“Good. Then you can clean and cut them. And you get to chop the onion.”
“Is that punishment for last night?”
She cracked the eggs one by one into a bowl. “If that’s what you think is an acceptable punishment, sure.”
“And is making breakfast at this ungodly hour your self-imposed punishment?”
“I’m making breakfast because I’m sick of you burning it and making the whole house smell.”
Aedion laughed quietly and came up beside her to begin slicing the onion.
“You stayed on the roof the whole time you were out, didn’t you?” She yanked an iron skillet from the rack over the stove, set it on a burner, and chucked a thick pat of butter onto its dark surface.
“You kicked me out of the apartment, but not the warehouse, so I figured I might as well make myself useful and take watch.” The twisty, bendy Old Ways manner of warping orders. She wondered what the Old Ways had to say about queenly propriety.
She grabbed a wooden spoon and pushed the melting butter around a bit. “We both have atrocious tempers. You know I didn’t mean what I said, about the loyalty thing. Or about the half-human thing. You know none of that matters to me.” Gavriel’s son—holy gods. But she would keep her mouth shut about it until Aedion felt like broaching the subject.
“Aelin, I’m ashamed of what I said to you.”
“Well, that makes two of us, so let’s leave it at that.” She whisked the eggs, keeping an eye on the butter. “I—I understand, Aedion, I really do, about the blood oath. I knew what it meant to you. I made a mistake not telling you. I don’t normally admit to that kind of thing, but … I should have told you. And I’m sorry.”
He sniffed at the onions, his expert slicing leaving a neat heap of them on one end of the cutting board, and then started on the small brown mushrooms. “That oath meant everything to me. Ren and I used to be at each other’s throats because of it when we were children. His father hated me because I was the one favored to take it.”
She took the onions from him and chucked them into the butter, sizzling filling the kitchen. “There’s nothing that says you can’t take the oath, you know. Maeve has several blood-sworn members in her court.” Who were now making Aelin’s life a living hell. “You can take it, and so can Ren—only if you want to, but … I won’t be upset if you don’t want to.”
“In Terrasen, there was only one.”
She stirred the onions. “Things change. New traditions for a new court. You can swear it right now if you wish.”
Aedion finished the mushrooms and set down the knife as he leaned against the counter. “Not now. Not until I see you crowned. Not until we can be in front of a crowd, in front of the world.”
She dumped in the mushrooms. “You’re even more dramatic than I am.”
Aedion snorted. “Hurry up with the eggs. I’m going to die of starvation.”
“Make the bacon, or you don’t get to eat any.”
Aedion could hardly move fast enough.
30
There was a room deep below the stone castle that the demon lurking inside him liked to visit.
The demon prince even let him out sometimes, through the eyes that might have once been his.
It was a room cloaked in endless night. Or maybe the darkness was from the demon.
But they could see; they had always been able to see in the blackness. Where the demon prince had come from, so little light existed that it had learned to hunt in the shadows.
There were pedestals arranged in the round room in an elegant curve, each topped with a black pillow. And on each pillow sat a crown.
Kept down here like trophies—kept in darkness. Like him.
A secret room.
The prince stood in the center of it, surveying the crowns.
The demon had taken control of the body completely. He’d let him, after that woman with the familiar eyes had failed to kill him.
He waited for the demon to leave the room, but the demon prince spoke instead. A hissing, cold voice that came from between the stars, speaking to him—only to him.
The crowns of the conquered nations, the demon prince said. More will be added soon. Perhaps the crowns of other worlds, too.
He did not care.
You should care—you will enjoy it as we rip the realms to shreds.
He backed away, tried to retreat into a pocket of darkness where even the demon prince couldn’t find him.
The demon laughed. Spineless human. No wonder she lost her head.
He tried to shut out the voice.
Tried to.
He wished that woman had killed him.
31
Manon stormed into Perrington’s massive war tent, shoving aside the heavy canvas flap so violently that her iron nails slashed through the material. “Why are my Thirteen being denied access to the Yellowlegs coven? Explain. Now.”
As the last word snapped out of her, Manon stopped dead.
