The brutality of the injury was enough to take Yrene’s breath away. And to make her grind her teeth, knowing how young Elide had been, how unbearably painful it was—knowing that her very uncle had done this to her.
“What’s wrong?” Elide breathed.
“Nothing—I mean, beyond what you already know.”
Such cruelty. Such terrible, unforgivable cruelty.
Yrene coiled her magic back into herself, but kept her hands on Elide’s ankle. “This injury would require weeks of work to repair, and with our current circumstances, I don’t think either of us can undergo it.” Elide nodded. “But if we survive this war, I can help you, if you wish.”
“What would it entail?”
“There are two roads,” Yrene said, letting some of her magic seep into Elide’s leg, soothing the aching muscles, the spots where bone ground against bone with no buffer. The lady sighed. “The first is the hardest. It would require me to completely restructure your foot and ankle. Meaning, I would have to break apart the bone, take out the parts that healed or fused incorrectly, and then regrow them. You could not walk while I did it, and even with the help I could give you for the pain, the recovery would be agonizing.” There was no way around that truth. “I’d need three weeks to take apart your bones and put them back together, but you’d need at least a month of resting and learning to walk on it again.”
Elide’s face had gone pale. “And the other option?”
“The other option would be to not do the healing, but to give you salve—like the one you said Lorcan gave you—to help with the aches. But I will warn you: the pain will never entirely leave you. With the way your bones grind together here”—she gently touched the spot on Elide’s upper foot, then a spot down by her toes—“arthritis is already setting in. As the bones continue to grind together, the arthritis, that pain you feel when you walk, will only worsen. There may come a point in a few years—maybe five, maybe ten, it’s hard to tell—when you find the pain to be so bad that no salve can help you.”
“So I would need the healing then, regardless.”
“It’s up to you whether you want the healing at all. I only want you to have a better idea of the road ahead.” She smiled at the lady. “It’s up to you to decide how you wish to face it.”
Yrene tapped Elide’s foot, and the lady lowered it back to the floor before putting her sock back on, then her boot. Efficient, easy motions.
Yrene sipped from her tea, cool enough now to drink. The fresh verve of the peppermint zapped through her, clearing her mind and calming her stomach.
Elide said, “I don’t know if I can face that pain again.”
Yrene nodded. “With that sort of injury, it would require facing a great many things inside yourself.” She smiled toward the wagon entrance. “My husband and I just went through one such journey together.”
“Was it hard?”
“Incredibly. But he did it. We did it.”
Elide considered, then shrugged. “We’d have to survive this war first, I suppose. If we live … then we can talk about it.”
air enough.”
Elide frowned at the wagon’s ceiling. “I wonder what they’ve learned up there.”
Up in the Omega and Northern Fang, where Chaol and the others were now meeting with the breeders and wranglers who had been left behind.
Yrene didn’t want to know more than that, and Chaol had not offered any other insight into how they’d be extracting information from the men.
“Hopefully something worth our visit to this awful place,” Yrene muttered, then drained the rest of her tea. The sooner they left, the better.
It was as if the gods were laughing at her—at them both. A knock on the wagon doors had Elide limping toward them, just before Borte appeared. Her face uncharacteristically solemn.
Yrene braced herself, but it was Elide whom the ruk rider addressed.
“You’re to come with me,” Borte said breathlessly. Behind the girl, Arcas waited, a sparrow perched on the saddle. Falkan Ennar. Not a companion, Yrene realized, but an additional guard.
Elide asked, “What’s wrong?”
Borte shifted, with impatience or nerves, Yrene couldn’t tell. “They found someone in the mountain. They want you up there—to decide what to do with him.”
Elide had gone still. Utterly still.
Yrene asked, “Who?”
Borte’s mouth tightened. “Her uncle.”
Elide wondered if the rukhin would shun her forever if she vomited all over Arcas. Indeed, during the swift, steep flight up to the bridge spanning the Omega and Northern Fang, it was all she could do not to hurl the contents of her stomach all over the bird’s feathers.
