Empire of Storms

by Sarah J. Maas

  Her magic was exhausted. For the first time in days, that pit of magic now slumbered.

  She could sleep for a week. A month.

  Each step across the marshes, back toward where those three ships would be waiting, was an effort. Lysandra frequently offered to shift into a horse and carry her, but Aelin refused. The shifter was drained as well. They all were.

  She wanted to talk to Elide, wanted to ask about so many things regarding those years apart, but … The exhaustion that nagged at her rendered speech nearly impossible. She knew what kind of sleep beckoned—the deep, restorative slumber that her body demanded after too much magic had been spent, after she’d held on to it for too long.

  So Aelin hardly spoke to Elide, leaving the lady to lean on Lorcan as they hurried to the coast. As they hauled the mirror with them.

  Too many secrets—there were still too many secrets with Elena and Brannon and their long-ago war. Had the Lock ever existed? Or was the witch mirror the Lock? Too many questions with too few answers. She’d figure it out. Once they were back to safety. Once she had a chance to sleep.

  Once … everything else fell into place, too. So they trudged through the marshes without rest.

  It was Lysandra who picked up on it with that leopard’s senses, half a mile from the white-sand beach and the calm gray sea beyond, a wall of grassy sand dunes blocking the view ahead.

  They all had weapons drawn as they scrambled up the dune, sand slipping from beneath them. Rowan didn’t shift—the only proof he’d shown of his utter exhaustion. He made it up the hill first. Drew his sword from across his back.

  Aelin’s breath burned her throat as she halted beside him, Gavriel and Fenrys gently setting down the mirror on her other side.

  Because a hundred gray sails stretched ahead, surrounding their own ships.

  They spread toward the western horizon, utterly silent save for the men they could barely make out on board. Ships from the west … from the Gulf of Oro.

  Melisande’s fleet.

  And on the beach, waiting for them … a party of twenty warriors, led by a gray-cloaked woman. Lysandra’s claws slipped free of their sheaths as she let out a low snarl.

  Lorcan shoved Elide behind him. “We retreat into the marshes,” he said to Rowan, whose face was set in stone as he sized up the party on the beach, the looming fleet. “We can outrun them.”

  Aelin slid her hands into her pockets. “They’re not going to attack.”

  Lorcan sneered, “You’re guessing this based on your many years of experience in war?”

  “Watch it,” Rowan snarled.

  “This is absurd,” Lorcan spat, twisting away, as if he’d grab Elide, pale-faced at his side. “Our reservoirs are drained—”

  Lorcan was halted from hauling Elide over a shoulder by a paper-thin wall of fire. About as much as Aelin could summon.

  And by Manon and her iron nails stepping before him as she growled, “You’re not taking Elide anywhere. Not now, and not ever.”

  Lorcan rose to his full height. And before they could wreck everything with their brawling, Elide laid a delicate hand on Lorcan’s arm—his own hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword. “I choose this, Manon.”

  Manon only glanced at the hand on Lorcan’s arm. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  Indeed. Aelin looked Lorcan over and jerked her chin. “Go brood somewhere else.” The cloaked woman on the beach, along with her soldiers, was now striding toward them.

  Lorcan growled, “It’s not over, this business between us.”

  Aelin smiled a bit. “You think I don’t know that?”

  But Lorcan prowled to Rowan, his dark power flickering, rippling away across the waves as if in a silent boom of thunder. Taking up a defensive position.

  Aelin looked to her stone-faced prince, then to Aedion, her cousin’s sword and shield angled and at the ready, then the others. “Let’s go say hello.”

  Rowan started. “Aelin—”

  But she was already striding down the dune, doing her best to keep from sliding on the treacherous sand, to keep her head high. The others trailing behind were taut as bowstrings, but their breathing remained even—primed for anything.

  The soldiers were in heavy, worn gray armor, their faces rough and scarred, sizing them up as they hit the sand. Fenrys snarled at one of them, and the man averted his eyes.

  But the cloaked woman removed her hood as she approached with feline grace, halting perhaps ten feet away.

  Aelin knew every detail about her.

