They were headed eastward—far from the coast. Rowan didn’t dare risk telling them they needed to find a port. He’d see where they led them tonight, and then craft their plan for returning to their own continent.

But when the Little Folk appeared before a gargantuan boulder, when they then vanished and reappeared in a sliver cut into the rock itself, bony hands beckoning from within, Rowan found himself balking.

The creature dwelling in the lake beneath Bald Mountain was a mild threat compared to the other things that still hunted in dark and forgotten places.

But the Little Folk beckoned again.

Lorcan appeared at his side. “It could be a trap.”

But Elide and Gavriel walked toward it, unfazed.

And behind them, Aelin continued as well. So Rowan followed her, as he would follow her until his last breath, and beyond it.

The cave mouth was tight, but soon opened into a larger passage. Aelin illuminated the space, bathing the black stone walls in a golden glow bright enough to see by.

But her flame was dwarfed when they entered a massive chamber. The ceiling stretched into gloom, but it was not the height of the chamber that made him halt.

Nooks and alcoves had been built into the side of the rock, some equipped with bedrolls, some with what seemed to be piles of clothes, and some with food. A small fire burned near one, and past it, tucked against the wall, a natural stone trough gleamed with water, courtesy of a small stream.

But farther into the cave, on the other side of the chamber, flowing right up to the black rock itself, a great lake stretched into the darkness.

There were countless subterranean lakes and rivers beneath these mountains—places so deep in the earth that even the Fae had not bothered or dared to explore.

This one, it seemed, the Little Folk had claimed for themselves, going so far as to outfit the space with sprawling birch branches against the walls. They’d hung small garlands and wreaths from the white limbs, and amongst the leaves, little bluish lights twinkled.

Magic—old, strange magic, those lights. Like they’d been plucked from the night sky.

Elide was surveying the space, awe written over her features. Gavriel and Lorcan, however, assessed it with a sharper, warier eye. Rowan did the same. The only exit seemed to be the one they’d entered through, and the lake stretched too far to discern if a shore lay beyond it.

Aelin did not pause as she strode for one of the glittering walls. There was none of her usual caution, no dart of her eyes as she weighed the exits and pitfalls, potential weapons to wield.

A trance—it was almost as if she had slipped into a trance, plunged into some depthless ocean inside herself and drifted so far down that they might as well have been birds soaring over its distant surface.

But she walked toward that wall, the birch branches artfully displayed across it. More of the Little Folk within, Rowan realized. Perched on the branches, clinging to them.

Aelin’s steps were silent on the stone. Fenrys halted nearby, as if to give her privacy.

Rowan had the vague sense of Lorcan, Elide, and Gavriel heading for the alcove across the cave to inspect the goods that had been laid out.

But he lingered in the center of the space as his mate paused before the shining, living wall. There was no expression on her face, no tension in her body.

Yet she inclined her head to the Little Folk half-hidden in the branches and boughs before her. Her jaw moved—speaking. Brief, short words.

He’d never so much as heard of the Little Folk talking. But there was his queen, his wife, his mate, murmuring with them.

At last, she turned away, her face still blank, her wildfire eyes as flat and cold as the lake. Fenrys fell into step beside her, and Rowan remained in place as Aelin aimed for the small fire.

Safe. The Little Folk must have told her this cave was safe, if she now moved for the fire, her own sphere of it still burning bright.

The others halted their assessment of the supplies.

But Aelin paid them no heed, paid the world no heed, as she took up a spot between the fire and the cave wall, lay upon the bare stone, and closed her eyes.

CHAPTER 32

Dorian had brown eyes for three days before he figured out how to change them back to blue. Asterin and Vesta teased him about it mercilessly as they’d traveled down through the spine of the Fangs, dramatically bemoaning the absence of his pretty bluebell eyes, and had sighed to the heavens when the sapphire hue had returned.

His magic could leap between one element and another, yet the ability to shift lay within something else entirely. Lay within a part of him that had always yearned for one thing above all others: to let go. To be free. As Temis, Goddess of Wild Things, was free—uncaged. As he had once wished to be, when he had been little more than a reckless, idealistic prince.

It was the magic’s sole command: let go. Let go of who and what he’d become since that collar and emerge into something new, something different.

It was easier realized than enacted. Since his eyes had returned to blue, like the unraveling of some thread within him, he’d been unable to do anything else. Even change them to brown again.

