Aelin took steadying breaths as Cairn shoved through the tent flaps, offering a glimpse of fires and lightening darkness beyond. Nothing else.

“Enjoy your rest?”

Aelin said nothing.

Cairn ran a hand down the metal table’s edge. “I’ve been debating what to do with you, you know. How to really savor this, make it special for us both before our time is through.”

Fenrys’s snarl rumbled through the tent. Cairn just swept the cloth from the smaller table.

Low metal dishes on three legs, piled with unlit logs.

Aelin stiffened as he hauled one over, and set it beneath the foot of the metal table. A smaller brazier, its legs cut short for its bowl to hover barely above the ground.

He set the second brazier below the table’s center. The third at the head.

“We’ve played with your hands before,” Cairn said, straightening. Aelin began shaking, began tugging on the chains anchoring her arms above her head. His smile grew. “Let’s see how your entire body reacts to flame without your special little gift. Perhaps you’ll burn like the rest of us.”

Aelin yanked uselessly, her feet sliding against the still-cool metal.

Not like this—

Cairn reached into his pocket and withdrew some flint.

This wasn’t just a breaking of her body. But a breaking of her—of the fire she’d come to love. To destroy the part of her that sang.

He’d melt her skin and bones until she feared the flame, until she hated it, as she hated those healers who had come again and again to repair her body, to hide what was real from what had been a dream.

Fenrys’s snarl rolled on, endless.

Cairn said mildly, “You can scream all you like, if it pleases you.”

The table would turn red-hot, and the scent of burning flesh would fill her nose, and she wouldn’t be able to stop it, stop him; she would sob in agony, as the burns went so deep, through skin and into bone—

The pressure in her body, her head, faded. It became secondary as Cairn fished a rolled pouch from his other pocket. He set it upon the swath of black velvet, and she could make out the indents of the slender tools inside. “For when heating the table grows boring,” he said, patting the tool kit. “I want to see how far the burns go inside your skin.”

Bile shot up her throat as he weighed the flint in his hands and stepped closer.

She began fraying then, who she was and had been melting away as her own body would soon melt when this table heated.

The hand she’d been dealt. It was the hand she had been dealt, and she would endure it. Even as a word took form on her tongue.

Please.

She tried to swallow it. Tried to keep it locked in as Cairn crouched beside the table, flint raised.

You do not yield.

You do not yield.

You do not yield.

“Wait.”

The word was a rasp.

Cairn paused. Rose from his crouch. “Wait?”

Aelin shook, her breathing ragged. “Wait.”

Cairn crossed his arms. “Do you have something you’d like to say at last?”

He’d let her promise anything to him, to Maeve. And then would still light those fires. Maeve would not hear of her yielding for days.

Aelin made herself meet his stare, her gauntlet-covered fingers pressing into the iron slab beneath her.

One last chance.

She’d seen the stars overhead. It was as great a gift as any she’d received, greater than the jewels and gowns and art she’d once coveted and amassed in Rifthold. The last gift she would receive, if she played the hand she’d been dealt. If she played him right.

To end this, end her. Before Maeve could put the Wyrdstone collar around her neck.

Dawn neared, the stars dimming one by one.

Rowan lurked by the southernmost entrance to the camp, his power thrumming.

Cairn’s tent lay in the center of the camp. A mile and a half lay between Rowan and his prey.

When the guards began their shift change, he’d rip the air from their lungs. Would rip the air from the lungs of every soldier in his path. How many would he know? How many had he trained? A small part of him prayed the number would be few. That if they knew him, they’d be wise and stand down. He had no intention of stopping, though.

Rowan freed the hatchet from his side, a long knife already glinting in the other.

A killing calm had settled over him hours ago. Days ago. Months ago.

Only a few more minutes.

The six guards at the camp entrance stirred from their watches. The sentries in the trees behind him, unaware of his presence this night, would spot the action the moment their fellow sentries went down. And certainly spot him the moment he broke from the trees, crossing the narrow strip of grass between the forest and camp.

He’d debated flying in, but the aerial patrols had circled all night, and if he faced them, expending more power than he needed to while also fighting off the arrows and magic sure to be firing from below … He’d waste vital reserves of his energy. So on foot it would be, a hard, brutal run to the center of the camp. Then out, either with Aelin or Cairn.

Still alive. He had to keep Cairn alive for now. Long enough to clear this camp and reach a spot where they could slice every answer from him.

