Aedion growled, even as worry flashed in his eyes.

But Prince Galan, who had kept silent and watchful, a listener despite his frequent smiles and bold fighting on both sea and land, stepped forward. Looked right at Aelin, his eyes—their eyes—glowing bright. “Poor allies we would indeed make,” he said, his Wendlynian accent rich and rolling, “if we abandoned our friends when their choices veered from ours. We promised our assistance in this war. Wendlyn will not back from it.”

Darrow tensed. Not at the words, but at the fact that they were directed at her. At Aelin.

Lysandra bowed her head, putting a hand on her heart.

Prince Endymion lifted his chin. “I swore an oath to my cousin, your consort,” he said, and the other lords bristled. Since Aelin was not queen, Rowan’s own title was still not recognized by them. Only the other lords, it seemed. “Since I doubt we will be welcome in Doranelle again, I would like to think that this may perhaps be our new home, should all go well.”

Aelin would have agreed. “You are welcome here—all of you. For as long as you like.”

“You are not authorized to make such invitations,” Lord Gunnar snapped.

None of them bothered to answer. But Ilias of the Silent Assassins gave a solemn nod that voiced his agreement to stay, and Ansel of Briarcliff merely winked again at Aelin and said, “I came this far to help you beat that bastard into dust. I don’t see why I’d go home now.”

Lysandra didn’t fake the gratitude that tightened her throat as she bowed to the allies her queen had gathered.

A tall, dark-haired young man entered the tent, his gray eyes darting around the gathered company. They widened when they beheld her—Aelin. Widened, then glanced to Aedion as if to confirm. He marked the golden hair, the Ashryver eyes, and paled.

“What is it, Nox,” Darrow growled. The messenger straightened, and hurried to the lord’s side, murmuring something in his ear. “Send him in,” was Darrow’s only answer.

Nox stalked out, graceful despite his height, and a shorter, pale-skinned man entered.

Darrow extended a hand for the letter. “You had a message from Eldrys?”

Lysandra smelled the stranger the moment Aedion did.

A moment before the stranger smiled and said, “Erawan sends his regards.”

And unleashed a blast of black wind right at her.

CHAPTER 17

Lysandra ducked, but not fast enough to avoid the lash of power that sliced down her arm.

She hit the ground, rolling, as she’d learned under Arobynn’s careful tutelage. But Aedion was already in front of her, sword out. Defending his queen.

A flash of light and cold—from Enda and Sellene—and the Morath messenger was pinned to his knees, his dark power lashing against an invisible barrier of ice-kissed wind.

Around the tent, all had fallen back, weapons glinting. Flanking the downed man, Ilias and Ansel had their swords already angled toward him, their defensive poses mirror images. Trained into their very bones by the same master, under the same blistering sun. Neither looked at the other, though.

Ren, Sol, and Ravi had slipped into position at Lysandra’s—at Aelin’s—side, their own blades primed to spill blood. A fledgling court closing ranks around its queen.

Never mind that the older lords had stumbled behind the safety of the refreshment table, their weathered faces ashen. Only Galan Ashryver had taken up a place near the tent exit, no doubt to intercept their assailant should he try to flee. A bold move—and a fool’s one, considering what knelt in the center of the tent.

“Did no one smell that he was a Valg demon?” Aedion demanded, hauling Lysandra to her feet with her uninjured arm. But there was no collar on the stranger, no ring on his bare, pale hands.

Lysandra’s stomach churned as she clasped a hand to the throbbing gash on her upper arm. She knew what beat within the man’s chest. A heart of iron and Wyrdstone.

The messenger laughed, hissing. “Run to your castle. We’re—”

He sniffed the air. Looked right at Lysandra. At the blood leaking down her left arm, seeping into the ocean blue of Aelin’s worn tunic.

His dark eyes widened with surprise and delight, the word taking form on his lips. Shifter.

“Kill him,” she ordered the silver-haired Fae royals, her heart thundering.

No one dared tell her to burn him herself.

Endymion raised a hand, and the Valg-possessed man began gasping. Yet not before his eyes darkened wholly, until no white shone.

Not from the death sweeping over him. But as he seemed to convey a message down a long, obsidian bond.

The message that might doom them: Aelin Galathynius was not here.

“Enough of this,” Aedion snarled, and fear—real fear blanched his face as he, too, realized what the messenger had just relayed to his master.

The Sword of Orynth flashed, black blood spraying, and the man’s head tumbled to the rug-covered ground.

