Empire of Storms
Page 59

Lorcan’s magic pushed against her leg, an invisible hand freeing her boot, and she tumbled into him. His arm and side were as hard and unyielding as the magic he’d used, and she rebounded away, tall grass crunching beneath her. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Lorcan stalked ahead and said without looking back, “We finished at the three dungeons and their entrances yesterday night. Tell me about what’s inside them.”
Her mouth went a bit dry as she recalled the cell she’d squatted in, the darkness and tight air…
“I don’t know what’s inside,” she lied, following him. “Suffering people, no doubt.”
Lorcan stooped, his dark head disappearing beneath a wave of grass. When he emerged, two sticks were gripped in his massive hands. He snapped them with little effort. “You described everything else with no problem. Yet your scent changed just now. Why?”
She strode past him, bending over and over to collect whatever scattered wood she could find. “They did horrible things down there,” she said over a shoulder. “You could sometimes hear people screaming.” She prayed Terrasen would be better. It had to be.
“Who did they keep down there? Enemy soldiers?” Potential allies, no doubt, for whatever he planned to do.
“Whoever they wanted to torture.” The hands of those guards, their sneers— “I assume you’re going to leave as soon as I finish describing the last pit of Morath?” She plucked up stick after stick, ankle objecting with each shift in her balance.
“Is there a problem if I do? That was our bargain. I’ve stayed longer than I intended.”
She turned, finding him with an armful of larger sticks. He unceremoniously dumped them into the small pile in her arms and thumbed free the hatchet at his side before prowling to the curving, fallen branch behind him. “So, am I just to play the abandoned wife, then?”
“You’re already playing the oracle, so what difference does another role make?” Lorcan brought his hatchet down upon the branch with a solid thwack! The blade sank unnervingly deep; wood groaned. “Describe the dungeons.”
It was only fair, and it had been their bargain, after all: his protection and help to get her out of harm’s way, in exchange for what she knew. And he’d been complacent in all the lies she’d spun to their company—quiet, but he’d gone along with it.
“The dungeons are gone,” Elide managed to say. “Or most of them should be. Along with the catacombs.”
Thwack, thwack, thwack. Lorcan severed the branch, the wood yielding with a splintering cry. He set to cutting another section apart. “Taken out in that blast?” He lifted his axe, the muscles in his powerful back shifting beneath his dark shirt, but paused. “You said you were near the courtyard when the blast happened—how do you know the dungeons are gone?”
Fine. She had lied about it. But … “The explosion came from the catacombs and took out some of the towers. One would assume the dungeons would be in its path, too.”
“I don’t make plans based on assumptions.” He resumed hacking apart the branch, and Elide rolled her eyes at his back. “Tell me the layout of the northern dungeon.”
Elide turned toward the sinking sun staining the fields with orange and gold beyond them. “Figure it out yourself.”
The thud of metal on wood halted. Even the wind in the grasses died down.
But she had endured death and despair and terror, and she had told him enough—turned over every horrible stone, looked around every dark corner at Morath for him. His rudeness, his arrogance … He could go to hell.
She had barely set one foot into the swaying grasses when Lorcan was before her, no more than a lethal shadow himself. Even the sun seemed to avoid the broad planes of his tan face, though the wind dared ruffle the silken black strands of his hair across it.
“We have a bargain, girl.”
Elide met that depthless gaze. “You did not specify when I had to tell you. So I may take as much time as I wish to recall details, if you desire to wring every last one of them from me.”
His teeth flashed. “Do not toy with me.”
“Or what?” She stepped around him as if he were no more than a rock in a stream. Of course, walking with temper was a bit difficult when every other step was limping, but she kept her chin high. “Kill me, hurt me, and you’ll still be out of answers.”
Faster than she could see, his arm lashed out—gripping her by the elbow. “Marion,” he growled.
That name. She looked up at his harsh, wild face—a face born in a different age, a different world. “Take your hand off me.”
Lorcan, to her surprise, did so immediately.
But his face did not change—not a flicker—as he said, “You will tell me what I wish to know—”
The thing in her pocket began thrumming and beating, a phantom heartbeat in her bones.
Lorcan yielded a step, his nostrils flaring delicately. As if he could sense that stone awakening. “What are you,” he said quietly.
“I am nothing,” she said, voice hollow. Maybe once she found Aelin and Aedion, she’d find some purpose, some way to be of use to the world. For now, she was a messenger, a courier of this stone—to Celaena Sardothien. However Elide might find one person in such an endless, vast world. She had to get north—and quickly.
“Why do you go to Aelin Galathynius?”
The question was too tense to be casual. No, every inch of Lorcan’s body seemed restrained. Leashed rage and predatory instincts.
“You know the queen,” she breathed.
He blinked. Not in surprise, but to buy himself time.
He did know—and he was considering what to tell her, how to tell her—
“Celaena Sardothien is in the queen’s service,” he said. “Your two paths are one. Find one and you’ll find the other.”
He paused, waiting.
Would this be her life, then? Wretched people, always looking out for themselves, every kindness coming at a cost? Would her own queen at least gaze at her with warmth in her eyes? Would Aelin even remember her?
“Marion,” he said again—the word laced with a growl.
Her mother’s name. Her mother—and her father. The last people who had looked at her with true affection. Even Finnula, all those years locked in that tower, had always watched her with some mixture of pity and fear.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been held. Or comforted. Or smiled at with any genuine love for who she was.
Words were suddenly hard, the energy to dredge up a lie or retort too much to bother with. So Elide ignored Lorcan’s command and headed back toward the cluster of painted wagons.
Manon had come for her, she reminded herself with each step. Manon, and Asterin, and Sorrel. But even they had left her alone in the woods.
Pity, she reminded herself—self-pity would do her no good. Not with so many miles between her and whatever shred of a future she stood a chance of finding. But even when she arrived, handed over her burden, and found Aelin … what could she offer? She couldn’t even read, gods above. The mere thought of explaining that to Aelin, to anyone—
She’d think on it later. She’d wash the queen’s clothes if she had to. At least she didn’t need to be literate for that.