: Part 2 – Chapter 45

To their credit, the sentries didn’t jump when Rowan shifted beside them atop the battlement wall. They had eyes keen enough to have detected his arrival as he swooped in. A slight tang of fear leaked from them, but that was to be expected, even if it troubled him more than it had in the past. But they did stir slightly when he spoke. “How long has she been down there?”

“An hour, Prince,” one said, watching the flashing flames below.

“For how many mornings in a row?”

“This is the fourth, Prince,” the same sentry replied.

The first three days she’d slipped from bed before dawn, he’d assumed she’d been helping in the kitchens. But when they’d trained yesterday she’d … improved at a rate she shouldn’t have, as if overnight. He had to give her credit for resourcefulness.

The girl stood outside the ward-stones, fighting with herself.

A dagger of flame flew from her hand toward the invisible barrier between two stones, then another, as if racing for the head of an opponent. It hit the magic wall with a flash of light and bounced back, reflected off the protective spell encircling the fortress. And when it reached her, she shielded—swift, strong, sure. A warrior on a battlefield.

“I’ve never seen anyone … fight like that,” the sentry said.

It was a question, but Rowan didn’t bother to answer. It wasn’t their business, and he wasn’t entirely certain if his queen would be pleased with the demi-Fae learning to use their powers in such a way. Though he fully planned to tell Lorcan, his commander and the only male who outranked him in Doranelle, just to see whether they could use it in their training.

The girl moved from throwing weapons to hand-to-hand combat: a punch of power, a sweeping kick of flame. Her flames had become gloriously varied—golds and reds and oranges. And her technique—not the magic, but the way she moved … Her master had been a monster, there was no doubt of that. But he had trained her thoroughly. She ducked and flipped and twisted, relentless, raging, and—

She swore with her usual color as the wall sent the punch of ruby flame back at her. She managed to shield, but still got knocked on her ass. Yet none of the sentries laughed. Rowan didn’t know if it was because of his presence or because of her.

He got his answer a heartbeat later, as he waited for her to shout or shriek or walk away. But the princess just slowly got to her feet, not bothering to brush off the dirt and leaves, and kept practicing.

The next corpse appeared a week later, setting a rather wretched tone for the crisp spring morning as Celaena and Rowan ran for the site.

They’d spent the past week fighting and defending and manipulating her magic, interrupted only by a rather miserable visit from some Fae nobility traveling through the area—which left Celaena in no hurry to set foot in Doranelle. Thankfully, the guests stayed for one night, hardly disrupting her lessons.

They worked only with fire, ignoring the drop of water affinity that she’d been given. She tried again and again to summon the water, when she was drinking, while in the bath, when it rained, but to no avail. Fire it was, then. And while she knew Rowan was aware of her early morning practicing, he never lightened her training, though she could have sworn she occasionally felt their magic … playing together, her flame taunting his ice, his wind dancing amongst her embers. But each morning brought something new, something harder and different and miserable. Gods, he was brilliant. Cunning and wicked and brilliant.

Even when he beat the hell out of her. Every. Damn. Day.

Not from malice, not like it had been before, but to prove his point—her enemies would give no quarter. If she needed to pause, if her power faltered, she died.

So he knocked her into the mud or the stream or the grass with a blast of wind or ice. So she rose, shooting arrows of flame, her shield now her strongest ally. Again and again, hungry and exhausted and soaking with rain and mist and sweat. Until shielding was an instinct, until she could hurl arrows and daggers of flame together, until she knocked him on his ass. There was always more to learn; she lived and breathed and dreamt of fire.

Sometimes, though, her dreams were of a brown-eyed man in an empire across the sea. Sometimes she’d awaken and reach for the warm, male body beside hers, only to realize it was not the captain—that she would never again lie next to Chaol, not after what had happened. And when she remembered that, it sometimes hurt to breathe.

There was nothing romantic about sharing a bed with Rowan, and they kept to their own sides. There certainly was nothing romantic about it when they reached the site of the corpse and she peeled off her shirt to cool down. In nothing but her underclothes, Celaena’s skin was bitten by the sea air with a delightful chill, and even Rowan unbuttoned his heavy jacket as they carefully approached the coordinates.

“Well, I can certainly smell him this time,” Celaena said between panting breaths. They’d reached the site in little less than three hours, guessing by the sun. That was faster and longer than she’d ever run, thanks to the Fae form she’d been training in.

“This body has been rotting here longer than the demi-Fae from three days ago.”

She bit back her retort. There had been another demi-Fae body found, and he hadn’t let her go see it, instead forcing her to practice all day while he flew to the site. But this morning, he’d taken one look at the fire smoldering in her eyes and relented.