Go, a quiet voice urged. Go now.

Essar’s sister had advised to wait until dawn. When the shift was weakest. When she’d make sure certain guards didn’t arrive on time.

Go now.

That voice, warm and yet insistent, tugged. Pushed him toward the camp.

Rowan bared his teeth, his breathing roughening. Lorcan and Gavriel would be waiting for the signal, a flare of his magic, when he got far enough into the camp.

Now, Prince.

He knew that voice, had felt its warmth. And if the Lady of Light herself whispered at his ear …

Rowan didn’t give himself time to consider, to rage at the goddess who urged him to act but would gladly sacrifice his mate to the Lock.

So Rowan steeled himself, willing ice into his veins.

Calm. Precise. Deadly.

Every swing of his blades, every blast of his power, had to count.

Rowan speared his magic toward the camp entrance.

The guards grabbed for their throats, feeble shields wobbling around them. Rowan shattered them with half a thought, his magic tearing the air from their lungs, their blood.

They went down a heartbeat later.

Sentries shouted from the trees, orders of “Sound the alarm!” ringing out.

But Rowan was already running. And the sentries in the trees, their shouts lingering on the wind as they gasped for breath, were already dead.

The sky slowly bled toward dawn.

Standing at the edge of the forest that bordered the eastern side of the camp, a good two miles of rolling, grassy hills between him and the edge of the army, Lorcan monitored the stirring troops.

Gavriel had already shifted, and the mountain lion now paced near the tree line, waiting for the signal.

It was an effort not to peer behind him, though Lorcan could not see her. They’d left Elide a few miles into the forest, hidden in a copse of trees bordering a glen. Should all go poorly, she’d flee deeper into the hilly woods, up into the ancient mountains. Where far more deadly and cunning predators than Fae still prowled.

She hadn’t offered him a parting word, though she’d wished them all luck. Lorcan hadn’t been able to find the right words anyway, so he’d left without so much as a look back.

But he glanced back now. Prayed that if they didn’t return, she wouldn’t come hunting for them.

Gavriel halted his pacing, ears twitching toward the camp.

Lorcan stiffened.

A spark of his power awakened and flickered.

Death beckoned nearby.

“It’s too soon,” Lorcan said, scanning for any sign of Whitethorn’s signal. Nothing.

Gavriel’s ears lay flat against his head. And still those flutters of the dying trickled past.

CHAPTER 26

Aelin swallowed once. Twice. The portrait of uncertain fear as she lay chained on the metal table, Cairn waiting for her answer.

And then she said, her voice cracking, “When you finish breaking me apart for the day, how does it feel to know that you are still nothing?”

Cairn grinned. “Some fire left in you, it seems. Good.”

She smiled back through the mask. “You were only given the oath for this. For me. Without me, you’re nothing. You’ll go back to being nothing. Less than nothing, from what I’ve heard.”

Cairn’s fingers tightened around the flint. “Keep talking, bitch. Let’s see where it gets you.”

A rasping laugh broke from her. “The guards talk when you’re gone, you know. They forget I’m Fae, too. Can hear like you.”

Cairn said nothing.

“At least they agree with me on one front. You’re spineless. Have to tie up people to hurt them because it makes you feel like a male.” Aelin gave a pointed glance between his legs. “Inadequate in the ways that count.”

A tremor went through him. “Would you like me to show you how inadequate I am?”

Aelin huffed another laugh, haughty and cool, and gazed toward the ceiling, toward the lightening sky. The last she’d see, if she played this right.

There had always been another, a spare, to take her place should she fail. That her death would mean Dorian’s, would send those hateful gods to demand his life to forge the Lock … It was no strange thing, to hate herself for it. She’d failed enough people, failed Terrasen, that the additional weight barely landed. She wouldn’t have much longer to feel it anyway.

So she drawled toward the sky, the stars, “Oh, I know there’s not much worth seeing in that regard, Cairn. And you’re not enough of a male to be able to use it without someone screaming, are you?” At his silence, she smirked. “I thought so. I dealt with plenty of your ilk at the Assassins’ Guild. You’re all the same.”

A deep snarl.

Aelin only chuckled and adjusted her body, as if getting comfortable. “Go ahead, Cairn. Do your worst.”

Fenrys let out a warning whine.

She waited, waited, maintaining the smirk, the looseness in her limbs.

A hand slammed into her gut, hard enough she bowed around it, the air vanishing from her.