Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(121)

They never did.

So Manon Blackbeak slept. And so she dreamed.





43


Lorcan was still wondering what the hell he was doing three days later. They’d left that plains town far behind them, but the terror of that night lay draped over the carnival caravan like a heavy blanket with each mile the wagons hurried down the roads.

The others hadn’t wised up to how, exactly, they’d survived the ilken—hadn’t realized the ilken were near-impossible to kill, and no mere mortal could have slain one, let alone four. Nik and Ombriel gave him and Elide a wide berth—and only catching their wary, examining stares at the dinner campfire every night revealed they were still piecing together who and what he was.

Elide kept well away from him, too. They hadn’t had a chance to set up their usual tents thanks to fleeing so quickly, but tonight, safely within the walls of a small plains town, they’d have to share a room at the cheap inn Molly had begrudgingly paid for.

It was hard not to watch Elide as she took in the town, then the inn—the keen-eyed observation, the hint of surprise and confusion that sometimes crossed her face.

He used a tendril of his magic to keep her foot stabilized. She never commented on it. And sometimes that dark, fell magic of his would brush up against whatever it was she carried—the gift from a dying woman to a hotheaded assassin—and recoil.

Lorcan hadn’t pushed to see it since that night, though he’d spent a great deal of time contemplating what might have come out of Morath. Collars and rings were likely the start of it.

Whitethorn and the bitch-queen had no idea about the ilken—perhaps about the majority of horrors Elide had shared with him. He wondered what a wall of wildfire would do to the creatures—wondered if the ilken were somehow training against Aelin Galathynius’s arsenal. If Erawan was smart, he’d have something in mind.

While the others trudged into the ramshackle inn in search of food and rest, Elide informed Molly that she was going on a walk along the river, and headed into the cobblestone streets. And though his stomach was grumbling, Lorcan trailed her, ever the husband wishing to guard his beautiful wife in a town that had seen better days—decades. No doubt caused by Adarlan’s relentless road-building across the continent and the fact that this town had been left far from any artery through the land.

The thunderstorm he’d scented building on the horizon lumbered toward the stone-wrought town, the light shifting from gold to silver. Within minutes, the thick humidity was washed away by a sweep of welcome coolness. Lorcan gave Elide all of three blocks before he fell into step beside her and said, “It’s going to rain.”

She slid a flat glance at him. “I do know what thunder means.”

The walled town had been built on either side of a small, half-forgotten river—two large water gates on either end demanding tolls to enter the city and tracking the goods that passed through. Old water, fish, and rotting wood reached him before the sight of the muddy, calm waters did, and it was precisely at the edge of the river docks that Elide paused.

“What are you looking for?” he asked at last, an eye on the darkening skies. The dockworkers, sailors, and merchants monitored the clouds, too, as they scurried about. Some lingered to tie up the long, flat-bellied barges and latch down the smooth poles they used to navigate the river. He’d seen a kingdom, perhaps three hundred years ago, that relied on barges to sail its goods from one end to another. Its name eluded him, lost to the catacombs of his memory. Lorcan wondered if it still existed, tucked away between two mountain ranges on the other side of the world.

Elide’s bright eyes tracked a group of well-dressed men heading into what looked to be a tavern. “Storms mean looking for shelter,” she murmured. “Shelter means being stuck inside with nothing to do but gossip. Gossip means news from merchants and sailors about the rest of the land.” Those eyes cut to him, dry humor dancing there. “That is what thunder means.”

Lorcan blinked as she followed after the men who’d entered the dockside tavern. The first fat drops of the storm plunked onto the moss-speckled cobblestones of the quay.

Lorcan followed Elide inside the tavern, some part of him admitting that for all his five hundred years of surviving and killing and serving, he’d never quite encountered someone so … unimpressed with him. Even gods-damned Aelin had some sense of the threat he posed. Maybe living with monsters had stripped away a healthy fear of them. He wondered how Elide hadn’t become one in the process.

Lorcan took in the details of the taproom by instinct and training, finding nothing worth a second thought. The reek of the place—unwashed bodies, piss, mold, wet wool—threatened to suffocate him. But in the span of a few moments, Elide had grabbed herself a table near a cluster of those people from the docks and ordered two tankards of ale and whatever was the lunch special.

Lorcan slid into the ancient wooden chair beside hers, wondering if the damn thing would collapse under him as it groaned. Thunder cracked overhead, and all eyes shifted to the bay of windows overlooking the quay. Rain fell in earnest, setting the barges bobbing and swaying.

Lunch was dropped before them, the bowls clattering and sending the goopy brown stew splashing over the chipped rims. Elide didn’t so much as look at it, or touch the ales that were plunked down with equal disinterest for a tip, as she scanned the room.

“Drink,” Elide commanded him.