“I’ll lie low,” Elide said.

Perhaps in the back of a wagon, as it made its way out of Morath and to freedom beyond.

It took three whole days to prepare for the meeting.

The Matron’s letter had contained no mention of the breeding and slaughter of witches. In fact, it was as if her grandmother hadn’t received any of Manon’s messages. As soon as Manon got back from this little mission, she’d start questioning the Keep’s messengers. Slowly. Painfully.

The Thirteen were to fly to coordinates in Adarlan—smack in the middle of the kingdom, just inside the tangle of Oakwald Forest—and arrive a day before the arranged meeting to establish a safe perimeter.

For the King of Adarlan was to at last see the weapon her grandmother had been building, and apparently wanted to inspect Manon as well. He was bringing his son, though Manon doubted it was for guarding his back in the way that the heirs protected their Matrons. She didn’t particularly care—about any of it.

A stupid, useless meeting, she’d almost wanted to tell her grandmother. A waste of her time.

At least seeing the king would provide an opportunity to meet the man who was sending out these orders to destroy witches and make monstrosities of their witchlings. At least she would be able to tell her grandmother in person about it—maybe even witness the Matron make mincemeat of the king once she learned the truth about what he’d done.

Manon climbed into the saddle, and Abraxos walked out onto the post, adjusting to the latest armor the aerial blacksmith had crafted—finally light enough for the wyverns to manage, and now to be tested on this trip. Wind bit at her, but she ignored it. Just as she’d ignored her Thirteen.

Asterin wouldn’t speak to her—and none of them had spoken about the Valg prince that the duke had sent to them.

It had been a test, to see who would survive, and to remind her what was at stake.

Just as unleashing shadowfire on that tribe had been a test.

She still couldn’t pick a coven. And she wouldn’t, until she’d spoken to her grandmother.

But she doubted that the duke would wait much longer.

Manon gazed into the plunge, at the ever-growing army sweeping across the mountains and valleys like a carpet of darkness and fire—so many more soldiers hidden beneath it. Her Shadows had reported that very morning about spotting lean, winged creatures with twisted human forms soaring through the night skies—too swift and agile to track before they vanished into the heavy clouds and did not return. The majority of Morath’s horrors, Manon suspected, had yet to be revealed. She wondered if she’d command them, too.

She felt the eyes of her Thirteen on her, waiting for the signal.

Manon dug her heels into Abraxos’s side, and they free-fell into the air.

The scar on her arm ached.

It always ached—more than the collar, more than the cold, more than the duke’s hands on her, more than anything that had been done to her. Only the shadowfire was a comfort.

She had once believed that she’d been born to be queen.

She had since learned that she’d been born to be a wolf.

The duke had even put a collar on her like a dog, and had shoved a demon prince inside her.

She’d let it win for a time, curling up so tightly inside herself that the prince forgot she was there.

And she waited.

In that cocoon of darkness, she bided her time, letting him think her gone, letting them do what they wanted to the mortal shell around her. It was in that cocoon where the shadowfire began to flicker, fueling her, feeding her. Long ago, when she was small and clean, flames of gold had crackled at her fingers, secret and hidden. Then they had vanished, as all good things had vanished.

And now they had returned—reborn within that dark shell as phantom fire.

The prince inside her did not notice when she began to nibble at him.

Bit by bit, she stole morsels of the otherworldly creature that had taken her body for its skin, who did such despicable things with it.

The creature noticed the day she took a bigger bite—big enough that it screamed in agony.

Before it could tell anyone, she leaped upon it, tearing and ripping with her shadowfire until only ashes of malice remained, until it was no more than a whisper of thought. Fire—it did not like fire of any kind.

For weeks now, she had been here. Waiting again. Learning about the flame in her veins—how it bled into the thing in her arm and reemerged as shadowfire. The thing spoke to her sometimes, in languages she had never heard, that had maybe never existed.

The collar remained around her neck, and she let them order her around, let them touch her, hurt her. Soon enough—soon enough she would find true purpose, and then she would howl her wrath at the moon.

She’d forgotten the name she’d been given, but it made no difference. She had only one name now:

Death, devourer of worlds.

55

Aelin fully believed in ghosts.

She just didn’t think they usually came out during the day.

Rowan’s hand clamped onto her shoulder right before sunrise. She took one look at his tight face and braced herself. “Someone’s broken into the warehouse.”

Rowan was out of the room, armed and fully ready to shed blood before Aelin could grab her own weapons. Gods above—he moved like the wind, too. She could still feel his canines at her throat, rasping against her skin, pressing down lightly—

On near-silent feet, she went after him, finding him and Aedion standing before the apartment door, blades in hand, their muscled, scarred backs rigid. The windows—they were their best options for escape if it was an ambush. She reached the two males just as Rowan eased open the door to reveal the gloom of the stairwell.

Collapsed in a heap, Evangeline was sobbing on the stair landing, her scarred face deathly pale and those citrine eyes wide with terror as she peered up at Rowan and Aedion. Hundreds of pounds of lethal muscle and bared teeth—

Aelin shoved past them, taking the stairs by twos and threes until she reached the girl. She was clean—not a scratch on her. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, her red-gold hair catching the light of the candle that Rowan brought down. The staircase shuddered with every step he and Aedion took.

“Tell me,” Aelin panted, silently praying it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. “Tell me everything.”

“They took her, they took her, they took her.”

“Who?” Aelin said, brushing back the girl’s hair, wondering whether she would panic if she held her.

“The king’s men,” Evangeline whispered. “They came with a letter from Arobynn. Said it was in Arobynn’s will that they be told about Lysandra’s b-b-bloodline.”

Aelin’s heart stopped dead. Worse—far worse than what she’d braced for—

“They said she was a shape-shifter. They took her, and they were going to take me, too, but she fought them, and she made me run, and Clarisse wouldn’t help—”

“Where did they take her?”

Evangeline sobbed. “I don’t know. Lysandra said I was to come here if anything ever happened; she told me to tell you to run—”

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Rowan knelt down beside them and slid his arms around the girl, scooping her up, his hand so big that it nearly enveloped the entire back of her head. Evangeline buried her face in his tattooed chest, and Rowan murmured wordless sounds of comfort.