Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(165)

The Fae Prince coughed pointedly behind her.

The queen looked over a shoulder, brows raised. “Am I forgetting another term of endearment?”

The warrior-prince’s eyes glowed, even as his face remained set with predatory intent. “I think you covered it.”

Aelin winked at Lorcan. “You hurt her, and I’ll melt your bones,” she merely said, and walked away.

Manon’s iron-clad smile grew, and she gave Lorcan a mocking incline of the head as she followed in the queen’s wake.

Aedion looked Lorcan over and snorted. “Aelin does whatever she wants, but I think she’d let me see how many of your bones I can break before she melts them.” Then he, too, was walking toward the two females. One silver, one gold.

Elide almost screamed as a ghost leopard appeared out of nowhere, twitched its whiskers in Lorcan’s direction, and then trotted after the women, its puffy tail swishing behind it.

Then the king left, then the Fae males. Until only Prince Rowan Whitethorn stood there. He gave Elide a Look.

Elide immediately shrugged out of Lorcan’s grip. Aelin and Aedion had stopped ahead, waiting for her. Smiling faintly—welcomingly.

So Elide headed for them, her court, and did not look back.





Rowan had kept quiet during the past few minutes, observing.

Lorcan had been willing to die for Elide. Had been willing to put aside his quest for Maeve in order for Elide to live. And had then acted territorial enough to make Rowan wonder if he seemed so ridiculous around Aelin all the time.

Now alone, Rowan said to Lorcan, “How did you find us?”

A cutting smile. “The dark god nudged me toward here. The ilken army did the rest.”

The same Lorcan he’d known for centuries, and yet … not. Some hard edge had been dulled—no, soothed.

Lorcan stared toward the source of that soothing, but his jaw clenched as his focus shifted to where Aelin walked beside her. “That power could just as easily destroy her, you know.”

“I know,” Rowan admitted. What she’d done minutes ago, the power she’d summoned and unleashed … It had been a song that had made his magic erupt in kind.

When the ilken’s resistance had finally yielded beneath flame and ice and wind, Rowan hadn’t been able to stifle the yearning to walk into the burning heart of that power and see her glowing with it.

Halfway across the plain, he’d realized it wasn’t just the allure of it that tugged at him. It was the woman inside it, who might need physical contact with another living being to remind herself that she had a body, and people who loved her, and to pull back from that killing calm that so mercilessly wiped the ilken from the skies. But then the flames had vanished, their enemies raining down as ash and ice and corpses, and she’d looked at him … Holy gods, when she’d looked at him, he’d almost fallen to his knees.

Queen, and lover, and friend—and more. He hadn’t cared that they had an audience. He had needed to touch her, to reassure himself that she was all right, to feel the woman who could do such great and terrible things and still look at him with that beckoning, vibrant life in her eyes.

You make me want to live, Rowan.

He wondered if Elide Lochan had somehow made Lorcan want to do the same.

He said to Lorcan, “And what about your mission?”

Any softness vanished from Lorcan’s granite-hewn features. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re in this shithole place, and then we’ll discuss my plans.”

“Aelin can decide what to tell you.”

“Such a good dog.”

Rowan gave him a lazy smile but refrained from commenting on the delicate, dark-haired young woman who now held Lorcan’s own leash.





58


Kaltain Rompier had just turned the tide in this war.

Dorian had never been more ashamed of himself.

He should have been better. Should have seen better. They all should have.

The thoughts swirled and eddied as Dorian kept back in the half-drowned temple complex, silently watching as Aelin studied the chest on the altar as if it were an opponent.

The queen was now flanked by Lady Elide, Manon on the dark-haired girl’s other side, Lysandra sprawled in ghost leopard form at the queen’s feet.

The power in that cluster alone was staggering. And Elide … Manon had murmured something to Aelin on their walk back into the ruins about Elide being watched over by Anneith.

Watched over, as the rest of them seemed to be by other gods.

Lorcan stepped into the ruins, Rowan at his side. Fenrys, Gavriel, and Aedion approached them, hands on their swords, bodies still thrumming with tension as they kept Lorcan within sight. Especially Maeve’s warriors.

Another ring of power.

Lorcan—Lorcan, blessed by Hellas himself, Rowan had told him on that skiff ride into the Dead Islands. Hellas, god of death. Who had traveled here with Anneith, his consort.

The hair on Dorian’s arms rose.

Scions—each of them touched by a different god, each of them subtly, quietly, guided here. It wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be.

Manon noticed him standing a few feet away, read whatever wariness was on his face, and broke from the circle of quietly talking women to come to his side. “What?”

Dorian clenched his jaw. “I have a bad feeling about this.”