“They found him hiding in the Northern Fang,” Borte had said before she’d hauled Elide into the saddle, Falkan already flying up the sheer face of the pass. “Trying to pretend to be a wyvern trainer. But one of the other trainers sold him out. Queen Aelin called for you as soon as they had him secure. Your uncle, not the trainer, I mean.”
Elide hadn’t been able to respond. Had only nodded.
Vernon was here. At the Gap. Not in Morath with his master, but here.
Gavriel and Fenrys were waiting when Arcas landed in the cavernous opening into the Northern Fang. The rough-hewn rock loomed like a gaping maw, the reek of what lay within making her stomach turn again. Like rotting meat and worse. Valg, undoubtedly, but also a smell of hate and cruelty and tight, airless corridors.
The two Fae males silently fell into step beside her as they entered. No sign of Lorcan, or Aelin. Or her uncle.
Men lay dead in some of the dim hallways that Fenrys and Gavriel led her through, killed by the rukhin when they’d swept in. None of them leaked black blood, but they still had that reek to them. Like this place had infected their very souls.
“They’re just up here,” Gavriel said quietly—gently.
Elide’s hands began shaking, and Fenrys placed one of his own on her shoulder. “He’s well restrained.”
She knew not with mere ropes or chains. Likely with fire and ice and perhaps even Lorcan’s own dark power.
But it did not stop her from shaking, from how small and brittle she became as they turned a corner and beheld Aelin, Rowan, and Lorcan standing before a shut door. Farther down the hall, Nesryn and Sartaq, Lord Chaol with them, waited. Letting them decide what to do.
Letting Elide decide.
Lorcan’s grave face was frozen with rage, his depthless eyes like frigid pools of night. He said quietly, “You don’t need to go in there.”
“We had you brought here,” Aelin said, her own face the portrait of restrained wrath, “so you could choose what to do with him. If you wish to speak to him before we do.”
One look at the knives at Rowan’s and Lorcan’s sides, at the way the queen’s fingers curled, and Elide knew what their sort of talking would include. “You mean to torture him for information?” She didn’t dare meet Aelin’s eyes.
“Before he receives what is due to him,” Lorcan growled.
Elide glanced between the male she loved and the queen she served. And her limp had never felt so pronounced, so obvious, as she took a step closer. “Why is he here?”
“He has yet to reveal that,” Rowan said. “And though we have not confirmed that you are here, he suspects.” A glance toward Lorcan. “The call is yours, Lady.”
“You will kill him regardless?”
Lorcan asked, “Do you wish us to?” Months ago, she had told him to. And Lorcan had agreed to do it. That had been before Vernon and the ilken had come to abduct her—before the night when she had been willing to embrace death rather than go with him to Morath.
Elide peered inward. They gave her the courtesy of silence. “I would like to speak to him before we decide his fate.”
A bow of Lorcan’s head was his only answer before he opened the door behind him.
Torches flickered, the chamber empty save for a worktable against one wall.
And her uncle, bound in thick irons, seated on a wooden chair.
His finery was worn, his dark hair unkempt, as if he’d struggled while they’d bound him. Indeed, blood crusted one of his nostrils, his nose swollen.
Shattered.
A glance to her right confirmed the blood on Lorcan’s knuckles.
Vernon straightened as Elide stopped several feet away, the door shutting, Lorcan and Aelin mere steps behind. The others remained in the hall.
“What mighty company you keep these days, Elide,” Vernon said.
That voice. Even with the broken nose, that silky, horrible voice raked talons along her skin.
But Elide kept her chin up. Kept her eyes upon her uncle. “Why are you here?”
“First you let the brute at me,” Vernon drawled, nodding to Lorcan, “then you send in the sweet-faced girl to coax answers?” A smile toward Aelin. “A technique of yours, Majesty?”
Aelin leaned against the stone wall, hands sliding into her pockets. Nothing human in her face. Though Elide marked the way her hands, even within their confines, shifted.
Bound in irons. Battered.
Only weeks ago, it had been the queen herself in Vernon’s place. And now it seemed she stood here through sheer will. Stood here, ready to pry the information from Vernon, for Elide’s sake.