  Knew that she was twenty years old now. Knew that the medium-length, wine-red hair was her real hair color. Knew the red-brown eyes were the only she’d seen in any land, on any adventure. Knew the wolf’s head on the pommel of the mighty sword at her side was her family’s crest. She knew the smattering of freckles, the full, laughing mouth, knew the deceptively slim arms that hid rock-hard muscle as she crossed them.

  That full mouth slanted into a half grin as Ansel of Briarcliff, Queen of the Wastes, drawled, “Who gave you permission to use my name in pit fights, Aelin?”

  “I gave myself permission to use your name however I please, Ansel, the day I spared your life instead of ending you like the coward you are.”

  That cocky smile widened. “Hello, bitch,” Ansel purred.

  “Hello, traitor,” Aelin purred right back, surveying the armada spread before them. “Looks like you made it on time after all.”

  59

  Aelin felt the utter shock of her companions ripple from them as Ansel bowed dramatically, gesturing to the ships behind them, and said, “As requested: your fleet.”

  Aelin snorted. “Your soldiers look like they’ve seen better days.”

  “Oh, they always look like that. I’ve tried and tried to get them to focus on outside appearances as much as improving their inner beauty, but … you know how men are.”

  Aelin chuckled. Even as she sensed her companions’ shock turning into something red-hot.

  Manon stepped forward, the sea breeze whipping strands of her white hair over her face, and said to Aelin, “Melisande’s fleet bows to Morath. You might as well be signing an alliance with Erawan, too, if you’re working with this … person.”

  Ansel’s face drained of color at the iron teeth, the nails. And Aelin remembered the story the assassin-turned-queen had once told her, whispered atop rolling desert sands and beneath a carpet of stars. A childhood friend—eaten alive by an Ironteeth witch.

  Then Ansel herself, after the slaughter of her family, had been spared when she’d stumbled into an Ironteeth witch’s camp.

  Aelin said to Manon, “She is not from Melisande. The Wastes are allied with Terrasen.”

  Aedion started, now sizing up the ships, the woman before them.

  Manon Blackbeak said in a voice like death, “Who is she to speak for the Wastes?”

  Oh, gods above. Aelin schooled her face into bland irreverence and gestured between the two women. “Manon Blackbeak, Heir to the Blackbeak Witch-Clan and now the last Crochan Queen … meet Ansel of Briarcliff, assassin and Queen of the Western Wastes.”

  Roaring filled Manon’s head as they rowed back to their ship, interrupted only by the splashing of the oars through the calm waves.

  She was going to kill the red-haired bitch. Slowly.

  They remained silent until they reached the towering ship, then climbed its side.

  No sign of Abraxos.

  Manon scanned the skies, the fleet, the seas. Not a scale to be found.

  The rage in her gut twisted into something else, something worse, and she took a step for the ruddy-faced captain to demand answers.

  But Aelin casually stepped in her path, giving her an adder’s smile as she glanced between Manon and the red-haired young woman who now leaned against the stair post. “You two should have a little chat later.”

  Manon stormed around her. “Ansel of Briarcliff does not speak for the Wastes.”

  Where was Abraxos—

  “
But you do?”

  And Manon had to wonder if she’d somehow … somehow become tangled in whatever plans the queen had woven. Especially as Manon found herself forced to halt again, forced to turn back to the smirking queen and say, “Yes. I do.”

  Even Rowan blinked at Manon Blackbeak’s tone—the voice that was not witch or warrior or predator. Queen.

  The last Crochan Queen.

  Rowan sized up the potentially explosive fight brewing between Ansel of Briarcliff and Manon Blackbeak.

  He remembered all that Aelin had told him of Ansel—the betrayal while the two woman had trained in the desert, the fight to the death that had left Aelin sparing the red-haired woman. A life debt.

  Aelin had called in the life debt owed to her.

  Ansel, with a swaggering arrogance that completely explained why she and Aelin had become fast friends, drawled to Manon from where she’d perched on the quarterdeck stairs, “Well, last I heard, neither Crochan nor Ironteeth witches bothered to look after the Wastes. I suppose that as someone who has fed and guarded its people these past two years, I do get to speak for them. And decide who we help and how we do it.” Ansel smirked at Aelin like the witch wasn’t staring at her throat as if she’d rip it out with her iron teeth. “You and I live next door to each other, after all. It’d be un-neighborly of me not to help.”

