Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)(161)

“No—stop!” Dorian flung out a hand.

“Then answer the question.”

“I am! You bastard, I am! I don’t know why they were meeting!”

The guard’s sword still remained up, ready to fall before Chaol could move an inch.

“Do you know that there has been a spy in my castle for several months now, Prince? Someone feeding information to my enemies and plotting against me with a known rebel leader?”

Shit. Shit. He had to mean Ren—the king knew who Ren was, had sent those men to hunt him down.

“Just tell me who, Dorian, and you can do whatever you wish with your friend.”

The king didn’t know, then—if it was he or Aedion or both of them who had been meeting with Ren. He didn’t know how much they’d learned about his plans, his control over magic. Aedion was somehow still keeping his mouth shut, somehow still looking ready for battle.

Aedion, who had survived for so long without hope, holding together his kingdom as best he could … who would never see the queen he so fiercely loved. He deserved to meet her, and she deserved to have him serve in her court.

Chaol took a breath, preparing himself for the words that would doom him.

But it was Aedion who spoke.

“You want a spy? You want a traitor?” the general drawled, and flung his replicated black ring on the floor. “Then here I am. You want to know why the captain and I were meeting? It was because your stupid bastard of a boy-captain figured out that I’d been working with one of the rebels. He’s been blackmailing information out of me for months to give to his father to offer you when the Lord of Anielle needed a favor. And you know what?” Aedion grinned at them all, the Northern Wolf incarnate. If the king was shocked about the ring, he didn’t show it. “All you monsters can burn in hell. Because my queen is coming—and she will spike you to the walls of your gods-damned castle. And I can’t wait to help her gut you like the pigs you are.” He spat at the king’s feet, right on top of the fake ring that had stopped bouncing.

It was flawless—the rage and the arrogance and the triumph. But as he stared each of them down, Chaol’s heart fractured.

Because for a flicker, as those turquoise eyes met with his, there was none of that rage or triumph. Only a message to the queen that Aedion would never see. And there were no words to convey it—the love and the hope and the pride. The sorrow at not knowing her as the woman she had become. The gift Aedion thought he was giving her in sparing Chaol’s life.

Chaol nodded slightly, because he understood that he could not help, not at this point—not until that sword was removed from Sorscha’s neck. Then he could fight, and he might still get them out alive.

Aedion didn’t struggle as the guards clapped shackles around his wrists and ankles.

“I’ve always wondered about that ring,” the king said. “Was it the distance, or some true strength of spirit that made you so unresponsive to its suggestions? But regardless, I am so glad that you confessed to treason, Aedion.” He spoke with slow, deliberate glee. “So glad you did it in front of all these witnesses, too. It will make your execution that much easier. Though I think…” The king smiled and looked at the fake black ring. “I think I’ll wait. Perhaps give it a month or two. Just in case any last-minute guests have to travel a long, long way for the execution. Just in case someone gets it into her head that she can rescue you.”

Aedion snarled. Chaol bit back his own reaction. Perhaps the king had never had anything on them—perhaps this had only been a ruse to get Aedion to confess to something, because the king knew that the general would offer up his own life instead of an innocent’s. The king wanted to savor this, and savor the trap that he had now set for Aelin, even if it cost him a fine general in the process. Because once she heard that Aedion was captured, once she knew the execution date … she would run to Rifthold.

“After she comes for you,” Aedion promised the king, “they’ll have to scrape what’s left of you off the walls.”

The king only smiled. Then he looked to Dorian and Sorscha, who seemed to be hardly breathing. The healer remained on the floor and did not lift her head as the king braced his massive forearms on his knees and said, “And what do you have to say for yourself, girl?”

She trembled, shaking her head.

“That’s enough,” Dorian snapped, sweat gleaming on his brow. The prince winced in pain as his magic was repressed by the iron in his system. “Aedion confessed; now let her go.”

“Why should I release the true traitor in this castle?”




Sorscha couldn’t stop shaking as the king spoke.

All her years of remaining invisible, all her training, first from those rebels in Fenharrow, then the contacts they’d sent her family to in Rifthold … all of it ruined.

“Such interesting letters you send to your friend. Why, I might not ever have read them,” the king said, “if you hadn’t left one in the rubbish for your superior to find. See—you rebels have your spies, and I have mine. And as soon as you decided to start using my son…” She could feel the king smirking at her. “How many of his movements did you report to your rebel friends? What secrets of mine have you given away over the years?”

“Leave her alone,” Dorian growled. It was enough to set her crying. He still thought she was innocent.