Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas
She scanned the roof tiles as if reading her mental map of the celebration—the map he’d given her. Then she swore. “He could lay traps for me—and Aedion. With the Wyrdmarks, he could write out spells on the floor or in the doors, keyed to me or Aedion, and we would be helpless—the exact same way I trapped that thing in the library. Shit,” she breathed. “Shit.”
Gripping her slackened bow, Nesryn said, “Brullo told us the king has his best men escorting Aedion from the dungeons to the hall—perhaps spelling those areas, too. If he spells them.”
“If is too big a gamble to make. And it’s too late to change our plans,” Aelin said. “If I had those gods-damned books, I could maybe find some sort of protection for me and Aedion, some spell, but I won’t have enough time tomorrow to grab them from my old rooms. The gods know if they’re even still there.”
“They’re not,” Chaol said. Aelin’s brows flicked up. “Because I have them. I grabbed them when I left the castle.”
Aelin pursed her lips in what he could have sworn was reluctant appreciation. “We don’t have much time.” She began climbing over the roof and out of sight. “There are two prisoners left,” she clarified. “And I think those streamers would look better with some Valg blood on them, anyway.”
Nesryn remained on the rooftop while Aelin went to another across the square—faster than Chaol had thought possible. That left him on street level.
He hurried as swiftly as he could through the crowd, spotting his three men gathered near the other edge of the platform—ready.
The clock struck six just as Chaol positioned himself, after making sure two more of his men were waiting down a narrow alley. Just as the guards finally cleared away the body of the first prisoner and dragged forward the second. The man was sobbing, begging them as he was forced to kneel in the puddle of his friend’s blood.
The executioner lifted his ax.
And a dagger, courtesy of Aelin Galathynius, went clean through the executioner’s throat.
Black blood sprayed—some onto the streamers, as Aelin had promised. Before the guards could shout, Nesryn opened fire from the other direction. That was all the distraction Chaol needed as he and his men surged toward the platform amid the panicking, fleeing crowd. Nesryn and Aelin had both fired again by the time he hit the stage, the wood treacherously slick with blood. He grabbed the two prisoners and roared at them to run, run, run!
His men were blade-to-blade with the guards as he rushed the stumbling prisoners down the steps and into the safety of the alley—and the rebels waiting beyond.
Block after block they fled, leaving the chaos of the square behind, until they hit the Avery, and Chaol set about attaining them a boat.
Nesryn found him leaving the docks an hour later, unharmed but splattered with dark blood. “What happened?”
“Pandemonium,” Nesryn said, scanning the river under the setting sun. “Everything fine?”
He nodded. “And you?”
“Both of us are fine.” A kindness, he thought with a flicker of shame, that she knew he couldn’t bring himself to ask about Aelin. Nesryn turned away, heading back in the direction she’d come.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To wash and change—and then go tell the family of the man who died.”
It was protocol, even if it was horrible. Better to have the families genuinely mourn than risk being looked on any longer as rebel sympathizers. “You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I’ll send one of the men.”
“I’m a city guard,” she said plainly. “My presence won’t be unexpected. And besides,” she said, her eyes glinting with her usual faint amusement, “you yourself said I don’t exactly have a line of suitors waiting outside my father’s house, so what else do I have to do with myself tonight?”
“Tomorrow’s an important day,” he said, even as he cursed himself for the words he’d spat the other night. An ass—that’s what he’d been, even if she’d never let on that it bothered her.
“I was just fine before you came along, Chaol,” she said—tired, possibly bored. “I know my limits. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
But he said, “Why go to the families yourself?”
Nesryn’s dark eyes shifted toward the river. “Because it reminds me what I have to lose if I’m caught—or if we fail.”
Night fell, and Aelin knew she was being followed as she stalked from rooftop to rooftop. Right now, even hours later, hitting the street was the most dangerous thing she could possibly do, given how pissed off the guards were after she and the rebels had stolen their prisoners right out from under them.
And she knew that because she’d been listening to them curse and hiss for the past hour as she trailed a patrol of black-uniformed guards on the route she’d noted the night before: along the docks, then keeping to the shadows off the main drag of taverns and brothels in the slums, and then near—but keeping a healthy distance from—the riverside Shadow Market. Interesting to learn how their route did or didn’t change when chaos erupted—what hidey-holes they rushed to, what sort of formations they used.
What streets were left unmonitored when all hell broke loose.
As it would tomorrow, with Aedion.
But Arobynn’s claims had been right—matching the maps Chaol and Nesryn had made, too.
She’d known that if she told Chaol why she’d shown up at the execution, he would get in the way somehow—send Nesryn to follow her, perhaps. She’d needed to see how skilled they were—all the parties that would be so crucial in tomorrow’s events—and then see this.
Just as Arobynn had told her, each guard wore a thick black ring, and they moved with jerks and twitches that made her wonder how well the demons squatting inside their bodies were adjusting. Their leader, a pale man with night-dark hair, moved the most fluidly, like ink in water, she thought.
She had left them to stalk toward another part of the city while she continued on toward where the craftsman district jutted out into the curve of the Avery, until all was silent around her and the scent of those rotting corpses faded away.
