Lysandra indeed went on the defensive and showed her hand. “I know my history is … unappealing.”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” Aedion said, daring a step closer. “And I’m going to tell you that there is nothing unappealing about you. Nothing. I’ve been with just as many people. Women, men … I’ve seen and tried it all.”
Her brows had risen. Aedion shrugged. “I find pleasure in both, depending on my mood and the person.” One of his former lovers still remained one of his closest friends—and most skilled commanders in his Bane. “Attraction is attraction.” He steeled his nerve. “And I know enough about it to understand what you and I …” Something shuttered in her eyes, and the words slipped from him. Too soon. Too soon for this sort of talk. “We can figure it out. Make no demands of each other beyond honesty.” That was really the only thing he cared to request. It was nothing more than he’d ask of a friend.
A small smile played about her lips. “Yes,” she breathed. “Let’s start there.”
He dared another step closer, not caring who watched on the deck or in the rigging or in the armada around them. Color bloomed high on those beautiful cheekbones, and it was an effort not to stroke a finger across them, then his mouth. To taste her skin.
But he’d take his time. Enjoy every moment, as he had told her to do.
Because this would be his last hunt. He had no intention of wasting each glorious moment in one go. Of wasting any of the moments that fate had granted him, and all he wanted to show her.
Every stream and forest and sea in Terrasen. To see Lysandra laugh her way through the autumnal circle dances; to weave ribbons around the maypoles in the spring; and listen, wide-eyed, to ancient tales of war and ghosts before the roaring winter fires in the mountain halls. All of it. He’d show her all of it. And walk onto those battlefields again and again to ensure he could.
So Aedion smiled at Lysandra and brushed her hand with his own. “I’m glad we’re in agreement, for once.”
60
Aelin and Ansel clinked bottles of wine over the long, scarred table in the galley and drank deeply.
They were to sail at first light tomorrow. North—back north. To Terrasen.
Aelin braced her forearms on the slick table. “Here’s to dramatic entrances.”
Lysandra, curled on the bench in ghost leopard form with her head on Aelin’s lap, let out a little feline laugh. Ansel blinked in wonder. “So what now?”
“It’d be nice,” Aedion grumbled from down the table, where he and Rowan glared at them, “to be included in just one of these schemes, Aelin.”
“But your faces are so wonderful when I get to reveal them,” Aelin crooned.
He and Rowan growled. Oh, she knew they were pissed. So pissed that she hadn’t told them about Ansel. But the thought of disappointing them, of failing … She’d wanted to do this on her own.
Rowan, apparently, mastered his annoyance enough to ask Ansel, “Were the ilken or Valg not in Melisande?”
“Are you implying my forces weren’t good enough to take the city if they had been?” Ansel swigged from her wine, laughter dancing in her eyes. Dorian sat at the table between Fenrys and Gavriel, the three of them wisely keeping quiet. Lorcan and Elide were on the deck—somewhere. “No, Prince,” Ansel went on. “I asked the Queen of Melisande about the lack of Morath-bred horrors, and, after some coaxing, she informed me that through whatever wiles and scheming, she managed to keep Erawan’s claws from her. And her soldiers.”
Aelin straightened a bit, wishing she’d had more wine than the third of a bottle she’d already consumed as Ansel added, “When this war is over, Melisande will not have the excuse of being in thrall to Erawan or the Valg. Everything she and her armies have done, their choice in allying with him, was a human choice.” A pointed glance to the darkest part of the galley, where Manon Blackbeak sat alone. “At least Melisande will have the Ironteeth to commiserate with.”
Manon’s iron teeth flashed in the dim light. Her wyvern hadn’t been spotted or heard from since he’d left, apparently. And she and Elide had talked for over an hour on the deck this afternoon.
Aelin decided to do them all a favor and cut in, “I need more men, Ansel. And I do not have the ability to be in so many places at once.” They were all watching now.
Ansel set down the bottle. “You want me to raise another army for you?”
“I want you to find me the lost Crochan witches.”
Manon jerked upright. “What.”
Aelin scratched at a mark on the table. “They are in hiding, but they’re still out there, if the Ironteeth hunt them. They might have significant numbers. Promise to share the Wastes with them. You control Briarcliff and half the coast. Give them inland and the South.”
Manon was prowling over, death in her eyes. “You do not have the right to promise such things.” Rowan’s and Aedion’s hands shot to their swords. But Lysandra opened a sleepy eye, stretched out a paw on the bench, and revealed the needle-sharp claws that now stood between Manon’s shins and Aelin.
