Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3)(64)

Rowan braced his hands on his hips, sniffing again, turning in the stream. He scanned Celaena, then the body. “You came out of that darkness looking as if someone had sucked the life from you. Your skin was a shade paler, your freckles gone.”

“It forced me to go through . . . memories. The worst kind.” The woman’s horrified, sorrowful face gaped up at the canopy. “Have you ever heard of a creature that can feed on such things? When I glimpsed it, I saw a man—­a beautiful man, pale and dark-­haired, with eyes of full black. He ­wasn’t human. I mean, he looked it, but his eyes—­they ­weren’t human at all.”

Her parents had been assassinated. She’d seen the wounds. But the smell in their room had been so similar . . . She shook her head as if to clear it, to shake the creeping feeling moving up her spine.

“Even my queen ­doesn’t know every foul creature roaming these lands. If the skinwalkers are venturing down from the mountains, perhaps other things are, too.”

“The townspeople might know something. Maybe they’ve seen it or heard rumors.”

Rowan seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he shook his head in disgust—­and sorrow, to her surprise. “We don’t have the time; ­you wasted daylight by coming ­here in your human form.” They hadn’t brought any overnight supplies, either. “We have an hour before we head back. Make the most of it.”

•

The path led absolutely nowhere. It ran into a sea cliff with no way to the narrow strip of beach below, no sign of anyone living nearby. Rowan stood at the cliff ’s edge, arms crossed as he stared out at the jade sea. “It ­doesn’t make sense,” he said, more to himself than to her. “This is the fourth body in the last few weeks—­none of them reported missing.” He squatted on the sandy ground and drew a rough line in the dirt with a tattooed finger. The shape of Wendlyn’s coastline. “They’ve been found ­here.” Little dots, seemingly random save for being close to the water. “We’re ­here,” he said, making another dot. He sat back on his heels as Celaena peered at the crude map. “And yet you and I encountered the creature lurking amongst the barrow-­wights ­here,” he added, and drew an X where she assumed the mounds ­were, deep inland. “I ­haven’t seen any further signs of it remaining by the barrows, and the wights have returned to their usual habits.”

“Were the other bodies the same?”

“All ­were drained like this, with expressions of terror on their faces—­not a hint of a wound, beyond dried blood at the nose and ears.” From the way his tan skin paled beneath his tattoo, the way he gritted his teeth, she knew that it rankled his immortal pride not to know what this thing was.

“All dumped in the forest, not the sea?” A nod. “But all within walking distance of the water.” Another nod. “If it ­were a skilled, sentient killer, it would hide the bodies better. Or, again, use the sea.” She gazed to the blinding water, the sun starting its afternoon descent. “Or maybe it ­doesn’t care. Maybe it wants us to know what it’s doing. There ­were—­there ­were times when I left bodies so that they’d be found by a certain person, or to send a type of message.” Grave being the latest of them. “What do the victims have in common?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We don’t even know their names or where they came from.” He ­rose and dusted his hands off. “We need to return to the fortress.”

She grabbed his elbow. “Wait. Have you seen enough of the body?”

A slow nod. Good. So had she—­and she’d had enough of the smell, too. She’d committed it to memory, noting everything that she could. “Then ­we’ve got to bury her.”

“The ground’s too hard ­here.”

She stalked through the trees, leaving him behind. “Then we’ll do it the ancient way,” she called. She’d be damned if she left that woman’s body decomposing in a stream, damned if she left her there for all eternity, wet and cold.

Celaena pulled the too-­light body out of the stream, laying it on the brown pine needles. Rowan didn’t say anything as she gathered kindling and branches and then knelt, trying not to look at the shriveled skin or the expression of lingering horror.

Neither did he mock her for the few times it took to get the fire started by hand, or make any snide comments once the pine needles finally crinkled and smoked, ancient incense for a rudimentary pyre. Instead, as she stepped from the rising flames, she felt him come to tower behind her, felt the surety and half wildness of him wrap around her like a phantom body. A warm breeze licked at her hair, her face. Air to help the fire; wind that helped consume the corpse.

The loathing she felt had nothing to do with her vow, or Nehemia. Celaena reached into the ageless pit inside her—­just once—­to see if she could pull up what­ever trigger it was that caused the shift, so she could help her sad little fire burn more evenly, more proudly.

Yet Celaena remained stale and empty, stranded in her mortal body.

Still, Rowan didn’t say anything about it, and his wind fed the flames enough to make quick work of the body, burning far faster than a mortal pyre. They watched in silence, until there was nothing but ashes—­until even those ­were carried up and away, over the trees, and toward the open sea.