Atop the roof of a glass-blowing warehouse, the tiles still warm from the heat of the day or the massive furnaces inside, Aelin surveyed the empty alley below.
The infernal spring rain began again, tinkling on the sloped roof, the many chimneys.
Magic—Chaol had told her how to free it. So easy, and yet—a monumental task. In need of careful planning. After tomorrow, though—if she survived—she’d set about doing it.
She shimmied down a drainpipe on the side of a crumbling brick building, splashing down a bit too loudly in a puddle of what she hoped was rain. She whistled as she strolled down the empty alley, a jaunty little tune she’d overheard at one of the slums’ many taverns.
Still, she was honestly a little surprised that she got nearly halfway down the alley before a patrol of the king’s guards stepped into her path, their swords like quicksilver in the dark.
The commander of the patrol—the demon inside him—looked at her and smiled as though it already knew what her blood tasted like.
Aelin grinned right back at him, flicking her wrists and sending the blades shooting out of her suit. “Hello, gorgeous.”
Then she was upon them, slicing and twirling and ducking.
Five guards were dead before the others could even move.
The blood they leaked wasn’t red, though. It was black, and slid down the sides of her blades, dense and shining as oil. The stench, like curdled milk and vinegar, hit her as hard as the clashing of their swords.
The reek grew, overpowering the lingering smoke from the glass factories around them, worsening as Aelin dodged the demon’s blow and swiped low. The man’s stomach opened up like a festering wound, and black blood and the gods knew what else sloshed onto the street.
Disgusting. Almost as bad as what wafted from the sewer grate at the other end of the alley—already open. Already oozing that too-familiar darkness.
The re
When blood and rain lay in puddles on the broken cobblestones, when Aelin stood in a field of fallen men, she began slicing.
Head after head tumbled away.
Then she leaned against the wall, waiting. Counting.
They did not rise.
Aelin stalked from the alley, kicking shut the sewer grate, and vanished into the rainy night.
Dawn broke, the day clear and warm. Aelin had been up half the night scouring the books Chaol had saved, including her old friend The Walking Dead.
Reciting what she’d learned in the quiet of her apartment, Aelin donned the clothes Arobynn had sent over, checking and rechecking that there were no surprises and everything was where she needed it to be. She let each step, each reminder of her plan anchor her, keep her from dwelling too long on what would come when the festivities began.
And then she went to save her cousin.
CHAPTER
15
Aedion Ashryver was ready to die.
Against his will, he’d recovered over the past two days, the fever breaking after sunset last night. He was strong enough to walk—albeit slowly—as they escorted him to the dungeon’s washroom, where they chained him down to wash and scrub him, and even risked shaving him, despite his best efforts to slit his own throat on the razor.
It appeared that they wanted him presentable for the court when they cut off his head with his own blade, the Sword of Orynth.
After cleaning his wounds, they shoved him into pants and a loose white shirt, yanked back his hair, and dragged him up the stairs. Guards with dark uniforms flanked him three deep on both sides, four in front and behind, and every door and exit had one of the bastards posted by it.
He was too drained from dressing to provoke them into putting a sword through him, so he let them lead him through the towering doors into the ballroom. Red and gold banners hung from the rafters, springtime blossoms covered every table, and an archway of hothouse roses had been crafted over the dais from which the royal family would watch the festivities before his execution. The windows and doors beyond the platform where he would be killed opened onto one of the gardens, a guard stationed every other foot, others positioned in the garden itself. If the king wanted to set a trap for Aelin, he certainly hadn’t bothered to be very subtle about it.
It was civilized of them, Aedion realized as he was shoved up the wooden steps of the platform, to give him a stool to sit on. At least he wouldn’t have to lounge on the floor like a dog while he watched them all pretend that they weren’t here just to see his head roll. And a stool, he realized with grim satisfaction, would make a good-enough weapon when the time came.
So Aedion let them chain him in the shackles anchored to the floor of the platform. Let them put the Sword of Orynth on display a few feet behind him, its scarred bone pommel glinting in the morning light.
It was just a matter of finding the right moment to meet the end of his own choosing.
CHAPTER
16
The demon made him sit on a dais, on a throne beside a crowned woman who had not noticed that the thing using his mouth wasn’t the person who had been born of her flesh. To his other side lounged the man who controlled the demon inside him. And in front of him, the ballroom was full of tittering nobility who could not see that he was still in here, still screaming.
The demon had broken a little farther through the barrier today, and it now looked through his eyes with an ancient, glittering malice. It was starved for this world.
Perhaps the world deserved to be devoured by the thing.
Maybe it was that traitorous thought alone that had caused such a hole to rip in the barrier between them. Maybe it was winning. Maybe it had already won.
So he was forced to sit on that throne, and speak with words that were not his own, and share his eyes with something from another realm, who gazed at his sunny world with ravenous, eternal hunger.
The costume itched like hell. The paint all over her didn’t help.
Most of the important guests had arrived in the days preceding the party, but those who dwelled inside the city or in the outlying foothills now formed a glittering line stretching through the massive front doors. Guards were posted there, checking invitations, asking questions, peering into faces none too keen to be interrogated. The entertainers, vendors, and help, however, were ordered to use one of the side entrances.