It strengthened Elide enough that she said to her uncle, “Your breaths are limited. I would suggest you use them wisely.”
“Ruthless.” Vernon smirked. “The witch-blood in your veins ran true after all.”
She couldn’t stand it. To be in this room with him. To breathe the same air as the man who had smiled while her father had been executed, smiled while he locked her in that tower for ten years. Smiled while he’d touched Kaltain, done far worse perhaps, then tried to sell Elide to Erawan for breeding. “Why?” she asked.
It was the only question she could really think of, that really mattered. “Why do any of it?”
“Since my breaths are limited,” Vernon said, “I suppose it makes no difference what I tell you.” A small smile curled his lips. “Because I could,” her uncle said. Lorcan growled. “Because my brother, your father, was an insufferable brute, whose only qualification to rule was the order of our birth. A warrior-brute,” Vernon spat, sneering toward Lorcan. Then at Elide. “Your mother’s preference seems to have passed to you, too.” A hateful shake of the head. “Such a pity. She was a rare beauty, you know. Such a pity that she was killed, defending Her Majesty.” Heat flared across the room, but Aelin’s face remained unmoved. “There might have been a place for her in Perranth had she not—”
“Enough,” Elide said softly, but not weakly. She took another step toward him. “So you were jealous. Of my father. Jealous of his strength, his talent. Of his wife.” Vernon opened his mouth, but Elide lifted a hand. “I am not done yet.”
Vernon blinked.
Elide kept her breathing steady, shoulders back. “I do not care why you are here. I do not care what they plan to do with you. But I want you to know that once I walk from this room, I will never think of you again. Your name will be erased from Perranth, from Terrasen, from Adarlan. There will never be a whisper of you, nor any reminder. You will be forgotten.”
Vernon paled—just slightly. Then he smiled. “Erased from Perranth? You say that as if you do not know, Lady Elide.” He leaned forward as much as his chains would allow. “Perranth now lies in the hands of Morath. Your city has been sacked.”
The words rippled through her like a blow, and even Lorcan sucked in a breath.
Vernon leaned back, smug as a cat. “Go ahead and erase me, then. With the rubble, it will not be hard to do.”
Perranth had been captured by Morath. Elide didn’t need to glance over a shoulder to know that Aelin’s eyes were near-glowing. Bad—this was far worse than they’d anticipated. They had to move quickly. Get to the North as fast as they could.
So Elide turned toward the door, Lorcan stalking ahead to open it for her.
“That’s it?” Vernon demanded.
Elide paused. Slowly turned. “What else could I have to say to you?”
“You did not ask me for details.” Another snake’s smile. “You still have not learned how to play the game, Elide.”
Elide returned his smile with one of her own. “There is nothing more that I care to hear from you.” She glanced toward Lorcan and Aelin, toward their companions gathered in the hall. “But they still have questions.”
Vernon’s face went the color of spoiled milk. “You mean to leave me in their hands, utterly defenseless?”
“I was defenseless when you let my leg remain unhealed,” she said, a steady sort of calm settling over her. “I was a child then, and I survived. You’re a grown man.” She let her lips curl in another smile. “We’ll see if you do, too.”
She didn’t try to hide her limp as she strode out. As she caught Lorcan’s eye and beheld the pride gleaming there.
Not a whisper—not one whisper from that voice who had guided her. Not from fear, but … Perhaps she did not need Anneith, Lady of Wise Things. Perhaps the goddess had known she herself was not needed.
Not anymore.
Aelin knew that one word from her, and Lorcan would rip out Vernon’s throat. Or perhaps begin with snapping bones.
Or skin him alive, as Rowan had done with Cairn.
As she followed Elide, the Lady of Perranth’s head still high, Aelin forced her own breathing to remain steady. To brace herself for what was to come. She could get through it. Push past the shaking in her hands, the cold sweat down her back. To learn what they needed, she could find some way to endure this next task.
Elide halted in the hall, Gavriel, Rowan, and Fenrys taking a step closer. No sign of Nesryn, Chaol, or Sartaq, though one shout would likely summon them in this festering warren.
Gods, the stench of this place. The feel of it.