The Valg prince laughed low and harsh, that beautiful face twisted with ancient brutality. His sapphire eyes were empty as he said, “I am going to destroy everything you love.”
She raised her father’s sword in both hands, advancing still.
“You’d never do it,” the thing said.
“Dorian,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “You are Dorian.” Seconds—she had seconds left to give him. Her blood dripped onto the gravel, and she let it pool there, her eyes fixed on the prince as she began tracing a symbol with her foot.
The demon chuckled again. “Not anymore.”
She gazed into those eyes, at the mouth she’d once kissed, at the friend she’d once cared for so deeply, and begged, “Just one sign, Dorian.”
But there was nothing of her friend in that face, no hesitation or twinge of muscle against the attack as the prince lunged.
Lunged, and then froze as he passed over the Wyrdmark she’d drawn on the ground with her foot—a quick and dirty mark to hold him. It wouldn’t last for more than a few moments, but that was all she needed as he was forced to his knees, thrashing and pushing against the power. Aedion quietly swore.
Aelin raised the Sword of Orynth over Dorian’s head. One strike. Just one to cleave through flesh and bone, to spare him.
The thing was roaring with a voice that didn’t belong to Dorian, in a language that did not belong in this world. The mark on the ground flared, but held.
Dorian looked up at her, such hatred on his beautiful face, such malice and rage.
For Terrasen, for their future, she could do this. She could end this threat here and now. End him, on his birthday—not a day past twenty. She would suffer for it later, grieve later.
Not one more name would she etch into her flesh, she’d promised herself. But for her kingdom … The blade dipped as she decided, and—
Impact slammed into her father’s sword, knocking her off balance as Aedion shouted.
The arrow ricocheted into the garden, hissing against the gravel as it landed.
Nesryn was already approaching, another arrow drawn, pointed at Aedion. “Strike the prince, and I’ll shoot the general.”
Dorian let out a lover’s laugh.
“You’re a shit spy,” Aelin snapped at her. “You didn’t even try to remain hidden when you watched me inside.”
“Arobynn Hamel told the captain you were going to try to kill the prince today,” Nesryn said. “Put your sword down.”
Aelin ignored the command. Nesryn’s father makes the best pear tarts in the capital. She supposed Arobynn had tried to warn her—and she’d been too distracted by everything else to contemplate the veiled message. Stupid. So profoundly stupid of her.
Only seconds left before the wards failed.
“You lied to us,” Nesryn said. The arrow remained pointed at Aedion, who was sizing up Nesryn, his hands curling as if he were imagining his fingers wrapped around her throat.
“You and Chaol are fools,” Aelin said, even as a part of her heaved in relief, even as she wanted to admit that what she’d been about to do made her a fool as well. Aelin lowered the sword to her side.
The thing inside Dorian hissed at her, “You will regret this moment, girl.”
Aelin just whispered, “I know.”
Aelin didn’t give a shit what happened to Nesryn. She sheathed the sword, grabbed Aedion, and ran.
Aedion’s breath was like shards of glass in his lungs, but the blood-covered woman—Aelin—was tugging him along, cursing at him for being so slow. The garden was enormous, and shouts rose over the hedges behind them, closing in.
Then they were at a stone wall already Wyrdmarked in blood, and there were strong hands reaching down to help him up and over. He tried to tell her to go first, but she was shoving at his back and then his legs, pushing him up as the two men atop the wall grunted with his weight. The wound in his ribs stretched and burned in agony. The world grew bright and spun as the hooded men eased him down to the quiet city street on the other side. He had to brace a hand against the wall to keep from slipping in the pooled blood of the downed royal guards beneath. He recognized none of their faces, some still set in silent screams.
There was the hiss of a body on stone, and then his cousin swung down beside him, wrapping her gray cloak around her bloody costume, slinging the hood over her blood-spattered face. She had another cloak in her hands, courtesy of the wall patrol. He could hardly stand upright as she wrapped it around him and shoved the hood over his head.
“Run,” she said. The two men atop the wall remained there, bows groaning as they were drawn. No sign of the young archer from the garden.
Aedion stumbled, and Aelin swore, darting back to wrap an arm around his middle. And damn his strength for failing him now, he put his arm around her shoulders, leaning on her as they hurried down the too-quiet residential street.
Shouts were now erupting behind, accented by the whiz and thud of arrows and the bleating of dying men.
“Four blocks,” she panted. “Just four blocks.”
That didn’t seem nearly far enough away to be safe, but he had no breath to tell her. Keeping upright was task enough. The stitches in his side had split, but—holy gods, they’d cleared the palace grounds. A miracle, a miracle, a mir—
“Hurry, you hulking ass!” she barked.
Aedion forced himself to focus and willed strength to his legs, to his spine.
They reached a street corner bedecked in streamers and flowers, and Aelin glanced in either direction before rushing through the intersection. The clash of steel on steel and the screams of wounded men shattered through the city, setting the throngs of merry-faced revelers around them to murmuring.
But Aelin continued down the street, and then down another. At the third, she slowed her steps and rocked into him, beginning to sing a bawdy tune in a very off-key, drunken voice. And thus they became two ordinary citizens out to celebrate the prince’s birthday, staggering from one tavern to the next. No one paid them any heed—not when all eyes were fixed on the glass castle towering behind them.
The swaying made his head spin. If he fainted … “One more block,” she promised.
This was all some hallucination. It had to be. No one would actually have been stupid enough to try to rescue him—and especially not his own queen. Even if he’d seen her cut down half a dozen men like so many stalks of wheat.
“Come on, come on,” she panted, scanning the decorated street, and he knew she wasn’t talking to him. People were milling about, pausing to ask what the palace commotion was about. Aelin led them through the crowd, mere cloaked and stumbling drunks, right up to the black carriage-for-hire that pulled along the curb as though it had been waiting. The door sprang open.
His cousin shoved him inside, right onto the floor, and shut the door behind her.
“They’re already stopping every carriage at the major intersections,” Lysandra said as Aelin pried open the hidden luggage compartment beneath one of the benches. It was big enough to fit a very tightly curled person, but Aedion was absolutely massive, and—
“In. Get in, now,” she ordered, and didn’t wait for Aedion to move before she heaved him into the compartment. He groaned. Blood had started seeping from his side, but—he’d live.
That is, if any of them lived through the next few minutes. Aelin shut the panel beneath the cushion, wincing at the thud of wood on flesh, and grabbed the wet rag Lysandra had pulled from an old hatbox.
“Are you hurt?” Lysandra asked as the carriage started into a leisurely pace through the reveler-clogged streets.