With every step down the stairs, Aelin’s shoulders seemed to droop, her hair seeming to grow duller, her skin paler.
This was where she’d last seen Sam, he realized. And her master knew it.
“We use this for most of our meetings—harder to eavesdrop or be caught unawares,” Arobynn said to no one in particular. “Though it also has other uses, as you’ll soon see.” He opened door after door, and it seemed to Rowan that Aelin was counting them, waiting, until—
“Shall we?” Arobynn said, gesturing toward the cell door.
Rowan touched her elbow. Gods, his self-control had to be in shreds tonight; he couldn’t stop making excuses to touch her. But this touch was essential. Her eyes met his, dim and cold. You give the word—just one damn word and he’s dead, and then we can search this house from top to bottom for that amulet.
She shook her head as she entered the cell, and he understood it well enough. Not yet. Not yet.
She’d almost balked on the stairs to the dungeons, and it was only the thought of the amulet, only the warmth of the Fae warrior at her back that made her put one foot in front of the other and descend into the dark stone interior.
She would never forget this room.
It still haunted her dreams.
The table was empty, but she could see him there, broken and almost unrecognizable, the scent of gloriella clinging to his body. Sam had been tortured in ways she hadn’t even known until she read Wesley’s letter. The worst of it had been requested by Arobynn. Requested, as punishment for Sam’s loving her—punishment for tampering with Arobynn’s belongings.
Arobynn sauntered into the room, hands in his pockets. Rowan’s sharp sniff told her enough about what this place smelled like.
Such a dark, cold room where they’d put Sam’s body. Such a dark, cold room where she’d vomited and then lain beside him on that table for hours and hours, unwilling to leave him.
Where Aedion now chained Stevan to the wall.
“Get out,” Arobynn said simply to Rowan and Aedion, who stiffened. “The two of you can wait upstairs. We don’t need unnecessary distractions. And neither does our guest.”
“Over my rotting corpse,” Aedion snapped. Aelin shot him a sharp look.
“Lysandra is waiting for you in the drawing room,” Arobynn said with expert politeness, his eyes now fixed on the hooded Valg chained to the wall. Stevan’s gloved hands tugged at the chains, his incessant hissing rising with impressive violence. “She’ll entertain you. We’ll be up for dinner shortly.”
Rowan was watching Aelin very, very carefully. She gave him a slight nod.
Rowan met Aedion’s gaze—the general stared right back.
Honestly, had she been anywhere else, she might have pulled up a chair to watch this latest little dominance battle. Thankfully, Aedion just turned toward the stairs. A moment later, they were gone.
Arobynn stalked to the demon and snatched the hood from his head.
Black, rage-filled eyes glared at them and blinked, scanning the room.
“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” Arobynn drawled.
Stevan just smiled.
Aelin listened to Arobynn interrogate the demon, demanding to know what it was, where it had come from, what the king wanted. After thirty minutes and minimal slicing, the demon was talking about anything and everything.
“How does the king control you?” Arobynn pushed.
The demon laughed. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Arobynn half turned to her, holding up his dagger, a trickle of dark blood sliding down the blade. “Would you like to do the honors? This is for your benefit, after all.”
She frowned at her dress. “I don’t want to get blood on it.”
Arobynn smirked and slashed his dagger down the man’s pectoral. The demon screeched, drowning out the pitter-patter of blood on the stones. “The ring,” it panted after a moment. “We’ve all got them.” Arobynn paused, and Aelin cocked her head. “Left—left hand,” it said.
Arobynn yanked off the man’s glove, revealing the black ring.
“How?”
“He has a ring, too—uses it to control us all. Ring goes on, and it doesn’t come off. We do what he says, whatever he says.”
“Where did he get the rings from?”
“Made ’em, I don’t know.” The dagger came closer. “I swear! We wear the rings, and he makes a cut on our arms—licks our blood so it’s in him, and then he can control us however he wants. It’s the blood that links us.”
“And what does he plan to do with you all, now that you’re invading my city?”