Aelin said to Manon, “You cannot hold the land, not with the curse. Ansel won it, through blood and loss and her own wits.”
“It is my home, my people’s home—”
“That was the asking price, wasn’t it? The Ironteeth get their homeland returned, and Erawan probably promised to break the curse.” At Manon’s wide eyes, Aelin snorted. “Oh—the Ancients didn’t tell you that, did they? Too bad. That’s what Ansel’s spies picked up.” She looked the Wing Leader over. “If you and your people prove to be better than your Matrons, there will be a place for you in that land, too.”
Manon just stalked back to her seat and glared at the galley’s small brazier as if she could freeze it over.
Ansel murmured, “So touchy, these witches.”
Aelin clamped her lips together, but Lysandra let out another breathy cat laugh. Manon’s nails clicked against each other from across the room. Lysandra merely answered with her own.
Aelin said to Ansel, “Find the Crochans.”
“They’re all gone,” Manon cut in again. “We’ve hunted them to near-extinction.”
Aelin slowly looked over a shoulder. “What if their queen summoned them?”
“I am no more their queen than you are.”
They’d see about that. Aelin laid a hand flat on the table. “Send anything and anyone you find north,” she said to Ansel. “Sacking Melisande’s capital on the sly will at least piss off Erawan, but we don’t want to be stuck down here when Terrasen is attacked.”
“I think Erawan was probably born pissed.” Only Ansel, who had once laughed at death as she’d leaped a ravine and convinced Aelin to nearly die doing the same, would mock a Valg king. But Ansel added, “I’ll do it. I don’t know how effective it’ll be, but I have to go north anyway. Though I think Hisli will be heartbroken to say farewell to Kasida once again.”
It was no surprise at all that Ansel had managed to hold on to Hisli, the Asterion mare she’d stolen for herself. But Kasida—oh, Kasida was just as beautiful as Aelin remembered, even more so once she’d been led over a gangway onto the ship. Aelin had brushed the mare down when she’d led her into the cramped, wet stables, and bribed the horse to forgive her with an apple.
Ansel slugged from the bottle. “I heard, you know. When you went to Endovier. I was still fighting my way onto the throne, battling Lord Loch’s horde with the lords I’d banded together, but … even out in the Wastes, we heard when you were sent there.”
Aelin picked at the table some more, well aware the others were listening. “It wasn’t fun.”
Ansel nodded. “Once I’d killed Loch, I had to stay to defend my throne, to make it right again for my people. But I knew if anyone could survive Endovier, it’d be you. I set out last summer. I’d reached the Ruhnn Mountains when I got word you were gone. Taken to the capital by …” She glanced at Dorian, stone-faced across the table. “Him. But I couldn’t go to Rifthold. It was too far, a
nd I had been gone too long. So I turned around. Went home.”
Aelin’s words were strangled. “You tried to get me out?”
The fire cast Ansel’s hair in ruby and gold. “There was not one hour that I did not think about what I did in the desert. How you fired that arrow after twenty-one minutes. You told me twenty, that you’d shoot even if I wasn’t out of range. I was counting; I knew how many it had been. You gave me an extra minute.”
Lysandra stretched out, nuzzling Ansel’s hand. She idly scratched the shifter.
Aelin said, “You were my mirror. That extra minute was as much for me as it was for you.” Aelin clinked her bottle against Ansel’s again. “Thank you.”
Ansel just said, “Don’t thank me yet.”
Aelin straightened. The others halted their eating, utensils discarded in their stew.
“The fires along the coast weren’t set by Erawan,” Ansel said, those red-brown eyes flickering in the lantern light. “We interrogated Melisande’s Queen and her lieutenants, but … it wasn’t an order from Morath.”
Aedion’s low growl told her they all knew the answer before Ansel replied.
“We got a report that Fae soldiers were spied starting them. Firing from ships.”
“Maeve,” Gavriel murmured. “But burning isn’t her style.”
“It’s mine,” Aelin said. They all looked at her. She let out a humorless laugh.
Ansel just nodded. “She’s been setting them, blaming you for it.”
“To what end?” Dorian asked, dragging a hand through his blue-black hair.
“To undermine Aelin,” Rowan said. “To make her look like a tyrant, not a savior. Like a threat worth banding against, rather than allying with.”
Aelin sucked on a tooth. “Maeve plays the game well, I’ll give her that.”