“She is a liar and a fool,” Maeve spat. “She seeks to drive us apart because she knows we can defeat her together.” Again, that dark power rallied around Maeve.
The dark king only stared at Aelin with those golden, burning eyes, and smiled. “Indeed. You—”
He paused. Those golden eyes lifted above Aelin. Above the gates and wall behind her. To something high above.
Aelin didn’t dare to look. To take her attention away for that long. To hope.
But the gold in Erawan’s eyes glowed. Glowed—with rage and perhaps a kernel of fear.
He twisted his head toward Maeve. “There are healers in that castle.”
“Of course there are,” Maeve snapped.
Yet Erawan stilled. “There are skilled healers there. Ripe with power.”
“Straight from the Torre Cesme,” Aelin said, nodding solemnly. “As I told you.”
Erawan only looked at Maeve. And that doubt flickered again.
He glanced to Aelin. To her fire, her sword. She bowed her head.
Erawan hissed at Maeve, “If she spoke true, you are carrion.”
And before Aelin could muster an ember to strike, a dark, sinewy form swept from the blackness behind Erawan and snatched him up. An ilken.
Aelin didn’t waste her power trying to down them, not with the ilken’s defenses against magic. Not with Maeve tracking Erawan as he was carried into the skies. Over the city.
Against two Valg rulers, she should have already been dead. Against the female before her, Aelin knew it was still just a matter of time. But if Yrene, if her friends, could take down Erawan …
“Just us, then,” Maeve said, lips curving into that spider’s smile. The smile of the horrendous creatures that launched themselves at Orynth.
Aelin lifted Goldryn again. “That’s precisely how I wanted it,” she said. Truth.
“But I know your secret, Heir of Fire,” Maeve crooned, and struck again.
CHAPTER 112
Atop the highest tower of the castle of Orynth, on the broad balcony that overlooked the world far below, the healer sent out another flare of power.
The white glow seared the night, casting the tower stones in stark relief.
A beacon, a challenge to the dark king who battled Aelin Galathynius below.
Here I am, the power sang through the night. Here I am.
Erawan answered.
His rage, his fear, his hatred filled the wind as he swept in, carried in an ilken’s gangly limbs. He smiled at the young healer whose hands glowed with pure light, as if already tasting her blood. Savoring the destruction of what she offered, the gift she’d been given.
His sheer presence set people in the castle below screaming as they fled.
Not death incarnate, but something far worse. Something nearly as ancient, and almost as powerful.
The ilken swept over the tower, dropping him onto the balcony stones. Erawan landed with the grace of a cat, barely winded as he straightened.
As he smiled at her.
“I never thought you’d do it, you know,” Maeve said, her dark power coiling around her as Aelin panted. A cramp had begun low in her back and now lashed its way up her spine, down her legs. “That you’d be foolish enough to put the keys back into the gate. What happened to that glorious vision you once showed me, Aelin? Of you in this very city, your worshipping masses crying your name. Was it simply too dull for you, to be revered?”
Aelin rallied herself with every breath, Goldryn still burning bright.
Let her talk—let her gloat and ramble. Every second she had to recover, to regain a fraction of her strength, was a blessing.
Erawan had taken the bait, had let the doubt she’d planted take root in his mind. She had known it was only a matter of time until he sensed Yrene’s power. She only prayed Yrene Towers was ready to meet him.
“I had always hoped that you and I were true equals, in a way,” Maeve went on. “That you, more than Erawan, understood the true nature of power. Of what it means to wield it. What a disappointment that deep down, you wished to be so ordinary.”
The shield had become unbearably heavy. Aelin didn’t dare look behind her to see where Erawan had gone. What he was doing. She’d felt Yrene’s flare of power, had dared hope it might even be a signal, a lure, but nothing since then. It had drawn Erawan away, though. It was enough.
The darkness around Maeve writhed. “The Queen Who Was Promised is no more,” she said, clicking her tongue. “Now you’re nothing but an assassin with a crown. And a commoner’s gift of magic.”
Twin whips of brutal power speared for Aelin’s either side.
Throwing up her shield, swinging Goldryn with her other arm, Aelin deflected, flame flashing.
The shield buckled, but Goldryn burned steady.
But she felt it. The familiar, unending pain. The shadows that could devour.
Pressing closer. Eating away at her power.
Maeve glanced to the blazing sword. “Clever of you, to imbue the sword with your own gifts. No doubt done before you yielded everything to the Wyrdgate.”
“A precaution, should I not return,” Aelin panted. “A weapon to kill Valg.”
“We shall see.” Maeve struck again. Again.
Forcing Aelin to concede a step. Then another.
Back toward the invisible line she’d drawn between them and the southern gate.
Maeve stalked forward, her dark hair and robes billowing. “You have denied me two things, Aelin Galathynius. The keys I sought.” Another whip of power sliced for Aelin. Her flame barely deflected it this time. “And the great duel I was promised.”
As if Maeve opened the lid to a chest on her power, plumes of darkness erupted.
Aelin sliced with Goldryn, the fire within the blade unfaltering. But it was not enough. And as Aelin retreated another step, one of those plumes snapped across her legs.
Aelin couldn’t stop the scream that shattered from her throat. She went down, shield scattering in the icy mud.
Training kept her fingers clenched on Goldryn.
But pressure, unbearable and slithering, began to push into her head.
“Wake up.”
The world shifted. Snow replaced by firelight. The ground for a slab of iron.
The pressure in her head writhed, and Aelin bowed over her knees, refusing to acknowledge it. Real—this battle, the snow and blood, this was real.
“Wake up, Aelin,” Maeve whispered.
Aelin blinked. And found herself in the iron box, Maeve leaning over the open lid. Smiling. “We’re here,” the Fae Queen said.
Not Fae. Valg. Maeve was Valg—
“You’ve been dreaming,” Maeve said, running a finger over the mask still clamped to her face. “Such strange, wandering dreams, Aelin.”
No. No, it had been real. She managed to lift her head enough to peer down at herself. At the shift and too-thin body. The scars still on her.
Still there. Not wiped away. No new skin.
“I can make this easy for you,” Maeve went on, brushing Aelin’s hair back with gentle, loving strokes. “Tell me where the Wyrdkeys are, swear the blood oath, and these chains, this mask, this box … all of it will go away.”
They hadn’t yet begun. To tear her apart.
All of it a dream. One long nightmare. The keys remained unbound, the Lock unforged.
A dream, while they’d sailed here. Wherever here was.
“What say you, niece? Will you spare yourself? Yield to me?”
You do not yield.
Aelin blinked.
“It’s easier, isn’t it,” Maeve mused, bracing her forearms against the lip of the coffin. “To remain here. So you needn’t make such terrible choices. To let the others share the burden. Bear its cost.” A hint of a smile. “Deep down, that’s what haunts you. That wish to be free.”
Freedom—she’d known it. Hadn’t she?
“It’s what you fear most—not me, or Erawan, or the keys. That your wish to be free of the weight of your crown, your power, will consume you. Embitter you until you do not recognize your own self.” Her smile widened. “I wish to spare you from that. With me, you shall be free in a way you’ve never imagined, Aelin. I swear it.”
An oath.
She had sworn an oath. To Terrasen. To Nehemia. To Rowan.