Behind them, she had the vague sense that Manon was quietly assessing.
“You were barely climbing out of slavery,” Elena said. “Hardly holding yourself together, trying so hard to pretend that you were still strong and whole. There was only so much I could do to guide you, nudge you along. The mirror was forged and hidden to one day show you all of this. In a way I couldn’t tell you—not when I could only manage a few minutes at a time.”
“Why did you tell me to go to Wendlyn? Maeve poses as great a threat as Erawan.”
Glacier-blue eyes met hers at last. “I know. Maeve has long wished to regain possession of the keys. My father believed it was for something other than conquest. Something darker, worse. I don’t know why she only began hunting for them once you arrived. But I sent you to Wendlyn for the healing. And so you would … find him. The one who had been waiting so long for you.”
Aelin’s heart cracked. “Rowan.”
Elena nodded. “He was a voice in the void, a secret, silent dreamer. And so were his companions. But the Fae Prince, he was …”
Aelin reined in her sob. “I know. I’ve known for a long time.”
“I wanted you to know that joy, too,” Elena whispered. “However briefly.”
“I did,” Aelin managed to say. “Thank you.”
Elena covered her face at those words, shuddering. But after a moment, she surveyed Aelin, then Manon, still silent and watching. “The witch mirror’s power is fading; it will not hold you here for much longer. Please—let me show you what must be done. How to end it. You won’t be able to see me after, but … I will be with you. Until the very end, every step of the way, I will be with you.”
Manon only put a hand on her sword as Aelin swallowed and said, “Show me, then.”
So Elena did. And when she was done, Aelin was silent. Manon was pacing, snarling softly.
But Aelin did not fight it as Elena leaned in to kiss her brow, where that damning mark had been her whole life. A bit of chattel, branded for the slaughterhouse.
Brannon’s mark. The mark of the bastard-born … the Nameless.
Nameless is my price. To buy them a future, she’d pay it.
She’d done as much as she could to set things in motion to ensure that once she was gone, help would still come. It was the only thing she could give them, her last gift to Terrasen. To those she loved with her heart of wildfire.
Elena stroked her cheek. Then the ancient queen and the mists were gone.
Sunlight flooded them, blinding Aelin and Manon so violently that they hissed and slammed into each other. The brine of the sea, crash of nearby waves, and rustle of seagrasses greeted them. And beyond that, distantly: the clamor and bellowing of all-out war.
They were on the outskirts of the marshes, upon the lip of the sea itself, the battle miles and miles out to sea. They must have traveled within the mists, somehow—
A soft female laugh slithered through the grass. Aelin knew that laugh.
And knew that somehow, perhaps they had not traveled through the mists …
But they had been placed here. By whatever forces were at work, whatever gods watching.
To stand in the sandy field before the turquoise sea, dead guards in Briarcliff armor slaughtered upon the nearby dunes, still bleeding out. To stand before Queen Maeve of the Fae.
Elide Lochan on her knees before her—with a Fae warrior’s blade at her throat.
69
Aedion had faced armies, faced death more times than he could count, but this …
Even with what Rowan had done … the enemy ships still outnumbered them.
The battling between ships had become too dangerous, the magic-wielders too aware of Lysandra to allow her to attack beneath the waves.
She was now fighting viciously beside Aedion in ghost leopard form, taking down whatever Fae warriors tried to board their ship. Whatever soldiers made it through the shredding gauntlet of Rowan’s and Dorian’s magic.
His father had left. Fenrys and Lorcan, too. He’d last seen his father on the quarterdeck of one of the ships that had been under his command, a sword in each hand, the Lion poised for the kill. And as if sensing Aedion’s gaze, a wall of golden light had wrapped around him.
Aedion wasn’t stupid enough to demand Gavriel take it away, not as the shield shrank and shrank, until it covered Aedion like a second skin.
Minutes later, Gavriel was gone—vanished. But that magic shield remained.
That had been the start of the sharp turn they’d taken, going back on the defensive as sheer numbers and immortal-versus-mortal fighting took its toll on their fleet.
