Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5) by Sarah J. Maas

“You planned to lie to me about it,” she seethed. “But how would you explain that?”

A shrug. Lorcan took up the pole and moved with fluid grace to the side of the barge, where he pushed them away from an approaching sandbank.

He had killed that man— “I swore to him he’d be set free.”

“You swore it, not me.”

Her fingers curled into fists. And that thing—that stone—wrapped in that bit of cloth inside her jacket began to stir.

Lorcan stilled, the pole gripped tight in his hands. “What is that,” he said too softly.

She held her ground. Like hell she’d back down from him, like hell she’d allow him to intimidate her, overrule her, kill people so they could escape—

“What. Is. That.”

She refused to speak, to even touch the lump in her pocket. It thrummed and grumbled, a beast opening an eye, but she didn’t dare to reach out, to so much as acknowledge that strange, otherworldly presence.

Lorcan’s eyes widened slightly, then he was setting down the pole and stalking across the deck and into the cabin. She lingered by the edge, unsure whether to follow or perhaps jump into the water and swim to shore, but—

There was a thud of metal on metal, as if something was being cracked open, and then—

Lorcan’s roar shook the boat, the river, the trees. Long-legged river birds hauled themselves into flight.

Then Lorcan flung open the door, so violently it nearly ripped off its hinges, and hurled what looked to be the shards of a broken amulet into the river. Or he tried to. Lorcan threw it hard enough that it cleared the river entirely and slammed into a tree, gouging out a chunk of wood.

He whirled, and Elide’s anger stumbled a step at the blistering wrath twisting his features. He prowled for her, grabbing the pole as if to keep from throttling her, and said, “What is it that you carry?”

And the demand, the violence and entitlement and arrogance, had her seeing red, too. So Elide said with quiet venom, “Why don’t you just slit my throat and find out for yourself?”

Lorcan’s nostrils flared. “If you have a problem with my killing someone who reeked of itching to betray us the moment he got the chance, then you are going to love your queen.”

For a while now, he’d hinted that he knew of her, that he knew of her well enough to call her horrible things, but— “What do you mean?”

Lorcan, gods above, looked as if his temper had at last slipped its leash as he said, “Celaena Sardothien is a nineteen-year-old assassin—who calls herself the best in the world.” A snort. “She killed and reveled and shopped her way through life and never once apologized for it. She gloried in it. And then this spring, one of my sentinels, Prince Rowan Whitethorn, was tasked to deal with her when she washed up on Wendlyn’s shores. Turns out, he fell in love with her instead, and she with him. Turns out, whatever they were doing up in the Cambrian Mountains got her to stop calling herself Celaena and start going by her true name again.” A brutal smile. “Aelin Galathynius.”

Elide could barely feel her body. “What?” was about the only word she could manage.

“Your fire-breathing queen? She’s a gods-damned assassin. Trained to be a killer from the moment your mother died defending her. Trained to be no better than the man who butchered your mother and your royal family.”

Elide shook her head, her hands slackening. “What?” she said again.

Lorcan laughed mirthlessly. “While you were locked in that tower for ten years, she was indulging in the riches of Rifthold, spoiled and coddled by her master—the King of the Assassins—whom she murdered in cold blood this spring. So you’ll find that your long-lost savior is little better than I am. You’ll find that she would have killed that man the same as I did, and would have as little tolerance for your whining as I do.”

Aelin … an assassin. Aelin—the same person she’d been tasked to give the stone to …

“You knew,” she said. “This whole time we’ve been together—you knew I was looking for the same person.”

“I told you that to find one would be to find the other.”

“You knew, and you didn’t tell me. Why?”

“You still haven’t told me your secrets. I don’t see why I should tell all of mine, either.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to ignore the dark stain on the wood—trying to soothe the sting of his words and seal the hole that had opened beneath her feet. What had been in that amulet? Why had he roared and—

“Your little queen,” Lorcan sneered, “is a murderer, and a thief, and a liar. So if you’re going to call me such things, then be prepared to fling them at her, too.”

Her skin was too tight, her bones too brittle to bear the anger that took control. She scrambled for the right words to hurt him, wound him, as if they were fistfuls of rocks that she could hurl at Lorcan’s head.

Elide hissed, “I was wrong. I said you and I were the same—that we had no family, no friends. But I have none because land and circumstance separate me from them. You have none because no one can stomach being around you.” She tried—and succeeded, if the ire that rippled in his eyes was any indication—to look down her nose at him, even with him towering over her. “And you know what is the biggest lie you tell everyone, Lorcan? It’s that you prefer it that way. But what I hear, when you rant about my bitch-queen? All I hear are the words of someone who is deeply, deeply jealous, and lonely, and pathetic. All I hear are the words of someone who saw Aelin and Prince Rowan fall in love and resented them for their happiness—because you are so unhappy.” She couldn’t stop the words once they started flinging out. “So call Aelin a murderer and a thief and a liar. Call her a bitch-queen and a fire-breather. But forgive me if I take it upon myself to be the judge of those things when I meet her. Which I will do.” She pointed to the muddy gray river flowing around them. “I’m going to Eyllwe. Take me ashore and I’ll wash my hands of you as easily as you washed the blood of that man off yours.”