The man with the twin swords ceased his circling, and the grin he gave Chaol was nothing short of feral. “You’re right, Aedion,” he said without taking his eyes off Chaol. “He is more interesting than he seems.”
Aedion pocketed the ring as if it were—as if it were indeed a fake. And Chaol realized that he’d revealed far more than he’d ever intended.
Aedion began circling again, the scarred young man echoing the graceful movements. “A magical leash—when there is no magic left,” the general mused. “And yet you still followed me, believing I was under the king’s spell. Thinking you could use me to win the rebels’ favor? Fascinating.”
Chaol kept his mouth shut. He’d already said enough to damn himself.
Aedion went on, “These two said your assassin friend was a rebel sympathizer. That she handed over information to Archer Finn without thinking twice—that she allowed rebels to sneak out of the city when she was commanded to put them down. Was she the one who told you about the king’s rings, or did you discover that tidbit all on your own? What, exactly, is going on in that glass palace when the king isn’t looking?”
Chaol clamped down on his retort. When it became clear he wouldn’t speak, Aedion shook his head.
“You know how this has to end,” Aedion said, and there wasn’t anything mocking in it. Just cold calculation. The true face of the Northern Wolf. “The way I see it, you signed your own death warrant when you decided to trail me, and now that you know so much . . . You have two options, Captain: we can torture it out of you and then we’ll kill you, or you can tell us what you know and we’ll make it quick for you. As painless as possible, on my honor.”
They stopped circling.
Chaol had faced death a few times in the past months. Had faced and seen and dealt it. But this death, where Celaena and Dorian and his mother would never know what happened to him . . . It disgusted him, somehow. Enraged him.
Aedion stepped closer to where Chaol knelt.
He could take out the scarred one, then hope he could stand against Aedion—or at least flee. He would fight, because that was the only way he could embrace this sort of death.
Aedion’s sword was at the ready—the sword that belonged to Celaena by blood and right. Chaol had assumed he was a two-faced butcher. Aedion was a traitor. But not to Terrasen. Aedion had been playing a very dangerous game since arriving here—since his kingdom fell ten years ago. And tricking the king into thinking that he’d been wearing his ring all this time—that was indeed information Aedion would be willing to kill to keep safe. Yet there was other information Chaol could use, perhaps, to get out of this alive.
Regardless of how shattered she’d been when she left, Celaena was safe now. She was away from Adarlan. But Dorian, with his magic, with the threat he secretly posed, was not. Aedion took a readying breath to kill him. Keeping Dorian protected was all he had left, all that had ever really mattered. If these rebels did indeed know something—anything—about magic that might help to free it, if he could use Aedion to get that information . . .
It was a gamble—the biggest gamble he’d ever made. Aedion raised his sword.
With a silent prayer for forgiveness, Chaol looked straight at Aedion. “Aelin is alive.”
•
Aedion Ashryver had been called Wolf, general, prince, traitor, and murderer. And he was all of those things, and more. Liar, deceiver, and trickster were his particular favorites—the titles only those closest to him knew.
Adarlan’s Whore, that’s what the ones who didn’t know him called him. It was true—in so many ways, it was true, and he had never minded it, not really. It had allowed him to maintain control in the North, to keep the bloodshed down to a minimum and a lie. Half the Bane were rebels, and the other half sympathizers, so many of their “battles” in the North had been staged, the body count a deceit and an exaggeration—at least, once the corpses got up from the killing field under cover of darkness and went home to their families. Adarlan’s Whore. He had not minded. Until now.
Cousin—that had been his most beloved title. Cousin, kin, protector. Those were the secret names he harbored deep within, the names he whispered to himself when the northern wind was shrieking through the Staghorns. Sometimes that wind sounded like the screams of his people being led to the butchering blocks. And sometimes it sounded like Aelin—Aelin, whom he had loved, who should have been his queen, and to whom he would have one day sworn the blood oath.
Aedion stood on the decaying planks of an empty dock in the slums, staring at the Avery. The captain was beside him, spitting blood into the water thanks to the beating given to him by Ren Allsbrook, Aedion’s newest conspirator and yet another dead man risen from the grave.