  “Explain,” Aedion said tightly, his heartbeat thundering loud enough for Rowan to hear. The first word the general had uttered since Ansel had pulled back her hood. Since Aelin’s little surprise had been waiting for them on the beach.

  Ansel angled her head, the silky red hair catching the light, looking, Rowan realized, like the richest red wine. Exactly as Aelin had once described it. “Well, months ago, I was minding my own business in the Wastes, when I got a message out of the blue. From Aelin. She sent me a message loud and clear from Rifthold. Pit fighting.” She chuckled, shaking her head. “And I knew to get ready. To move my army to the edge of the Anascaul Mountains.”

  Aedion’s breathing snagged. Only centuries of training kept Rowan’s from doing the same. His cadre remained stalwart behind them all, positions they’d taken hundreds of times over the centuries. Ready for bloodshed—or to fight their way out of it.

  Ansel smiled, a winning grin. “Half of them are on their way there now. Ready to join with Terrasen. The country of my friend Celaena Sardothien, who did not forget it, even when she was in the Red Desert; and who did not stop looking north every night that we could see the stars. There was no greater gift I could offer to repay her than saving the kingdom she did not forget. And that was before I got her letter months ago, telling me who she was and that she’d gut me if I didn’t assist in her cause. I was on my way with my army already, but … then the next letter arrived. Telling me to go to the Gulf of Oro. To meet her here and follow a specific set of instructions.”

  Aedion snapped his head to Aelin, salt water still gleaming on his tan face from the boat over. “The dispatches from Ilium—”

  Aelin waved a lazy hand to Ansel. “Let the woman finish.”

  Ansel strolled to Aelin and linked her arm through her elbow. She smirked like a fiend. “I’m assuming you lot know how bossy Her Majesty is. But I followed the instructions. I brought the other half of my army when I veered down south, and we hiked through the White Fangs and into Melisande. Its queen assumed we arrived to offer aid. She let us right in the front gates.”

  Rowan held his breath.

  Ansel let out a sharp whistle, and on the nearest ship, clopping and nickering sounded.

  And then an Asterion horse emerged from the stables.

  The horse was a storm made flesh.

  Rowan couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Aelin beam with pure delight as she breathed, “Kasida.”

  “Do you know,” Ansel went on, “that I rather enjoy pillaging? With Melisande’s troops spread so thin for Morath, she really had no choice but to yield. Though she was particularly furious to see me claim the horse—made worse when I took her out of her dungeon to reveal that Terrasen’s flag now flies alongside my wolf at her own damn house.”

  “What,” Aedion blurted.

  Aelin and Ansel faced them, brows high. Dorian staggered forward a step at Ansel’s words, and the Queen of the Wastes gave him a look that said she’d like to pillage him.

  Ansel gestured to the ships around them with a broad sweep of her arm. “Melisande’s fleet is now our fleet. And its capital is now ours, too.” She jerked her chin at Aelin. “You’re welcome.”

  Manon Blackbeak burst out laughing.

  Aedion didn’t know who to be more furious with: Aelin, for not telling him about Ansel of Briarcliff and the gods-damned army she’d quietly ordered to sack Melisande and seize its fleet, or himself, for not trusting her. For demanding where their allies were, for implying all that he had in those moments before the ilken attack. She’d just taken it.

  As Ansel’s words sank in to the company still gathered on the main deck, his cousin said quietly, “Melisande meant to assist Morath in cleaving the North and South. I did not take its city for glory or conquest, but I will not allow anything to come between me and defeating Morath. Melisande will now clearly understand the cost of allying with Erawan.”

  He tried not to bristle. He was her general-prince. Rowan was her consort—or close enough to it. And yet she had not entrusted them with this. He hadn’t even contemplated the Wastes as an ally. Perhaps that was why. He would have told her not to bother.

