Empire of Storms
Page 149

Manon told them about the Lock.
About Elena. About the cost the gods demanded of her. Demanded of Aelin.
But it was Elide who then took up the thread, leaning against Lysandra, who was staring at that blood and that shirt as if it were a corpse, telling them what had happened on these dunes. What Aelin had sacrificed.
She told Rowan that he was Aelin’s mate. Told him about Lyria.
She told them about the whipping, and the mask, and the box.
When Elide finished, they were silent. And Lorcan only watched as Aedion turned to Lysandra and snarled, “You knew.”
Lysandra did not flinch. “She asked me—that day on the boat. To help her. She told me the suspected price to banish Erawan and restore the keys. What I needed to do.”
Aedion snarled, “What could you possibly …”
Lysandra lifted her chin.
Rowan breathed, “Aelin would die to forge the new Lock to seal the keys into the gate—to banish Erawan. But no one would know. No one but us. Not while you wore her skin for the rest of your life.”
Aedion dragged a hand through his blood-caked hair. “But any offspring with Rowan wouldn’t look anything like—”
Lysandra’s face was pleading. “You would fix that, Aedion. With me.”
With the golden hair, the Ashryver eyes … If that line bred true, the shifter’s offspring could pass as royal. Aelin wanted Rowan on the throne—but it would be Aedion secretly siring the heirs.
Aedion flinched as if he’d been struck. “And when were you going to reveal this? Before or after I thought I was taking my gods-damned cousin to bed for whatever reason you concocted?”
Lysandra said softly, “I will not apologize to you. I serve her. And I am willing to spend the rest of my life pretending to be her so that her sacrifice isn’t in vain—”
“You can go to hell,” Aedion snapped. “You can go to hell, you lying bitch!”
Lysandra’s answering snarl wasn’t human.
Rowan just took Goldryn from the general and walked toward the sea, the wind tossing his silver hair.
Lorcan rose to his feet, swaying again. But Elide was there.
And there was nothing of the young woman he’d come to know in her pale, taut face. Nothing of her in the raw voice as Elide said to Lorcan, “I hope you spend the rest of your miserable, immortal life suffering. I hope you spend it alone. I hope you live with regret and guilt in your heart and never find a way to endure it.”
Then she was heading for the Thirteen. The golden-haired one held up an arm, and Elide slipped beneath it, entering a sanctuary of wings and claws and teeth.
Lysandra stormed to tend to Gavriel, who had the good sense not to flinch at her still-snarling face, and Lorcan looked to Aedion to find the young general already watching him.
Hatred shone in Aedion’s eyes. Pure hatred. “Even before you got the order to stand down, you did nothing to help her. You summoned Maeve here. I will never forget that.”
Then he was striding for the beach—to where Rowan knelt in the sand.
 
 
Asterin was alive.
The Thirteen were alive. And it was joy in Manon’s heart—joy, she realized, as she beheld those smiling faces and smiled back.
She said to Asterin, all of them standing among their wyverns on a dune overlooking the sea, “How?”
Asterin brushed a hand over Elide’s hair as the girl wept into her shoulder. “Your grandmother’s bitches gave us one hell of a chase, but we managed to gut them. We’ve spent the past month looking for you. But Abraxos found us and seemed to know where you were, so we followed him.” She scratched at some dried blood on her cheek. “And saved your ass, apparently.”
Not soon enough, Manon thought, seeing Elide’s silent tears, the way the humans and Fae were either standing or arguing or just doing nothing.
Not soon enough to stop this. To save Aelin Galathynius.
“What do we do now?” Sorrel asked from where she leaned against her bull’s flank, wrapping up a slice in her forearm.
The Thirteen all looked to Manon, all waited.
She dared to ask, “Did you hear what my grandmother said before … everything?”
“The Shadows told us,” Asterin said, eyes dancing.
“And?”
“And what?” Sorrel grunted. “So you’re half Crochan.”
“Crochan Queen.” And heir to Rhiannon Crochan’s likeness. Had the Ancients noted it?
Asterin shrugged. “Five centuries of pure-blooded Ironteeth couldn’t bring us home. Maybe you can.”
A child not of war … but of peace.
“And will you follow me?” Manon asked them quietly. “To do what needs to be done before we can return to the Wastes?”
Aelin Galathynius had not beseeched Elena for another fate. She had only asked for one thing, one request of the ancient queen:
Will you come with me? For the same reason Manon had now asked them.
As one, the Thirteen lifted their fingers to their brows. As one, they lowered them.
Manon looked toward the sea, her throat tight.
“Aelin Galathynius willingly handed over her freedom so an Ironteeth witch could walk free,” Manon said. Elide straightened, pulling from Asterin’s arms. But Manon continued, “We owe her a life debt. And more than that … It is time that we became better than our foremothers. We are all children of this land.”
“What are you going to do?” Asterin breathed, her eyes so bright.
Manon looked behind them. To the north.
“I am going to find the Crochans. And I am going to raise an army with them. For Aelin Galathynius. And her people. And for ours.”
“They’ll never trust us,” Sorrel said.
Asterin drawled, “Then we’ll have to just be our charming selves.”
Some of them smirked; some of them shifted on their feet.
Manon said again to her Thirteen, “Will you follow me?”
And when they all touched their fingers to their brows again, Manon returned the gesture.
 
 
Rowan and Aedion were sitting silently on the beach. Gavriel had recovered enough from the shock of the oath’s severing that he and Lorcan were now standing atop the bluff, talking quietly; Lysandra was sitting alone, in ghost leopard form, amongst the waving seagrasses; and Dorian was just … watching them from the apex of a dune.
What Aelin had done … what she’d lied about …
Some of the blood on the ground had dried.
If Aelin was gone, if her life would indeed be the cost if she ever got free …
“Maeve doesn’t have the two keys,” Manon said from Dorian’s side, having crept up silently. Her coven lingered behind her, Elide ensconced within their ranks. “In case you were concerned.”
Lorcan and Gavriel turned toward them. Then Lysandra.
Dorian dared to ask, “Then where are they?”
“I have them,” Manon said simply. “Aelin slid them into my pocket.”
Oh, Aelin. Aelin. She’d worked Maeve into such a frenzy, made the queen so focused on capturing her that she hadn’t thought to confirm if Aelin held the keys before she vanished.
She’d been dealt such a wicked, impossible hand—and yet Aelin had made it count. One last time, she’d made it count.