That would be nothing compared to this.

“I am leaving for a few days,” Maeve said.

Aelin stilled.

Maeve shook her head in a mockery of disappointment. “You are not progressing as quickly as I wished, Aelin.”

Across the room, Fenrys let out a warning snarl. Maeve didn’t so much as glance at him.

“It has come to my attention that our mutual enemy has been spotted again on these shores. One of them, a Valg prince, was contained a few days’ journey from here, near the southern border. It brought with it several collars, no doubt to use on my own people. Perhaps even on me.”

No. No—

Maeve brushed a hand over Aelin’s neck, as if tracing a line where the collar would go. “So I will go myself to retrieve that collar, to see what Erawan’s minion might say for itself. I ripped apart the Valg princes who encountered me in the first war,” she said quietly. “It shall be rather easy, I suppose, to instead bend them to my will. Well, bend one to my will and wrest it from Erawan’s control, once I put its collar around your neck.”

No.

The word was a steady chant, a rising shriek within her.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,” Maeve mused.

No.

Maeve poked Aelin’s shattered wrist, and Aelin swallowed her scream. “Think on it. And when I return, let’s discuss my proposition again. Maybe all that growing strain will make you see more clearly, too.”

A collar. Maeve was going to retrieve a Wyrdstone collar—

Maeve turned, black gown swirling with her. She crossed the threshold, and her owl swooped from its perch atop the open door to land upon her shoulder. “I’m sure Cairn will find ways to entertain you while I’m away.”

She didn’t know how long she lay on the altar after the healers swept in with their sweet-smelling smoke. They’d put the metal gauntlets back on her.

With each hour, the pressure beneath her skin grew. Even in that heavy, drugged sleep. As if once she’d acknowledged it, it wouldn’t be ignored. Or contained.

It would be the least of her problems, if Maeve put a collar around her neck.

Fenrys sat by the wall, concern bright in his eyes as he blinked. Are you all right?

She blinked twice. No.

No, she was not anywhere near to all right. Maeve had been waiting for this, waiting for this pressure to begin, worse than anything Cairn might do. And with the collar Maeve now went to personally retrieve …

She couldn’t let herself contemplate it. A more horrific form of slavery, one she might never escape, never be able to fight. Not a breaking of the Fire-Bringer, but an erasure.

To take all she was, power and knowledge, and rip it from her. To have her trapped inside while she witnessed her own voice yield the location of the Wyrdkeys. Swear the blood oath to Maeve. Wholly submit to her.

Fenrys blinked four times. I am here, I am with you.

She answered in kind. I am here, I am with you.

Her magic surged, seeking a way out, filling the gaps between her breath and bones. She couldn’t find room for it, couldn’t do anything to soothe it.

You do not yield.

She focused on the words. On her mother’s voice.

Perhaps the magic would devour her from the inside before Maeve returned.

But she did not know how she’d endure it. Endure another few days of this, let alone the next hour. To ease the strain, just a fraction …

She shut down the thoughts that snaked into her mind. Her own or Maeve’s, she didn’t care.

Fenrys blinked again, the same message over and over. I am here, I am with you.

Aelin closed her eyes, praying for oblivion.

“Get up.”

A mockery of words she’d once heard.

Cairn stood above her, a smile twisting his hateful face. And the wild light in his eyes …

Aelin went still as he began unfastening her chains.

Guards stomped in. Fenrys snarled.

The pressure writhed against her skin, pounding in her head like a brutal hammer. Worse than the tools of breaking dangling at Cairn’s side.

“Maeve wants you moved,” he said, that feverish light growing as he hoisted her up and carried her to the box. Let her drop into it so hard the chains clanked against her bones, her skull. Her eyes watered, and she lunged up, but the lid slammed shut.

Darkness, hot and tight, pressed in. The twin to what grew under her skin.

“With Morath creeping onto these shores again, she wants you moved somewhere more secure until she returns,” Cairn crooned through the lid. Guards grunted, and the box lifted, Aelin shifting, biting her lip against the movement. “I don’t give a shit what she does to you once she puts that demon collar around your throat. But until then … I’ll get you all to myself, won’t I? A last little bout of fun for you and me, until you find yourself with a new friend inside you.”

Dread coiled in her stomach, smothering the pressure.