Celaena stepped carefully on the pine carpet, scanning for any signs of a fight or of the attacker. The ground was churned up, and despite the rushing stream, the flies were buzzing near what appeared to be a heap of clothing peeking from behind a small boulder.

Rowan swore, low and viciously, even lifting his forearm to cover his nose and mouth as he examined the husk that remained, the demi-Fae male’s face twisted in horror. Celaena might have done the same, except … except—

That second smell was here, too. Not as strong as it had been at the first site, but it lingered. She shoved back against the memory that wanted to rise in response to the smell, the memory that had overwhelmed her that day in the barrow-field.

“It has our attention and it knows it,” she said. “It’s targeting demi-Fae—either to send a message, or because they … taste good. But—” She pictured the map Rowan kept in his room, detailing the wide area where the corpses had been found, and winced. “What if there’s more than one?” Rowan looked back at her, brows high. She didn’t say anything else until she had moved to where he stood by the body, careful not to disturb any clues. Her stomach lurched and bile stung the back of her throat, but she clamped down on the horror with a wall of ice that even her fire could not melt. “You’re old as hell,” she said. “You must have considered that we’re dealing with a few of them, given how vast the territory is. What if the one we saw in the barrows wasn’t even the creature responsible for these bodies?”

He narrowed his eyes, but conceded a nod. She studied the hollowed-out face, the torn clothes.

Torn clothes, what looked like small cuts along the palms—as if he’d dug in his fingernails. The others had barely been touched, but this …

“Rowan.” She waved away flies. “Rowan, tell me you see what I’m seeing.”

Another vicious curse. He crouched, using the tip of a dagger to push back a bit of clothing torn at the collar. “This male—”

“Fought. He fought back against it. None of the others did, according to the reports.”

The stench of the corpse was nearly enough to bring her to her knees. But she squatted by the decaying hand and forearm, shriveled and wasted from the inside out. She held out a hand for Rowan’s dagger, still possessing none of her own. He hesitated as she looked up at him.

Only for the afternoon, he seemed to growl as he pressed the hilt into her open palm.

She yanked down the dagger. I know, I know. I haven’t earned my weapons back yet. Don’t get your feathers ruffled.

She turned back to the husk, cutting off their wordless conversation and getting a snarl in response. Butting heads with Rowan was the least of her concerns, even if it had become one of her favorite activities.

There was something so familiar about doing this, she thought as she carefully, as gently and respectfully as she could, ran the tip of the dagger under the male’s cracked and filthy nails, then smeared the contents on the back of her own hand. Dirt and black … black …

“What the hell is that?” Rowan demanded, kneeling beside her, sniffing her outstretched hand. He jerked back, snarling. “That’s not dirt.”

No, it wasn’t. It was blacker than night, and reeked just as badly as it had the first time she’d smelled it, in the catacombs beneath the library, an obsidian, oily pool of blood. Slightly different from that other, horrific smell that loitered around this place, but similar. So similar to—

“This isn’t possible,” she said, jolting to her feet. “This—this—this—” She paced, if only to keep from shaking. “I’m wrong. I have to be wrong.”

There had been so many cells in that forgotten dungeon beneath the library, beneath the king’s Wyrdstone clock tower. The creature she’d encountered there had possessed a human heart. It had been left, she’d suspected, because of some defect. What if … what if the perfected ones had been moved elsewhere? What if they were now … ready?

“Tell me,” Rowan growled, the words barely understandable as he seemed to struggle to rein in the killing edge he rode in response to the threat lurking somewhere in these woods.

She lifted her hand to rub her eyes, but realized what was on her fingers and went to wipe them on her shirt. Only to recall that she was wearing nothing but the soft white band around her breasts, and that she was cold to her very bones. She rushed to the nearby stream to scrub off the dried black blood, hating even that the trace of it would be in the water, in the world, and quickly, quietly told Rowan of the creature in the library, the Wyrdkeys, and the information Maeve held hostage regarding how to destroy that power. Power that was being used by the king to make things—and targeting people with magic in their blood to be their hosts.

A warm breeze wrapped around her, heating her bones and blood, steadying her. “How did it get here?” Rowan asked, his features now set with icy calm.

“I don’t know. I hope I’m wrong. But that smell—I’ll never forget that smell as long as I live. Like it had rotted from the inside out, its very essence ruined.”

“But it retained some cognitive abilities. And whatever this is, it must have them, too, if it’s dumping the bodies.”

She tried to swallow—twice—but her mouth was dry. “Demi-Fae … they would make perfect hosts, with so many of them able to use magic and no one in Wendlyn or Doranelle caring if they live or die. But these corpses—if he wanted to kidnap them, why kill them?”

