But Aelin looked back at Rowan, holding his stare. How convenient that your shield vanished right as that thing waddled up. What an excellent opportunity for a magic lesson. What if it had gone wrong?
Rowan’s eyes glittered. Why do you think the hole opened up by the witch?
Aelin swallowed her laugh of dismay. But Manon Blackbeak was taking in the king, her hand still on her sword. Aelin didn’t bother to pretend looking as if she wasn’t watching them as the witch shifted those gold eyes to her. To the Eye of Elena still balanced on Aelin’s knee.
Manon’s lip curled back from her teeth. “Where did you get that.”
The hair on Aelin’s arms rose. “The Eye of Elena? It was a gift.”
But the witch again glanced to Dorian—as if saving her from that thing … Oh, Rowan hadn’t lowered the shield just for a magic lesson, had he? Aelin didn’t dare glance at him this time, not as Manon dipped her fingers into the muddy earth to sketch a shape.
A large circle—and two overlapping circles, one atop the other, within its circumference. “That is the Three-Faced Goddess,” Manon said, her voice low. “We call this …” She drew a rough line in the centermost circle, in the eye-shaped space where they overlapped. “The Eye of the Goddess. Not Elena.” She circled the exterior again. “Crone,” she said of the outermost circumference. She circled the interior top circle: “Mother.” She circled the bottom: “Maiden.” She stabbed the eye inside: “And the heart of the Darkness within her.”
It was Aelin’s turn to shake her head. The others didn’t so much as blink.
Manon said again, “That is an Ironteeth symbol. Blueblood prophets have it tattooed over their hearts. And those who won valor in battle, when we lived in the Wastes … they were once given those. To mark our glory—our being Goddess-blessed.”
Aelin debated chucking the gods-damned amulet into the marsh, but said, “The day I first saw Baba Yellowlegs … the amulet turned heavy and warm in her presence. I thought it was in warning. Perhaps it was in … recognition.”
Manon studied the necklace of scars marring Aelin’s throat. “Its power worked even with magic contained?”
“I was told that certain objects were … exempt.” Aelin’s voice strained. “Baba Yellowlegs knew the entire history of the Wyrdkeys and gates. She was the one who told me about them. Is that a part of your history, too?”
“No. Not in those terms,” Manon said. “But Yellowlegs was an Ancient—she knew things now lost to us. She ripped down the walls of the Crochan city herself.”
“The legends claim the slaughter was … catastrophic,” Dorian said.
Shadows flickered in Manon’s eyes. “That killing field, the last I heard, is still barren. Not a blade of grass grows on it. They say it’s from Rhiannon Crochan’s curse. Or from the blood that soaked it for the final three weeks of that war.”
“What is the curse, exactly?” Lysandra asked, brows furrowing.
Manon examined her iron nails, long enough that Aelin thought she wouldn’t answer. Aedion chucked the wineskin back into her lap, and Aelin swigged from it again as Manon at last replied. “Rhiannon Crochan held the gates to her city for three days and three nights against the three Ironteeth Matrons. Her sisters were dead around her, her children slaughtered, her consort spiked to one of the Ironteeth war caravans. The last Crochan Queen, the final hope of their thousand-year dynasty … She did not go gently. It was only when she fell at dawn on the fourth day that the city was truly lost. And as she lay dying on that killing field, as the Ironteeth ripped down the walls of the city around her and butchered her people … she cursed us. Cursed the three Matrons, and through them, all Ironteeth. She cursed Yellowlegs herself—who gave Rhiannon her finishing blow.”
None of them moved or spoke or breathed too loudly.
“Rhiannon swore on her last breath that we would win the war, but not the land. That for what we had done, we would inherit the land only to see it wilt and die in our hands. Our beasts would shrivel and keel over dead; our witchlings would be stillborn, poisoned by the streams and rivers. Fish would rot in lakes before we could catch them. Rabbits and deer would flee across the mountains. And the once-verdant Witch Kingdom would become a wasteland.
“The Ironteeth laughed at it, drunk on Crochan blood. Until the first Ironteeth witchling was born—dead. And then another and another. Until the cattle rotted in the fields, and the crops withered overnight. By the end of the month, there was no food. By the second, the three Ironteeth Clans were turning on one another, ripping themselves to pieces. So the Matrons ordered us all into exile. Separated the Clans to cross the mountains and wander as we would. Every few decades, they would send groups to try to work the land, to see if the curse still held. Those groups never returned. We have been wanderers for five hundred years—the wound made worse by the fact that humans eventually took it for themselves. And the land responded to them.”