He had no doubt Maeve had something to do with it. But that bitch wasn’t his problem.
No, his problem was the armada all around him; his problem was the fact that the enemy soldiers he engaged were highly trained and didn’t go down easily. His problem was his sword arm ached, his shield was embedded with arrows and dented, and still more of those ships stretched away into the distance.
He did not let himself think about Aelin, about where she was. His Fae instincts pricked at the rumble of Rowan’s and Dorian’s magic surging up, then snapping into the enemy flank. Ships broke in the wake of that power; warriors drowned beneath the weight of their armor.
Their own ship rocked back from the one they’d been engaging thanks to the flood of power, and Aedion used the reprieve to whirl to Lysandra. Blood from his own wounds and ones he’d inflicted covered him, mixing with the sweat running down his skin. He said to the shifter, “I want you to run.”
Lysandra turned a fuzzy head toward him, pale green eyes narrowing slightly. Blood and gore dripped from her maw onto the wood planks.
Aedion held that gaze. “You turn into a bird or a moth or a fish—I don’t rutting care—and you go. If we’re about to fall, you run. That’s an order.”
She hissed, as if to say, You don’t give me orders.
“I technically outrank you,” he said, slashing his sword down his shield to clear it of two protruding arrows as they again swung in toward another ship crammed full of well-rested Fae warriors. “So you’ll run. Or I’ll kick your ass in the Afterworld.”
Lysandra stalked up to him. A lesser man might have backed away from a predator that big prowling close. Some of his own soldiers did.
But Aedion held his ground as she rose on her back legs, those huge paws settling on his shoulders, and brought her bloodied feline face up to his. Her wet whiskers twitched.
Lysandra leaned in and nuzzled his cheek, his neck.
Then she trotted back to her place, blood splashing beneath her silent paws.
When she deigned to glance his way, spitting blood onto the deck, Aedion said softly, “The next time, do that in your human form.”
Her puffy tail just curled a bit in answer.
But their ship rocked back toward their latest attacker. The temperature plummeted, either from Rowan or Dorian or one of the Whitethorn nobles, Aedion couldn’t tell. They’d been lucky that Maeve had brought a fleet whose magic-wielders hailed mostly from Rowan’s line.
Aedion braced himself, spreading apart his feet as wind and ice tore into the enemy lines. Fae soldiers, perhaps ones Rowan himself had commanded, screamed. But Rowan and Dorian struck relentlessly.
Line after line, Rowan and Dorian blasted their power into Maeve’s fleet.
Yet more ships flooded past them, engaging Aedion and the others. Ansel of Briarcliff held the left flank, and … the lines remained steady. Even if Maeve’s armada still outnumbered them.
The first Fae soldier who cleared the railing of their ship headed right for Lysandra.
It was the last mistake the male made.
She leaped, dodging past his guard, and closed her jaws around his neck.
Bone crunched and blood sprayed.
Aedion leaped forward to engage the next soldier over the railing, cutting through the grappling hooks that arced and landed true.
Aedion loosed himself into a killing calm, an eye on the shifter, who took down soldier after soldier, his father’s gold shield holding strong around her, too.
Death rained upon him.
Aedion did not let himself think about how many were left. How many Rowan and Dorian felled, the ruins of ships sinking around them, blood and flotsam choking the sea.
So Aedion kept killing.
And killing.
And killing.
Dorian’s breath burned his throat, his magic was sluggish, a headache pulsed at his temples, but he kept unleashing his power upon the enemy lines while soldiers fought and died around him.
So many. So many trained warriors, a scant few of whom were blessed with magic—and had been wielding it to get past them.
He didn’t dare see how the others were faring. All he heard were roars and snarls of wrath, shrieks of dying people, and the crack of wood and the snap of rope. Clouds had formed and gathered above, blocking out the sun.
His magic sang as it froze the life out of ships, out of soldiers, as it bathed in their death. But it still flagged. He’d lost track of how long it had been.
Still, they kept coming. And still, Manon and Aelin did not return.
