Tonight he’d been horrified to find the secret door left slightly ajar. He shouldn’t have come, but he’d done it anyway, making up an easy list of lies to tell should he find an unfriendly face down here. Then he’d gotten close enough to hear the two male voices and almost fled . . . Almost, until he’d realized who was talking.
It was impossible, because they hated each other. Yet there they were, in Elena’s tomb. Allies. It was enough, too much. But then he’d heard it—heard what Chaol said to the general, so quietly it was barely audible. “Your Queen gave this necklace to me when she left for Wendlyn.”
It was a mistake. It had to be a mistake, because . . . His chest had become too tight, too small.
You will always be my enemy. That’s what Celaena had screamed at Chaol the night Nehemia died. And she’d said—said that she’d lost people ten years ago, but . . .
But.
Dorian couldn’t move as Chaol launched into another story, another truth. About Dorian’s own father. About the power the king wielded. Celaena had discovered it. Celaena was trying to find a way to destroy it.
His father had made that thing they’d fought in the library catacombs—that monstrous thing that had seemed human. Wyrdkeys. Wyrdgates. Wyrd-stone.
They had lied to him, too. They had decided he wasn’t to be trusted. Celaena and Chaol—they’d decided against him. Chaol had known who and what Celaena truly was.
It was why he’d sent her to Wendlyn—why he’d gotten her out of the castle. Dorian was still frozen on the stairs when Aedion slipped out of the tomb, sword out and looking ready to attack whatever enemy he’d detected.
Spotting him, Aedion swore, low and viciously, his eyes bright in the glow of his torch.
Celaena’s eyes. Aelin Ashryver—Ashryver—Galathynius’s eyes.
Aedion was her cousin. And he was still loyal to her—lying through his teeth, through every action, about where his allegiance lay.
Chaol rushed into the hall, a hand lifted beseechingly. “Dorian.”
For a moment, he could only stare at his friend. Then he managed to say, “Why?”
Chaol loosed a breath. “Because the fewer people who know, the safer—for her, for everyone. For you. They have information that might help you.”
“You think I’d run to my father?” The words were barely more than a strangled whisper as the temperature plummeted.
Chaol stepped forward, putting himself between Aedion and Dorian, his palms exposed. Placating. “I can’t afford to guess—to hope. Even with you.”
“How long?” Ice coated his teeth, his tongue.
“She told me about your father before she left. I figured out who she is soon afterward.”
“And you’re working with him now.”
The captain’s breath clouded in front of him. “If we can find a way to free magic, it could save you. They think they might have some answers about what happened, and how to reverse it. But if Aedion and his allies are caught, if she is caught . . . they will die. Your father will put them all down, starting with her. And right now, Dorian, we need them.”
Dorian turned to Aedion. “Are you going to kill my father?”
“Does he not deserve to die?” was the general’s reply.
Dorian could see the captain wincing—not at the general’s words, but at the cold. “Did you tell him—about me?” Dorian ground out.
“No,” Aedion answered for Chaol. “Though if you don’t learn to control yourself, there soon won’t be a soul in the realm who doesn’t know you have magic.” Aedion slid those heirloom eyes to the captain. “So that’s why you were so desperate to trade secrets—you wanted the information for his sake.” A nod from Chaol. Aedion smirked at Dorian, and ice coated the stairwell. “Does your magic manifest in ice and snow, then, princeling?” the general asked.
“Come closer and find out,” Dorian said with a faint smile. Perhaps he could throw Aedion across the hall, just as he had with that creature.
“Aedion can be trusted, Dorian,” Chaol said.
“He’s as two-faced as they come. I don’t believe for one heartbeat that he wouldn’t sell us out if it meant furthering his own cause.”
“He won’t,” Chaol snapped, cutting off Aedion’s reply. Chaol’s lips went blue from the cold.
Dorian knew he was hurting him—knew it, and didn’t quite care. “Because you want to be Aedion’s king someday?”
Chaol’s face drained of color, from the cold or from fear, and Aedion barked a laugh. “My queen will die heirless sooner than marry a man from Adarlan.”
Chaol tried to hide his flicker of pain, but Dorian knew his friend well enough to spot it. For a second he wondered what Celaena would think about Aedion’s claim. Celaena, who had lied—Celaena, who was Aelin, whom he had met ten years ago, whom he had played with in her beautiful castle. And that day in Endovier—that first day, he had felt as if there were something familiar about her . . . Oh gods.
Celaena was Aelin Galathynius. He had danced with her, kissed her, slept beside her, his mortal enemy. I’ll come back for you, she’d said her final day here. Even then, he’d known there was something else behind it. She would come back, but perhaps not as Celaena. Would it be to help him, or to kill him? Aelin Galathynius knew about his magic—and wanted to destroy his father, his kingdom. Everything she had ever said or done . . . He’d once thought it had been a charade to win favor as his Champion, but what if it had been because she was the heir of Terrasen? Was that why she was friends with Nehemia? What if, after a year in Endovier . . .
Aelin Galathynius had spent a year in that labor camp. A queen of their continent had been a slave, and would bear the scars of it forever. Perhaps that entitled her, and Aedion, and even Chaol who loved her, to conspire to deceive and betray his father.
“Dorian, please,” Chaol said. “I’m doing this for you—I swear it.”
“I don’t care,” Dorian said, staring them down as he walked out. “I will carry your secrets to the grave—but I want no part of them.”
He ripped his cold magic from the air and turned it inward, wrapping it around his heart.
•
Aedion took the secret subterranean exit out of the castle. He’d told Chaol it was to avoid any suspicion, to lose anyone else trailing them as they went back to their rooms. One look from the captain told him he knew precisely where Aedion was headed.