Empire of Storms
Page 81

Silence.
Then, as if she hadn’t shattered any sense of safety they still possessed, Aelin withdrew the mangled Eye of Elena from her pack, chucked it once in the air, and jerked her chin at the King of Adarlan. “I think it’s time you met your ancestor.”
 
 
Dorian listened to Aelin’s story.
About the Wyrdkey she’d secretly carried, about what had happened today in the bay, about how she’d tricked Lorcan and how it would eventually lead the warrior back to them—hopefully with the other two keys in his hands. And, if they were lucky, they would have already found this Lock she had been ordered twice now to retrieve from the Stone Marshes—the only thing capable of binding the Wyrdkeys back into the gate from which they’d been hewn and ending the threat of Erawan forever.
No number of allies would make a difference if they could not stop Erawan from using those keys to unleash the Valg hordes from his own realm upon Erilea. His possession of two keys had already led to such darkness. If he gained the third, gained mastery over the Wyrdgate and could open it to any world at will, use it to summon any conquering army … They had to find that Lock to nullify those keys.
When the queen was done, Aedion was silently fuming, Lysandra was frowning, and Aelin was now snuffing out the candles in the room with hardly a wave of her hand. Two ancient tomes, withdrawn from Aedion’s crammed saddlebags, lay open on the table. He knew those books—he had no idea she’d taken them from Rifthold. The warped metal of the Eye of Elena amulet sat atop one of them as Aelin double-checked the markings on an age-spotted page.
Darkness fell as she used her own blood to etch those markings on the wooden floor.
“Looks like our bill of damages to this city is going to rise,” Lysandra muttered.
Aelin snorted. “We’ll just move the rug to cover it.” She finished making a mark—a Wyrdmark, Dorian realized with a chill, and stepped back, plucking up the Eye in her fist.
“Now what?” Aedion said.
“Now we keep our mouths shut,” Aelin said sweetly.
The moonlight spread on the floor, devoured by the dark lines she’d etched. Aelin drifted over to where Rowan sat on the edge of the bed, still shirtless thanks to the queen currently wearing his shirt, and took up a spot beside him, a hand on his knee.
Lysandra was the first to notice.
She sat up in the bed, green eyes glowing with animal brightness as the moonlight on the blood-marks seemed to shimmer. Aelin and Rowan jerked to their feet. Dorian just stared at the marks, at the moonlight, at the beam of it shining through the open balcony doors.
As if the light itself were a doorway, the shaft of moonlight turned into a humanoid figure.
It flickered, its form barely there. Like a figment of a dream.
The hair on Dorian’s arms rose. And he had the good sense to slide out of his chair and onto a knee as he bowed his head.
He was the only one who did so. The only one, he realized, who had spoken to Elena’s mate, Gavin. Long ago—another lifetime ago. He tried not to consider what it meant that he now carried Gavin’s sword, Damaris. Aelin had not asked for it back—did not seem inclined to do so.
A muffled female voice, as if it were calling from far away, flickered in and out with the image. “Too—far,” a light, young voice said.
Aelin stepped forward and shut those ancient spellbooks before stacking them with a thump. “Well, Rifthold isn’t exactly available, and your tomb is trashed, so tough luck.”
Dorian’s head lifted as he glanced between the flickering figure of moonlight and the young queen of flesh and blood.
Elena’s roughly formed body vanished, then reappeared, as if the wind itself disturbed her. “Can’t—hold—”
“Then I’ll make it quick.” Aelin’s voice was sharp as a blade. “No more games. No more half-truths. Why did Deanna arrive today? I get it: finding the Lock is important. But what is it? And tell me what she meant by calling me the Queen Who Was Promised.”
As if the words jolted the dead queen like lightning, his ancestor appeared, fully corporeal.
She was exquisite: her face young and grave, her hair long and silvery-white—like Manon’s—and her eyes … Startling, dazzling blue. They now fixed on him, the pale gown she wore fluttering on a phantom breeze. “Rise, young king.”
Aelin snorted. “Can we not play the holier-than-thou-ancient-spirit game?”
But Elena surveyed Rowan, Aedion. Her slender, fair neck bobbed.
And Aelin, gods above, snapped her fingers at the queen—once, twice—drawing her attention back to her. “Hello, Elena,” she drawled, “so nice to see you. It’s been a while. Care to answer some questions?”
Irritation flickered in the dead queen’s eyes. But Elena’s chin remained high, her slender shoulders back. “I do not have much time. The connection is too hard to maintain so far from Rifthold.”
“What a surprise.”
The two queens stared each other down.
Elena, Wyrd damn him, broke first. “Deanna is a god. She does not have rules and morals and codes the way we do. Time does not exist for her the way it does for us. You let your magic touch the key, the key opened a door, and Deanna happened to be watching at that exact moment. That she spoke to you at all is a gift. That you managed to shove her out before she was ready … She will not soon forget that insult, Majesty.”
“She can get in line,” Aelin said.
Elena shook her head. “There is … there is so much I did not get to tell you.”
“Like the fact that you and Gavin never killed Erawan, lied to everyone about it, and then left him for us to deal with?”
Dorian risked a glance at Aedion, but his face was hard, calculating, ever the general—fixed on the dead queen now standing in this room with them. Lysandra—Lysandra was gone.
No, in ghost leopard form, slinking through the shadows. Rowan’s hand was resting casually on his sword, though Dorian’s own magic swept the room and realized the weapon was to be the physical distraction from the magical blow he’d deal Elena if she so much as looked funny at Aelin. Indeed, a hard shield of air now lay between the two queens—and sealed this room, too.
Elena shook her head, her silver hair flowing. “You were meant to retrieve the Wyrdkeys before Erawan could get this far.”
“Well, I didn’t,” Aelin snapped. “Forgive me if you weren’t entirely clear on your directions.”
Elena said, “I do not have time to explain, but know it was the only choice. To save us, to save Erilea, it was the only choice I could make.” And for all their snapping at each other, the queen exposed her palms to Aelin. “Deanna and my father spoke true. I’d thought … I’d thought it was broken, but if they told you to find the Lock … ” She bit her lip.
Aelin said, “Brannon said to go to the Stone Marshes of Eyllwe to find the Lock. Where, precisely, in the marshes?”
“There was once a great city in the heart of the marshes,” Elena breathed. “It is now half drowned on the plain. In a temple at its center, we laid the remnants of the Lock. I didn’t … My father attained the Lock at terrible cost. The cost … of my mother’s body, her mortal life. A Lock for the Wyrdkeys—to seal shut the gate, and bind the keys inside them forever. I did not understand what it had been intended for; my father never told me about any of it until it was too late. All I knew was that the Lock was only able to be used once—its power capable of sealing anything we wished. So I stole it. I used it for myself, for my people. I have been paying for that crime since.”