Everyone, Darrow included, turned to the girl. No one had an answer. No lie to offer.
So they again faced the army gathered on the plain, its farthest reaches now visible.
“One hundred thousand,” Ansel of Briarcliff announced softly.
CHAPTER 76
“It’s possible—to show a different world?” Dorian asked Maeve when they were again in their tower room.
Maeve slid into a chair, her face distant. “Using mirrors, yes.”
Dorian lifted a brow.
“You have seen yourself the power of witch mirrors. What it did to Aelin Galathynius and Manon Blackbeak. Who do you think taught the witches such power? Not the Fae.” A small laugh. “And how do you think I have been able to see so far, hear the voices of my eyes, all the way from Doranelle? There are mirrors to spy, to travel, to kill. Even now, Erawan wields them to his advantage with the Ironteeth.” With the witch towers.
Maeve lounged, a queen with no crown. “I can show him what he wishes to see.”
Dorian opened his mouth, then considered the words.
“An illusion. You don’t plan to show him Orcus or Mantyx at all.”
She cut him a cool stare. “A sleight of hand—while you enter the tower.”
“I can’t get in.”
“I am a world-walker,” Maeve said. “I have traveled between universes. Do you think moving between rooms will be so hard?”
“Something kept you from going to Terrasen all these years.”
Maeve’s jaw tightened. “Brannon Galathynius was aware of my gifts to move between places. The wards around his kingdom prevent me from doing so.”
“So you could not transport Erawan’s armies there for him.”
“No. I can only enter on foot. There are too many of them, anyway, for me to hold the portal that long.”
“Erawan is aware of your gift, so he’ll likely have taken steps to guard his own room.”
“Yes, and I have spent my time here slowly unraveling them. He is not so skilled a spellworker as he thinks.” A smug, triumphant smile.
Yet Dorian asked, “Why not do this from the start?”
“Because I had not yet decided it was worth the risk. Because he had not yet pushed me to bring my handmaidens here, to be mere foot soldiers.”
“You care about them—the spiders.”
“You will find, Your Majesty, that a loyal friend is a rare thing indeed. They are not so easy to sacrifice.”
“You offered up six of them to those princesses.”
“And I shall remember that for as long as I live,” Maeve said, and some kernel of emotion indeed danced over her face. “They went willingly. I tell myself that whenever I look upon them now and see nothing of the creatures I knew. They wished to help me.” Her eyes met his. “Not all Valg are evil.”
“Erawan is.”
“Yes,” she said, and her eyes darkened. “He and his brothers … they are the worst of our kind. Their rule was through fear and pain. They delight in such things.”
“And you do not?”
Maeve twirled an inky strand around a finger. And didn’t answer.
Fine. Dorian went on, “So you shall break past Erawan’s wards on his room, open the portal for me, and I’ll slip in while you distract him with an illusion about his brothers.” He frowned. “As soon as I find the key, he’ll know you’ve deceived him. We’ll have to leave quickly.”
Her mouth curved. “We will. And go to wherever you have hidden the others.”
Dorian kept every expression off his face. “You’re certain he won’t know he’s being tricked?”
“Orcus is his brother. But Orcus was also my husband. The illusion will be real enough.”
Dorian considered. “What time do we make our move?”
Nightfall.
That was when Maeve had told Erawan to meet. That liminal space between light and dark, when one force yielded to another. When she would open the portal for Dorian from rooms away.
As the sun set—not that Dorian could see it with the clouds and gloom of Morath—he found himself staring at the wall of Maeve’s chamber.
She had left minutes ago, with nothing more than a farewell glance. Their escape route had been plotted, an alternative with it. All should go according to plan.
And the body he now wore, the golden hair and golden eyes … Should anyone but Erawan himself stumble into the tower, they would find it occupied by their master.
He did not have room in himself for fear, for doubt. Did not think of the Wyrdstone collars beneath the fortress, or every twisted room and dungeon he’d passed through. Darkness fell beyond the room.
Dorian stepped back as the stones turned dark, dark, dark—then vanished.
The stench of death, of rot, of hate flowed out. Far more putrid than the tomb levels below.
It threatened to buckle his knees, but Dorian drew Damaris. Rallied his power and lifted his left hand, a faint golden light shining from his fingers. Fire.
With a prayer to whatever gods might bother to help him, Dorian stepped through the portal.
CHAPTER 77
Dorian didn’t know what he had expected from a Valg king’s chamber, but the four-poster bed of carved black wood, the washstand and desk, would have been low on his list of guesses.
Nothing extraordinary. No trove of stolen, ancient weapons or heirlooms, no bubbling potions or spellbooks, no snarling beasts in the corner. No additional of Wyrdstone collars.
A bedroom and nothing more.
He scanned the circular room, even going so far as to peer down the stairwell. A straight shot to the iron door and guards posted outside. No closets. No trapdoors.
He opened the armoire to find row after row of clean clothes. None of the drawers contained anything—and there were no hidden compartments.
But he felt it. That otherworldly, terrible presence. Could feel it all around him—
A small noise had him whirling.
Dorian looked at the bed then. At what he had missed, left lying between obsidian sheets, which nearly swallowed her frail, small body.
The young woman. Her face was hollow, vacant. Yet she stared at him. As if she’d awoken.
A pretty, dark-haired girl. No older than twenty. A near-twin to Kaltain.
Bile burned his throat. And as the girl sat up farther, the sheets falling away to reveal a wasted, naked body, to reveal a too-thin arm and the hideous purplish scar near the wrist … He knew why he had felt the key’s presence throughout the keep. Moving about. Vanishing.
It had been walking. Trailing its master. Her enslaver.
A collar of black stone had been clamped around her throat.
And yet she sat there in that rumpled bed. Staring at him.
Hollow and vacant—and in pain.
He had no words. There was only ringing silence.
Kaltain had destroyed the Valg prince inside her, but the Wyrdkey had driven her mad. Had given her terrible power, but ripped apart her mind.
Dorian slowly, carefully, took one step closer to the bed. “You’re awake,” he said, willing his voice to the drawl of the Valg king. Knowing it was her captor she saw.
A blink.
Dorian had witnessed Erawan’s experiments, the horrors of his dungeons. Yet this young woman, so starved, the bruises on her skin, the unholy thing in her arm, the unholy thing he’d known had shared this bed with her …
He dared to unspool a thread of his power. It neared her arm and recoiled.
Yes, the key was there.
He prowled closer, willing her not to look toward the portal in the wall.
The young woman trembled—just slightly.
He willed himself not to vomit. Not to do anything but look at her with cool command as he said, “Give me your arm.”
Her brown eyes scanned his face, but she held out her arm.
He nearly staggered back at the festering wound, the black veins running up from it. Leaking its poison into her. What Kaltain’s wound had no doubt looked like, and why the scar remained, even in death.
But he sheathed Damaris and took her arm in his hands.
Ice. Her skin was like ice. “Lie down,” he told her.
She shook, but obeyed. Bracing herself. For him.
Kaltain. Oh gods, Kaltain. What she’d endured—