That was where Aelin had found Madam Florine and her troupe of dancers, clad in costumes of black tulle and silk and lace, like liquid night in the midmorning sun.
Shoulders back, core tight, arms loose at her sides, Aelin eased into the middle of the flock. With her hair dyed a ruddy shade of brown and her face coated in the heavy cosmetics the dancers all wore, she blended in well enough that none of the others looked her way.
She focused entirely on her role of trembling novice, on looking more interested in how the other dancers perceived her than in the six guards stationed at the small wooden door in the side of the stone wall. The castle hallway beyond was narrow—good for daggers, bad for swords, and deadly for these dancers if she got into trouble.
If Arobynn had indeed betrayed her.
Head down, Aelin subtly monitored the first test of trust.
The chestnut-haired Florine walked along her line of dancers like an admiral aboard a ship.
Aging but beautiful, Florine’s every movement was layered with a grace that Aelin herself had never been able to replicate, no matter how many lessons she’d had with her while growing up. The woman had been the most celebrated dancer in the empire—and since her retirement, she remained its most valued teacher. Instructor Overlord, Aelin had called her in the years that she’d trained under the woman, learning the most fashionable dances and ways to move and hone her body.
Florine’s hazel eyes were on the guards ahead as she paused beside Aelin, a frown on her thin lips. “You still need to work on your posture,” the woman said.
Aelin met Florine’s sidelong gaze. “It’s an honor to be an understudy for you, Madam. I do hope Gillyan soon recovers from her illness.”
The guards waved through what looked to be a troupe of jugglers, and they inched forward.
“You look in good-enough spirits,” Florine murmured.
Aelin made a show of ducking her head, curling in her shoulders, and willing a blush to rise to her cheeks—the new understudy, bashful at the compliments of her mistress. “Considering where I was ten months ago?”
Florine sniffed, and her gaze lingered on the thin bands of scars across Aelin’s wrists that even the painted whorls couldn’t conceal. They’d raised the top of the dancers’ open-backed costumes, but even so, and even with the body paint, the upper ends of her tattoo-covered scars peeked through.
“If you think I had anything to do with the events that led up to that—”
Aelin’s words were barely louder than the crunch of silk shoes on gravel as she said, “You’d already be dead if you had.” It wasn’t a bluff. When she’d written her plans on that ship, Florine’s name had been one that she’d written down—and then crossed out, after careful consideration.
Aelin continued, “I trust you made the proper adjustments?” Not just the slight change in the costumes to accommodate the weapons and supplies Aelin would need to smuggle in—all paid for by Arobynn, of course. No, the big surprises would come later.
“A bit late to be asking that, isn’t it?” Madam Florine purred, the dark jewels at her neck and ears glimmering. “You must trust me a great deal to have even appeared.”
“I trust that you like getting paid more than you like the king.” Arobynn had given a massive sum to pay off Florine. She kept an eye on the guards as she said, “And since the Royal Theater was shut down by His Imperial Majesty, I trust we both agree that what was done to those musicians was a crime as unforgivable as the massacres of the slaves in Endovier and Calaculla.”
“Pytor was my friend,” Florine whispered, the color leeching from her tan cheeks. “There was no finer conductor, no greater ear. He made my career. He helped me establish all this.” She waved a hand to encompass the dancers, the castle, the prestige she’d acquired. “I miss him.”
There was nothing calculated, nothing cold, when Aelin put a hand over her own heart. “I will miss going to hear him conduct the Stygian Suite every autumn. I will spend the rest of my life knowing that I may never again hear finer music, never again experience a shred of what I felt sitting in that theater while he conducted.”
Madam Florine wrapped her arms around herself. Despite the guards ahead, despite the task that neared with every tick of the clock, it took Aelin a moment to be able to speak again.
But that hadn’t been what made Aelin agree to Arobynn’s plan—to trust Florine.
Two years ago, finally free of Arobynn’s leash but nearly beggared thanks to paying her debts, Aelin had continued to take lessons with Florine not only to keep current with the popular dances for her work but also to keep flexible and fit. Florine had refused to take her money.
Moreover, after each lesson Florine had allowed Aelin to sit at the pianoforte by the window and play until her fingers were sore, since she had been forced to leave her beloved instrument at the Assassins’ Keep. Florine had never mentioned it, never made her feel like it was charity. But it had been a kindness when Aelin had desperately needed one.
Aelin said under her breath, “You’ve memorized the preparations for you and your girls?”
“Those who wish to flee may come on the ship Arobynn hired. I have made space for all, just in case. If they’re stupid enough to stay in Rifthold, then they deserve their fate.”
Aelin hadn’t risked being seen meeting with Florine until now, and Florine hadn’t even dared to pack her belongings for fear of being discovered. She would take only what she could carry with her to the performance—money, jewels—and flee to the docks the moment chaos erupted. There was a good chance she wouldn’t make it out of the palace—and neither would her girls, despite the escape plans provided by Chaol and Brullo and the cooperation of the kinder guards.