Rowan said to Manon, “You go left. Whistle if you find anything.”
Manon stalked off among the stones and water and reeds, shoulders tight enough to suggest she hadn’t appreciated the order, but she wasn’t dumb enough to tangle with him.
Aelin smiled a bit at the thought as she and Rowan continued on. Running her free palm over the carved walls they passed, she said casually, “That sunrise Mala appeared to you—what, exactly, did she say?”
He slashed a glance in her direction. “Why?”
Her heart turned thunderous, and maybe it made her a coward to say it now—
Rowan gripped her elbow as he read her body, scented her fear and pain. “Aelin.”
She braced herself, nothing but stone and water and bramble around them, and turned a corner.
And there it was.
Even Rowan forgot to demand an answer to what she’d been about to tell him as they surveyed the open space flanked by crumbling walls and punctuated by fallen pillars. And at its northern end … “Big surprise,” Aelin muttered. “There’s an altar.”
“It’s a chest,” Rowan corrected with a half smile. “It’s got a lid.”
“Even better,” she said, nudging him with an elbow. Yes—yes, she’d tell him later.
The water separating them from the chest was still and silver bright—too murky to see if there was a bottom at all beyond the steps up to the dais. Aelin reached for her water magic, hoping it’d whisper of what lay beneath that surface, but her flames were burning too loudly.
Splashing issued across the way, and Manon appeared around an opposite wall. Her focus went to the enormous stone chest at the rear of the space, the stone cracked and overflowing with weeds and vines. She began easing across the water, one step at a time.
Aelin said, “Don’t touch the chest.”
Manon just gave her a long look and kept heading for the dais.
Trying not to slip on the slick floor, Aelin crossed the space, sloshing water over the dais steps as she mounted them, Rowan close behind.
Manon leaned over the chest to study the lid but did not open it. Studying, Aelin realized, the countless Wyrdmarks carved into the stone.
Nehemia had known how to use the marks. Had been taught them and was fluent enough in them to have wielded their power. Aelin had never asked how or why or when.
But here were Wyrdmarks, deep within Eyllwe.
Aelin stepped up to Manon, examining the lid more closely. “Do you know what those are?”
Manon brushed back her long white hair. “I’ve never seen such markings.”
Aelin examined a few, her memory straining for the translation. “Some of these aren’t symbols I’ve encountered before. Some are.” She scratched her head. “Should we throw a rock at it—see what it does?” she asked, twisting to where Rowan peered over her shoulder.
But a hollow throb of air pulsed around them, silencing the incessant buzz of the marshes’ inhabitants. And it was that utter silence, the bark of surprise from Fenrys, that had Aelin and Manon shifting into flanking, defensive positions. As if they’d done this a hundred times before.
But Rowan had gone still as he scanned the gray skies, the ruins, the water.
“What is it?” Aelin breathed.
Before her prince could answer, Aelin felt it again. A pulsing, dark wind demanding their attention. Not the Valg. No, this darkness was born of something else.
“Lorcan,” Rowan breathed, a hand on his sword—but not drawing it.
“Is that his magic?” Aelin shuddered as that death-kissed wind shoved at her. She batted it away as if it were a gnat. It snapped at her in answer.
“It’s his warning signal,” Rowan murmured.
“For what?” Manon asked sharply.
Rowan was instantly moving, scaling the high walls with ease, even as stone crumbled away. He balanced on its top, surveying the land on the other side of the wall.
Then he smoothly climbed back down, his splash as he landed echoing off the stones.
Lysandra slithered around a cluster of weeds and halted with a swift thrust of her scaled tail as Rowan said too calmly, “There is an aerial legion approaching.”
Manon breathed, “Ironteeth?”
“No,” Rowan said, meeting Aelin’s gaze with an icy steadiness that had seen him through centuries of battle. “Ilken.”
“How many?” Aelin’s voice turned distant—hollow.
Rowan’s throat bobbed, and she knew he’d been taking in the horizon and surrounding lands not for any chance of winning the battle that was sure to come, but for any shot at getting her out. Even if the rest of them had to buy her time with their own lives.
“Five hundred.”
55
Lorcan’s breath singed his throat with every inhalation, but he kept running through the marshes, Elide laboring beside him, never complaining, only scanning the skies with wide, dark eyes.
Lorcan sent out another flickering blast of his power. Not toward the winged army that raced not too far ahead, but farther—toward wherever Whitethorn and his bitch-queen might be in this festering place. If those ilken reached them long before Lorcan could arrive, that Wyrdkey the bitch carried would be as good as lost. And Elide … He shut out the thoughts.
The ilken flew hard and fast, heading toward what had to be the heart of the marshes. What the hell had brought the queen out here?
Elide flagged, and Lorcan gripped her under an elbow to keep her upright as she stumbled over a bit of pockmarked stone. Faster. If the ilken caught them unawares, if they stole his revenge and that key …
Lorcan sent out burst after burst of his power in every direction.
Keys aside, he didn’t want to see the look on Elide’s face if the ilken got there first. And they found whatever was left of the fire-breather and her court.
There was nowhere to go.
In the heart of this festering plain, there was nowhere to run, or hide.
Erawan had tracked them here. Had sent five hundred ilken to retrieve them. If the ilken had found them on the sea and in this endless wasteland, they’d no doubt be able to find them if they tried hiding among the ruins.
