Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass 5)

“Your fire-breathing queen? She’s a gods-damned assassin. Trained to be a killer from the moment your mother died defending her. Trained to be no better than the man who butchered your mother and your royal family.”

Elide shook her head, her hands slackening. “What?” she said again.

Lorcan laughed mirthlessly. “While you were locked in that tower for ten years, she was indulging in the riches of Rifthold, spoiled and coddled by her master—the King of the Assassins—whom she murdered in cold blood this spring. So you’ll find that your long-lost savior is little better than I am. You’ll find that she would have killed that man the same as I did, and would have as little tolerance for your whining as I do.”

Aelin … an assassin. Aelin—the same person she’d been tasked to give the stone to …

“You knew,” she said. “This whole time we’ve been together—you knew I was looking for the same person.”

“I told you that to find one would be to find the other.”

“You knew, and you didn’t tell me. Why?”

“You still haven’t told me your secrets. I don’t see why I should tell all of mine, either.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to ignore the dark stain on the wood—trying to soothe the sting of his words and seal the hole that had opened beneath her feet. What had been in that amulet? Why had he roared and—

“Your little queen,” Lorcan sneered, “is a murderer, and a thief, and a liar. So if you’re going to call me such things, then be prepared to fling them at her, too.”

Her skin was too tight, her bones too brittle to bear the anger that took control. She scrambled for the right words to hurt him, wound him, as if they were fistfuls of rocks that she could hurl at Lorcan’s head.

Elide hissed, “I was wrong. I said you and I were the same—that we had no family, no friends. But I have none because land and circumstance separate me from them. You have none because no one can stomach being around you.” She tried—and succeeded, if the ire that rippled in his eyes was any indication—to look down her nose at him, even with him towering over her. “And you know what is the biggest lie you tell everyone, Lorcan? It’s that you prefer it that way. But what I hear, when you rant about my bitch-queen? All I hear are the words of someone who is deeply, deeply jealous, and lonely, and pathetic. All I hear are the words of someone who saw Aelin and Prince Rowan fall in love and resented them for their happiness—because you are so unhappy.” She couldn’t stop the words once they started flinging out. “So call Aelin a murderer and a thief and a liar. Call her a bitch-queen and a fire-breather. But forgive me if I take it upon myself to be the judge of those things when I meet her. Which I will do.” She pointed to the muddy gray river flowing around them. “I’m going to Eyllwe. Take me ashore and I’ll wash my hands of you as easily as you washed the blood of that man off yours.”

Lorcan looked her over, teeth bared enough to show those slightly elongated canines. But she didn’t care about his Fae heritage, or his age, or his ability to kill.

After a moment, he went back to pushing the pole against the river bottom—not to bring them to shore, but to guide them along.

“Did you not hear what I said? Take me to shore.”

“No.”

Her rage overcame any sort of common sense, any warning from Anneith as she stormed over to him. “No?”

He let the pole drag in the water and turned his face to her. No emotion—not even anger lingered there. “The river veered southward two miles ago. From the map in the cabin, we can take it straight south, then find the fastest route to Banjali.” She wiped the rain from her dripping brow as Lorcan brought his face close enough for them to share breath. “Turns out, I now have business with Aelin Galathynius, too. Congratulations, Lady. You just got yourself a guide to Eyllwe.”

A cold, killing light was in his eyes, and she wondered what the hell he’d roared about.

But those eyes dipped to her mouth, clamped tight in her rage. And a part of her that had nothing to do with fear went still at the attention, even as other parts went a bit molten.

Lorcan’s eyes at last found her own, and his voice was a midnight growl as he said, “As far as anyone’s concerned, you’re still my wife.”

Elide didn’t object—even as she walked back into the cabin, his insufferable magic helping with her limp, and slammed the door shut so hard the glass rattled.

Storm clouds drifted away to reveal a star-flecked night and a moon bright enough for Lorcan to navigate the narrow, sleepy river.

He steered them hour after hour, contemplating precisely how he was going to murder Aelin Galathynius without Elide or Whitethorn getting in the way, and then how he was going to slice up her corpse and feed it to the crows.

She had lied to him. She and Whitethorn had tricked him that day the prince had handed over the Wyrdkey.

There’d been nothing inside the amulet but one of those rings—an utterly useless Wyrdstone ring, wrapped in a bit of parchment. And on it was written in a feminine scrawl:

Here’s hoping you discover more creative terms than “bitch” to call me when you find this.

With all my love,

A.A.G.

He’d kill her. Slowly. Creatively. He’d been forced to swear a blood promise that Mala’s ring truly offered immunity from the Valg when it was worn—he hadn’t thought to demand that their Wyrdkey was real, too.

And Elide—what Elide carried, what had made him realize it … He’d think about that later. Contemplate what to do with the Lady of Perranth later.

His only consolation was that he’d stolen Mala’s ring back, but the little bitch still had the key. And if Elide needed to go to Aelin anyway … Oh, he’d find Aelin for Elide.

And he’d make the Queen of Terrasen crawl before the end of it.

44

The world began and ended in fire.

A sea of fire with no room for air, for sound beyond the cascading molten earth. The true heart of fire—the tool of creation and destruction. And she was drowning in it.

Its weight smothered her as she thrashed, seeking a surface or a bottom to push off from. Neither existed.

As it flooded her throat, surging into her body and melting her apart, she began screaming noiselessly, begging it to halt—

Aelin.

The name, roared into the core of flame at the heart of the world, was a beacon, a summons. She’d been born waiting to hear that voice, had blindly sought it her whole life, would follow it unto

the ending of all things—

“AELIN.”

Aelin bowed off the bed, flame in her mouth, her throat, her eyes. Real flame.

Golds and blues wove among simmering swaths of reds. Real flame, erupting from her, the sheets scorched, the room and the rest of the bed spared from incineration, the ship in the middle of the sea spared from incineration, by an uncompromising, unbreakable wall of air.

Hands wrapped in ice squeezed her shoulders, and through the flame, Rowan’s snarling face appeared, commanding her to breathe—

She took a breath. More flame rushed down her throat.

There was no tether, no leash to bring her magic to heel. Oh, gods—oh, gods, she couldn’t even feel a burnout threatening nearby. There was nothing but this flame—

Rowan gripped her face in his hands, steam rippling where his ice and wind met her fire. “You are its master; you control it. Your fear grants it the right to take over.”

Her body arced off the mattress again, utterly naked. She must have burned her clothes—Rowan’s favorite shirt. Her flames burned wilder.

He gripped her hard, forcing her to meet his eyes as he snarled, “I see you. I see every part of you. And I am not afraid.”

I will not be afraid.

A line in the burning brightness.

My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius …

And I will not be afraid.

As surely as if she grabbed it in her hand, the leash appeared.

Darkness flowed in, blessed and calm where that burning pit of flame had raged.

She swallowed once, twice. “Rowan.”

His eyes gleamed with near-animal brightness, scanning every inch of her.

His heartbeat was rampant, thundering—panicked. “Rowan,” she repeated.

Still he did not move, did not stop staring at her, searching for signs of harm. Something in her own chest shifted at his panic.

Aelin grasped his shoulder, digging in her nails at the violence rampant on every line of his body, as if he’d loosed whatever leashes he kept on himself in anticipation of fighting to keep her in this body and not some goddess or worse. “Calm down. Now.”