And the words were his own.
For a moment he was so stunned that he blinked. He blinked. The demon inside of him recoiled, clawing at the walls of his mind. Eyes of the Valg kings, eyes of our masters, it shrieked. Do not touch that one!
“Is there a reason you’re smiling at me,” she said, “or shall I interpret it as a death wish?”
Do not speak to it.
He didn’t care. Let this be another dream, another nightmare. Let this new, lovely monster devour him whole. He had nothing beyond the here and now.
“Do I need a reason to smile at a beautiful woman?”
“I’m not a woman.” Her iron nails glinted as she crossed her arms. “And you …” She sniffed. “Man or demon?”
“Prince,” he said. That’s what the thing inside him was; he had never learned its name.
Do not speak to it!
He c.o.c.ked his head. “I’ve never been with a witch.”
Let her rip out his throat for that. End it.
A row of iron fangs snapped down over her teeth as her smile grew. “I’ve been with plenty of men. You’re all the same. Taste the same.” She looked him over as if he were her next meal.
“I dare you,” he managed to say.
Her eyes narrowed, the gold like living embers. He’d never seen anyone so beautiful.
This witch had been crafted from the darkness between the stars.
“I think not, Prince,” she said in her midnight voice. She sniffed again, her nose crinkling slightly. “But would you bleed red, or black?”
“I’ll bleed whatever color you tell me to.”
Step away, get away. The demon prince inside him yanked so hard he took a step. But not away. Toward the white-haired witch.
She let out a low, vicious laugh. “What is your name, Prince?”
His name.
He didn’t know what that was.
She reached out, her iron nails glimmering in the dappled sunlight. The demon’s screaming was so loud in his head that he wondered if his ears would bleed.
Iron clinked against stone as she grazed the collar around his neck. Higher—if she just slashed higher—
“Like a dog,” she murmured. “Leashed to your master.”
She ran a finger along the curve of the collar, and he shuddered—in fear, in pleasure, in antic.i.p.ation of the nails tearing into his throat.
“What is your name.” A command, not a question, as eyes of pure gold met his.
“Dorian,” he breathed.
Your name is nothing, your name is mine, the demon hissed, and a wave of that human woman’s screaming swept him away.
Crouched in the brush just twenty feet from the prison wagon, Aelin froze.
Dorian.
It couldn’t have been. There wasn’t a chance of it, not when the voice that Dorian had spoken with was so empty, so hollow, but—
Beside her, Chaol’s eyes were wide. Had he heard the slight shift?
The Wing Leader c.o.c.ked her head, her iron-tipped hand still touching the Wyrdstone collar. “Do you want me to kill you, Dorian?”
Aelin’s blood went cold.
Chaol tensed, his hand going to his sword. Aelin gripped the back of his tunic in silent reminder. She had no doubt that across the clearing, Nesryn’s arrow was already pointed with lethal accuracy at the Wing Leader’s throat.
“I want you to do lots of things to me,” the prince said, raking his eyes along the witch’s body.
The humanity was gone again. She’d imagined it. The way the king had acted … That was a man who held pure control over his son, confident that there was no struggle inside.
A soft, joyless laugh, and then the Wing Leader released Dorian’s collar. Her red cloak flowed around her on a phantom wind as she stepped back. “Come find me again, Prince, and we’ll see about that.”
A Valg prince inhabited Dorian—but Aelin’s nose did not bleed in its presence, and there was no creeping fog of darkness. Had the king muted its powers so his son could deceive the world around him? Or was that battle still being waged inside the prince’s mind?
Now—they had to move now, while the Matron and the king remained in that painted wagon.
Rowan cupped his hands to his mouth and signaled with a bird’s call, so lifelike that none of the guards shifted. But across the clearing, Aedion and Nesryn heard, and understood.
She didn’t know how they managed to accomplish it, but a minute later, the wyverns of the High Witch’s coven were roaring with alarm, the trees shuddering with the sound. Every guard and sentinel turned toward the racket, away from the prison wagon.
It was all the distraction Aelin needed.
