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

But then Fenrys pulled at his lower lip, scanning the skies. “What I don’t get is why wait so long to do any of this? If Erawan wants you lot dead”—a nod toward Dorian and Aelin—“why let you mature, grow powerful?”

Dorian tried not to shudder at the thought. How unprepared they’d been.

“Because I escaped Erawan,” Aelin said. Dorian tried not to remember that night ten years ago, but the memory of it snapped through him, and her, and Aedion. “He thought I was dead. And Dorian … his father shielded him. As best he could.”

Dorian shut out that memory, too. Especially as Manon angled her head in question.

Fenrys said, “Maeve knew you were alive. Odds are, so did Erawan.”

“Maybe she told Erawan,” Aedion said.

Fenrys whipped his head to the general. “She’s never had any contact with Erawan, or Adarlan.”

“As far as you know,” Aedion mused. “Unless she’s a talker in the bedroom.”

Fenrys’s eyes darkened. “Maeve does not share power. She saw Adarlan as an inconvenience. Still does.”

Aedion countered, “Everyone can be bought for a price.”

“Nameless is the price of Maeve’s allegiance,” Fenrys snapped. “It can’t be purchased.”

Aelin went utterly still at the warrior’s words.

She blinked at him, her brows narrowing as her lips silently mouthed the words he’d said.

“What is it?” Aedion demanded.

Aelin murmured, “Nameless is my price.” Aedion opened his mouth, no doubt to ask what had snagged her interest, but Aelin frowned at Manon. “Can your kind see the future? See it as an oracle can?”

“Some,” Manon admitted. “The Bluebloods claim to.”

“Can other Clans?”

“They say that for the Ancients, past and present and future bleed together.”

Aelin shook her head and walked toward the door that led to the hall of cramped cabins. Rowan swooped off the rigging and shifted, his feet hitting the planks just as he finished. He didn’t so much as look at them as he followed her into the hall and shut the door behind them.

“What was that about?” Fenrys asked.

“An Ancient,” Dorian mused, then murmured to Manon, “Baba Yellowlegs.”

They all turned to him. But Manon’s fingers brushed against her collarbone—where the necklace of Aelin’s scars from Yellowlegs still ringed her neck in stark white.

“This winter, she was at your castle,” Manon said to him. “Working as a fortune-teller.”

“And what—she said something to that degree?” Aedion crossed his arms. He’d known of the visit, Dorian recalled. Aedion had always kept an eye on the witches—on all the power players of the realm, he’d once said.

Manon stared the general down. “Yellowlegs was a fortune-teller—a powerful oracle. I bet she knew who the queen was the moment she saw her. And saw things she planned to sell to the highest bidder.” Dorian tried not to flinch at the memory. Aelin had butchered Yellowlegs when she’d threatened to sell his secrets. Aelin had never implied a threat against her own. Manon continued, “Yellowlegs wouldn’t have told the queen anything outright, only in veiled terms. So it’d drive the girl mad when she figured it out.”

A pointed glance at the door through which Aelin had vanished.

None of them said anything else, even as they later ate cold porridge for breakfast.

The cook, it seemed, hadn’t made it through the night.





Rowan knocked on the door of their private bathing room. She’d locked it. Walked into their room, then into the bathing room, and locked him out.

And now she was puking her guts up.

“Aelin,” he growled softly.

A ragged intake of breath, then retching, then—more vomiting.

“Aelin,” he snarled, debating how long until it was socially acceptable for him to break down the door. Act like a prince, she’d snarled at him the other night.

“I don’t feel well,” was her muffled response. Her voice was hollow, flat in a way he hadn’t heard for some time now.

“Then let me in so I can take care of you,” he said as calmly and rationally as he could.

She’d locked him out—locked him out.

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“I’ve seen you wet yourself. I can handle vomiting. Which I have also seen you do before.”

Ten seconds. Ten more seconds seemed like a fair enough amount of time before he crunched down on the handle and splintered the lock.

“Just—give me a minute.”

“What was it about Fenrys’s words that set you off?” He’d heard it all from his post on the mast.

Utter silence. Like she was spooling the raw terror back into herself, shoving it down into a place where she wouldn’t look at it or feel it or acknowledge it. Or tell him about it.

“Aelin.”

The lock turned.

Her face was gray, her eyes red-rimmed. Her voice broke as she said, “I want to talk to Lysandra.”

Rowan looked at the bucket she’d half filled, then at her bloodless lips. At the sweat beaded on her brow.

His heart stopped dead in his chest as he contemplated that … that she might not be lying.