’ve just made the mistake of your life, girl.”
He might have a point.
The noontime bells were ringing.
Yet the clock tower still stood.
71
Rowan swung his sword and the Wyrdhound fell back, howling as his blade pierced through stone and into the tender flesh beneath. But not enough to keep it down, to kill it. Another Wyrdhound leaped. Where they lunged, Rowan struck.
Side by side, he and Aedion had been pushed against a wall, conceding foot after foot of the passage—driven farther and farther from the spool of fuse Aedion had been forced to drop.
A clanging, miserable noise rang out.
In the span between clangs, Rowan slashed for two different Wyrdhounds, blows that would have disemboweled most creatures.
The clock tower. Noon.
The Wyrdhounds were herding them back, dodging sure-kill blows, keeping out of their reach.
To keep them from getting to the fuse.
Rowan swore and launched into an assault that engaged three of them at once, Aedion flanking him. The Wyrdhounds held their line.
Noon, he had promised Aelin. As the sun began to reach its apex on the solstice, they’d bring the tower crashing down.
The final clang of the clock tower sounded.
Noon had come and gone.
And his Fireheart, his queen, was in that castle above them—left with only her mortal training and wits to keep her alive. Perhaps not for much longer.
The thought was so abhorrent, so outrageous, that Rowan roared his fury, louder than the shrieks of the beasts.
The bellow cost his brother. One creature shot past Rowan’s guard, leaping, and Aedion barked out a curse and staggered back. Rowan smelled Aedion’s blood before he saw it.
It must have been a dinner bell to the Wyrdhounds, that demi-Fae blood. Four of them leaped for the general as one, their maws revealing flesh-shredding stone teeth.
The three others whirled for Rowan, and there was nothing he could do to get to that fuse.
To save the queen who held his heart in her scarred hands.
A few steps ahead of him, Chaol watched Aelin back toward the glass doors, just as they’d planned after seeing his men dead.
The king’s attention was fixed on the Eye of Elena around her neck. She removed it, holding it in a steady hand. “Been looking for this, have you? Poor Erawan, locked in his little tomb for so long.”
It was an effort to hold his position as Aelin kept retreating.
“Where did you find that?” the king seethed.
Aelin reached Chaol, brushing against him, a comfort and a thank-you and a good-bye as she continued past. “Turns out your ancestor didn’t approve of your hobbies. We Galathynius women stick together, you know.”
For the first time in his life, Chaol saw the king’s face go slack. But then the man said, “And did that ancient fool tell you what will happen if you wield the other key you already possess?”
She was so close to the doors. “Let the prince go, or I’ll destroy this right here, and Erawan can stay locked up.” She slid the chain into her pocket.
“Very well,” the king said. He looked at Dorian, who showed no sign of even remembering his own name, despite what the witch had written on the walls of their city. “Go. Retrieve her.”
Darkness surged from Dorian, leaking like blood in water, and Chaol’s head gave a burst of pain as—
Aelin ran, exploding through the glass doors.
Faster than he should be, Dorian raced after her, ice coating the floor, the room. The cold of it knocked the breath from him. But Dorian didn’t glance once in his direction before he was gone.
The king took a step down the dais, his breath clouding in front of him.
Chaol lifted his sword, holding his position between the open doors and the conqueror of their continent.
The king took another step. “More heroic antics? Don’t you ever get bored of them, Captain?”
Chaol did not yield. “You murdered my men. And Sorscha.”
“And a good many more.”
Another step. The king stared over Chaol’s shoulder to the hallway where Aelin and Dorian had vanished.
“It ends now,” Chaol said.
The Valg princes had been lethal in Wendlyn. But when inhabiting Dorian’s body, with Dorian’s magic …
Aelin hurtled down the hallway, glass windows flanking her, marble beneath—nothing but open sky around her.
And behind, charging after her like a black storm, was Dorian.
Ice spread from him, hoarfrost splintering along the windows.
The moment that ice hit her, Aelin knew she would not run another step.
She’d memorized every hallway and stairwell thanks to Chaol’s maps. She pushed herself harder, praying that Chaol bought her time as she neared a narrow flight of stairs and hurled herself up, taking the steps by twos and threes.
Ice cracked along the glass right behind her, and cold bit at her heels.
Faster—faster.
Around and around, up and up she flew. It was past noon. If something had gone wrong with Rowan and Aedion …
She hit the top of the stairs, and ice made the landing so slick that she skidded, going sideways, going down—
She caught herself with a hand against the floor, her skin ripping open on the ice. She slammed into a glass wall and rebounded, then she was running again as the ice closed in around her.
Higher—she had to get higher.
And Chaol, facing the king—
She didn’t let herself think about that. Spears of ice shot out from the walls, narrowly missing her sides.
Her breath was a flame in her throat.
“I told you,” a cold male voice said from behind, not at all winded. Ice spiderwebbed across the windows on either side. “I told you that you would regret sparing me. That I would destroy everything you love.”
She reached a glass-covered bridge that stretched between two of the highest spires. The floor was utterly transparent, so clear that she could see every inch of the plunge to the ground far, far below.
Hoarfrost coated the windows, groaning—
Glass exploded, and a cry shattered from her throat as it sliced into her back.
Aelin veered to the side, for the now-broken window, its too-small iron frame, and the drop beyond.
She flung herself through it.
