The pillar groaned, swayed—and toppled to the side, hitting the pillar beside it, sending them both cracking to the ground.
Along with the domed roof.
Manon didn’t even have time to lunge out of the way as the marble crashed down on her.
One of the few remaining witches on the other side of the ravine screamed.
Aelin was already running, even as the rock island itself began trembling, as if whatever ancient force held this temple together had died the moment the roof crumbled.
Shit.
Aelin sprinted for the second bridge, dust and debris burning her eyes and lungs.
The island jolted with a thunderous crack, so violent that Aelin stumbled. But there were the posts and the bridge beyond, Aedion waiting on the other side—an arm held out, beckoning.
The island swayed again—wider and longer this time.
It was going to collapse beneath them.
There was a flicker of blue and white, a flash of red cloth, a glimmer of iron—
A hand and a shoulder, grappling with a fallen column.
Slowly, painfully, Manon heaved herself onto a slab of marble, her face coated in pale dust, blue blood leaking down her temple.
Across the ravine, cut off entirely, the golden-haired witch was on her knees. “Manon!”
I don’t think you’ve ever groveled for anything in your life, Wing Leader, the king had said.
But there was a Blackbeak witch on her knees, begging whatever gods they worshipped; and there was Manon Blackbeak, struggling to rise as the temple island crumbled away.
Aelin took a step onto the bridge.
Asterin—that was the golden-haired witch’s name. She screamed for Manon again, a plea to rise, to survive.
The island jolted.
The remaining bridge—the bridge to her friends, to Rowan, to safety—still held.
Aelin had felt it before: a thread in the world, a current running between her and someone else. She’d felt it one night, years ago, and had given a young healer the money to get the hell out of this continent. She’d felt the tug—and had decided to tug back.
Here it was again, that tug—toward Manon, whose arms buckled as she collapsed to the stone.
Her enemy—her new enemy, who would have killed her and Rowan if given the chance. A monster incarnate.
But perhaps the monsters needed to look out for each other every now and then.
“Run!” Aedion roared from across the ravine.
So she did.
Aelin ran for Manon, leaping over the fallen stones, her ankle wrenching on loose debris.
The island rocked with her every step, and the sunlight was scalding, as if Mala were holding that island aloft with every last bit of strength the goddess could summon in this land.
Then Aelin was upon Manon Blackbeak, and the witch lifted hate-filled eyes to her. Aelin hauled off stone after stone from her body, the island beneath them buckling.
“You’re too good a fighter to kill,” Aelin breathed, hooking an arm under Manon’s shoulders and hauling her up. The rock swayed to the left—but held. Oh, gods. “If I die because of you, I’ll beat the shit out of you in hell.”
She could have sworn the witch let out a broken laugh as she got to her feet, nearly a dead weight in Aelin’s arms.
“You—should let me die,” Manon rasped as they limped over the rubble.
“I know, I know,” Aelin panted, her sliced arm aching with the weight of the witch it supported. They hurried over the second bridge, the temple rock swaying to the right—stretching the bridge behind them tightly over the drop and the shining river far, far below.
Aelin tugged at the witch, gritting her teeth, and Manon stumbled into a staggering run. Aedion remained between the posts across the ravine, an arm still extended toward her—while his other lifted his sword high, ready for the Wing Leader’s arrival. The rock behind them groaned.
Halfway—nothing but a death-plunge waiting for them. Manon coughed blue blood onto the wooden slats. Aelin snapped, “What the hell good are your beasts if they can’t save you from this kind of thing?”
The island veered back in the other direction, and the bridge went taut—oh, shit—shit, it was going to snap. Faster they ran, until she could see Aedion’s straining fingers and the whites of his eyes.
The rock cracked, so loudly it deafened her. Then came the tug and stretch of the bridge as the island began to crumble into dust, sliding to the side—
Aelin lunged the last few steps, gripping Manon’s red cloak as the chains of the bridge snapped. The wooden slats dropped out from beneath them, but they were already leaping.
Aelin let out a grunt as she slammed into Aedion. She whirled to see Chaol grabbing Manon and hauling her over the lip of the ravine, her cloak torn and covered in dust, fluttering in the wind.
When Aelin looked past the witch, the temple was gone.
Manon gasped for air, concentrating on her breathing, on the cloudless sky above her.
The humans left her lying between the stone bridge posts. The queen hadn’t even bothered to say good-bye. She’d just dashed for the injured Fae warrior, his name like a prayer on her lips.
