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

No, she wouldn’t go. She wouldn’t let them take her, break and use her—

One shot. She’d have one shot.

No, whispered the voice in her head. No—

But there was a knife at her uncle’s side as he strolled ahead and out the door. It was all she’d need. She’d seen Lorcan do it enough while hunting.

Vernon paused in the back courtyard, a large, rectangular iron box waiting before him.

There was a small window in it.

And handles on two of its edges.

She knew what the ilken were for as the three others fell into place around it.

They’d shove her inside, lock the door, and fly her back to Morath.

The box was little bigger than a coffin standing upright.

Its door was already open.

The ilken would have to release her to throw her inside. For a heartbeat, they’d let go. She’d have to use it to her advantage.

Vernon loitered beside the box. She didn’t dare look at his knife.

A sob broke from her throat. She’d die here—in this filthy courtyard, with these awful things around her. She’d never see the sun again, or laugh, or hear music—

The ilken stirred around the box, wings rustling.

Five feet. Four. Three.

No, no, no, the wise voice begged her.

She would not be taken back to Morath. She would not let them touch her and corrupt her—

The ilken shoved her forward, a violent thrust meant to send her staggering into the box.

Elide twisted, slamming face-first into the edge instead, her nose crunching, but she whirled on her uncle. Her ankle roared as she set her weight on it to lunge for the knife at his side.

Vernon didn’t have time to realize what she intended as she whipped the knife free from its sheath at his hip. As she flipped the knife in her fingers, her other hand wrapping around the hilt.

As her shoulders curved inward, her chest caving, and she drove the blade home.





Lorcan had the kill shot.

Hidden in the fog, the four ilken couldn’t detect him as the man he was certain was Elide’s uncle had that ilken haul her toward that prison-box.

It was on him that Lorcan had trained his hatchet.

Elide was sobbing. In terror and despair.

Each sound whetted his rage into something so lethal Lorcan could barely see straight.

Then the ilken threw her into that iron box.

And Elide proved she wasn’t bluffing in her claim to never return to Morath.

He heard her nose break as she hit the rim of the box, heard her uncle’s cry of surprise as she rebounded and lunged for him—

And grabbed his dagger. Not to kill him.

For the first time in five centuries, Lorcan knew true fear as Elide turned that knife on herself, the blade angled to plunge up and into her heart.

He threw his hatchet.

As the tip of that dagger pierced the leather over her ribs, the wooden handle of his hatchet slammed into her wrist.

Elide went down with a cry, the dagger flying wide—

Lorcan was already moving as they whirled toward where he’d perched on the rooftop. He leaped to the nearest one, to the weapons he’d positioned there minutes before, knowing they’d emerge from this door—

His next knife went through the wing of an ilken. Then another to keep it down before they pinpointed his location. But Lorcan was already sprinting to the third rooftop flanking the courtyard. To the sword he’d left there. He hurled it right through the face of the closest one.

Two left, along with Vernon, screaming now to get the girl in the box—

Elide was running like hell for the narrow alley out of the courtyard, not the broad street. The alley, too small for the ilken to fit, especially with all the debris and trash littered throughout. Good girl.

Lorcan leaped and rolled onto the next roof, to the two remaining daggers—

He threw them, but the ilken had already learned his aim, his throwing style.

They hadn’t learned Elide’s.

She hadn’t just gone into the alley to save herself. She’d gone after the hatchet.

And Lorcan watched as that woman crept up behind the distracted ilken and drove the hatchet into its wings.

With an injured wrist. With her nose leaking blood down her face.

The ilken screamed, thrashing to grab her, even as it crashed to its knees.

Where she wanted it.

The axe was swinging again before its scream finished sounding.

The sound was cut off a heartbeat later as its head bounced to the stones.

Lorcan hurtled off the roof, aiming for the one remaining ilken now seething at her—

But it pivoted and ran to where Vernon was cowering by the door, his face bloodless.

Sobbing, her own blood sprayed on the stones, Elide whirled toward her uncle, too. Axe already lifting.

But the ilken reached her uncle, snatched him up in its strong arms, and launched them both into the sky.

Elide threw the hatchet anyway.

It missed the ilken’s wing by a whisper of wind.

The axe slammed to the cobblestones, taking out a chunk of rock. Right near the ilken with the shredded wings—now crawling toward the courtyard exit.

Lorcan watched as Elide picked up his axe and walked toward the hissing, broken beast.

It lashed at her with its claws. Elide easily sidestepped the swipe.

It screamed as she stomped on its wrecked wing, halting its crawl to freedom.

When it fell silent, she said in a quiet, merciless voice he’d never heard her use, clear despite the blood clogging one nostril, “I want Erawan to know that the next time he sends you after me like a pack of dogs, I’ll return the favor. I want Erawan to know that the next time I see him, I will carve Manon’s name on his gods-damned heart.” Tears rolled down her face, silent and unending as the wrath that now sculpted her features into a thing of mighty and terrible beauty.