  Aedion said to Ansel, “Melisande has likely already sent word to Morath. Its own armies are no doubt rushing back to the capital city. Get your remaining men across the Fangs again. We can lead the armada from here.”

  Ansel looked to Aelin, who nodded her agreement. The Queen of the Wastes then asked him, “And then march north to Terrasen and cross at the Anascaul passes?”

  Aedion gave a single nod of confirmation, already calculating where he’d place her men, who in the Bane he’d give command over them. Without seeing Ansel’s men fight … Aedion began heading toward the stairs to the quarterdeck, not bothering to wait for permission.

  But Aelin halted him with a cleared throat. “Talk to Ansel before she leaves tomorrow morning about where to bring her army once it’s whole again.”

  He merely nodded and continued up the steps, ignoring his father’s concerned look as he went. The others eventually split up, and Aedion didn’t care where they went, only that he had a few minutes to himself.

  He leaned against the rail, peering into the sea lapping against the side of the ship, trying not to notice the men on the surrounding ships sizing up him and his companions.

  Some of their whispers hit him from across the water. The Wolf of the North; General Ashryver. Some began to tell stories—most outright lies, a few close enough to the truth. Aedion let the sound of them bleed into the plunk and hiss of the waves.

  Her ever-changing scent hit him, and something in his chest loosened. Loosened a bit further at the sight of her slim golden arms as she braced them on the rail beside his own.

  Lysandra glanced over her shoulder to where the witch and Elide—gods above, Elide—had gone to sit by the foremast, talking quietly. Probably recounting their own adventures since parting ways.

  The armada wouldn’t sail until morning, he’d overheard the captain saying. He doubted it had to do with Aelin waiting to see if the Wing Leader’s missing mount would return.

  “We shouldn’t linger,” Aedion said, now scanning the northern horizon. The ilken had come from that direction—and if they had found them so easily, even with an armada now around them … “We’re carrying two keys and the Lock—or whatever the hell that witch mirror actually is. The tide’s with us. We should go.”

  Lysandra shot him a sharp look. “Go take it up with Aelin.”

  Aedion studied her from head to toe. “What’s chewing on you?”

  She’d been distant for the past few days. But now he could practically see that c
ourtesan’s mask snap into place as she seemed to will her eyes to brighten, her frowning mouth to soften. “Nothing. I’m just tired.” Something about the way she glanced toward the sea rubbed at him.

  Aedion said carefully, “We’ve been battling our way across the continent. Even after ten years of this, it still drains me. Not just physically, but—in my heart.”

  Lysandra ran a finger down the smooth wood of the railing. “I thought … It all seemed a grand adventure. Even when the danger was so horrible, it was still new, and I was no longer caged in dresses and bedrooms. But that day in Skull’s Bay, it stopped being any of that. It started being … survival. And some of us might not make it.” Her mouth wobbled a bit. “I never had friends—not as I do now. And today on that beach, when I saw that fleet and thought it belonged to our enemy … For a moment, I wished I’d never met any of you. Because the thought of any of you …” She sucked in a breath. “How do you do it? How have you learned to enter a battlefield with your Bane and not fall apart with the terror that not all of you might walk off it?”

  Aedion listened to every word, assessed every shaking breath. And he said plainly, “You have no choice but to learn to face it.” He wished she didn’t need to think of such things, have such weight on her. “The fear of loss … it can destroy you as much as the loss itself.”

  Lysandra at last met his gaze. Those green eyes—the sadness in them hit him like a blow to the gut. It was an effort not to reach for her. But she said, “I think we will both need to remind ourselves of that in the times ahead.”

  He nodded, sighing through his nose. “And remember to enjoy what time we do have.” She’d likely learned that as many times as he had.

  Her slender, lovely throat bobbed, and she glanced sidelong at him beneath lowered lashes. “I do enjoy it, you know. This—whatever this is.”

  His heart ratcheted to a thunderous beat. Aedion debated whether or not to go for subtlety and gave himself the span of three breaths to decide. In the end, he went for his usual method, which had served him well both on and off battlefields: a precise sort of blunt attack, edged with enough outright arrogance to throw his opponents off their guard. “Whatever this is,” he said with a half smile, “between us?”