They were all silent as they gathered on a grassy hill at the edge of the ruins, watching that black mass take form. Deep in the ruins behind them, the chest still waited. Untouched.
Aelin knew the Lock couldn’t help—other than to waste their time by opening its container. Brannon could get in line to complain.
And Lorcan … somewhere out there. She’d think on that later. At least Fenrys and Gavriel had remained, rather than charging off to fulfill Maeve’s kill order.
Rowan said, eyes pinned on those swift, leathery wings far on the horizon, “We’ll use the ruin to our advantage. Force them to bottleneck in key areas.” Like a cloud of locusts, the ilken blocked out the clouds, the light, the sky. A dull, glazed sort of calm swept over Aelin.
Eight against five hundred.
Fenrys quickly tied back his golden hair. “We divide it up, take them out. Before they can get close enough. While they’re still in the air.” He tapped his foot on the ground, rolling his shoulders—as if shaking off the grip of that blood oath roaring at him to hunt down Lorcan.
Aelin rasped, “There’s another way.”
“No,” was Rowan’s response.
She swallowed hard and lifted her chin. “There is nothing and no one out here. The risk of using that key would be minimal—”
Rowan’s teeth flashed as he snarled, “No, and that’s final.”
Aelin said too quietly, “You don’t give me orders.”
She saw as much as she felt Rowan’s temper rise with dizzying speed. “You will have to pry that key out of my cold, dead hands.”
He meant it, too—he’d make her kill him before he let her use the key in any capacity beyond wielding the Lock.
Aedion let out a low, bitter laugh. “You wanted to send a message to our enemies about your power, Aelin.” Closer and closer that army came, and Rowan’s ice and wind licked at her as he tunneled down into his magic. Aedion jerked his chin toward the army approaching. “It seems Erawan sent his answer.”
Aelin hissed, “You blame me for this?”
Aedion’s eyes darkened. “We should have stayed in the North.”
“I had no choice, I’ll have you remember.”
“You did,” Aedion breathed, none of the others, not even Rowan, stepping in. “You’ve had a choice all along, and you opted to flash your magic around.”
Aelin knew very well that her eyes were now flickering with flames as she took a step toward him. “So I guess the ‘you’re perfect’ stage is over, then.”
Aedion’s lip curled off his teeth. “This isn’t a game. This is war, and you pushed and pushed Erawan to show his hand. You refused to run your schemes by us first, to let us weigh in, when we have fought wars—”
“Don’t you dare pin this on me.” Aelin peered inside herself—to the power there. Down and down it went, to that pit of eternal fire.
“This isn’t the time,” Gavriel offered.
Aedion threw out a hand in his direction, a silent, vicious order for the Lion to shut his mouth. “Where are our allies, Aelin? Where are our armies? All we have to show for our efforts is a Pirate Lord who might very well change his mind if he hears about this from the wrong lips.”
She held in the words. Time. She had needed time—
“If we’re going to stand a chance,” Rowan said, “we need to get into position.”
Embers sparked at her fingertips. “We do it together.” She tried not to look offended at their raised brows, their slightly gaping mouths. “Magic might not last against them. But steel will.” She jerked her chin at Rowan, at Aedion. “Plan it.”
So they did. Rowan stepped to her side, a hand on her lower back. The only comfort he’d show—when he knew, they both knew, it hadn’t been his argument to win. He said to the Fae males, “How many arrows?”
“Ten quivers, fully stocked,” Gavriel said, eyeing Aedion as he removed the Sword of Orynth from his back and rebuckled it at his side.
Returned to her human form, Lysandra had drifted to the edge of the bank, back stiff as the ilken gathered on the horizon.
Aelin left the males to sort out their positions and slipped up beside her friend. “You don’t have to fight. You can stay with Manon—guard the other direction.”
Indeed, Manon was already scaling one of the ruin walls, a quiver with unnervingly few arrows slung over her back beside Wind-Cleaver. Aedion had ordered her to scout the other direction for any nasty surprises. The witch had looked ready to debate—until she seemed to realize that, on this battlefield at least, she was not the apex predator.
Lysandra loosely braided her black hair, her golden skin sallow. “I don’t know how they have done this so many times. For centuries.”
“Honestly, I don’t know, either,” Aelin said, glancing over a shoulder at the Fae males now analyzing the layout of the marshes, the flow of the wind, whatever else to use to their advantage.
Lysandra rubbed at her face, then squared her shoulders. “The marsh beasts are easily enraged. Like someone I know.” Aelin jabbed the shifter with an elbow, and Lysandra snorted, even with the army ahead. “I can rile them up—threaten their nests. So that if the ilken land …”
“They won’t just have us to deal with.” Aelin gave her a grim smile.
But Lysandra’s skin was still pale, her breathing a bit shallow. Aelin threaded her fingers through the shifter’s and squeezed tightly.
Lysandra squeezed back once before letting go to shift, murmuring, “I’ll signal when I’m done.”
Aelin just nodded, lingering on the bank for a moment to watch the long-legged white bird flap across the marsh—toward that building darkness.
She turned back to the others in time to see Rowan jerk his chin to Aedion, Gavriel, and Fenrys. “You three herd them—to us.”