She’d spent two weeks in one of those wagons. She knew the bars of the little window, knew the hinges and the locks. And Rowan, fortunately, knew exactly how to dispatch the three guards stationed at the back door without making a sound.
She didn’t dare breathe too loudly as she climbed the few steps to the back of the wagon, pulled out her lock-picking kit, and set to work. One look over here, one shift of the wind—
There—the lock sprang open, and she eased back the door, bracing for squeaky hinges. By some G.o.d’s mercy, it made no sound, and the wyverns went on bellowing.
Lysandra was curled against the far corner, b.l.o.o.d.y and dirty, her short nightgown torn and her bare legs bruised.
No collar. No ring on either hand.
Aelin bit back her cry of relief and flicked her fingers to tell the courtesan to hurry—
On near-silent feet, Lysandra hurtled past her, right into the speckled brown-and-green cloak Rowan was holding out. Two heartbeats later she was down the steps and into the brush. Another beat, and the dead guards were inside the wagon with the door locked. Aelin and Rowan slipped back into the forest amid the roars of the wyverns.
Lysandra was shivering where she knelt in the thicket, Chaol before her, inspecting her wounds. He mouthed to Aelin that she was fine and helped the courtesan rise to her feet before hauling her deeper into the woods.
It had taken less than two minutes—and thank the G.o.ds, because a moment later the painted wagon’s door was flung open and the Matron and king stormed out to see what the noise was about.
A few paces from Aelin, Rowan monitored every step, every breath their enemy took. There was a flash of movement beside her, and then Aedion and Nesryn were there, dirty and panting, but alive. The grin on Aedion’s face faltered as he peered back at the clearing behind them.
The king stalked to the heart of the clearing, demanding answers.
Butchering b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
And for a moment, they were again in Terrasen, at that dinner table in her family’s castle, where the king had eaten her family’s food, drunk their finest wine, and then he’d tried to shatter her mind.
Aedion’s eyes met hers, his body trembling with restraint—waiting for her order.
She knew she might live to regret it, but Aelin shook her head. Not here—not now. There were too many variables, and too many players on the board. They had Lysandra. It was time to go.
The king told his son to get onto his horse and barked orders to the others as the Wing Leader backed away from the prince with a casual, lethal grace. The Matron waited across the clearing, her voluminous black robes billowing despite her stillness.
Aelin prayed that she and her companions would never run into the Matron—at least not without an army behind them.
Whatever the king had seen inside the painted wagon had been important enough that they hadn’t risked letters about its specific details.
Dorian mounted his horse, his face cold and empty.
I’ll come back for you, she’d promised him. She had not thought it would be in this way.
The king’s party departed with eerie silence and efficiency, seemingly unaware that they were now missing three of their own. The stench of the Valg faded as they vanished, cleared away by a brisk wind as if Oakwald itself wanted to wipe away any trace.
Headed in the opposite direction, the witches prowled into the trees, lugging the wagon behind them with inhuman strength, until only the Wing Leader and her horrifying grandmother remained in the clearing.
The blow happened so fast that Aelin couldn’t detect it. Even Aedion flinched.
The smack reverberated through the forest, and the Wing Leader’s face snapped to the side to reveal four lines of blue blood now running down her cheek.
“Insolent fool,” the Matron hissed. Lingering near the trees, the beautiful, golden-haired lieutenant observed every movement the Matron made—so intensely that Aelin wondered if she would go for the Matron’s throat. “Do you wish to cost me everything?”
“Grandmother, I sent you letters—”
“I received your whining, sniveling letters. And I burned them. You are under orders to obey. Did you think my silence was not intentional? Do as the duke says.”
“How can you allow these—”
Another strike—four more lines bleeding down the witch’s face. “You dare question me? Do you think yourself as good as a High Witch, now that you’re Wing Leader?”
“No, Matron.” There was no sign of that c.o.c.ky, taunting tone of minutes before; only cool, lethal rage. A killer by birth and training. But the golden eyes turned toward the painted wagon—a silent question.
The Matron leaned in, her rusted iron teeth within shredding distance of her granddaughter’s throat. “Ask it, Manon. Ask what’s inside that wagon.”