Ren, heir and Lord of Allsbrook, had trained with Aedion as a child—and had once been his rival. Ten years ago, Ren and his grandfather, Murtagh, had escaped the butchering blocks thanks to a diversion started by Ren’s parents that cost them their lives and gave Ren the nasty scar down his face. But Aedion hadn’t known—he’d thought them dead, and had been stunned to learn that they were the secret rebel group he’d hunted down upon arriving in Rifthold. He’d heard the claims that Aelin was alive and raising an army and had dragged himself down from the north to get to the bottom of it and destroy the liars, preferably cutting them up piece by piece.
The king’s summons had been a convenient excuse. Ren and Murtagh had instantly admitted that the rumors had been spread by a former member of their rebel group. They had never had or heard of any contact with their dead queen. But seeing Ren and Murtagh, he’d since wondered who else might have survived. He had never allowed himself to hope that Aelin . . .
Aedion set his sword on the wooden rail and ran his scarred fingers down it, taking in the nicks and lines, each mark a tale of legendary battles fought, of great kings long dead. The sword was the last shred of proof that a mighty kingdom had once existed in the North.
It wasn’t his sword, not really. In those initial days of blood and conquest, the King of Adarlan had snatched the blade from Rhoe Galathynius’s cooling body and brought it to Rifthold. And there it had stayed, the sword that should have been Aelin’s.
So Aedion had fought for years in those war camps and battlefields, fought to prove his invaluable worth to the king, and had taken everything that was done to him, again and again. When he and the Bane won that first battle and the king had proclaimed him the Northern Wolf and offered him a boon, Aedion had asked for the sword.
The king attributed the request to an eighteen-year-old’s romanticism, and Aedion had swaggered about his own glory until everyone believed that he was a traitorous, butchering bastard who made a mockery of the sword just by touching it. But winning back the sword didn’t erase his failure.
Even though he’d been thirteen, and even though he’d been forty miles away in Orynth when Aelin had been killed on the country estate, he should have stopped it. He’d been sent to her land upon his mother’s death to become Aelin’s sword and shield, to serve in the court she was supposed to have ruled, that child of kings. So he should have ridden out when the castle erupted with news that Orlon Galathynius had been assassinated. By the time anyone did, Rhoe, Evalin, and Aelin were dead.
It was that reminder he?
??d carried with him on his back, the reminder of who the sword belonged to, and to whom, when he took his last breath and went to the Otherworld, he’d finally give it.
But now the sword, that weight he’d embraced for years, felt . . . lighter and sharper, far more fragile. Infinitely precious. The world had slipped from beneath his feet.
No one had spoken for a moment after the Captain of the Guard made his claim. Aelin is alive. Then the captain had said he’d only speak with Aedion about it.
Just to show they weren’t bluffing about torturing him, Ren had bloodied him up with a cool precision that Aedion grudgingly admired, but the captain had taken the blows. And whenever Ren paused, Murtaugh looking on disapprovingly, the captain said the same thing. After it became clear that the captain would either tell only Aedion or die, he’d called off Ren. The heir of Allsbrook bristled, but Aedion had dealt with plenty of young men like him in the war camps. It never took much to get them to fall in line. Aedion gave him a long, hard stare, and Ren backed down.
Which was how they wound up here, Chaol cleaning off his face with a scrap of his shirt. For the past few minutes, Aedion had listened to the most unlikely story he’d ever heard. The story of Celaena Sardothien, the infamous assassin, being trained by Arobynn Hamel, the story of her downfall and year in Endovier, and how she’d wound up in the ridiculous competition to become the King’s Champion. The story of Aelin, his Queen, in a death camp, and then serving in her enemy’s house.
Aedion braced his hands on the rail. It couldn’t be true. Not after ten years. Ten years without hope, without proof.
“She has your eyes,” Chaol said, working his jaw. If this assassin—an assassin, gods above—was truly Aelin, then she was the King’s Champion. Then she was the captain’s—
“You sent her to Wendlyn,” Aedion said, his voice ragged. The tears would come later. Right now, he was emptied. Gutted. Every lie, every rumor and act and party he’d thrown, every battle, real or faked, every life he’d taken so more could live . . . How would he ever explain that to her? Adarlan’s Whore.