So Elide headed for them, her court, and did not look back.
Rowan had kept quiet during the past few minutes, observing.
Lorcan had been willing to die for Elide. Had been willing to put aside his quest for Maeve in order for Elide to live. And had then acted territorial enough to make Rowan wonder if he seemed so ridiculous around Aelin all the time.
Now alone, Rowan said to Lorcan, “How did you find us?”
A cutting smile. “The dark god nudged me toward here. The ilken army did the rest.”
The same Lorcan he’d known for centuries, and yet … not. Some hard edge had been dulled—no, soothed.
Lorcan stared toward the source of that soothing, but his jaw clenched as his focus shifted to where Aelin walked beside her. “That power could just as easily destroy her, you know.”
“I know,” Rowan admitted. What she’d done minutes ago, the power she’d summoned and unleashed … It had been a song that had made his magic erupt in kind.
When the ilken’s resistance had finally yielded beneath flame and ice and wind, Rowan hadn’t been able to stifle the yearning to walk into the burning heart of that power and see her glowing with it.
Halfway across the plain, he’d realized it wasn’t just the allure of it that tugged at him. It was the woman inside it, who might need physical contact with another living being to remind herself that she had a body, and people who loved her, and to pull back from that killing calm that so mercilessly wiped the ilken from the skies. But then the flames had vanished, their enemies raining down as ash and ice and corpses, and she’d looked at him … Holy gods, when she’d looked at him, he’d almost fallen to his knees.
Queen, and lover, and friend—and more. He hadn’t cared that they had an audience. He had needed to touch her, to reassure himself that she was all right, to feel the woman who could do such great and terrible things and still look at him with that beckoning, vibrant life in her eyes.
You make me want to live, Rowan.
He wondered if Elide Lochan had somehow made Lorcan want to do the same.
He said to Lorcan, “And what about your mission?”
Any softness vanished from Lorcan’s granite-hewn features. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re in this shithole place, and then we’ll discuss my plans.”
“Aelin can decide what to tell you.”
“Such a good dog.”
Rowan gave him a lazy smile but refrained from commenting on the delicate, dark-haired young woman who now held Lorcan’s own leash.
58
Kaltain Rompier had just turned the tide in this war.
Dorian had never been more ashamed of himself.
He should have been better. Should have seen better. They all should have.
The thoughts swirled and eddied as Dorian kept back in the half-drowned temple complex, silently watching as Aelin studied the chest on the altar as if it were an opponent.
The queen was now flanked by Lady Elide, Manon on the dark-haired girl’s other side, Lysandra sprawled in ghost leopard form at the queen’s feet.
The power in that cluster alone was staggering. And Elide … Manon had murmured something to Aelin on their walk back into the ruins about Elide being watched over by Anneith.
Watched over, as the rest of them seemed to be by other gods.
Lorcan stepped into the ruins, Rowan at his side. Fenrys, Gavriel, and Aedion approached them, hands on their swords, bodies still thrumming with tension as they kept Lorcan within sight. Especially Maeve’s warriors.
Another ring of power.
Lorcan—Lorcan, blessed by Hellas himself, Rowan had told him on that skiff ride into the Dead Islands. Hellas, god of death. Who had traveled here with Anneith, his consort.
The hair on Dorian’s arms rose.
Scions—each of them touched by a different god, each of them subtly, quietly, guided here. It wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be.
Manon noticed him standing a few feet away, read whatever wariness was on his face, and broke from the circle of quietly talking women to come to his side. “What?”
Dorian clenched his jaw. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
He waited for the dismissal, the mockery. Manon only said, “Explain.”
He opened his mouth, but Aelin stepped up to the dais.
The Lock—the Lock that would contain the Wyrdkeys, would allow Aelin to put them back in their gate. Thanks to Kaltain, thanks to Elide, they only needed one more. Wherever Erawan had it. But getting this Lock …
Rowan was instantly at the queen’s side as she peered into the chest.
Slowly, she looked back at them. At Manon.
“Get up here,” the queen said in an unnervingly calm voice.
Manon, wisely, did not refuse.
“This isn’t the place or time for exploring it,” Rowan said to the queen. “We move it back to the ship, then figure it out from there.”
Aelin murmured her agreement, her face paling.
Manon asked them, “Was the Lock ever here to begin with?”
“I don’t know.” Dorian had never heard Aelin utter the words. It was enough to send him splashing up the stairs, dripping water behind him as he peered in.
There was no Lock. Not in the way that they had expected, not in the way the queen had been promised and instructed to find it.
The stone chest held only one thing:
An iron-bound mirror, the surface near-golden with age, speckled, and covered in grime. And along the twining, intricately carved border, tucked into the upper right corner …
The marking of the Eye of Elena. A witch symbol.
“What the hell is it?” Aedion demanded from the steps below.
It was Manon who answered, glancing sidelong at the grim-faced queen, “It’s a witch mirror.”
“A what?” Aelin asked. The others edged closer.
Manon tapped a nail on the stone rim of the chest. “When you killed Yellowlegs, did she give any hint about why she was there, what she wanted from you or the former king?” Dorian searched his own memory but found nothing.
“No.” Aelin glanced to him in question, but Dorian shook his head as well. She asked the witch, “Do you know why she was there?”
A hint of a nod. A breath of hesitation. Dorian braced himself. “Yellowlegs was there to meet with the king—to show him how her magic mirrors worked.”
“I smashed most of them,” Aelin said, crossing her arms.
“Whatever you destroyd were cheap tricks and replicas. Her true witch mirrors … You cannot break those. Not easi
ly, at least.”
Dorian had a horrible feeling about where this was headed. “What can they do?”
“You can see the future, past, present. You can speak between mirrors, if someone possesses the sister-glass. And then there are the rare silvers—whose forging demands something vital from the maker.” Manon’s voice dropped low. Dorian wondered if even among the Blackbeaks, these tales had only been whispered at their campfires. “Other mirrors amplify and hold blasts of raw power, to be unleashed if the mirror is aimed at something.”
“A weapon,” Aedion said, eliciting a nod from Manon. The general must have been piecing things together as well because he asked before Dorian could, “Yellowlegs met with him about those weapons, didn’t she?”
Manon went silent for long enough that he knew Aelin was about to push. But Dorian gave her a warning stare to keep quiet. So she did. They all did.
Finally, the witch said, “They’ve been making towers. Enormous, yet capable of being hauled across battlefields, lined with those mirrors. For Erawan to use with his powers—to incinerate your armies in a few blasts.”
Aelin closed her eyes. Rowan laid a hand on her shoulder.
Dorian asked, “Is this …” He gestured to the chest, the mirror inside. “One of the mirrors they plan to use?”
“No,” Manon said, studying the witch mirror within the chest. “Whatever this mirror is … I’m not sure what it was meant for. What it can even do. But it surely isn’t that Lock you sought.”
Aelin fished the Eye of Elena from her pocket, weighing it in her hand, and loosed a sharp sigh through her nose. “I’m ready for today to be over.”
Mile after mile, the Fae males carried the mirror between them.
Rowan and Aedion pushed Manon for details on those witch towers. Two were already constructed, but she didn’t know how many more were being built. They were stationed in the Ferian Gap, but with others possibly elsewhere. No, she didn’t know the mode of transportation. Or how many witches to a tower.
Aelin let their words settle into some deep, quiet part of her. She’d figure it out tomorrow—after she slept. Figure out this damn witch mirror tomorrow, too.