Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(155)

They reached a crossroads—one leading left, one right. Neither offering a hint of the direct path to the center of the ruin.

Rowan said to Manon, “You go left. Whistle if you find anything.”

Manon stalked off among the stones and water and reeds, shoulders tight enough to suggest she hadn’t appreciated the order, but she wasn’t dumb enough to tangle with him.

Aelin smiled a bit at the thought as she and Rowan continued on. Running her free palm over the carved walls they passed, she said casually, “That sunrise Mala appeared to you—what, exactly, did she say?”

He slashed a glance in her direction. “Why?”

Her heart turned thunderous, and maybe it made her a coward to say it now—

Rowan gripped her elbow as he read her body, scented her fear and pain. “Aelin.”

She braced herself, nothing but stone and water and bramble around them, and turned a corner.

And there it was.

Even Rowan forgot to demand an answer to what she’d been about to tell him as they surveyed the open space flanked by crumbling walls and punctuated by fallen pillars. And at its northern end … “Big surprise,” Aelin muttered. “There’s an altar.”

“It’s a chest,” Rowan corrected with a half smile. “It’s got a lid.”

“Even better,” she said, nudging him with an elbow. Yes—yes, she’d tell him later.

The water separating them from the chest was still and silver bright—too murky to see if there was a bottom at all beyond the steps up to the dais. Aelin reached for her water magic, hoping it’d whisper of what lay beneath that surface, but her flames were burning too loudly.

Splashing issued across the way, and Manon appeared around an opposite wall. Her focus went to the enormous stone chest at the rear of the space, the stone cracked and overflowing with weeds and vines. She began easing across the water, one step at a time.

Aelin said, “Don’t touch the chest.”

Manon just gave her a long look and kept heading for the dais.

Trying not to slip on the slick floor, Aelin crossed the space, sloshing water over the dais steps as she mounted them, Rowan close behind.

Manon leaned over the chest to study the lid but did not open it. Studying, Aelin realized, the countless Wyrdmarks carved into the stone.

Nehemia had known how to use the marks. Had been taught them and was fluent enough in them to have wielded their power. Aelin had never asked how or why or when.

But here were Wyrdmarks, deep within Eyllwe.

Aelin stepped up to Manon, examining the lid more closely. “Do you know what those are?”

Manon brushed back her long white hair. “I’ve never seen such markings.”

Aelin examined a few, her memory straining for the translation. “Some of these aren’t symbols I’ve encountered before. Some are.” She scratched her head. “Should we throw a rock at it—see what it does?” she asked, twisting to where Rowan peered over her shoulder.

But a hollow throb of air pulsed around them, silencing the incessant buzz of the marshes’ inhabitants. And it was that utter silence, the bark of surprise from Fenrys, that had Aelin and Manon shifting into flanking, defensive positions. As if they’d done this a hundred times before.

But Rowan had gone still as he scanned the gray skies, the ruins, the water.

“What is it?” Aelin breathed.

Before her prince could answer, Aelin felt it again. A pulsing, dark wind demanding their attention. Not the Valg. No, this darkness was born of something else.

“Lorcan,” Rowan breathed, a hand on his sword—but not drawing it.

“Is that his magic?” Aelin shuddered as that death-kissed wind shoved at her. She batted it away as if it were a gnat. It snapped at her in answer.

“It’s his warning signal,” Rowan murmured.

“For what?” Manon asked sharply.

Rowan was instantly moving, scaling the high walls with ease, even as stone crumbled away. He balanced on its top, surveying the land on the other side of the wall.

Then he smoothly climbed back down, his splash as he landed echoing off the stones.

Lysandra slithered around a cluster of weeds and halted with a swift thrust of her scaled tail as Rowan said too calmly, “There is an aerial legion approaching.”

Manon breathed, “Ironteeth?”

“No,” Rowan said, meeting Aelin’s gaze with an icy steadiness that had seen him through centuries of battle. “Ilken.”

“How many?” Aelin’s voice turned distant—hollow.

Rowan’s throat bobbed, and she knew he’d been taking in the horizon and surrounding lands not for any chance of winning the battle that was sure to come, but for any shot at getting her out. Even if the rest of them had to buy her time with their own lives.

“Five hundred.”





55


Lorcan’s breath singed his throat with every inhalation, but he kept running through the marshes, Elide laboring beside him, never complaining, only scanning the skies with wide, dark eyes.

Lorcan sent out another flickering blast of his power. Not toward the winged army that raced not too far ahead, but farther—toward wherever Whitethorn and his bitch-queen might be in this festering place. If those ilken reached them long before Lorcan could arrive, that Wyrdkey the bitch carried would be as good as lost. And Elide … He shut out the thoughts.