Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(140)

“What was that about?” Fenrys asked.

“An Ancient,” Dorian mused, then murmured to Manon, “Baba Yellowlegs.”

They all turned to him. But Manon’s fingers brushed against her collarbone—where the necklace of Aelin’s scars from Yellowlegs still ringed her neck in stark white.

“This winter, she was at your castle,” Manon said to him. “Working as a fortune-teller.”

“And what—she said something to that degree?” Aedion crossed his arms. He’d known of the visit, Dorian recalled. Aedion had always kept an eye on the witches—on all the power players of the realm, he’d once said.

Manon stared the general down. “Yellowlegs was a fortune-teller—a powerful oracle. I bet she knew who the queen was the moment she saw her. And saw things she planned to sell to the highest bidder.” Dorian tried not to flinch at the memory. Aelin had butchered Yellowlegs when she’d threatened to sell his secrets. Aelin had never implied a threat against her own. Manon continued, “Yellowlegs wouldn’t have told the queen anything outright, only in veiled terms. So it’d drive the girl mad when she figured it out.”

A pointed glance at the door through which Aelin had vanished.

None of them said anything else, even as they later ate cold porridge for breakfast.

The cook, it seemed, hadn’t made it through the night.





Rowan knocked on the door of their private bathing room. She’d locked it. Walked into their room, then into the bathing room, and locked him out.

And now she was puking her guts up.

“Aelin,” he growled softly.

A ragged intake of breath, then retching, then—more vomiting.

“Aelin,” he snarled, debating how long until it was socially acceptable for him to break down the door. Act like a prince, she’d snarled at him the other night.

“I don’t feel well,” was her muffled response. Her voice was hollow, flat in a way he hadn’t heard for some time now.

“Then let me in so I can take care of you,” he said as calmly and rationally as he could.

She’d locked him out—locked him out.

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“I’ve seen you wet yourself. I can handle vomiting. Which I have also seen you do before.”

Ten seconds. Ten more seconds seemed like a fair enough amount of time before he crunched down on the handle and splintered the lock.

“Just—give me a minute.”

“What was it about Fenrys’s words that set you off?” He’d heard it all from his post on the mast.

Utter silence. Like she was spooling the raw terror back into herself, shoving it down into a place where she wouldn’t look at it or feel it or acknowledge it. Or tell him about it.

“Aelin.”

The lock turned.

Her face was gray, her eyes red-rimmed. Her voice broke as she said, “I want to talk to Lysandra.”

Rowan looked at the bucket she’d half filled, then at her bloodless lips. At the sweat beaded on her brow.

His heart stopped dead in his chest as he contemplated that … that she might not be lying.

And why she might be ill. He tried to scent her, but the vomit was too overpowering, the space too small and full of brine. He stumbled back a step, shutting out the thoughts. Without another word, he left their room.

He was numb as he hunted down the shifter, now returned and in human form as she devoured a cold, soggy breakfast. With a concerned look, Lysandra silently did as he commanded.

Rowan shifted and soared so high that the ship turned into a bobbing speck below. Clouds cooled his feathers; the wind roared over the pure panic thundering in his heart.

He planned to lose himself in the awakening sky while scouting for danger, to sort himself out before he returned to her and started asking questions that he might not be ready to hear the answers to.

But the coast appeared—and only his magic kept him from tumbling out of the sky at what the first rays of the sun revealed.

Broad, sparkling rivers and snaking streams flowed throughout the undulating emerald and gold of the grasslands and reeds lining them, the burnt gold of the sandbanks flanking either side.

And where little fishing villages had once watched over the sea … Fire.

Dozens of those villages burning.

On the ship beneath him, the sailors began to shout, calling to one another as the coast at last broke over the horizon and the smoke became visible.

Eyllwe.

Eyllwe was burning.





49


Elide didn’t speak to Lorcan for three days.

She wouldn’t have spoken to him for another three, maybe for three damn months, if necessity hadn’t required them to break their hateful silence.

Her cycle had come. And through whatever steady, healthy diet she’d been consuming this past month, it had gone from an inconsistent trickle to the deluge she’d awoken to this morning.

She’d hurtled from the narrow bed in the cabin to the small privy on board, rifled through every drawer and box she could find, but … clearly, a woman had never spent any time on this infernal boat. She resorted to ripping up the embroidered tablecloth for liners, and by the time she’d cleaned herself up, Lorcan was awake and already steering the boat.