She’d been debating for the past hour whether it was worth it to her sanity and stomach to shift back into her human form—to the blessed lesser sense of smell it offered.
Elide said to none of them in particular, “I don’t care what you do with him.”
“Do you care if he walks out alive?” Lorcan said with deadly calm.
Elide studied the male whose heart she held. “No.” Good, Aelin almost said. Elide added, “But make it quick.” Lorcan opened his mouth. Elide shook her head. “My father would wish it so.”
Punish them all, Kaltain had made Aelin once promise. And Vernon, from what Elide had told Aelin, seemed likely to have been at the top of Kaltain’s list.
“We need to question him first,” Rowan said. “See what he knows.”
“Then do it,” Elide said. “But when it’s time, make it quick.”
“Quick,” Fenrys mused, “but not painless?”
Elide’s face was cold, unyielding. “You can decide.”
Lorcan’s brutal smile told Aelin enough. So did the hatchet, twin to Rowan’s, gleaming at his side.
Her palms turned sweaty. Had been sweating since they’d bound up Vernon, since she’d seen the iron chains.
Aelin reached for her magic. Not the raging flame, but the cooling droplet of water. She listened to its silent song, letting it wash through her. And in its wake, she knew what she wished to do.
Lorcan took a step toward the chamber door, but Aelin blocked his path. She said, “Torture won’t get anything out of him.”
Even Elide blinked at that.
Aelin said, “Vernon likes to play games. Then I’ll play.”
Rowan’s eyes guttered. As if he could scent the sweat on her hands, as if he knew that doing it the old-fashioned way … it’d send her puking her guts up over the edge of the Northern Fang.
“Never underestimate the power of breaking a few bones,” Lorcan countered.
“See what you can get out of him,” Rowan said to her instead. Lorcan whirled, mouth opening, but Rowan snarled, “We can decide, here and now, what we wish to be as a court. Do we act like our enemies? Or do we find alternative methods to break them?”
Her mate met her stare, understanding shining there.
Lorcan still seemed ready to argue.
Above the phantom sting of chains on her wrists, the weight of a mask on her face, Aelin said, “We do it my way first. You can still kill him, but we try my way first.” When Lorcan didn’t object, she said, “We need some ale.”
Aelin slid the tankard of chilled ale across the table to where Vernon now sat, chains loosened enough for him to use his hands.
One false move, and her fire would melt him.
Only the Lion and Fenrys stood in the chamber, stationed by the doors.
Rowan and Lorcan had snarled at her order to stay in the hall, but Aelin had declared that they would only hinder her efforts here.
Aelin sipped from her own tankard and hummed. “An odd day, when one has to compliment their enemy’s good taste in ale.”
Vernon frowned at the tankard.
“It’s not poisoned,” Aelin said. “It’d defeat the purpose if it was.”
Vernon took a small sip. “I suppose you think plying me with ale and talking like we’re steadfast friends will get you what you want to know.”
“Would you prefer the alternative?” She smiled slightly. “I certainly don’t.”
“The methods may differ, but the end result will be the same.”
“Tell me something interesting, Vernon, and maybe it will change.”
His eyes swept over her. “Had I known you’d grow into such a queen, perhaps I would not have bothered to kneel for Adarlan.” A sly smile. “So different from your parents. Did your father ever torture a man?”
Ignoring the taunt, Aelin drank, swishing the ale in her mouth, as if it could wash away the taint of this place. “You tried and failed to win power for yourself. First by stealing it from Elide, then by trying to sell her to Erawan. Morath has sacked Perranth, and no doubt marches on Orynth, and yet we find you here. Hiding.” She drank again. “One might think Erawan’s favor had shifted elsewhere.”
“Perhaps he stationed me here for a reason, Majesty.”
Her magic had already felt him out. To make sure no heart of iron or Wyrdstone beat in his chest.