Moving her to another location—she had once warned a young healer about that. Had told her if an attacker tried to move her, they would most definitely kill her, and she was to make a final stand before they could.

And that was without the threat of a Wyrdstone collar traveling closer with each passing day.

But Cairn wouldn’t kill her, not when Maeve needed her alive.

Aelin focused on her breathing. In and out, out and in.

It didn’t keep the oily, sharp fear from taking hold. From making her start shaking.

“You are to join us, Fenrys,” Cairn said, laughter in his voice as Aelin slid against the metal of the box while they walked up the stairs. “I wouldn’t want you to miss a heartbeat of this.”

CHAPTER 21

Rowan knew every path, traveled and hidden, into Doranelle. Both the lush kingdom and the sprawling city it had been named after.

So did Gavriel and Lorcan. They’d sold their horses the night before, Elide bartering for them. The Fae warriors were too recognizable, and if their faces weren’t noted, the sheer presence of their power would be. Few wouldn’t know who they were.

Unlike the northern border with Wendlyn, no wild wolves guarded the southern roads into the kingdom. But they’d still kept hidden, taking half-forgotten pathways on their trek northward.

And when they were a few days away from the outer limits of the city, they had laid their trap for Maeve.

What he knew the queen might not be able to resist coming to retrieve herself: Wyrdstone collars.

Aelin had not broken yet. He knew it, had felt it. It would likely be driving Maeve mad. So the temptation to use one of the Wyrdstone collars, the arrogance he knew Maeve possessed that would allow her to believe she might control the demon within, wrest it away from Erawan himself … it would indeed be too great an opportunity for the queen to pass up.

So they had begun with rumors, fed by Elide at taverns and markets, at the places where Rowan knew Maeve’s spies would be listening. Whispers of a Fae garrison who had captured a Valg prince—the strange collars they found on him. The location: an outpost leagues away. The collars: anyone’s for the taking.

He didn’t bother to pray to the gods that Maeve fell for it. That she didn’t send one of her spies instead to retrieve the collars or confirm their existence. A fool’s gamble, but the only one they could make.

And as they scaled the steep southern hillocks that would offer them a view of the night-veiled city at last, Rowan’s heart thundered in his chest. They might not have Maeve’s cloaking abilities, but without the blood oath, they could remain undetected.

Though Maeve’s eyes were everywhere, her net of power spread far and wide across this land. And so many others.

Their breathing was labored as they half crawled to the highest of the wooded hills. There were other ways into the city, yes, but none that offered a view of the terrain before them. Rowan hadn’t risked flying, not when keen-eyed patrols no doubt searched for a white-tailed hawk, even under cover of darkness.

Only thirty feet to the summit now.

Rowan kept climbing, the others close behind.

She was here. She’d been here the entire time. If they’d come directly to Doranelle—

He didn’t let himself consider it. Not as he cleared the hilltop.

Under the sliver of a moon, the gray-stoned city was bathed in white, wreathed in mist from the surrounding rivers and waterfalls. Elide, amid her panting, gasped.

“I—I thought it would be like Morath,” she admitted.

The serene city lay in the heart of a river basin. Lanterns still glowed despite the late hour, and he knew that in some squares, music would be playing.

Home. Or it had been. Were its citizens still his people, when he’d wed a foreign queen? When he’d fought and killed so many of them on Eyllwe’s waters? He didn’t look for the black mourning banners that would be hanging from so many windows.

Beside him, he knew Lorcan and Gavriel were avoiding counting them, too. For centuries, they had known these people, lived amongst them. Called them friends.

But were any aware who was held in their midst? Had they heard her screams?

“That’s the palace,” Gavriel said to Elide, pointing toward the cluster of domes and elegant buildings set on the eastern edge, right along the lip of the massive waterfall.

None of them spoke as they scanned the column-lined building that housed the queen’s private quarters. And their own suites. No lights burned within.

“It doesn’t confirm anything,” Lorcan said. “Whether Maeve left, or if Aelin remains.”

Rowan listened to the wind, scented it, but felt nothing. “The only way to confirm either is to go into the city.”

“Are those two bridges the only way in?” Elide frowned toward the twin stone bridges on the southern and northern sides of Doranelle. Both open, both visible for miles around.

“Yes,” Lorcan said, his voice tight.