But he also knew his queen. And knew that despite the enormity of what they’d done, Aelin had also kept him on that beach to avoid the others. Avoid answering their questions and demands. But he made it one foot inside the Ocean Rose, saw the light in Aedion’s room, and knew their friends would not be so easily deterred.
Indeed, Aelin was scowling up at the light—though worry quickly replaced it as she remembered the shifter who had been so thoroughly unconscious. Her bare feet were silent on the stairs and hallway as she hurried for the room, not bothering to knock before flinging open the door.
Rowan loosed a sharp breath, trying to draw up his magic to cool the fire still in his blood. To calm the instincts roaring and raging at him. Not to take her—but to eliminate any other threat.
A dangerous time, for any Fae male, when they first took a lover. Worse, when it meant something more.
Dorian and Aedion sat in the two armchairs before the darkened fireplace, arms crossed.
And her cousin’s face went pale with what might have been terror as he scented Aelin—the markings both seen and invisible on them.
Lysandra sat in bed, face drawn but eyes narrowed at the queen. It was the shifter who purred, “Enjoy your ride?”
Aedion didn’t dare move and was giving Dorian a warning look to do the same. Rowan bit down against the rage at the sight of other males near his queen, reminding himself that they were his friends, but—
That primal rage stumbled as he felt Aelin’s shuddering relief upon finding the shifter mostly healed and lucid. But his queen only shrugged. “Isn’t that all these Fae males are good for?”
Rowan raised his brows, chuckling as he debated reminding her how she’d begged him throughout, how she’d said words like please, and oh, gods, and then a few extra pleases thrown in for good measure. He’d enjoy wringing those rarely seen manners from her again.
Aelin shot him a glare, daring him to say it. And despite just having her, despite the fact that he could still taste her, Rowan knew that whenever they found their bed again, she would not get the rest she wanted. Color stained Aelin’s cheeks, as if she saw his plans unfold, but she lifted the amulet from around her neck, dropped it onto the low-lying table between Aedion and Dorian, and said, “I learned that this was the third Wyrdkey when I was still in Wendlyn.”
Silence.
Then, as if she hadn’t shattered any sense of safety they still possessed, Aelin withdrew the mangled Eye of Elena from her pack, chucked it once in the air, and jerked her chin at the King of Adarlan. “I think it’s time you met your ancestor.”
Dorian listened to Aelin’s story.
About the Wyrdkey she’d secretly carried, about what had happened today in the bay, about how she’d tricked Lorcan and how it would eventually lead the warrior back to them—hopefully with the other two keys in his hands. And, if they were lucky, they would have already found this Lock she had been ordered twice now to retrieve from the Stone Marshes—the only thing capable of binding the Wyrdkeys back into the gate from which they’d been hewn and ending the threat of Erawan forever.
No number of allies would make a difference if they could not stop Erawan from using those keys to unleash the Valg hordes from his own realm upon Erilea. His possession of two keys had already led to such darkness. If he gained the third, gained mastery over the Wyrdgate and could open it to any world at will, use it to summon any conquering army … They had to find that Lock to nullify those keys.
When the queen was done, Aedion was silently fuming, Lysandra was frowning, and Aelin was now snuffing out the candles in the room with hardly a wave of her hand. Two ancient tomes, withdrawn from Aedion’s crammed saddlebags, lay open on the table. He knew those books—he had no idea she’d taken them from Rifthold. The warped metal of the Eye of Elena amulet sat atop one of them as Aelin double-checked the markings on an age-spotted page.
Darkness fell as she used her own blood to etch those markings on the wooden floor.
“Looks like our bill of damages to this city is going to rise,” Lysandra muttered.
Aelin snorted. “We’ll just move the rug to cover it.” She finished making a mark—a Wyrdmark, Dorian realized with a chill, and stepped back, plucking up the Eye in her fist.
“Now what?” Aedion said.
“Now we keep our mouths shut,” Aelin said sweetly.
The moonlight spread on the floor, devoured by the dark lines she’d etched. Aelin drifted over to where Rowan sat on the edge of the bed, still shirtless thanks to the queen currently wearing his shirt, and took up a spot beside him, a hand on his knee.
Lysandra was the first to notice.
She sat up in the bed, green eyes glowing with animal brightness as the moonlight on the blood-marks seemed to shimmer. Aelin and Rowan jerked to their feet. Dorian just stared at the marks, at the moonlight, at the beam of it shining through the open balcony doors.
As if the light itself were a doorway, the shaft of moonlight turned into a humanoid figure.
It flickered, its form barely there. Like a figment of a dream.
The hair on Dorian’s arms rose. And he had the good sense to slide out of his chair and onto a knee as he bowed his head.
He was the only one who did so. The only one, he realized, who had spoken to Elena’s mate, Gavin. Long ago—another lifetime ago. He tried not to consider what it meant that he now carried Gavin’s sword, Damaris. Aelin had not asked for it back—did not seem inclined to do so.
A muffled female voice, as if it were calling from far away, flickered in and out with the image. “Too—far,” a light, young voice said.
Aelin stepped forward and shut those ancient spellbooks before stacking them with a thump. “Well, Rifthold isn’t exactly available, and your tomb is trashed, so tough luck.”
Dorian’s head lifted as he glanced between the flickering figure of mo
onlight and the young queen of flesh and blood.
Elena’s roughly formed body vanished, then reappeared, as if the wind itself disturbed her. “Can’t—hold—”
“Then I’ll make it quick.” Aelin’s voice was sharp as a blade. “No more games. No more half-truths. Why did Deanna arrive today? I get it: finding the Lock is important. But what is it? And tell me what she meant by calling me the Queen Who Was Promised.”
As if the words jolted the dead queen like lightning, his ancestor appeared, fully corporeal.
She was exquisite: her face young and grave, her hair long and silvery-white—like Manon’s—and her eyes … Startling, dazzling blue. They now fixed on him, the pale gown she wore fluttering on a phantom breeze. “Rise, young king.”
Aelin snorted. “Can we not play the holier-than-thou-ancient-spirit game?”
But Elena surveyed Rowan, Aedion. Her slender, fair neck bobbed.
And Aelin, gods above, snapped her fingers at the queen—once, twice—drawing her attention back to her. “Hello, Elena,” she drawled, “so nice to see you. It’s been a while. Care to answer some questions?”
Irritation flickered in the dead queen’s eyes. But Elena’s chin remained high, her slender shoulders back. “I do not have much time. The connection is too hard to maintain so far from Rifthold.”
“What a surprise.”
The two queens stared each other down.
Elena, Wyrd damn him, broke first. “Deanna is a god. She does not have rules and morals and codes the way we do. Time does not exist for her the way it does for us. You let your magic touch the key, the key opened a door, and Deanna happened to be watching at that exact moment. That she spoke to you at all is a gift. That you managed to shove her out before she was ready … She will not soon forget that insult, Majesty.”
“She can get in line,” Aelin said.
Elena shook her head. “There is … there is so much I did not get to tell you.”
“Like the fact that you and Gavin never killed Erawan, lied to everyone about it, and then left him for us to deal with?”