Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(181)

Gavin started, hissing at his broken body with the sudden movement.

They had no forms. They were only figments of light and shadow, wind and rain, song and memory. Each individual, and yet a part of one majority, one consciousness.

They were all gazing at the broken Lock in her hands, its stone dull.

Gavin lowered his brow to the blood-soaked rock and averted his eyes.

Elena’s very bones quailed in their presence, but she kept her chin high.

“Our sister’s bloodline has betrayed us,” said one that was of sea and sky and storms.

Elena shook her head, trying to swallow. Failing. “I saved us. I stopped Erawan—”

“Fool,” said the one of many shifting voices, both animal and human. “Half-breed fool. Did you not consider why your father carried it, why he bided his time all these years, gathering his strength? He was to wield it—to seal the three Wyrdkeys back into the gate, and send us home before he shut the gate forever. Us, and the Dark King. The Lock was forged for us—promised to us. And you wasted it.”

Elena braced a hand on the earth to keep from swaying. “My father bears the Wyrdkeys?” He had never so much as hinted … And the Lock … she had thought it a mere weapon. A weapon he had refused to wield in this bloody war.

They did not answer, their silence confirmation enough.

A small, broken noise came out of her throat. Elena breathed, “I’m sorry.”

Their rage rattled her bones, threatened to stop her heart dead in her chest. The one of flame and light and ashes seemed to withhold, seemed to pause in her wrath.

To remember.

She had not seen or spoken to her mother since she had left her body to forge the Lock. Since Rhiannon Crochan had helped Mala cast her very essence into it, the mass of its power contained within the small witch mirror disguised as a blue stone, to be unleashed only once. They had never told Elena why. Never said it was anything more than a weapon that her father would one day desperately need to wield.

The cost: her mother’s mortal body, the life she had wanted for herself with Brannon and their children. It had been ten years since then. Ten years, her father had never stopped waiting for Mala to return, hoping he’d see her again. Just once.

I will not remember you, Mala had said to them all before she had given herself to the Lock’s forging. And yet there she was. Pausing. As if she remembered.

“Mother,” Elena whispered, a broken plea.

Mala Light-Bringer looked away from her.

The one who saw all with wise, calm eyes said, “Unleash him. So we have been betrayed by these earth beasts, let us return the favor. Unleash the Dark King from his coffin.”

“No,” Elena pleaded, rising from her knees. “Please—please. Tell me what I must do to atone, but please do not unleash him. I beg you.”

“He will rise again one day,” said the one of darkness and death. “He will awaken. You have wasted our Lock on a fool’s errand, when you could have solved all, had you only the patience and wits to understand.”

“Then let him awaken,” Elena begged, her voice breaking. “Let someone else inherit this war—someone better prepared.”

“Coward,” said the one with a voice of steel and shields and arrows. “Coward to shove the burden to another.”

“Please,” Elena said. “I will give you anything. Anything. But not that.”

As one, they looked to Gavin.

No—

But it was her mother who said, “We have waited this long to return home. We may wait a little longer. Watch over this … place a little longer.”

Not just gods, but beings of a higher, different existence. For whom time was fluid, and bodies were things to be shifted and molded. Who could exist in multiple places, spread themselves wide like nets being thrown. They were as mighty and vast and eternal as a human was to a mayfly.

They had not been born in this world. Perhaps had become trapped here after wandering through a Wyrdgate. And they had struck some bargain with her father, with Mala, to at last send them home, banishing Erawan with them. And she had ruined it.

The one with three faces said, “We will wait. But there must be a price. And a promise.”

“Name it,” Elena said. If they took Gavin, she’d follow. She was not the heir to her father’s throne. It did not matter if she walked out of this mountain pass. She wasn’t entirely certain she could bear to see him again, not after her arrogance and pride and self-righteousness. Brannon had begged her to listen, to wait. She had instead stolen the Lock from him and run with Gavin into the night, desperate to save these lands.

The one with three faces studied her. “Mala’s bloodline shall bleed again to forge the Lock anew. And you will lead them, a lamb to slaughter, to pay the price of this choice you made to waste its power here, for this petty battle. You will show this future scion how to forge a new Lock with Mala’s gifts, how to then use it to wield the keys and send us home. Our original bargain still holds: we will take the Dark King with us. Tear him apart in our own world, where he will be but dust and memory. When we are gone—you will show this scion how to seal the gate behind us, the Lock holding it intact eternally. By yielding every last drop of their life force. As your father was prepared to do when the time was right.”

“Please,” Elena breathed.