Kingdom of Ash

Had they somehow overlooked the simplest option? For Maeve to have been in Doranelle this entire time, hidden from her subjects?

But that commander had been lying filth. He’d spat in Lorcan’s face before they’d ended it.

The other commander they’d found today, however, after a week of hunting him down at the nearest seaport, had claimed he’d received orders from a distant kingdom they’d searched three weeks ago. In the opposite direction of Doranelle.

Lorcan toed at the dirt.

None of them had felt like speaking since the commander this afternoon had contradicted the first’s claim.

“Doranelle is Maeve’s stronghold,” Elide said at last, her steady voice filling the heavy quiet. “Simple as it is, it would make sense for her to bring Aelin there.”

Whitethorn only stared into the fire. He hadn’t washed the blood from his dark gray jacket.

“It would be impossible, even for Maeve, to keep her hidden in Doranelle,” Lorcan countered. “We would have heard about it by now.”

He wasn’t sure when he’d last spoken to the woman before him.

She hadn’t balked from how he’d broken Maeve’s commanders, though. She’d cringed during the worst of it, yes, but she’d listened to every word Rowan and Lorcan had wrung from them. Lorcan supposed she’d seen worse at Morath—hated that she had. Hated that her monster of an uncle still breathed.

But that hunt would come later. After they found Aelin. Or whatever remained of her.

Elide’s eyes grew cold, so cold, as she said, “Maeve managed to conceal Gavriel and Fenrys from Rowan in Skull’s Bay. And somehow hid and spirited away her entire fleet.”

Lorcan didn’t reply. Elide went on, her gaze unwavering, “Maeve knows Doranelle would be the obvious choice—the choice we’d likely reject because it’s too simple. She anticipated that we’d believe she’d haul Aelin to the farthest reaches of Erilea, rather than right back home.”

“Maeve would have the advantage of an easily summoned army,” Gavriel added, his tattooed throat bobbing. “Which would make rescue difficult.”

Lorcan refrained from telling Gavriel to shut his mouth. He hadn’t failed to notice how often Gavriel went out of his way to help Elide, to talk to her. And yes, some small part of him was grateful for it, since the gods knew she wouldn’t accept any sort of help from him.

Hellas damn him, he’d had to resort to giving his cut-up shirt to Whitethorn and Gavriel to hand to her for her cycle. He’d threatened to skin them alive if they’d said it was his, and Elide, with her human sense of smell, hadn’t scented him on the fabric.

He didn’t know why he bothered. He hadn’t forgotten her words that day on the beach.

I hope you spend the rest of your miserable, immortal life suffering. I hope you spend it alone. I hope you live with regret and guilt in your heart and never find a way to endure it.

Her vow, her curse, whatever it had been, had held true. Every word of it.

He’d broken something. Something precious beyond measure. He’d never cared until now.

Even the severed blood oath, still gaping wide within his soul, didn’t come close to the hole in his chest when he looked at her.

She’d offered him a home in Perranth knowing he’d be a dishonored male. Offered him a home with her.

But it hadn’t been Maeve’s sundering of the oath that had rescinded that offer. It had been a betrayal so great he didn’t know how to fix it.

Where is Aelin? Where is my wife?

Whitethorn’s wife—and his mate. Only this mission of theirs, this endless quest to find her, kept Lorcan from plunging into a pit from which he knew he would not emerge.

Perhaps if they found her, if there was still enough left of Aelin to salvage after Cairn’s ministrations, he’d find a way to live with himself. To endure this … person he’d become. It might take him another five hundred years to do so.

He didn’t let himself consider that Elide would be little more than dust by then. The thought alone was enough to turn the paltry dinner of stale bread and hard cheese in his stomach.

A fool—he was an immortal, stupid fool for starting down this path with her, for forgetting that even if she forgave him, her mortality beckoned.

Lorcan said at last, “It would also make sense for Maeve to go to the Akkadians, as the commander today claimed. Maeve has long maintained ties with that kingdom.” He, Whitethorn, and Gavriel had been to war and back in that sand-blasted territory. He’d never wished to set foot in it again. “Their armies would shield her.”

For it would take an army to keep Whitethorn from reaching his mate.

He turned toward the prince, who gave no indication he’d been listening. Lorcan didn’t want to consider if Whitethorn would soon need to add a tattoo to the other side of his face.

“The commander today was much more forthcoming,” Lorcan went on to the prince he’d fought beside for so many centuries, who had been as cold-hearted a bastard as Lorcan himself until this spring. “You barely threatened him and he sang for us. The one who claimed Maeve was in Doranelle was still sneering by the end.”

“I think she’s in Doranelle,” Elide cut in. “Anneith told me to listen that day. She didn’t the other two times.”

“It’s something to consider, yes,” Lorcan said, and Elide’s eyes sparked with irritation. “I see no reason to believe the gods would be that clear.”

“Says the male who feels the touch of a god, telling him when to run or fight,” Elide snapped.

Lorcan ignored her, that truth. He hadn’t felt Hellas’s touch since the Stone Marshes. As if even the god of death was repulsed by him. “Akkadia’s border is a three-day ride from here. Its capital three days beyond that. Doranelle is over two weeks away, if we travel with little rest.”

And time was not on their side. With the Wyrdkeys, with Erawan, with the war surely unleashing itself back on Elide’s own continent, every delay came at a cost. Not to mention what each day undoubtedly brought upon the Queen of Terrasen.

Elide opened her mouth, but Lorcan cut her off. “And then, to arrive in Maeve’s stronghold exhausted and hungry … We won’t stand a chance. Not to mention that with the veiling she can wield, we might very well walk right past Aelin and never know it.”

Elide’s nostrils flared, but she turned to Rowan. “The call is yours, Prince.”

Not just a prince, not anymore. Consort to the Queen of Terrasen.

At last, Whitethorn lifted his head. As those green eyes settled on him, Lorcan withstood the weight in his gaze, the innate dominance. He’d been waiting for Rowan to claim the vengeance he deserved, waiting for that blow. Hoping for it. It had never come.

“We’ve come this far south,” Rowan said at last, his voice low. “Better to go to Akkadia than risk venturing all the way to Doranelle to find we were wrong.”

And that was that.

Elide only threw a seething glare toward Lorcan and rose, murmuring about seeing to her needs before she went to sleep. Her gait held steady as she crunched through the grass—thanks to the brace Gavriel kept around her ankle.

It should have been his magic helping her. Touching her skin.

Her steps turned distant, near-silent. She usually went farther than necessary to avoid having them hear anything. Lorcan gave her a few minutes before he stalked into the dark after her.

He found Elide already heading back, and she paused atop a little hill, barely more than a hump of dirt in the field. “What do you want.”

Lorcan kept walking, until he was at the base of the hill, and stopped. “Akkadia is the wiser choice.”

“Rowan decided that, too. You must be so pleased.”

She made to stomp past him, but Lorcan stepped into her path. She craned back her neck to see his face, yet he’d never felt smaller. Shorter. “I didn’t push for Akkadia to spite you,” he managed to say.

“I don’t care.”

She tried to edge around him, Lorcan easily keeping ahead of her. “I didn’t …” The words strangled him. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”