Elide followed her, a hand sliding to the knife in her pocket. The female led the way, no weapons to be seen, her gait unhurried.

But when they halted in the shadows beneath the awning, the female held up a hand once more.

Golden flame danced between her fingers.

Elide recoiled, and the fire vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “My name is Essar,” the female said softly. “I am a friend—of your friends, I believe.”

Elide said nothing.

“Cairn is a monster,” Essar said, taking a step closer. “Stay far from him.”

“I need to find him.”

“You played the part of his mistreated lover well enough. You have to know something about him. What he does.”

“If you know where he is, please tell me.” She wasn’t above begging.

Essar ran an eye over Elide. Then she said, “He was in this city until yesterday. Then he went out to the eastern camp.” She pointed with a thumb over a shoulder. “He’s there now.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s not terrorizing the patrons of every fine establishment in this town, glutting himself on the coin Maeve gave him when he took the blood oath.”

Elide blinked. She had hoped some of the Fae might be opposed to Maeve, especially after the battle in Eyllwe, but to find such outright distaste …

Essar then added, “And because my sister—the soldier you spoke with—told me. She saw him in the camp this morning, smirking like a cat.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because you are wearing Lorcan’s shirt, and Rowan Whitethorn’s cloak. If you do not believe me, inform them who told you and they will.”

Elide cocked her head to the side.

Essar said softly, “Lorcan and I were involved for a time.”

They were in the midst of war, and had traveled for thousands of miles to find their queen, and yet the tightness that coiled in Elide’s gut at those words somehow found space. Lorcan’s lover. This delicate beauty with a bedroom voice had been Lorcan’s lover.

“I’ll be missed if I’m gone for too long, but tell them who I am. Tell them that I told you. If it’s Cairn they seek, that is where he shall be. His precise location, I don’t know.” Essar backed away a step. “Don’t go asking after Cairn at other taverns. He isn’t well regarded, even amongst the soldiers. And those who do follow him … You do not wish to attract their interest.”

Essar made to turn away, but Elide blurted, “Where did Maeve go?”

Essar looked over her shoulder. Studied her. The female’s eyes widened. “She has Aelin of the Wildfire,” Essar breathed.

Elide said nothing, but Essar murmured, “That was … that was the power we felt the other night.” Essar swept back toward Elide. Gripped her hands. “Where Maeve went a few days ago, I don’t know. She did not announce it, did not take anyone with her. I often serve her, am asked to … It doesn’t matter. What matters is Maeve is not here. But I do not know when she will return.”

Relief again threatened to send Elide crumpling to the ground. The gods, it seemed, had not abandoned them just yet.

But if Maeve had taken Aelin to the outpost where they’d lied that the Valg prince had been contained …

Elide gripped Essar’s hands, finding them warm and dry. “Does your sister know where Cairn resides in the camp?”

For long minutes, then an hour, they had talked. Essar left and returned with Dresenda, her sister. And in that alley, they had plotted.

Elide finished telling Rowan, Lorcan, and Gavriel what she’d learned. They sat in stunned silence for a long minute.

“Just before dawn,” Elide repeated. “Dresenda said the watch on the eastern camp is weakest at dawn. That she’d find a way for the guards to be occupied. It’s our only window.”

Rowan was staring into the trees, as if he could see the layout of the camp, as if he were plotting his way in, way out.

“She didn’t confirm if Aelin was in Cairn’s tent, though,” Gavriel cautioned. “Maeve is gone—Aelin might be with her, too.”

“It’s a risk we take,” Rowan said. A risk, perhaps, they should have considered.

Elide glanced to Lorcan, who had been silent throughout. Even though it had been his lover who had helped them, perhaps guided by Anneith herself. Or at least had been tipped off by the scent on Elide’s clothes.

“You think we can trust her?” Elide asked Lorcan, though she knew the answer.

Lorcan’s dark eyes shifted to her. “Yes, though I don’t see why she’d bother.”

“She’s a good female, that’s why,” Rowan said. At Elide’s lifted brow, he explained, “Essar visited Mistward this spring. She met Aelin.” He cut a glare toward Lorcan. “And asked me to tell you that she sends her best.”

Elide hadn’t seen anything that came close to pining in Essar’s face, but gods, she was beautiful. And smart. And kind. And Lorcan had let her go, somehow.

Gavriel cut in, “If we move on the eastern camp, we need to figure out our plan now. Get into position. It’s miles away.”