“But you plan to return to it still?” Dorian asked.
Those golden eyes were not of this earth. “Rhiannon Crochan said there was one way—only one—to break the curse.” Manon swallowed and recited in a cold, tight voice, “Blood to blood and soul to soul, together this was done, and only together it can be undone. Be the bridge, be the light. When iron melts, when flowers spring from fields of blood—let the land be witness, and return home.” Manon toyed with the end of her braid, the scrap of red cloak she’d tied around it. “Every Ironteeth witch in the world has pondered that curse. For five centuries, we have tried to break it.”
“And your parents … their union was made in order to break this curse?” Aelin pushed—carefully.
A sharp nod. “I did not know—that Rhiannon’s bloodline survived.” And now ran through Manon’s blue veins.
Dorian mused, “Elena predates the witch wars by a millennium. The Eye had nothing to do with that.” He rubbed his neck. “Right?”
Manon didn’t reply, only extending a foot to wipe away the symbol she’d traced in the dirt.
Aelin drained the rest of the wine and shoved the Eye back into her pocket. “Maybe now you understand,” she said to Dorian, “why I’ve found Elena just a bit difficult to deal with.”
The island was wide enough that a conversation could be had without being overheard.
Rowan supposed that was precisely what his former cadre wanted as they found him on watch atop the vine-choked, crumbling spiral stairwell that overlooked the island and its surroundings. Leaning against a section that had once been the curving wall, Rowan demanded, “What?”
Gavriel said, “You should take Aelin a thousand miles from here. Tonight.”
A wave of his magic and honed instincts told him all was safe in the immediate vicinity, calming the killing rage he’d slipped into at the thought.
Fenrys said, “Whatever awaits us tomorrow, it has been waiting for a long time, Rowan.”
“And how do either of you know this?”
Gavriel’s tawny eyes gleamed animal-bright in the darkness. “Your beloved’s life and the witch’s are entwined. They have been led here, by forces even we cannot understand.”
“Think about it,” Fenrys pushed. “Two females whose paths crossed tonight in a way we’ve rarely witnessed. Two queens, who might control either half of this continent, two sides of one coin. Both half-breeds. Manon, an Ironteeth and a Crochan. Aelin …”
“Human and Fae,” Rowan finished for him.
“Between them, they cover the three main races of this earth. Between the two of them, they are mortal and immortal; one worships fire, the other Darkness. Do I need to go on? It feels as if we’re playing right into the hands of whoever has been running this game—for eons.”
Rowan gave Fenrys a stare that usually had men backing away. Even as he considered it.
Gavriel interrupted to say, “Maeve has been waiting, Rowan. Since Brannon. For someone who would lead her to the keys. For your Aelin.”
Maeve had not mentioned the Lock this spring. She hadn’t mentioned Mala’s ring, either. Rowan said slowly, his words a death promise, “Did Maeve send you because of this Lock, too?”
“No,” Fenrys said. “No—she never mentioned that.” He shifted on his feet, turning toward a distant, brutal roar. “If Maeve and Aelin go to war, Rowan, if they meet on a battlefield …”
He tried not to let himself imagine it. The cataclysmic carnage and destruction.
Perhaps they should have remained in the North, shoring up their defenses.
Fenrys breathed, “Maeve will not allow herself to lose. Already, she’s replaced you.”
Rowan whirled on Gavriel. “Who.”
Those lion’s eyes darkened. “Cairn.”
Rowan’s blood iced over, colder than his magic. “Is she insane?”
“She told us of his promotion a day before we left. He was grinning like a cat with a canary in its mouth as we walked out of the palace.”
“He’s a sadist.” Cairn … No amount of training, both off the battlefield and on it, had ever broken the Fae warrior of his penchant for cruelty. Rowan had locked him up, flogged him, disciplined him, wielded whatever shred of compassion he could muster in himself … nothing. Cairn had been born savoring the suffering of others.
So Rowan had kicked him out of his own army—dumped him into Lorcan’s lap. Cairn had lasted about a month with Lorcan before he was packed off to an isolated legion, commanded by a general who was not cadre and had no interest in being one. The tales of what Cairn did to the soldiers and innocents he encountered …
There were few laws against murder with the Fae. And Rowan had considered sparing the world of Cairn’s vileness every time he’d seen him. For Maeve to appoint him to the cadre, to give him almost unchecked power and influence—
“I’d bet every bit of gold I have that she’s going to let Aelin nearly break herself destroying Erawan … then strike when she’s weakest,” Fenrys mused.
For Maeve not to have given either male a gag order through the blood oath … She wanted him—wanted Aelin—to have this knowledge. To worry and speculate.
