Empire of Storms
Page 20

His legs buckled, and he braced a tan hand against the ancient stone wall as he shot her a glare over a broad shoulder. A glare.
“Do you not know death when you see it?” she hissed, low and vicious.
“I have seen death, and worse,” he said, those sapphire eyes frozen as he surveyed her from head to armored boot-tip and back again. “The death you’d offer is kind compared to that.”
It struck something in her, but the king was already limping down the stairs, a hand braced on the wall. Moving so damn slowly while that poison worked its way out of him, his magic surely battling with everything it had to keep him on this side of life.
The door at the base of the tower shattered.
Dorian halted at the four Yellowlegs sentinels who rushed in, snarling up the hollow center of the tower. The witches paused, blinking at their Wing Leader.
Wind-Cleaver twitched in her hand. Kill him—kill him now, before they could spread the word that she’d been spotted with him … Shit, shit, shit.
Manon didn’t have to decide. In a whirlwind of steel, the Yellowlegs died before they could turn toward the warrior who exploded through the doorway.
Silver hair, tattooed face and neck, and slightly pointed ears. The source of that wind.
Dorian swore, staggering down a step, but the Fae warrior’s eyes were on her. Only lethal rage flickered there.
The air in Manon’s throat choked away into nothing.
A strangled sound came out of her, and she stumbled back, clawing at her throat as if she could carve an airway. But the male’s magic held firm.
He’d kill her for what she’d tried to do to his queen. For the arrow Asterin had shot, meaning to strike the queen’s heart. An arrow he had jumped in front of.
Manon crashed to her knees. The king was instantly at her side, studying her for a heartbeat before he roared down the stairs, “NO!”
That was all it took. Air flooded her mouth, her lungs, and Manon gasped, back arching as she drank it in.
Her kind had no magical shields against attacks like that. Only when most desperate, most enraged, could a witch summon the core of magic in her—with devastating consequences. Even the most bloodthirsty and soulless of them only whispered of that act: the Yielding.
Dorian’s face swam in her watery vision. Manon still gasped for that fresh, lifesaving air as he said, “Find me when you change your mind, Blackbeak.”
Then the king was gone.
 
 
8

Rowan Whitethorn had flown without food or water or rest for two days. He’d still reached Rifthold too late.
The capital was in chaos under the claws of the witches and their wyverns. He’d seen enough cities fall over the centuries to know that this one was done for.
Even if the people rallied, it would only be to meet their deaths head-first. The witches had already brought down Aelin’s glass wall. Another calculated move by Erawan.
It had been an effort to leave the innocent to fight on their own, to race hard and fast for the stone castle and the king’s tower. He had one order, given to him by his queen.
He’d still come too late—but not without a glimmer of hope.
Dorian Havilliard stumbled as they hurried down the castle hallway, Rowan’s keen ears and sense of smell keeping them from areas where the fighting raged. If the secret tunnels were watched, if they could not reach the sewers … Rowan calculated plan after plan. None ended well.
“This way,” the king panted. It was the first thing Dorian had said since rushing down the stairs. They were in a residential part of the palace Rowan had only seen from his own scouting outside—in hawk form. The queen’s quarters. “There’s a secret exit from my mother’s bedroom.”
The pale white doors to the queen’s suite were locked.
Rowan blasted through them with half a thought, wood splintering and impaling the lavish furniture, the art on the walls. Baubles and valuables shattered. “Sorry,” Rowan said to the king—not sounding like it at all.
His magic flickered, a distant flutter to let him know it was draining. Two days of riding the winds at breakneck speed, then fighting off those wyverns outside, had taken its toll.
Dorian surveyed the casual damage. “Someone would have done it anyway.” No feeling, no sorrow behind it. He hurried through the room, limping a bit. If the king had possessed a fraction less magic, he might have succumbed to the wyvern’s venomous tail.
Dorian reached a large, gilded portrait of a beautiful auburn-haired young woman with a sapphire-eyed babe in her arms.
The king looked at it for a heartbeat longer than necessary, enough to tell Rowan everything. But Dorian hauled the painting toward him. It pulled away to reveal a small trapdoor.
Rowan saw to it that the king went inside first, candle in hand, before using his magic to float the painting back into its resting place, then shutting the door behind them.
The hall was cramped, the stones dusty. But the wind ahead whispered of open spaces, of dampness and mold. Rowan sent a tendril of magic to probe the stairs they now strode down and the many halls ahead. No sign of the cave-in from when they’d destroyed the clock tower. No signs of enemies lying in wait, or the corrupt reek of the Valg and their beasts. A small mercy.
His Fae ears picked up the muffled screams and shouts of the dying above them.
“I should stay,” Dorian said softly.
A gift of the king’s magic, then—the enhanced hearing. Raw magic that could grant him any gifts: ice, flame, healing, heightened senses and strength. Perhaps shape-shifting, if he tried.
“You are more useful to your people alive,” Rowan said, his voice rough against the stones. Exhaustion nagged at him, but he shoved it aside. He’d rest when they were safe.
The king didn’t respond.
Rowan said, “I have seen many cities fall. I have seen entire kingdoms fall. And the destruction I saw as I flew in was thorough enough that even with your considerable gifts, there is nothing you could have done.” He wasn’t entirely sure what they’d do if that destruction were brought to Orynth’s doorstep. Or why Erawan was waiting to do it. He’d think about that later.
“I should die with them,” was the king’s answer.
They reached the bottom of the stairs, the passage now widening into breathable chambers. Rowan again snaked his magic through the many tunnels and stairs. The one to the right suggested a sewer entrance lay at its bottom. Good.
“I was sent here to keep you from doing just that,” Rowan said at last.
The king glanced over his shoulder at him, wincing a bit as the motion stretched his still-healing skin. Where Rowan suspected a gaping wound had been minutes before, now only an angry red scar peeked through the side of his torn jacket. Dorian said, “You were going to kill her.”
He knew whom the king meant. “Why did you tell me not to?”
So the king told him of the encounter as they descended deeper into the castle’s bowels. “I wouldn’t trust her,” Rowan said after Dorian had finished, “but perhaps the gods will throw us a bone. Perhaps the Blackbeak heir will join our cause.”
If her crimes weren’t discovered first. But even if they only had thirteen witches and their wyverns, if that coven was the most skilled of all the Ironteeth … it could mean the difference between Orynth falling or standing against Erawan.