“Unless they weren’t compatible,” Rowan said. “And if they weren’t compatible, then what better use for them than to drain them dry?”

“But what’s the point of leaving the bodies where we can find them? To drum up fear?”

Rowan ground his jaw and stalked through the area, examining the ground, the trees, the rocks. “Burn the body, Aelin.” He removed the sheath and belt that had housed the dagger still dangling from her hand and tossed them to her. She caught them with her free hand. “We’re going hunting.”

They found nothing, even when Rowan shifted into his other form and circled high above. As the light grew dim, they climbed into the biggest, densest tree in the area. They squeezed onto a massive branch, huddling together, as he would not let her summon even a flicker of flame.

When she complained about the conditions, Rowan pointed out that there was no moon that night, and worse things than the skinwalkers prowled the woods. That shut her up until he asked her to tell him more about the creature in the library, to explain every detail and weakness and strength.

After she finished, he took out one of his long knives—a fraction of the marvelous assortment he carried—and began cleaning it. With her heightened senses, she could see enough in the starlight to make out the steel, his hands, and the shifting muscles in his shoulders as he wiped the blade. He himself was a beautiful weapon, forged by centuries of ruthless training and warring.

“Do you think I was mistaken?” she said as he put away the knife and reached for the ones hidden beneath his clothes. Like the first, none of them were dirty, but she didn’t point it out. “About the creature, I mean.”

Rowan slung his shirt over his head to get at the weapons strapped beneath, revealing his broad back, muscled and scarred and glorious. Fine—some very feminine, innate part of her appreciated that. And she didn’t mind his half-nakedness. He’d seen every inch of her now. She supposed there was no part of him that would be much of a surprise, either, thanks to Chaol. But—no, she wouldn’t think about Chaol. Not when she was feeling balanced and clear-headed and good.

“We’re dealing with a cunning, lethal predator, regardless of where it originated and how many there are,” he said, cleaning a small dagger that had been strapped across his pectoral muscle. She followed the path of his tattoo down his face, neck, shoulders, and arm. Such a stark, brutal marking. Had the scars on Chaol’s face healed, or would they be a permanent reminder of what she’d done to him? “If you were mistaken, I’d consider it a blessing.”

She slumped against the trunk. That was twice now she’d thought of Chaol. She must truly be exhausted, because the only other option was that she just wanted to make herself feel miserable.

She didn’t want to know what Chaol had been doing these months, or what he now thought of her. If he’d sold the information about her past to the king, maybe the king had sent one of those things here, to hunt her. And Dorian—gods, she’d been so lost in her own misery that she’d hardly wondered about him, whether he’d managed to keep his magic secret. She prayed he was safe.

She suffered with her own thoughts until Rowan finished with his weapons, then took out their skin of water and rinsed his hands, neck, and chest. She watched him sidelong, the way the water gleamed on his skin in the starlight. It was a damn good thing Rowan had no interest in her, either, because she knew she was stupid and reckless enough to consider whether moving on in the physical sense might solve the problem of Chaol.

There was still such a mighty hole in her chest. A hole that grew bigger, not smaller, and that no one could fix, not even if she took Rowan to bed. There were some days when the amethyst ring was her most precious belonging—others when it was all she could do not to melt it down in a flame of her own making. Maybe she had been a fool to love a man who served the king, but Chaol had been what she needed after losing Sam, after surviving the mines.

But these days … she didn’t know what she needed. What she wanted. If she felt like admitting it, she actually didn’t have the faintest clue who the hell she was anymore. All she knew was that whatever and whoever climbed out of that abyss of despair and grief would not be the same person who had plummeted in. And maybe that was a good thing.

Rowan put his clothes back on and settled against the trunk, his body warm and solid against hers. They sat in the dark for a little until she said quietly, “You once told me that when you find your mate, you can’t stomach the idea of hurting them physically. Once you’re mated, you’d sooner harm yourself.”

“Yes; why?”

“I tried to kill him. I mauled his face, then held a dagger over his heart because I thought he was responsible for Nehemia’s death. I would have done it if someone hadn’t stopped me. If Chaol—if he’d truly been my mate, I wouldn’t have been able to do that, would I?”

He was silent for a long while. “You hadn’t been in your Fae form for ten years, so perhaps your instincts weren’t even able to take hold. Sometimes, mates can be together intimately before the actual bond snaps into place.”

“It’s a useless hope to cling to, anyway.”

“Do you want the truth?”

She tucked her chin into her tunic and closed her eyes. “Not tonight.”