In the silence, Lysandra panted, lifting her hand from her arm to survey the wound. The cut was not deep, but it would be tender for a few hours.

Ansel of Briarcliff sheathed her wolf-headed sword and gripped Lysandra’s shoulder, her red hair swaying as she assessed the injury, then the corpse. “Nasty little pricks, aren’t they?”

Aelin would have had some swaggering answer to set them all chuckling, but Lysandra couldn’t find the words. She just nodded as the black stain inched over the tent floor. The Fae royals sniffed at the reek, grimacing.

“Clean up this mess,” Darrow ordered no one in particular. Even as his hands shook slightly.

By the tent flaps, Nox was gaping at the decapitated Valg. His gray eyes met hers, searching, and then lowered. “He didn’t have a ring,” Nox murmured.

Snatching up a dangling edge of tablecloth from the untouched refreshment table, Aedion wiped the Sword of Orynth clean. “He didn’t need one.”

Erawan knew Aelin was not with them. That a shifter had taken her place.

Aedion stalked through the camp, Lysandra-as-Aelin at his heels. “I know,” he said over his shoulder, for once ignoring the warriors who saluted him.

She kept following him anyway. “What should we do?”

He didn’t stop until he reached his own tent, the reek of that Valg messenger clinging in his nose. That whip of blackness spearing for Lysandra still burning behind his eyes. Her cry of pain ringing in his ears.

His temper roiled, howling for an outlet.

She followed him into the tent. “What should we do?” she asked again.

“How about we start with making sure there aren’t any other messengers lurking in the camp,” he snarled, pacing. The Fae royals had already conveyed that order, and were sending out their best scouts.

“He knows,” she breathed. He whirled to face her, finding his cousin—finding Lysandra shaking. Not Aelin, though she’d been plenty convincing today. Better than usual. “He knows what I am.”

Aedion rubbed his face. “He also seems to know we’re going to Orynth. Wants us to do just that.”

She slumped onto his cot, as if her knees couldn’t hold her upright. For a heartbeat, the urge to sit beside her, to pull her to him, was so strong he nearly yielded to it.

The tang of her blood filled the space, along with the wild, many-faced scent of her. It dragged a sensual finger down his skin, whetting his rage into something so deadly he might have very well killed the next male who entered this tent.

“Erawan might hear the news and worry,” Aedion said when he could think again. “He might wonder why she isn’t here, and if she’s about to do something that will hurt him. It could force him to show his hand.”

“Or to strike us now, with his full might, when he knows we’re weakest.”

“We’ll have to see.”

“Orynth will be a slaughterhouse,” she whispered, her shoulders curving beneath the weight—not just of being a woman thrust into this conflict, but a woman playing another, who might be able to pretend, but only so far. Who did not truly have the power to halt the hordes marching north. She’d been willing to shoulder that burden, though. For Aelin. For this kingdom.

Even if she’d lied to him about it, she’d been willing to accept this weight.

Aedion slumped down beside her and stared blankly at the tent walls. “We’re not going to Orynth.”

Her head lifted. Not just at the words, but at how close he sat. “Where are we going, then?”

Aedion surveyed his suit of armor, oiled and waiting on a dummy across the tent. “Sol and Ravi will take some of their men back to the coast to make sure that we don’t encounter any more attacks from the sea. They’ll rendezvous with what’s left of the Wendlynian fleet while Galan and his soldiers stay with us. We’ll march as one army down to the border.”

“The other lords voted against it.” Indeed they had, the old fools.

He’d danced with treason for the past decade. Had made it an art form. Aedion smiled slightly. “Leave that to me.”

The Bane were loyal to none but Aelin Galathynius.

So were the allies she’d gathered. And the forces of Ren Allsbrook and Ravi and Sol of Suria.

And so, apparently, was Nox Owen.

Yet it was Lysandra, not Aedion, who made their flight possible.

She’d been walking back to her own tent—to Aelin’s tent, not fit for a queen, but an army captain—when Nox fell into step beside her. Silent and graceful. Well-trained. And likely more lethal than he appeared.

“So, Erawan knows you’re not Aelin.”

She whipped her head to him. “What?” A quick, vague question to buy herself time. Had Aedion risked telling him the truth?

Nox gave her a half smile. “I figured as much when I saw the surprise on that demon’s face.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“Am I? Or do you not remember me at all?”

She did her best to look down her nose at him, even as the messenger-thief towered over her. Aelin had never mentioned a Nox Owen. “Why should I remember one of Darrow’s lackeys?”