Rowan.
Manon had looked up in time to see the queen fall to her knees before the injured warrior in the grass, demanding answers from the brown-haired man—Chaol—who pressed a hand to the arrow wound in Rowan’s shoulder to stanch the bleeding. The queen’s shoulders were shaking.
Fireheart, the Fae warrior murmured. Manon would have watched—would have, had she not coughed blood onto the bright grass and blacked out.
When she awoke, they were gone.
Only minutes had passed—because then there were booming wings, and Abraxos’s roar. And there were Asterin and Sorrel, rushing for her before their wyverns had fully landed.
The Queen of Terrasen had saved her life. Manon didn’t know what to make of it.
For she now owed her enemy a life debt.
And she had just learned how thoroughly her grandmother and the King of Adarlan intended to destroy them.
CHAPTER
61
The trek back through Oakwald was the longest journey of Aelin’s miserable life. Nesryn had removed the arrow from Rowan’s shoulder, and Aedion had found some herbs to chew and shove into the open wound to stanch the bleeding.
But Rowan still sagged against Chaol and Aedion as they hurried through the forest.
Nowhere to go. She had nowhere to take an injured Fae male in the capital city, in this entire shit-hole kingdom.
Lysandra was pale and shaking, but she’d squared her shoulders and offered to help carry Rowan when one of them tired. None of them accepted. When Chaol at last asked Nesryn to take over, Aelin glimpsed the blood soaking his tunic and hands—Rowan’s blood—and nearly vomited.
Slower—every step was slower as Rowan’s strength flagged.
“He needs to rest,” Lysandra said gently. Aelin paused, the towering oaks pressing in around her.
Rowan’s eyes were half-closed, his face drained of all color. He couldn’t even lift his head.
She should have let the witch die.
“We can’t just camp out in the middle of the woods,” Aelin said. “He needs a healer.”
“I know where we can take him,” Chaol said. She dragged her eyes to the captain.
She should have let the witch kill him, too.
Chaol wisely averted his gaze and faced Nesryn. “Your father’s country house—the man who runs it is married to a midwife.”
Nesryn’s mouth tightened. “She’s not a healer, but—yes. She might have something.”
“Do you understand,” Aelin said very quietly to them, “that if I suspect they’re going to betray us, they
will die?”
It was true, and maybe it made her a monster to Chaol, but she didn’t care.
“I know,” Chaol said. Nesryn merely nodded, still calm, still solid.
“Then lead the way,” Aelin said, her voice hollow. “And pray they can keep their mouths shut.”
Joyous, frenzied barking greeted them, rousing Rowan from the half consciousness he’d fallen into during the last few miles to the little stone farmhouse. Aelin had barely breathed the entire time.
But despite herself, despite Rowan’s injuries, as Fleetfoot raced across the high grass toward them, Aelin smiled a little.
The dog leaped upon her, licking and whining and wagging her feathery, golden tail.
She hadn’t realized how filthy and bloody her hands were until she put them on Fleetfoot’s shining coat.
Aedion grunted as he took all of Rowan’s weight while Chaol and Nesryn jogged for the large, brightly lit stone house, dusk having fallen fully around them. Good. Fewer eyes to see as they exited Oakwald and crossed the freshly tilled fields. Lysandra tried to help Aedion, but he refused her again. She hissed at him and helped anyway.
Fleetfoot danced around Aelin, then noticed Aedion, Lysandra, and Rowan, and that tail became a bit more tentative. “Friends,” she told her dog. She’d become huge since Aelin had last seen her. She wasn’t sure why it surprised her, when everything else in her life had changed as well.
Aelin’s assurance seemed good enough for Fleetfoot, who trotted ahead, escorting them to the wooden door that had opened to reveal a tall midwife with a no-nonsense face that took one look at Rowan and tightened.
One word. One damn word that suggested she might turn them in, and she was dead.
But the woman said, “Whoever put that bloodmoss on the wound saved his life. Get him inside—we need to clean it before anything else can be done.”
It took a few hours for Marta, the housekeeper’s wife, to clean, disinfect, and patch up Rowan’s wounds. Lucky, she kept saying—so lucky it didn’t hit anything vital.
Chaol didn’t know what to do with himself other than carry away the bowls of bloodied water.
Aelin just sat on a stool beside the cot in the spare room of the elegant, comfortable house, and monitored every move Marta made.