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

Lorcan reached out, grasping her chin and forcing her to look at him. Hopeless, bleak eyes met his. He brushed away a stray tear with his thumb. “I made a promise to protect you. I will not break it, Elide.”

She made to pull away, but he gripped her a little harder, keeping her eyes on him.

“I will always find you,” he swore to her.

Her throat bobbed.

Lorcan whispered, “I promise.”





Elide sifted through all Lorcan had told her while he cleaned her face, inspected her nose and wrist, bound the latter in soft cloth, and quickly, but not viciously, set her nose.

Wyrdkeys. Wyrdgates.

Aelin had one Wyrdkey. Was looking for the other two.

Soon to be only one more, once Elide gave her the key she carried.

Two keys—against one. Perhaps they would win this war.

Even if Elide didn’t know how Aelin could use them and not destroy herself. But … she’d leave it up to her. Erawan might have the armies, but if Aelin had two keys …

She tried not to think about Manon. Vernon had lied about Lorcan leaving—to break her spirit, to get her to come willingly. Perhaps Manon was not dead, either.

She wouldn’t believe it until she had proof. Until the whole world screamed at her that the Wing Leader was gone.

Lorcan was back at the prow by the time she’d changed into one of his own shirts while her leathers dried. Her wrist throbbed, a dull, insistent ache, her face was no better and Lorcan had promised she’d likely have a black eye from it, but … her head was clear.

She came up beside him, watching him push the pole against the mucky bottom of the river. “I killed those things.”

“You did a fine job of it,” he said.

“I don’t regret it.”

Dark, depthless eyes slid to her. “Good.”

She didn’t know why she said it, why she felt a need or like it was worth anything to him at all, but Elide stood on her toes, kissed his stubble-rough cheek, and said, “I will always find you, too, Lorcan.”

She felt him staring at her, even when she’d climbed into bed minutes later.

When she awoke, clean strips of linen for her cycle were next to the bed.

His own shirt, washed and dried overnight—now cut up for her to use as she would.





51


Eyllwe’s coast was burning.

For three days, they sailed past village after village. Some still burning, some only cinders. And at each of them, Aelin and Rowan had labored to put out those flames.

Rowan, in his hawk form, could fly in, but … It killed her. Absolutely killed her that they could not afford to halt long enough to go to shore. So she did it from the ship, burrowing deep into her power, stretching it as far as it could go across sea and sky and sand, to wink out those fires one by one.

By the end of the third day, she was flagging, so thirsty that no amount of water was able to slake it, her lips chapped and peeling.

Rowan had gone to shore three times now to ask who had done it.

Each time the answer was the same: darkness had swept over them in the night, the kind that blotted out the stars, and then the villages were burning beneath flaming arrows not spotted until they had found their targets.

But where that darkness, where Erawan’s forces were … there was no sign of them.

No sign of Maeve, either.

Rowan and Lysandra had flown high and wide, searching for either force, but … nothing.

Ghosts, some villagers were now claiming, had attacked them. The ghosts of their unburied dead, raging home from distant lands.

Until they started whispering another rumor.

That Aelin Galathynius herself was burning Eyllwe, village by village. For vengeance that they had not aided her kingdom ten years ago.

No matter that she was putting out the flames. They did not believe Rowan when he tried to explain who soothed their fires from aboard the distant ship.

He told her not to listen, not to let it sink in. So she tried.

And it had been during one of those times that Rowan had run his thumb over the scar on her palm, leaning to kiss her neck. He’d breathed her in, and she knew he detected an answer to the question that had caused him to flee that morning on the ship. No, she was not carrying his child.

They had only discussed the matter once—last week. When she’d crawled off him, panting and coated in sweat, and he’d asked if she was taking a tonic. She merely told him no.

He’d gone still.

And then she had explained that if she’d inherited so much of Mab’s Fae blood, she might very well have inherited the Fae’s struggle to conceive. And even if the timing was horrible … if this was to be the one shot she had of providing Terrasen a bloodline, a future … she would not waste it. His green eyes turned distant, but he’d nodded, kissing her shoulder. And that had been that.

She hadn’t mustered the nerve to ask if he wanted to sire her children. If he wanted to have children, given what had happened to Lyria.

And during that brief moment before he’d flown back to shore to put out more flames, she hadn’t possessed the nerve to explain why she’d hurled her guts up that morning, either.

The past three days had been a blur. From the moment Fenrys had uttered those words, Nameless is my price, everything had been a blur of smoke and flame and waves and sun.

But as the sun set on the third day, Aelin again shoved those thoughts away as the escort ship began signaling ahead, the crew frantically working to drop anchor.