The Crochans and the Thirteen had halted for their midday break under the heavy cover of Oakwald, the trees barren, yet not a hint of snow on the earth. Another day, and they’d reach the rendezvous point. A week after they’d promised the Eyllwe war leaders, but they would arrive.

He sat on a fallen, moss-covered log, gnawing on the strip of dried rabbit. His dinner.

“My head pounds on your behalf, just watching you try so hard,” Glennis said from across the clearing. Around them, the Thirteen ate in silence, Manon monitoring all. The Crochans sat amongst them, at least. Quietly, but they sat there.

Which meant they all looked at him now. Dorian lowered the strip of tough meat and inclined his head to the crone. “My head is pounding enough for both of us, I think.”

“What are you trying to turn into, exactly? Or who?”

The opposite of what he was. The opposite of the man who’d overlooked Sorscha’s presence for years. And offered her only death in the end. He’d be glad to let go of it, if only the magic would allow him.

“Nothing,” he said. Many of the Thirteen and Crochans went back to their meager meals at his dull response. “I just want to see if it’s possible, for someone with my manner of magic. To even change small features.” Not a lie, not entirely.

Manon frowned, as if trying to work out some puzzle she couldn’t quite grasp.

“But were you to succeed,” Glennis pressed, “who would you wish to be?”

He didn’t know. Couldn’t conjure an image beyond empty darkness. Damaris, at his side, would have no answer, either.

Dorian peered inward, feeling the sea of magic that roiled inside him.

He traced its shape with careful, invisible hands. Followed a thread within himself not to his gut, but to his still-cracked heart.

Who do you wish to be?

There, like the seed of power that Cyrene had stolen, it lay—the little snarl in his magic. Not a snarl, but a knot—a knot in a tapestry. One that he might weave.

One he might fashion into something if he dared.

Who do you wish to be? he asked the barely woven tapestry within himself. Let the threads and knots take form, crafting the picture within his mind. Starting small.

Glennis chuckled. “Your eyes are green now, king.”

Dorian started, heart thundering. The others again halted their lunches, gaping, some leaning in to peer at him more closely. But he fed his magic into the loom within himself, adding to the emerging picture.

“Och, golden hair does not suit you at all.” Asterin grimaced. “You look sickly.”

Who did he wish to be? Anyone but himself. But what he’d become.

His silent answer sent that magical loom tumbling from his invisible grip, and he knew if he looked, his dark hair and sapphire eyes would have returned. Asterin sighed in relief.

But Manon smiled grimly, as if she’d heard his unspoken answer. And understood.

Night was full overhead, the Crochans’ fires crackling away beneath the lattice of leafless trees, when Glennis asked, “Have any of you seen the Wastes?”

The Thirteen blinked toward the crone. She didn’t usually address them all at once, or ask such personal questions.

But at least Glennis spoke to them. Three days of travel, and Manon was no closer to winning the Crochans over than she’d been upon their departure from the Fangs. Though they spoke to her, and occasionally joined Glennis’s hearth for meals, it was with as few words as necessary.

Asterin answered for the coven. “No. Not one of us, though I spent some time in a forest on the other side of the mountains. But never that far.” Sorrow flickered in the witch’s gold-flecked black eyes, as if there was more to the tale than that. Indeed, Sorrel and Vesta, even Manon, looked with a bit of that sorrow at the witch.

Manon asked Glennis, the sole Crochan at this fire under the canopy, “Why do you ask?”

“Curiosity,” the crone said. “None of us have been, either. We do not dare.”

“For fear of us?” Asterin’s golden hair shifted as she leaned closer to the fire. She’d found a strip of leather in the camp to tie across her brow—not the black she’d worn for the past century, but a familiar sight, at least. One thing, it seemed, had not entirely altered.

“For fear of what it will do to us, to see what is left of our once-great city, our lands.”

“Nothing but rubble, they say,” Manon muttered.

“And would you rebuild it, if you could?” Glennis asked. “Rebuild the city for yourselves?”

“We never discussed what we’d do,” Asterin said. “If we could ever go home.”

“A plan, perhaps,” Glennis mused, “would be wise. A powerful thing to have.” Her blue eyes settled on Manon. “Not just for the Crochans, but your own people.”

Dorian nodded, though he was not a part of this conversation.

Who did the Thirteen, the Ironteeth and Crochans, wish to be, to build, as a people?

Manon opened her mouth, but the Shadows burst into the ring of their hearth, their faces tight. The Thirteen were instantly on their feet.