Rowan gazed again toward that distant camp.

“If you’re debating flying there right now,” Lorcan growled, “then you’ll deserve whatever misery comes of your stupidity.” Rowan flashed his teeth, but Lorcan said, “We all go in. We all go out.”

Elide nodded, in agreement for once. Lorcan seemed to stiffen in surprise.

Rowan arrived at that conclusion, too, because he crouched and plunged a knife into the mossy earth. “This is Cairn’s tent,” he said of the dagger, and fished for a nearby pinecone. “This is the southern entrance to the camp.”

And so they planned.

Rowan had parted from his companions an hour ago, sending them to take up their positions.

They would not all go in, all go out.

Rowan would break into the eastern camp, taking the southernmost entrance. Gavriel and Lorcan would be waiting for his signal near the east entrance, hidden in the forest just beyond the rolling, grassy hills on that side of the camp. Ready to unleash hell when he sent a flare of his magic, diverting soldiers to their side while Rowan made his run for Aelin.

Elide would wait for them farther in that forest. Or flee, if things went badly.

She’d protested, but even Gavriel had told her that she was mortal. Untrained. And what she’d done today … Rowan didn’t have the words to convey his gratitude for what Elide had done. The unexpected ally she’d found.

He trusted Essar. She’d never liked Maeve, had outright said she did not serve her with any willingness or pride. But these last few hours before dawn, when so many things could go wrong …

Maeve was not here. That much, at least, had gone right.

Rowan lingered in the steep hills above the southern entrance to the camp. He’d easily kept hidden from the sentries in the trees, his wind masking any trace of his scent.

Down below, spread across the grassy eastern plain, the army camp glittered.

She had to be there. Aelin had to be there.

If they had come so close but wound up being the very thing that had caused Maeve to take Aelin away again, to bring her along to the outpost …

Rowan pushed against the weight in his chest. The bond within him lay dark and slumbering. No indication of her proximity.

Essar had no idea that Aelin was being kept here until Elide informed her. How many others hadn’t known? How well had Maeve hidden her?

If Aelin wasn’t in that camp tomorrow, they’d find Cairn, at least. And get some answers then. Give him a taste of what he’d done—

Rowan shut out the thought. He didn’t let himself think of what had been done to her.

He’d do that tomorrow, when he saw Cairn. When he repaid him for every moment of pain.

Overhead, the stars shone clear and bright, and though Mala had only once appeared to him at dawn, on the foothills across this very city, though she might be little more than a strange, mighty being from another world, he offered up a prayer anyway.

Then, he had begged Mala to protect Aelin from Maeve when they entered Doranelle, to give her strength and guidance, and to let her walk out alive. Then, he had begged Mala to let him remain with Aelin, the woman he loved. The goddess had been little more than a sunbeam in the rising dawn, and yet he had felt her smile at him.

Tonight, with only the cold fire of the stars for company, he begged her once more.

A curl of wind sent his prayer drifting to those stars, to the waxing moon silvering the camp, the river, the mountains.

He had killed his way across the world; he had gone to war and back more times than he cared to remember. And despite it all, despite the rage and despair and ice he’d wrapped around his heart, he’d still found Aelin. Every horizon he’d gazed toward, unable and unwilling to rest during those centuries, every mountain and ocean he’d seen and wondered what lay beyond … It had been her. It had been Aelin, the silent call of the mating bond driving him, even when he could not feel it.

They’d walked this dark path together back to the light. He would not let the road end here.

CHAPTER 24

The Crochans ignored her. And ignored the Thirteen. A few hissed insults as they passed, but one glance from Manon and the Thirteen kept their fists balled at their sides.

The Crochans remained in the camp for a week to tend to their wounded, and so Manon and the Thirteen had remained as well, ignored and hated.

“What is this place?” Manon asked Glennis as she found the crone polishing the handle of a gold-bound broom beside the fire. Two others lay on a cloak nearby. Menial work for the witch in charge of this camp.

“This is an ancient camp—one of the oldest we claim.” Glennis’s knobbed fingers flew over the broom handle. “Each of the seven Great Hearths has a fire here, as do many others.” Indeed, there were far more than seven in the camp. “It was a gathering place for us after the war, and since then, it had become a place to usher in some of our younger witches to adulthood. It is a rite we’ve developed over the years—to send them into the deep wilds for a few weeks to hunt and survive with only their brooms and a knife. We remain here while they do so.”