She’d started at the top of the Keep—with the aeries and wyverns and witches. Then she’d descended, floor by floor. It had taken them these two weeks to work their way down to the sublevels, and their companions had no idea that while the young, married couple snuck off for more “firewood,” whispering sweet nothings was the last thing on their minds.
When the caravan stopped that night, Elide aimed for a copse of trees in the heart of the field to see what could be used at their large campfire. Lorcan trailed at her side, as quiet as the hissing grasses around them. The nickering of the horses and clamor of their companions readying for the evening meal faded behind, and Elide frowned as her boot sank deep into a pocket of mud. She yanked on it, ankle barking at bearing her weight, and gritted her teeth until—
Lorcan’s magic pushed against her leg, an invisible hand freeing her boot, and she tumbled into him. His arm and side were as hard and unyielding as the magic he’d used, and she rebounded away, tall grass crunching beneath her. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Lorcan stalked ahead and said without looking back, “We finished at the three dungeons and their entrances yesterday night. Tell me about what’s inside them.”
Her mouth went a bit dry as she recalled the cell she’d squatted in, the darkness and tight air…
“I don’t know what’s inside,” she lied, following him. “Suffering people, no doubt.”
Lorcan stooped, his dark head disappearing beneath a wave of grass. When he emerged, two sticks were gripped in his massive hands. He snapped them with little effort. “You described everything else with no problem. Yet your scent changed just now. Why?”
She strode past him, bending over and over to collect whatever scattered wood she could find. “They did horrible things down there,” she said over a shoulder. “You could sometimes hear people screaming.” She prayed Terrasen would be better. It had to be.
“Who did they keep down there? Enemy soldiers?” Potential allies, no doubt, for whatever he planned to do.
“Whoever they wanted to torture.” The hands of those guards, their sneers— “I assume you’re going to leave as soon as I finish describing the last pit of Morath?” She plucked up stick after stick, ankle objecting with each shift in her balance.
“Is there a problem if I do? That was our bargain. I’ve stayed longer than I intended.”
She turned, finding him with an armful of larger sticks. He unceremoniously dumped them into the small pile in her arms and thumbed free the hatchet at his side before prowling to the curving, fallen branch behind him. “So, am I just to play the abandoned wife, then?”
“You’re already playing the oracle, so what difference does another role make?” Lorcan brought his hatchet down upon the branch with a solid thwack! The blade sank unnervingly deep; wood groaned. “Describe the dungeons.”
It was only fair, and it had been their bargain, after all: his protection and help to get her out of harm’s way, in exchange for what she knew. And he’d been complacent in all the lies she’d spun to their company—quiet, but he’d gone along with it.
“The dungeons are gone,” Elide managed to say. “Or most of them should be. Along with the catacombs.”
Thwack, thwack, thwack. Lorcan severed the branch, the wood yielding with a splintering cry. He set to cutting another section apart. “Taken out in that blast?” He lifted his axe, the muscles in his powerful back shifting beneath his dark shirt, but paused. “You said you were near the courtyard when the blast happened—how do you know the dungeons are gone?”
Fine. She had lied about it. But … “The explosion came from the catacombs and took out some of the towers. One would assume the dungeons would be in its path, too.”
“I don’t make plans based on assumptions.” He resumed hacking apart the branch, and Elide rolled her eyes at his back. “Tell me the layout of the northern dungeon.”
Elide turned toward the sinking sun staining the fields with orange and gold beyond them. “Figure it out yourself.”
The thud of metal on wood halted. Even the wind in the grasses died down.
But she had endured death and despair and terror, and she had told him enough—turned over every horrible stone, looked around every dark corner at Morath for him. His rudeness, his arrogance … He could go to hell.
She had barely set one foot into the swaying grasses when Lorcan was before her, no more than a lethal shadow himself. Even the sun seemed to avoid the broad planes of his tan face, though the wind dared ruffle the silken black strands of his hair across it.
“We have a bargain, girl.”
Elide met that depthless gaze. “You did not specify when I had to tell you. So I may take as much time as I wish to recall details, if you desire to wring every last one of them from me.”
His teeth flashed. “Do not toy with me.”
“Or what?” She stepped around him as if he were no more than a rock in a stream. Of course, walking with temper was a bit difficult when every other step was limping, but she kept her chin high. “Kill me, hurt me, and you’ll still be out of answers.”
Faster than she could see, his arm lashed out—gripping her by the elbow. “Marion,” he growled.
That name. She looked up at his harsh, wild face—a face born in a different age, a different world. “Take your hand off me.”
Lorcan, to her surprise, did so immediately.
But his face did not change—not a flicker—as he said, “You will tell me what I wish to know—”
The thing in her pocket began thrumming and beating, a phantom heartbeat in her bones.
Lorcan yielded a step, his nostrils flaring delicately. As if he could sense that stone awakening. “What are you,” he said quietly.
“I am nothing,” she said, voice hollow. Maybe once she found Aelin and Aedion, she’d find some purpose, some way to be of use to the world. For now, she was a messenger, a courier of this stone—to Celaena Sardothien. However Elide might find one person in such an endless, vast world. She had to get north—and quickly.