Rowan held the front line, weapons angled, ready for any soldiers stupid enough to approach. But too many broke past their magic. Too many now steadily overwhelmed them.
As soon as he thought it, Aedion’s bark of pain cut across the waves.
There was a roar of rage that echoed it. Was Aedion—
The coppery tang of blood coated Dorian’s mouth—the burnout. Another roar, deep and bellowing, cleaved the world. Dorian braced himself, rallying his magic perhaps for the last time.
That roar sounded again as a mighty shape shot down from the heavy clouds.
A wyvern. A wyvern with shimmering wings.
And behind it, descending upon the Fae fleet with wicked delight, flew twelve others.
70
Lysandra knew that roar.
And then there was Abraxos, plunging from the heavy clouds, twelve other wyverns with riders behind him.
Ironteeth witches.
“Hold your fire!” Rowan bellowed from half a dozen ships away, at the archers who had trained their few remaining arrows on the golden-haired witch closest to Abraxos, her pale-blue wyvern shrieking a war cry.
The other witches and their wyverns unleashed hell upon the Fae, smashing through the converging lines, snapping grappling ropes, buying them a moment’s reprieve. How they knew who to attack, what side to fight for—
Abraxos and eleven others angled northward in one smooth movement, then plowed into the panicking enemy fleet. The golden-haired rider, however, swept for Lysandra’s ship, her sky-blue wyvern gracefully landing on the prow.
The witch was beautiful, a strip of black braided leather across her brow, and she called to none of them in particular, “Where is Manon Blackbeak?”
“Who are you?” Aedion demanded, his voice a rasp. But there was recognition in his eyes, as if remembering that day at Temis’s temple—
The witch grinned, revealing white teeth, but iron glinted at her fingertips. “Asterin Blackbeak, at your service.” She scanned the embattled ships. “Where is Manon? Abraxos led—”
“It’s a long story, but she’s here,” Aedion shouted over the din. Lysandra crept closer, sizing up the witch, the coven that was now wreaking havoc upon the Fae lines. “You and your Thirteen save our asses, witch,” Aedion said, “and I’ll tell you anything you damn want.”
A wicked grin and an incline of her head. “Then we shall clear the field for you.”
Then Asterin and the wyvern soared up, and blasted between the waves, spearing for where the others were fighting.
At Asterin’s approach, the wyverns and riders reeled back, rising high into the air, falling into formation. A hammer about to strike.
The Fae knew it. They began throwing up feeble shields, shooting wildly for them, their panic making their aim sloppy. But the wyverns were covered in armor—efficient, beautiful armor.
The Thirteen laughed at their enemy as they slammed into its southern flank.
Lysandra wished she had strength left to shift—one last time. To join them in that glorious destruction.
The Thirteen herded the panicking ships between them, smashed them apart, wielding every weapon in their arsenal—wyverns, blades, iron teeth. What got past them received the brutal mercy of Rowan’s and Dorian’s magic. And what got past that magic …
Lysandra found Aedion’s blood-splattered stare. The general-prince smirked in that insolent way of his, sending a thrill wilder than bloodlust through her. “We don’t want the witches to make us look bad, do we?”
Lysandra returned his smirk and lunged back into the fray.
Not many more.
Rowan’s magic was strained to the breaking point, his panic a dull roaring in the back of his mind, but he kept attacking, kept swinging his blades at any that got past his wind and ice, or Dorian’s own blasts of raw, unchecked power. Fenrys, Lorcan, and Gavriel had bolted an hour or lifetimes ago, vanishing to wherever Maeve had no doubt summoned them, but the armada held fast. Whoever Ansel of Briarcliff’s men were, they weren’t cowed by Fae warriors. And they were no strangers to bloodshed. Neither were Rolfe’s men. None of them ran.
The Thirteen continued to wreak havoc on Maeve’s panicking fleet. Asterin Blackbeak barked commands high above them, the twelve witches breaking the enemy lines with fierce, clever determination. If this was how one coven fought, then an army of them—