“We’re searching for the general. I won’t—won’t tell anyone he’s here … Or that she’s here, I swear. The rest—the rest I don’t know.” His eyes met hers—dark, pleading.
“Kill him,” she said to Arobynn. “He’s a liability.”
“Please,” Stevan said, his eyes still holding hers. She looked away.
“He does seem to have run out of things to tell me,” Arobynn mused.
Swift as an adder, Arobynn lunged for him, and Stevan screamed so loudly it hurt her ears as Arobynn sliced off his finger—and the ring that held it—in one brutal movement. “Thank you,” Arobynn said above Stevan’s screaming, and then slashed his knife across the man’s throat.
Aelin stepped clear of the spray of blood, holding Stevan’s stare as the light faded from his gaze. When the spray had slowed, she frowned at Arobynn. “You could have killed him and then cut off the ring.”
“Where would the fun be in that?” Arobynn held up the bloody finger and pried off the ring. “Lost your bloodlust?”
“I’d dump that ring in the Avery if I were you.”
“The king is enslaving people to his will with these things. I plan to study this one as best I can.” Of course he did. He pocketed the ring and inclined his head toward the door. “Now that we’re even, darling … shall we eat?”
It was an effort to nod with Stevan’s still-bleeding body sagging from the wall.
Aelin was seated to Arobynn’s right, as she’d always been. She’d expected Lysandra to be across from her, but instead the courtesan was beside her. No doubt meant to reduce her options to two: deal with her longtime rival, or talk to Arobynn. Or something like that.
She had bid hello to Lysandra, who’d been keeping Aedion and Rowan company in the drawing room, keenly aware of Arobynn on her heels as she shook Lysandra’s hand, subtly passing over the note she’d kept hidden in her dress all night.
The note was gone by the time Aelin leaned in to kiss the courtesan’s cheek, the peck of someone not entirely thrilled to be doing so.
Arobynn had seated Rowan to his left, with Aedion beside the warrior. The two members of her court were separated by the table to keep them from reaching her, and to leave her unprotected from Arobynn. Neither had asked what happened in the dungeon.
“I have to say,” Arobynn mused as their first course—tomato and basil soup, courtesy of vegetables grown in the hothouse in the back—was cleared away by silent servants who had been summoned now that Stevan had been dealt with. Aelin recognized some, though they didn’t look at her. They had never looked at her, even when she was living here. She knew they wouldn’t dare whisper a word about who dined at this table tonight. Not with Arobynn as their master. “You’re a rather quiet group. Or has my protégée scared you into silence?”
Aedion, who had watched every bite she took of that soup, lifted an eyebrow. “You want us to make small talk after you just interrogated and butchered a demon?”
Arobynn waved a hand. “I’d like to hear more about you all.”
“Careful,” she said too quietly to Arobynn.
The King of the Assassins straightened the silverware flanking his plate. “Shouldn’t I be concerned about who my protégée is living with?”
“You weren’t concerned about who I was living with when you had me shipped off to Endovier.”
A slow blink. “Is that what you think I did?”
Lysandra stiffened beside her. Arobynn noted the movement—as he noted every movement—and said, “Lysandra can tell you the truth: I fought tooth and nail to free you from that prison. I lost half my men to the effort, all of them tortured and killed by the king. I’m surprised your friend the captain didn’t tell you. Such a pity he’s on rooftop watch tonight.”
He missed nothing, it seemed.
Arobynn looked to Lysandra—waiting. She swallowed and murmured, “He did try, you know. For months and months.”
It was so convincing that Aelin might have believed it. Through some miracle, Arobynn had no idea that the woman had been meeting with them in secret. Some miracle—or Lysandra’s own wits.
Aelin drawled to Arobynn, “Do you plan on telling me why you insisted we stay for dinner?”
“How else would I get to see you? You would have just dumped that thing on my doorstep and left. And we learned so much—so much that we could use, together.” The chill down her spine wasn’t faked. “Though I have to say, this new you is much more … subdued. I suppose for Lysandra that’s a good thing. She always looks at the hole you left in the entry wall when you threw that dagger at her head. I kept it there as a little reminder of how much we all missed you.”