Standing in the center of the dim tent, the duke whirled toward her, his face dark—and, Manon had to admit with a thrill, a bit terrifying. “Get out,” he said, his eyes flaring like embers.
But Manon’s attention was fixed on what—who—stood beyond the duke.
Manon stepped forward, even as the duke advanced on her.
Her black, filmy dress like woven night, Kaltain was facing a kneeling, trembling young soldier, her pale hand outstretched toward his contorted face.
And all over her, an unholy aura of dark fire burned.
“What is that?” Manon said.
“Out,” the duke barked, and actually had the nerve to lunge for Manon’s arm. She swiped with her iron nails, sidestepping the duke without so much as glancing at him. All her focus, every pore of her, was pinned on the dark-haired lady.
The young soldier—one of Perrington’s own—was silently sobbing as tendrils of that black fire floated from Kaltain’s fingertips and slithered over his skin, leaving no marks. The human turned pain-filled gray eyes to Manon. Please, he mouthed.
The duke snatched for Manon again, and she darted past him. “Explain this.”
“You do not give orders, Wing Leader,” the duke snapped. “Now get out.”
“What is that?” Manon repeated.
The duke surged for her, but then a silken female voice breathed, “Shadowfire.”
Perrington froze, as if surprised she had spoken.
“Where does this shadowfire come from?” Manon demanded. The woman was so small, so thin. The dress was barely more than cobwebs and shadows. It was cold in the mountain camp, even for Manon. Had she refused a cloak, or did they just not care? Or perhaps, with this fire … Perhaps she did not need one at all.
“From me,” Kaltain said, in a voice that was dead and hollow and yet vicious. “It has always been there—asleep. And now it has been awoken. Shaped anew.”
“What does it do?” Manon said. The duke had stopped to observe the young woman, like he was figuring out some sort of puzzle, like he was waiting for something else.
Kaltain smiled faintly at the soldier shaking on the ornate red carpet, his golden-brown hair shimmering in the light of the dimmed lantern above him. “It does this,” she whispered, and curled her delicate fingers.
The shadowfire shot from her hand and wrapped around the soldier like a second skin.
He opened his mouth in a silent scream—convulsing and thrashing, tipping his head back to the ceiling of the tent and sobbing in quiet, unheard agony.
But no burns marred his skin. As if the shadowfire summoned only pain, as if it tricked the body into thinking it was being incinerated.
Manon didn’t take her eyes away from the man spasming on the carpet, tears of blood now leaking from his eyes, his nose, his ears. Quietly she asked the duke, “Why are you torturing him? Is he a rebel spy?”
Now the duke approached Kaltain, peering at her blank, beautiful face. Her eyes were wholly fixed on the young man, enthralled. She spoke again. “No. Just a simple man.” No inflection, no sign of empathy.
“Enough,” the duke said, and the fire vanished from Kaltain’s hand. The young man sagged on the carpet, panting and weeping. The duke pointed to the curtains in the back of the tent, which no doubt concealed a sleeping area. “Lie down.”
Like a doll, like a ghost, Kaltain turned, that midnight gown swirling with her, and stalked toward the heavy red curtains, slipping through them as if she were no more than mist.
The duke walked over to the young man and knelt before him on the ground. The captive lifted his head, blood and tears mingling on his face. But the duke’s eyes met Manon’s as he put his massive hands on either side of his soldier’s face.
And snapped his neck.
The death-crunch shuddered through Manon like the twanging of a harp. Normally, she would have chuckled.
But for a heartbeat she felt warm, sticky blue blood on her hands, felt the hilt of her knife imprinted against her palm as she gripped it hard and slashed it across the throat of that Crochan.
The soldier slumped to the carpet as the duke rose. “What is it that you want, Blackbeak?”
Like the Crochan’s death, this had been a warning. Keep her mouth shut.
But she planned to write to her grandmother. Planned to tell her everything that had happened: this, and that the Yellowlegs coven hadn’t been seen or heard from since entering the chamber beneath the Keep. The Matron would fly down here and start shredding spines.