What Aelin had done … what she’d lied about …
Some of the blood on the ground had dried.
If Aelin was gone, if her life would indeed be the cost if she ever got free …
“Maeve doesn’t have the two keys,” Manon said from Dorian’s side, having crept up silently. Her coven lingered behind her, Elide ensconced within their ranks. “In case you were concerned.”
Lorcan and Gavriel turned toward them. Then Lysandra.
Dorian dared to ask, “Then where are they?”
“I have them,” Manon said simply. “Aelin slid them into my pocket.”
Oh, Aelin. Aelin. She’d worked Maeve into such a frenzy, made the queen so focused on capturing her that she hadn’t thought to confirm if Aelin held the keys before she vanished.
She’d been dealt such a wicked, impossible hand—and yet Aelin had made it count. One last time, she’d made it count.
“It’s why I couldn’t do anything about it,” Manon said. “To help her. I had to look uninvolved. Neutral.” From where he sat on the beach below, Aedion had twisted toward them, his keen Fae hearing feeding him every word. Manon said to all of them, “I am sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”
She reached into the pocket of her riding leathers and extended the Amulet of Orynth and a sliver of black stone to Dorian. He balked.
“Elena said Mala’s bloodline can stop this. It runs in both your houses.”
The golden eyes were weary—heavy. He realized what Manon was asking.
Aelin had never planned to see Terrasen again.
She had married Rowan knowing she would have months at best, days at the worst, with him. But she would give Terrasen a legal king. To hold her territory together.
She had made plans for all of them—and none for herself.
“The quest does not end here,” Dorian said softly.
Manon shook her head. And he knew she meant more than the keys, than the war, as she said, “No, it does not.”
He took the keys from her. They throbbed and flickered, warming his palm. A foreign, horrible presence, and yet … all that stood between them and destruction.
No, the quest did not end here. Not even close. Dorian slid the keys into his pocket.
And the road that now sprawled away before him, curving into unknown, awaiting shadow … it did not frighten him.
75
Rowan had married Aelin before dawn barely two days ago.
Aedion and Lysandra had been the only witnesses as they’d awoken the bleary-eyed captain, who married them quickly and quietly and signed a vow of secrecy.
They’d had fifteen minutes in their cabin to consummate that marriage.
Aedion still carried the formal documents; the captain bearing the duplicates.
Rowan had been kneeling on that spit of beach for half an hour now. Silent, wandering the paths of his churning thoughts. Aedion had kept him company, staring blankly at the sea.
Rowan had known.
Part of him had known that Aelin was his mate. And had turned away from that knowledge, again and again, out of respect for Lyria, out of terror for what it’d mean. He’d leapt in front of her at Skull’s Bay knowing it, deep down. Knowing mates aware of the bond could not bear to harm each other, and that it might be the only force to compel her to regain control from Deanna. And even when she had proved him right … He had turned from that proof, still unready, pushing it from his mind even as he claimed her in every other way.
Aelin had known, though. That he was her mate. And she had not pushed it, or demanded he face it, because she loved him, and he knew she’d rather carve out her own heart than cause him pain or distress.
His Fireheart.
His equal, his friend, his lover. His wife.
His mate.
That gods-damned bitch had put her in an iron box.
She’d whipped his mate so brutally that he’d rarely seen such blood spilled as a result. Then chained her. Then put Aelin in a veritable iron coffin, still bleeding, still hurting.
To contain her. To break her. To torture her.
His Fireheart, locked in the dark.
She’d tried to tell him. Right before the ilken converged.
Tried to tell him she’d vomited her guts up on the ship that day not because she was pregnant but because she’d realized she was going to die. That the cost of sealing the gate, forging a new Lock to do so, was her life. Her immortal life.
Goldryn lying beside him, its ruby dull in the bright sun, Rowan gathered up two fistfuls of sand and let the grains slide out, let the wind carry them toward the sea.
It was all borrowed time anyway.
Aelin did not expect them to come for her.
She, who had come for them, who had found them all. She had arranged for everything to fall into place when she yielded her life. When she gave up a thousand years to save them.
And Rowan knew she believed they’d make the right choice, the wise choice, and remain here. Lead their armies to victory—the armies she’d secured for them, guessing that she wouldn’t be there to see it through.
She did not think she’d ever see him again.
He did not accept that.
He would not accept that.
And he would not accept that he had found her, and she had found him, and they had survived such sorrow and pain and despair together, only to be cleaved apart. He would not accept the fate that had been dealt to her, would not accept that her life was the asking price for saving this world. Her life, or Dorian’s.
He would not accept it for one heartbeat.
Footsteps thudded on the sand, and he scented Lorcan before he bothered to look. For half a breath, he debated killing the male where he stood.
Rowan knew that today—today he’d win. Something had fractured in Lorcan, and if Rowan attacked now, the other male would die. Lorcan might not even put up much of a fight.
Lorcan’s granite-hewn face was hard, but his eyes … That was agony in them. And regret.
The others flowed down the dunes, the witch’s coven remaining behind, and Aedion rose to his feet.
They all stared at Rowan as he remained kneeling.
The sea rolled away, undulating under the clearing blue sky.
He speared that bond into the world, casting it wide as a net. Flinging it out with his magic, his soul, his cracked heart. Searching for her.
