Her magic was exhausted. For the first time in days, that pit of magic now slumbered.
She could sleep for a week. A month.
Each step across the marshes, back toward where those three ships would be waiting, was an effort. Lysandra frequently offered to shift into a horse and carry her, but Aelin refused. The shifter was drained as well. They all were.
She wanted to talk to Elide, wanted to ask about so many things regarding those years apart, but … The exhaustion that nagged at her rendered speech nearly impossible. She knew what kind of sleep beckoned—the deep, restorative slumber that her body demanded after too much magic had been spent, after she’d held on to it for too long.
So Aelin hardly spoke to Elide, leaving the lady to lean on Lorcan as they hurried to the coast. As they hauled the mirror with them.
Too many secrets—there were still too many secrets with Elena and Brannon and their long-ago war. Had the Lock ever existed? Or was the witch mirror the Lock? Too many questions with too few answers. She’d figure it out. Once they were back to safety. Once she had a chance to sleep.
Once … everything else fell into place, too. So they trudged through the marshes without rest.
It was Lysandra who picked up on it with that leopard’s senses, half a mile from the white-sand beach and the calm gray sea beyond, a wall of grassy sand dunes blocking the view ahead.
They all had weapons drawn as they scrambled up the dune, sand slipping from beneath them. Rowan didn’t shift—the only proof he’d shown of his utter exhaustion. He made it up the hill first. Drew his sword from across his back.
Aelin’s breath burned her throat as she halted beside him, Gavriel and Fenrys gently setting down the mirror on her other side.
Because a hundred gray sails stretched ahead, surrounding their own ships.
They spread toward the western horizon, utterly silent save for the men they could barely make out on board. Ships from the west … from the Gulf of Oro.
Melisande’s fleet.
And on the beach, waiting for them … a party of twenty warriors, led by a gray-cloaked woman. Lysandra’s claws slipped free of their sheaths as she let out a low snarl.
Lorcan shoved Elide behind him. “We retreat into the marshes,” he said to Rowan, whose face was set in stone as he sized up the party on the beach, the looming fleet. “We can outrun them.”
Aelin slid her hands into her pockets. “They’re not going to attack.”
Lorcan sneered, “You’re guessing this based on your many years of experience in war?”
“Watch it,” Rowan snarled.
“This is absurd,” Lorcan spat, twisting away, as if he’d grab Elide, pale-faced at his side. “Our reservoirs are drained—”
Lorcan was halted from hauling Elide over a shoulder by a paper-thin wall of fire. About as much as Aelin could summon.
And by Manon and her iron nails stepping before him as she growled, “You’re not taking Elide anywhere. Not now, and not ever.”
Lorcan rose to his full height. And before they could wreck everything with their brawling, Elide laid a delicate hand on Lorcan’s arm—his own hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword. “I choose this, Manon.”
Manon only glanced at the hand on Lorcan’s arm. “We’ll discuss this later.”
Indeed. Aelin looked Lorcan over and jerked her chin. “Go brood somewhere else.” The cloaked woman on the beach, along with her soldiers, was now striding toward them.
Lorcan growled, “It’s not over, this business between us.”
Aelin smiled a bit. “You think I don’t know that?”
But Lorcan prowled to Rowan, his dark power flickering, rippling away across the waves as if in a silent boom of thunder. Taking up a defensive position.
Aelin looked to her stone-faced prince, then to Aedion, her cousin’s sword and shield angled and at the ready, then the others. “Let’s go say hello.”
Rowan started. “Aelin—”
But she was already striding down the dune, doing her best to keep from sliding on the treacherous sand, to keep her head high. The others trailing behind were taut as bowstrings, but their breathing remained even—primed for anything.
The soldiers were in heavy, worn gray armor, their faces rough and scarred, sizing them up as they hit the sand. Fenrys snarled at one of them, and the man averted his eyes.
But the cloaked woman removed her hood as she approached with feline grace, halting perhaps ten feet away.
Aelin knew every detail about her.
Knew that she was twenty years old now. Knew that the medium-length, wine-red hair was her real hair color. Knew the red-brown eyes were the only she’d seen in any land, on any adventure. Knew the wolf’s head on the pommel of the mighty sword at her side was her family’s crest. She knew the smattering of freckles, the full, laughing mouth, knew the deceptively slim arms that hid rock-hard muscle as she crossed them.
That full mouth slanted into a half grin as Ansel of Briarcliff, Queen of the Wastes, drawled, “Who gave you permission to use my name in pit fights, Aelin?”
“I gave myself permission to use your name however I please, Ansel, the day I spared your life instead of ending you like the coward you are.”
That cocky smile widened. “Hello, bitch,” Ansel purred.
“Hello, traitor,” Aelin purred right back, surveying the armada spread before them. “Looks like you made it on time after all.”
59
Aelin felt the utter shock of her companions ripple from them as Ansel bowed dramatically, gesturing to the ships behind them, and said, “As requested: your fleet.”
Aelin snorted. “Your soldiers look like they’ve seen better days.”
“Oh, they always look like that. I’ve tried and tried to get them to focus on outside appearances as much as improving their inner beauty, but … you know how men are.”
Aelin chuckled. Even as she sensed her companions’ shock turning into something red-hot.
Manon stepped forward, the sea breeze whipping strands of her white hair over her face, and said to Aelin, “Melisande’s fleet bows to Morath. You might as well be signing an alliance with Erawan, too, if you’re working with this … person.”
Ansel’s face drained of color at the iron teeth, the nails. And Aelin remembered the story the assassin-turned-queen had once told her, whispered atop rolling desert sands and beneath a carpet of stars. A childhood friend—eaten alive by an Ironteeth witch.
Then Ansel herself, after the slaughter of her family, had been spared when she’d stumbled into an Ironteeth witch’s camp.
Aelin said to Manon, “She is not from Melisande. The Wastes are allied with Terrasen.”
Aedion started, now sizing up the ships, the woman before them.
Manon Blackbeak said in a voice like death, “Who is she to speak for the Wastes?”
Oh, gods above. Aelin schooled her face into bland irreverence and gestured between the two women. “Manon Blackbeak, Heir to the Blackbeak Witch-Clan and now the last Crochan Queen … meet Ansel of Briarcliff, assassin and Queen of the Western Wastes.”
Roaring filled Manon’s head as they rowed back to their ship, interrupted only by the splashing of the oars through the calm waves.
She was going to kill the red-haired bitch. Slowly.
They remained silent until they reached the towering ship, then climbed its side.
No sign of Abraxos.
Manon scanned the skies, the fleet, the seas. Not a scale to be found.
The rage in her gut twisted into something else, something worse, and she took a step for the ruddy-faced captain to demand answers.