Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(171)

Aelin decided to do them all a favor and cut in, “I need more men, Ansel. And I do not have the ability to be in so many places at once.” They were all watching now.

Ansel set down the bottle. “You want me to raise another army for you?”

“I want you to find me the lost Crochan witches.”

Manon jerked upright. “What.”

Aelin scratched at a mark on the table. “They are in hiding, but they’re still out there, if the Ironteeth hunt them. They might have significant numbers. Promise to share the Wastes with them. You control Briarcliff and half the coast. Give them inland and the South.”

Manon was prowling over, death in her eyes. “You do not have the right to promise such things.” Rowan’s and Aedion’s hands shot to their swords. But Lysandra opened a sleepy eye, stretched out a paw on the bench, and revealed the needle-sharp claws that now stood between Manon’s shins and Aelin.

Aelin said to Manon, “You cannot hold the land, not with the curse. Ansel won it, through blood and loss and her own wits.”

“It is my home, my people’s home—”

“That was the asking price, wasn’t it? The Ironteeth get their homeland returned, and Erawan probably promised to break the curse.” At Manon’s wide eyes, Aelin snorted. “Oh—the Ancients didn’t tell you that, did they? Too bad. That’s what Ansel’s spies picked up.” She looked the Wing Leader over. “If you and your people prove to be better than your Matrons, there will be a place for you in that land, too.”

Manon just stalked back to her seat and glared at the galley’s small brazier as if she could freeze it over.

Ansel murmured, “So touchy, these witches.”

Aelin clamped her lips together, but Lysandra let out another breathy cat laugh. Manon’s nails clicked against each other from across the room. Lysandra merely answered with her own.

Aelin said to Ansel, “Find the Crochans.”

“They’re all gone,” Manon cut in again. “We’ve hunted them to near-extinction.”

Aelin slowly looked over a shoulder. “What if their queen summoned them?”

“I am no more their queen than you are.”

They’d see about that. Aelin laid a hand flat on the table. “Send anything and anyone you find north,” she said to Ansel. “Sacking Melisande’s capital on the sly will at least piss off Erawan, but we don’t want to be stuck down here when Terrasen is attacked.”

“I think Erawan was probably born pissed.” Only Ansel, who had once laughed at death as she’d leaped a ravine and convinced Aelin to nearly die doing the same, would mock a Valg king. But Ansel added, “I’ll do it. I don’t know how effective it’ll be, but I have to go north anyway. Though I think Hisli will be heartbroken to say farewell to Kasida once again.”

It was no surprise at all that Ansel had managed to hold on to Hisli, the Asterion mare she’d stolen for herself. But Kasida—oh, Kasida was just as beautiful as Aelin remembered, even more so once she’d been led over a gangway onto the ship. Aelin had brushed the mare down when she’d led her into the cramped, wet stables, and bribed the horse to forgive her with an apple.

Ansel slugged from the bottle. “I heard, you know. When you went to Endovier. I was still fighting my way onto the throne, battling Lord Loch’s horde with the lords I’d banded together, but … even out in the Wastes, we heard when you were sent there.”

Aelin picked at the table some more, well aware the others were listening. “It wasn’t fun.”

Ansel nodded. “Once I’d killed Loch, I had to stay to defend my throne, to make it right again for my people. But I knew if anyone could survive Endovier, it’d be you. I set out last summer. I’d reached the Ruhnn Mountains when I got word you were gone. Taken to the capital by …” She glanced at Dorian, stone-faced across the table. “Him. But I couldn’t go to Rifthold. It was too far, and I had been gone too long. So I turned around. Went home.”

Aelin’s words were strangled. “You tried to get me out?”

The fire cast Ansel’s hair in ruby and gold. “There was not one hour that I did not think about what I did in the desert. How you fired that arrow after twenty-one minutes. You told me twenty, that you’d shoot even if I wasn’t out of range. I was counting; I knew how many it had been. You gave me an extra minute.”

Lysandra stretched out, nuzzling Ansel’s hand. She idly scratched the shifter.

Aelin said, “You were my mirror. That extra minute was as much for me as it was for you.” Aelin clinked her bottle against Ansel’s again. “Thank you.”

Ansel just said, “Don’t thank me yet.”

Aelin straightened. The others halted their eating, utensils discarded in their stew.

“The fires along the coast weren’t set by Erawan,” Ansel said, those red-brown eyes flickering in the lantern light. “We interrogated Melisande’s Queen and her lieutenants, but … it wasn’t an order from Morath.”

Aedion’s low growl told her they all knew the answer before Ansel replied.

“We got a report that Fae soldiers were spied starting them. Firing from ships.”

“Maeve,” Gavriel murmured. “But burning isn’t her style.”