Fenrys and Gavriel swapped wary glances. “We still serve her, Rowan,” Gavriel murmured. “And we still have to kill Lorcan when the time comes.”
“Why bring this up at all? I won’t get in your way. Neither will Aelin, believe me.”
“Because,” Fenrys said, “Maeve’s style isn’t to execute. It’s to punish—slowly. Over years. But she wants Lorcan dead. And not half dead, or throat slit, but irrevocably dead.”
“Beheaded and burned,” Gavriel said grimly.
Rowan loosed a breath. “Why?”
Fenrys cast his glance over the edge of the stairs—to where Aelin slept, her golden hair shining in the moonlight. “Lorcan and you are the most powerful males in the world.”
“You forget Lorcan and Aelin can’t even stand to be in the same breathing space. I doubt there’s a chance of an alliance between them.”
“All we’re saying,” Fenrys explained, “is that Maeve does not make decisions without considerable motive. Be ready for anything. Sending her armada, wherever it is, is only the start.”
The marsh beasts roared, and Rowan wanted to roar right back. If Aelin and Cairn ever encountered each other, if Maeve had some plan beyond her greed for the keys …
Aelin turned in her sleep, scowling at the ruckus, Lysandra dozing beside her in ghost leopard form, that fluffy tail twitching. Rowan pushed off the wall, more than ready to join his queen. But he found Fenrys staring at her as well, his face tight and drawn. Fenrys’s voice was a broken whisper as he said, “Kill me. If that order is given. Kill me, Rowan, before I have to do it.”
“You’ll be dead before you can get within a foot of her.”
Not a threat—a promise and a plain statement of fact. Fenrys’s shoulders slumped in thanks.
“I’m glad, you know,” Fenrys said with unusual graveness, “that I got this time. That Maeve unintentionally gave me that. That I got to know what it was like—to be here, as a part of this.”
Rowan didn’t have words, so he looked to Gavriel.
But the Lion was merely nodding as he stared down at the little camp below. At his sleeping son.
54
The last leg of the trek the next morning was the longest yet, Manon thought.
Close—so close to this Lock the queen with a witch emblem in her pocket was seeking.
She’d fallen asleep, pondering how it could be connected, but gleaned nothing. They’d all been awake before dawn, dragged to consciousness by the oppressive humidity, so heavy it felt like a blanket weighing on Manon’s shoulders.
The queen was mostly quiet from where she walked at the head of their company, her mate scouting overhead, and her cousin and the shape-shifter flanking her, the latter wearing the skin of a truly horrific swamp viper. The Wolf and the Lion brought up the rear, sniffing and listening for anything wrong.
The people who had once dwelled within these lands had not met easy or pleasant ends. She could feel their pain even now, whispering through the stones, rippling through the water. That marsh beast that had snuck up on her last night was the mildest of the horrors here. At her side, Dorian Havilliard’s tense tan face seemed to suggest he felt the same.
Manon waded waist-deep through a pool of warm, thick water and asked, if only to get it out of where it rattled in her skull, “How will she use the keys to banish Erawan and his Valg? Or, for that matter, get rid of the things he’s created that aren’t of his original realm, but are some hybrid?”
Sapphire eyes slid toward her. “What?”
“Is there a way of weeding out who belongs and who doesn’t? Or will all those with Valg blood”—she put a hand on her sodden chest—“be sent into that realm of darkness and cold?”
Dorian’s teeth gleamed as he clenched them. “I don’t know,” he admitted, watching Aelin nimbly hop over a stone. “If she does, I assume she’ll tell us when it’s most convenient for her.”
And the least convenient for them, he didn’t need to add.
“And she gets to decide, I suppose? Who stays and who goes.”
“Banishing people to live with the Valg isn’t something Aelin would willingly do.”
“But she does decide, ultimately.”
Dorian paused atop a little hill. “Whoever holds those keys gets to decide. And you’d better pray to whatever wicked gods you worship that it’s Aelin holding them in the end.”
“What about you?”
“Why should I wish to go anywhere near those things?”
“You’re as powerful as she is. You could wield them. Why not?”
The others were swiftly pulling ahead, but Dorian remained still. Even had the audacity to grip her wrist—hard. “Why not?” There was such unyielding coldness in that beautiful face. She couldn’t turn away from it. A hot, humid breeze shoved past, dragging her hair with it. The wind didn’t touch him, didn’t ruffle one raven-dark hair on his head. A shield—he was shielding himself. Against her, or whatever was in this swamp? He said softly, “Because I was the one who did it.”
She waited.