Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(104)

She turned toward the door, exhaustion and rage nipping at her bones.

Rolfe said to her back, “Do you want to know what the cost of this map was?”

She halted, Rowan glancing between them, face unreadable.

She smirked over her shoulder. “Your soul?”

Rolfe let out a hoarse laugh. “Yes—in a way. When I was sixteen, I was barely more than a slave on one of these festering ships, my Mycenian heritage just a one-way ticket to a beating.” He laid a tattooed hand on the Thresher’s lettering. “Every coin I earned came back here—to my mother and sister. And one day the ship I was on got caught in a storm. The captain was a haughty bastard, refused to find safe harbor, and the ship was destroyed. Most of the crew drowned. I drifted for a day, washed up on an island at the edge of the archipelago, and awoke to find a man staring down at me. I asked if I was dead, and he laughed and inquired what I wanted for myself. I was so delirious I told him that I wanted to be captain—I wanted to be Pirate Lord of Skull’s Bay and make the arrogant fools like the captain who had killed my friends bow before me. I thought I was dreaming when he explained that if he were to grant me the skills to do it, there would be a price. What I valued most in the world, he would have. I said I’d pay it—whatever it was. I had no belongings, no wealth, no people anyway. A few coppers would be nothing. He smiled before he vanished into sea mist. I awoke with the ink on my hands.”

Aelin waited.

Rolfe shrugged. “I made it back here, finding friendly ships using the map the stranger had inked there. A gift from a god—or so I thought. But it wasn’t until I saw the black sheets over my cottage’s windows that I began to worry. And it wasn’t until I learned that my mother and sister had used their little money to hire a skiff to go looking for me—and that the skiff had returned to harbor but they had not—that I realized the price I’d handed over. That’s what the sea claimed. What he claimed. And it made me soulless enough that I loosed myself upon this city, this archipelago.” Rolfe’s green eyes were as merciless as the Sea God who had gifted and damned him. “That was the price of my power. What shall yours be, Aelin Galathynius?”

She didn’t reply to him before storming out. Though Deanna’s voice had echoed in her mind.

The Queen Who Was Promised.

Now, standing on that empty beach and monitoring the glimmering expanse of the sea as the last of the sun vanished, Rowan said beside her, “Did you willingly use the key?”

No hint of judgment, of condemnation. Just curiosity—and concern.

Aelin rasped, “No. I don’t know what happened. One minute it was us … then she came.” She rubbed at her chest, avoiding the touch of the golden chain against it. Her throat tightened as she took in that spot on his own chest, right between his pectorals. Where her fist had been aimed.

“How could you?” she breathed, a tremor running through her. “How could you put yourself in front of me like that?”

Rowan took a step closer but no farther. The crashing of waves and cries of gulls heading home for the night filled the space between them. “If you had destroyed that city, it would have destroyed you, and any sort of hope at an alliance.”

Shaking began in her hands, spreading to her arms, her chest, her knees. Flame and ash curled on her tongue. “If I had killed you,” she hissed, but choked on the words, unable to finish the thought, the idea of it. Her throat burned, and she squeezed her eyes shut, warm flames rippling around her. “I thought I’d found the bottom of my power,” she admitted, magic already overflowing, so soon, too soon after she’d emptied herself. “I thought what I found in Wendlyn was the bottom. I had no idea it was all just an … antechamber.”

Aelin lifted her hands, opening her eyes to find her fingers wreathed in flame. Darkness spread over the world. Through the veil of gold and blue and red, she looked at her prince. She raised her burning hands helplessly between them. “She stole me—she took me. And I could feel her—feel her consciousness. It was like she was a spider, waiting in a web for decades, knowing I’d one day be strong and stupid enough to use my magic and the key together. I might as well have rung the dinner bell.” Her fire burned hotter, brighter, and she let it build and rise and flicker.

A wry, bitter smile. “It seems she wants us to make finding this Lock a priority, if you were given the message twice.”

Indeed. “Isn’t it enough to contend with Erawan and Maeve, to do the bidding of Brannon and Elena? Now I have to face the gods breathing down my neck about it as well?”

“Perhaps it was a warning—perhaps Deanna wished to show you how a not-so-friendly god might use you if you’re not careful.”

“She enjoyed every rutting second of it. She wanted to see what my power might do, what she could do with my body, with the key.” Her flames burned hotter, shredding through her clothes until they were ash, until she was naked and clothed in only her own fire. “And what she called me—the Queen Who Was Promised. Promised when? To whom? To do what? I’ve never heard that phrase in my life, not even before Terrasen fell.”

“We’ll figure it out.” And that was that.

“How can you be so … fine with this?” Embers sprayed from her like a swarm of fireflies.

Rowan’s mouth tightened. “Trust me, Aelin, I am anything but fine with the idea that you are fair game to those immortal bastards. I am anything but fine with the idea that you could be taken from me like that. If I could, I would hunt Deanna down and pay her back for it.”