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

“Manon Blackbeak,” Aedion mused, “would be a valuable ally, if we can get her to turn.”

Aelin glanced at Rowan’s shoulder—where a faint scar now marred the golden skin beneath his clothes.

“Perhaps getting Manon to turn on her kin would ignite an internal battle among the witches,” she said. “Maybe they’ll save us the task of killing them and just destroy each other.”

Dorian straightened in his chair, but only cold calculation swirled in his eyes as he countered, “But what is it that they want? Beyond our heads, I mean. Why ally with Erawan at all?”

And all of them then looked to the thin necklace of scars marring the base of Aelin’s throat—where the scent permanently marked her as a Witch Killer. Baba Yellowlegs had visited the castle this winter for that alliance, but had there been anything else?

“We can contemplate the whys and hows of it later,” Aelin declared. “If we encounter any of the witches, we take them alive. I want some questions answered.”

Then she explained what they’d witnessed in Ilium. The order Brannon had given her: Find the Lock. Well, he and his little quest could get in line.

It was never-ending, she supposed while they dined that night on peppered crab and spiced rice. This burden, these threats.

Erawan had been planning this for decades. Maybe for centuries, while he’d slept, he’d planned all this out. And she was to be given nothing more than obscure commands by long-dead royals to find a way to stop it, nothing more than gods-damned months to rally a force against him.

She doubted it was a coincidence that Maeve was sailing for Eyllwe at the same moment Brannon had commanded she go to the Stone Marshes on its southwestern peninsula. Or that the gods-damned Morath fleet was squatting in the Gulf of Oro—right on its other side.

There was not enough time, not enough time to do what she needed to, to fix things.

But … small steps.

She had Rolfe to deal with. The little matter of securing his people’s alliance. And the map she still needed to persuade him to use to assist her in tracking down that Lock.

But first … best to ensure that infernal map actually worked.





29


Too many animals loitering about the streets at this hour would attract the wrong sort of attention.

But Aedion still wished that the shifter was wearing fur or feathers compared to … this.

Not that she was sore on the eyes as an auburn-haired and green-eyed young woman. She could have passed for one of the lovely mountain maidens of northern Terrasen with that coloring. It was who Lysandra was supposed to be as they waited just inside an alley. Who he was supposed to be, too.

Lysandra leaned against the brick wall, a foot propped against it to reveal a length of creamy-white thigh. And Aedion, with his hand braced against the wall beside her head, was no more than an hourly customer.

No sound in the alley but scuttling rats digging through rotten, discarded fruit. Skull’s Bay was precisely the shithole he expected it to be, right down to its Pirate Lord.

Who now unwittingly held the only map to the Lock that Aelin had been commanded to find. When Aedion had complained that of course it was a map they could not steal, Rowan had been the one to suggest this … plan. Trap. Whatever it was.

He glanced at the delicate gold chain dangling around Lysandra’s pale throat, tracing its length down the front of her bodice, to where the Amulet of Orynth was now hidden beneath.

“Admiring the view?”

Aedion snapped his eyes up from the generous swells of her breasts. “Sorry.”

But the shifter somehow saw the thoughts churning in his head. “You think this won’t work?”

“I think there are plenty of valuable things on this island—why would Rolfe bother to go after this?” Storms, enemies, and treasure—that was what the map showed. And since he and Lysandra were not the first two … only one, it seemed, would be able to appear on that map inked on Rolfe’s hands.

“Rowan claimed Rolfe would find the amulet interesting enough to go after it.”

“Rowan and Aelin have a tendency to say one thing and mean something else entirely.” Aedion heaved a breath through his nose. “We’ve already been here an hour.”

She arched an auburn brow. “Do you have somewhere else to be?”

“You’re tired.”

“We’re all tired,” she said sharply.

He shut his mouth, not wanting his head ripped off just yet.

Each shift took something out of Lysandra. The bigger the change, the bigger the animal, the steeper the cost. Aedion had witnessed her morph from butterfly to bumblebee to hummingbird to bat within the span of a few minutes. But going from human to ghost leopard to bear or elk or horse, she’d once demonstrated, took longer between shifts, the magic having to draw up the strength to become that size, to fill the body with all its inherent power.

Casual footsteps sounded, accented by a two-note whistle. Lysandra’s breath brushed against his jaw at the sound. Aedion, however, stiffened slightly as those steps grew closer, and he found himself staring at the son of his great enemy. King, now.

But still a face he’d hated, sneered at, debated cutting into tiny pieces for many, many years. A face he’d seen drunk out of his mind at parties mere seasons ago; a face he’d seen buried against the necks of women whose names he’d never bothered to learn; a face that had taunted him in that dungeon cell.