Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3)(61)

He wanted to bash Murtaugh’s teeth down his throat, if only because he was right. “Who ­else of Orlon’s inner circle is still alive?”

Murtaugh named four. Ren quickly added, “We heard they ­were in hiding for years—­always moving around, like us. They might not be easy to find.”

Four. Aedion’s stomach dropped. “That’s it?” He’d been in Terrasen, but he’d never looked for an exact body count, never wanted to know who made it through the bloodshed and slaughter, or who had sacrificed everything to get a child, a friend, a family member out. Of course he’d known deep down, but there had always been some fool’s hope that most were still alive, still waiting to return.

“I’m sorry, Aedion,” Murtaugh said softly. “Some minor lords escaped, and even managed to hold onto their lands and keep them thriving.” Aedion knew and hated most of them—self-serving pigs. Murtaugh went on. “Vernon Lochan survived, but only because he was already the king’s puppet, and after Cal was executed, Vernon seized his brother’s mantle as Lord of Perranth. You know what happened to Lady Marion. But we never learned what happened to Elide.” Elide—­Lord Cal and Lady Marion’s daughter and heir, almost a year younger than Aelin. If she ­were alive, she would be at least seventeen by now. “Lots of children vanished in the initial weeks,” Murtaugh finished. Aedion didn’t want to think about those too-­small graves.

He had to look away for a moment, and even Ren stayed quiet. At last, Aedion said, “Send out feelers to Ravi and Sol, but hold off on the others. Ignore the minor lords for now. Small steps.”

To his surprise, Ren said, “Agreed.” For a heartbeat, their eyes met, and he knew that Ren felt what he often did—­what he tried to keep buried. They had survived, when so many had not. And no one ­else could understand what it was like to bear it, unless they had lost as much.

Ren had escaped at the cost of his parents’ lives—­and had lost his home, his title, his friends, and his kingdom. He had hidden and trained and never lost sight of his cause.

They ­were not friends now; they never really had been. Ren’s father hadn’t particularly liked that Aedion, not Ren, was favored to take the blood oath to Aelin. The oath of pure submission—­the oath that would have sealed Aedion as her lifelong protector, the one person in whom she could have absolute trust. Everything he possessed, everything he was, should have belonged to her.

Yet the prize now was not just a blood oath but a kingdom—­a shot at vengeance and rebuilding their world. Aedion made to walk away, but looked back. Just two cloaked figures, one hunched, the other tall and armed. The first shred of Aelin’s court. The court he’d raise for her to shatter Adarlan’s chains. He could keep playing the game—­for a little longer.

“When she returns,” Aedion said quietly, “what she will do to the King of Adarlan will make the slaughtering ten years ago look merciful.” And in his heart, Aedion hoped he spoke true.

25

A week passed without any further attempts to skin Celaena alive, so even though she made absolutely no progress with Rowan, she considered it to be a success. Rowan lived up to his word about her pulling double duty in the kitchens—­the only upside of which was that she was so exhausted when she tumbled into bed that she did not remember dreaming. Another benefit, she supposed, was that while she was scrubbing the eve­ning dishes, she could listen to Emrys’s stories—­which Luca begged for every night, regardless of rain.

Despite what had happened with the skinwalkers, Celaena was no closer to mastering her shift. Even though Rowan had offered his cloak that night beside the river, the next morning had brought them back to their usual vitriolic dislike. Hatred felt like a strong word, as she ­couldn’t quite hate someone who had saved her, but dislike fit pretty damn well. She didn’t particularly care what side of the hatred-­dislike line Rowan was on. But gaining his approval to enter Doranelle was undoubtedly a long, long way off.

Every day, he brought her to the temple ruins—­far enough away that if she did manage to shift and lost control of her magic in the pro­cess, she ­wouldn’t incinerate anyone. Everything—everything—depended on that command: shift. But the memory of what the magic had felt like as it seared out of her, when it threatened to swallow her and the ­whole world, plagued her, waking and asleep. It was almost as bad as the endless sitting.

Now, after two miserable hours of it, she groaned and stood, stalking around the ruins. It was unusually sunny that day, making the pale stones seem to glow. In fact, she could have sworn that the whispered prayers of long-­gone worshippers still resonated. Her magic had been flickering oddly in response—­strange, in her human form, where it was normally so bolted down.

As she studied the ruins, she braced her hands on her hips: anything to keep from ripping out her hair. “What was this place, anyway?” Only slabs of broken stone remained to show where the temple had stood. A few oblong stones—­pillars—were tossed about as if a hand had scattered them, and several stones grouped together indicated what had once been a road.

Rowan dogged her steps, a thundercloud closing in around her as she examined a cluster of white stones. “The Sun Goddess’s temple.”

Mala, Lady of Light, Learning, and Fire. “You’ve been bringing me ­here because you think it might help with mastering my powers—­my shifting?”