“I think you were cast aside,” she said, leaning back and crossing her arms. “I think you outlived your usefulness, especially after you failed to recapture Elide, and Erawan didn’t feel like entirely ridding himself of a lackey, but also didn’t want you skulking about. So here you are.” She waved a hand to the chamber, the mountain above them. “The lovely Ferian Gap.”
“It’s beautiful in the spring,” Vernon said.
Aelin smiled. “Again, tell me something interesting, and perhaps you’ll live to see it.”
“Do you swear it? On your throne? That you shall not kill me?” A glance toward Fenrys and Gavriel, stone-faced behind her. “Nor any of your companions?”
Aelin snorted. “I was hoping you’d hold out longer before showing your hand.” She drained the rest of her ale. “But yes. I swear that neither me nor any of my companions will kill you if you tell us what you know.”
Fenrys started. All the confirmation Vernon needed that she meant it—that they had not planned it.
Vernon drank deeply from his ale. Then said, “Maeve has come to Morath.”
Aelin was glad she was sitting. She kept her face bored, bland. “To see Erawan?”
“To unite with him.”
CHAPTER 80
The room was spinning slightly. Even the droplet of her mother’s magic couldn’t steady her.
Worse. Worse than anything Aelin had imagined hearing from Vernon’s lips.
“Did Maeve bring her army?” Her cool, unruffled voice sounded far, far away.
“She brought no one but herself.”
“No army—none at all?”
Vernon drank again. “Not that I saw before Erawan packed me off on a wyvern in the dead of night. Claimed I had asked too many questions and I was better suited to be stationed here.”
Erawan or Maeve had to have known. Somehow. That they’d wind up here, and planted Vernon in their path. To tell them this.
“Did she say where her army was?” Not Terrasen—if it had gone ahead to Terrasen …
“She did not, but I assumed her forces had been left near the coast, to await orders on where to sail.”
Aelin shoved aside her rising nausea. “Did you learn what Maeve and Erawan plan to do?”
“Face you, I’d wager.”
She made herself lean back in her seat, her face bored, casual. “Do you know where Erawan keeps the third Wyrdkey?”
“What’s that?”
Not a misleading question. “A sliver of black stone—like the one planted in Kaltain Rompier’s arm.”
Vernon’s eyes shuttered. “She had the fire gift, too, you know. I tremble to think what might happen if Erawan put the stone within your arm.”
She ignored him. “Well?”
Vernon finished his ale. “I don’t know if he had another beyond what was in Kaltain’s arm.”
“He did. He does.”
“Then I don’t know where it is, do I? I only knew of the one my cunning little niece stole.”
Aelin refrained from grinding her teeth. Maeve and Erawan—united. And not a whisper of where Dorian and Manon were with the two other keys.
She didn’t acknowledge the walls that began pressing in, the cold sweat again sliding down her back. “Why did Maeve ally with Erawan?”
“I was not privy to that discussion. I was dispatched here quickly.” A flash of annoyance. “But Maeve somehow has … influence over Erawan.”
“What happened to the Ironteeth stationed here at the Gap?”
“Called northward. To Terrasen. They were given orders to join with the legion already on its way after routing the army at the border, then at Perranth.”
Oh gods. It took all her training to think past the roaring in her head.
“One hundred thousand soldiers march on Orynth,” Vernon said, chuckling. “Will that fire of yours be enough to stop them?”
Aelin put a hand on Goldryn’s hilt, her heart thundering. “How far are they from the city?”
Vernon shrugged. “They were already within a few days’ march when the Ironteeth legion left here.”
Aelin calculated the distance, the terrain, the size of their own army. They were two weeks away at best—if the weather didn’t hinder them. Two weeks through dense forest and enemy territory.
They’d never make it in time.
“Do Maeve and Erawan go to join them?”
“I’d assume so. Not with the initial group, for reasons I was not told, but they will go to Orynth. And face you there.”
Her mouth turned dry. Aelin rose.
Vernon frowned at her. “Don’t you wish to ask if I know of Erawan’s weaknesses, or any surprises in store for you?”