Fight it, he willed her, sending the words down the bond—the mating bond, which perhaps had settled into place that first moment they’d become carranam, hidden beneath flame and ice and hope for a better future. Fight her. I am coming for you. Even if it takes me a thousand years. I will find you, I will find you, I will find you.
Only salt and wind and water answered him.
Rowan rose to his feet. And slowly turned to face them.
But their attention snagged on the ships now sailing out of the west—from the battle site. His cousins’ ships, with what remained of the fleet Ansel of Briarcliff had won for them, and Rolfe’s three ships.
But it was not those boats that made him pause.
It was the one that rounded the eastern tip of the land—a longboat. It swept closer on a phantom wind, too fast to be natural.
Rowan braced himself. The boat’s shape didn’t belong to any of the fleets assembled. But its style nagged at his memory.
From their own fleet, Ansel of Briarcliff and Enda were soaring over the waves in a longboat, aiming for this beach.
But Rowan and the others watched in silence as the foreign boat crested through the surf and slid onto the sand.
Watched the olive-skinned sailors haul it up the beach. A broad-shouldered young man nimbly leaped out, his slightly curling dark hair tossed in the sea breeze.
He did not emit a whiff of fear as he stalked for them—didn’t even go for the comforting touch of the fine sword at his side.
“Where is Aelin Galathynius?” the stranger asked a bit breathlessly as he scanned them.
And his accent …
“Who are you,” Rowan ground out.
But the young man was now close enough that Rowan could see the color of his eyes. Turquoise—with a core of gold.
Aedion breathed as if in a trance, “Galan.”
Galan Ashryver, Crown Prince of Wendlyn.
The young man’s eyes widened as he took in the warrior-prince. “Aedion,” he said hoarsely, something like awe and grief in his face. But he blinked it away, self-assured and steady, and again asked, “Where is she?”
None of them answered. Aedion demanded, “What are you doing here?”
Galan’s dark brows flicked toward each other. “I thought she would have informed you.”
“Informed us of what?” Rowan said too quietly.
Galan reached into the pocket of his worn blue tunic, pulling out a crinkled letter that looked like it had been read a hundred times. He silently handed it to Rowan.
Her scent still clung to it as he unfolded the paper, Aedion reading over his shoulder.
Aelin’s letter to the Prince of Wendlyn had been short. Brutal. The large letters were sprawled across the page as if her temper had gotten the better of her:
TERRASEN REMEMBERS EVALIN ASHRYVER.
DO YOU?
I FOUGHT AT MISTWARD FOR YOUR PEOPLE.
RETURN THE GODS-DAMNED FAVOR.
And then coordinates—for this spot.
“It only went to me,” Galan said softly. “Not to my father. Only to me.”
To the armada that Galan controlled—as a blockade runner against Adarlan.
“Rowan,” Lysandra murmured in warning. He followed her stare.
Not to where Ansel and Enda now arrived at the edge of their group, giving the Thirteen a wide berth as they lifted their brows at Galan.
But to the small company of white-clad people that appeared on the cresting dunes behind them, splattered in mud and looking like they had trekked across the marshes themselves.
And Rowan knew.
He knew who they were before they even reached the beach.
Ansel of Briarcliff had gone pale at the sight of their layered, flowing clothes. And as the tall male in their center peeled off his hood to reveal a brown-skinned, green-eyed face still handsome with youth, the Queen of the Wastes whispered, “Ilias.”
Ilias, son of the Mute Master of the Silent Assassins, gaped at Ansel, his back stiffening. But Rowan stepped toward the man, drawing his attention. Ilias’s eyes narrowed in assessment. And he, like Galan, scanned them all, searching for a golden-haired woman who was not there. His eyes returned to Rowan as if he’d marked him as the axis of this group.
In a voice hoarse from disuse, Ilias asked him, “We have come to fulfill our life debt to Celaena Sardothien—to Aelin Galathynius. Where is she?”
“You are the sessiz suikast,” Dorian said, shaking his head. “The Silent Assassins of the Red Desert.”
Ilias nodded. And glanced at Ansel, who still seemed near vomiting, before saying to Rowan, “It seems my friend has called in many debts in addition to ours.”
As if the words themselves were a signal, more white-clad figures filled the dunes behind them.
Dozens. Hundreds.
Rowan wondered if every single assassin from that desert Keep had come to honor their debt to the young woman. A lethal legion in themselves.
And Galan …
Rowan turned to the Crown Prince of Wendlyn. “How many,” he asked. “How many did you bring?”
Galan only smiled a bit and pointed to the eastern horizon.
Where white sails now broke over its rim. Ship after ship after ship, each bearing the cobalt flag of Wendlyn.
“Tell Aelin Galathynius that Wendlyn has never forgotten Evalin Ashryver,” Galan said to him, to Aedion. “Or Terrasen.”
Aedion fell to his knees in the sand as Wendlyn’s armada spread before them.
I promise you that no matter how far I go, no matter the cost, when you call for my aid, I will come, Aelin had told him she’d sworn to Darrow. I’m going to call in old debts and promises. To raise an army of assassins and thieves and exiles and commoners.
And she had. She had meant and accomplished every word of it.
Rowan counted the ships that slid over the horizon. Counted the ships in their own armada. Added Rolfe’s—and the Mycenians he was rallying in the North.
“Holy gods,” Dorian breathed as Wendlyn’s armada kept spreading wider and wider.