“Why do you go to Aelin Galathynius?”
The question was too tense to be casual. No, every inch of Lorcan’s body seemed restrained. Leashed rage and predatory instincts.
“You know the queen,” she breathed.
He blinked. Not in surprise, but to buy himself time.
He did know—and he was considering what to tell her, how to tell her—
“Celaena Sardothien is in the queen’s service,” he said. “Your two paths are one. Find one and you’ll find the other.”
He paused, waiting.
Would this be her life, then? Wretched people, always looking out for themselves, every kindness coming at a cost? Would her own queen at least gaze at her with warmth in her eyes? Would Aelin even remember her?
“Marion,” he said again—the word laced with a growl.
Her mother’s name. Her mother—and her father. The last people who had looked at her with true affection. Even Finnula, all those years locked in that tower, had always watched her with some mixture of pity and fear.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been held. Or comforted. Or smiled at with any genuine love for who she was.
Words were suddenly hard, the energy to dredge up a lie or retort too much to bother with. So Elide ignored Lorcan’s command and headed back toward the cluster of painted wagons.
Manon had come for her, she reminded herself with each step. Manon, and Asterin, and Sorrel. But even they had left her alone in the woods.
Pity, she reminded herself—self-pity would do her no good. Not with so many miles between her and whatever shred of a future she stood a chance of finding. But even when she arrived, handed over her burden, and found Aelin … what could she offer? She couldn’t even read, gods above. The mere thought of explaining that to Aelin, to anyone—
She’d think on it later. She’d wash the queen’s clothes if she had to. At least she didn’t need to be literate for that.
Elide didn’t hear Lorcan this time as he approached, arms laden with massive logs.
“You will tell me what you know,” he said through his teeth. She almost sighed, but he added, “Once you are … better.”
She supposed that, to him, sorrow and despair would be some sort of sickness.
“Fine.”
“Fine,” he said right back.
Their companions were smiling when she and Lorcan returned. They had found dry ground on the other side of the wagons—solid enough for tents.
Elide spied the one that had been raised for her and Lorcan and wished it would rain.
Lorcan had trained enough warriors to know when not to push. He’d tortured enough enemies to know when they were one slice or snap away from breaking in ways that would make them useless.
So Marion, when her scent had changed, when he’d felt even the strange, otherworldly power hidden in her blood shift to sorrow … worse, to hopelessness…
He’d wanted to tell her not to bother with hope anyway.
But she was barely into womanhood. Perhaps hope, foolish as it was, had gotten her out of Morath. At least her cleverness had, lies and all.
He’d dealt with enough people, killed and bedded and fought alongside enough people, to know Marion wasn’t wicked, or conniving, or wholly selfish. He wished she was, because it’d make it easier—make his task so much easier.
But if she didn’t tell him about Morath, if he broke her from pushing too much … He needed every advantage when he slipped into that Keep. And when he slipped out again.
She’d done it once. Perhaps Marion was the only person alive who had managed to escape.
He was about to explain that to her when he saw what she was staring at—the tent.
Their tent.
Ombriel came forward, throwing her usual wary glance his way, and slyly informed Elide they’d finally have a night alone together.
Arms full of logs, Lorcan could only watch as that pale face of sorrow and despair transformed into youth and mischief, into blushing anticipation, as easily as if Marion had held up a mask. She even gave him a flirting glance before beaming at Ombriel and rushing to dump her armful of sticks and twigs into the pit they’d cleared for the nightly fire.
He possessed the good sense to at least smile at the woman who was supposed to be his wife, but by the time he’d followed to drop his own burden into the fire pit, she’d stalked off for the tent set a good distance away from the others.
It was small, he realized with no tiny amount of horror. Probably meant for the sword-thrower who’d last used it. Marion’s slim figure slipped through the white canvas flaps with hardly a ripple. Lorcan just frowned a bit before ducking inside.
And remained ducking slightly. His head would go straight through the canvas if he stood to his full height. Woven mats atop gathered rushes covered the stuffy interior, and Marion stood on the other side of the tent, cringing at the sleeping roll on the makeshift floor.
The tent probably had enough room for a proper bed and table, if need be, but unless they were camping longer than a night, he doubted they’d get any of those things.
“I’ll sleep on the ground,” he offered blandly. “You take the roll.”
“What if someone comes in?”
“Then you’ll say we got into a fight.”
“Every night?” Marion pivoted, her rich eyes meeting his. The cold, weary face was back.
Lorcan considered her words. “If someone walks into our tent without permission tonight, no one here will make the same mistake again.”
He’d punished men in his war camps for less.
But her eyes remained weary—wholly unimpressed and unmoved. “Fine,” she said again.
Too close—far too close to the edge of snapping entirely. “I could find some buckets, heat water, and you could bathe in here, if you want. I’ll stand watch outside.”
Creature comforts—to get her to trust him, be grateful to him, to want to help him. To ease that dangerous brittleness.