Empire of Storms
Page 21

They reached the castle sewers. Even the rats were fleeing through the small stream entrance, as if the bellowing of the wyverns were a death knell.
They passed an archway sealed off by collapsed stones—no doubt from the hellfire eruption this summer.
Aelin’s passageway, Rowan realized with a tug deep in his chest. And a few steps ahead, an old pool of dried blood stained the stones along the water’s edge. A human reek lingered around it, tainted and foul.
“She gutted Archer Finn right there,” Dorian said, following his stare.
Rowan didn’t let himself think about it, or that these fools had unwittingly given an assassin a room that connected to their queen’s chambers.
There was a boat moored to a stone post, its hull almost rotted through, but solid enough. And the grate to the little river snaking past the castle remained open.
Rowan again speared his magic into the world, tasting the air beyond the sewers. No wings cleaved it, no blood scented its path. A quiet, eastern part of the castle. If the witches had been smart, they’d have sentries monitoring every inch of it.
But from the screaming and pleading going on above, Rowan knew the witches were too lost in their bloodlust to think straight. At least for a few minutes.
Rowan jerked his chin to the boat. “Get in.”
Dorian frowned at the mold and rot. “We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t collapse around us.”
“You,” Rowan corrected. “Around you. Not me. Get in.”
Dorian heard his tone and wisely got in. “What are you—”
Rowan yanked off his cloak and threw it over the king. “Lie down, and put that over you.”
Face a bit pale, Dorian obeyed. Rowan snapped the ropes with a flash of his knives.
He shifted, wings flapping loudly enough to inform Dorian what had happened. Rowan’s magic groaned and strained while it pushed what looked like an empty, meandering vessel out of the sewers, as if someone had accidentally loosed it.
Flying through the sewer mouth, he shielded the boat with a wall of hard air—containing the king’s scent and keeping any stray arrows from piercing it.
Rowan looked back only once as he flew down the little river, high above the boat.
Only once, at the city that had forged and broken and sheltered his queen.
Her glass wall was no more than chunks and shards gleaming in the streets and the grass.
These past weeks of travel had been torture—the need to claim her, taste her, driving him out of his wits. And given what Darrow had said … perhaps, despite his promise when he’d left, it had been a good thing that they had not taken that final step.
It had been in the back of his mind long before Darrow and his horse-shit decrees: he was a prince, but in name only.
He had no army, no money. The substantial funds he possessed were in Doranelle—and Maeve would never allow him to claim them. They’d likely already been distributed amongst his meddlesome cousins, along with his lands and residences. It wouldn’t matter if some of them—the cousins he’d been raised with—might refuse to accept out of typical Whitethorn loyalty and stubbornness. All Rowan now had to offer his queen were the strength of his sword, the depth of his magic, and the loyalty of his heart.
Such things did not win wars.
He’d scented the despair on her, though her face had hidden it, when Darrow had spoken. And he knew her fiery soul: she would do it. Consider marriage to a foreign prince or lord. Even if this thing between them … even if he knew it was not mere lust, or even just love.
This thing between them, the force of it, could devour the world.
And if they picked it, picked them, it might very well cause the end of it.
It was why he had not uttered the words he’d meant to tell her for some time, even when every instinct was roaring for him to do it as they parted. And maybe having Aelin only to lose her was his punishment for letting his mate die; his punishment for finally letting go of that grief and loathing.
The lap of waves was barely audible over the roar of wyverns and the innocents screaming for help that would never come. He shut out the ache in his chest, the urge to turn around.
This was war. These lands would endure far worse in the coming days and months. His queen, no matter how he tried to shield her, would endure far worse.
By the time the boat drifted down the little river snaking toward the Avery delta, a white-tailed hawk soaring high above it, the walls of the stone castle were bathed in blood.
 
 
9

Elide Lochan knew she was being hunted. For three days now, she’d tried to lose whatever tracked her through the endless sprawl of Oakwald. And in the process, she herself had become lost.
Three days hardly sleeping, barely stopping long enough to scavenge for food and water.
She’d turned south once—to backtrack and shake it off her trail. She’d wound up heading a day in that direction. Then west, toward the mountains. Then south, possibly east; she couldn’t tell. She’d been running then, Oakwald so dense that she could hardly track the sun. And without a clear view of the stars, not daring to stop and find an easy tree to climb, she couldn’t find the Lord of the North—her beacon home.
By noon on the third day, she was close to weeping. From exhaustion, from rage, from bone-deep fear. Whatever took its time hunting her would surely take its time killing her.
Her knife trembled in her hand as she paused in a clearing, a swift, nimble stream dancing through it. Her leg ached—her ruined, useless leg. She’d offer the dark god her soul for a few hours of peace and safety.
Elide dropped the knife into the grass beside her, falling to her knees before the stream and drinking swift and deep. Water filled the gaps in her belly left by berries and roots. She refilled her canteen, hands shaking uncontrollably.
Shaking so hard she dropped the metal cap into the stream.
She swore, plunging into the cold water up to her elbows as she fumbled for the cap, patting the rocks and slick tendrils of river weed, begging for one solitary break—
Her fingers closed on the cap as the first howl sounded through the forest.
Elide and the forest went still.
She had heard dogs baying, had listened to the unearthly choruses of wolves when she’d been hauled from Perranth down to Morath.
This was neither. This was…
There had been nights in Morath when she’d been yanked from sleep because of howls like that. Howls she’d believed were imagined when they didn’t sound again. No one ever mentioned them.
But there was the sound. That sound.
We shall create wonders that will make the world tremble.
Oh, gods. Elide blindly screwed the cap onto the canteen. Whatever it might be, it was closing in fast. Maybe a tree—high up a tree—might save her. Hide her. Maybe.
Elide twisted to shove her canteen into her bag.
But a warrior was crouched across the stream, a long, wicked knife balanced on his knee.
His black eyes devoured her, his face harsh beneath equally dark, shoulder-length hair as he said in a voice like granite, “Unless you want to be lunch, girl, I suggest you come with me.”
A small, ancient voice whispered in her ear that she’d at last found her relentless hunter.
And they’d now both become someone else’s prey.
 
 
Lorcan Salvaterre listened to the rising snarls in the ancient wood and knew they were likely about to die.