“I could sell you to Erawan right now and he would reward me handsomely.”
“Reward you—as if you are a hound bringing back a pheasant to its master.” Dorian laughed, and her eyes flashed. “It was you who just posed this alliance between us, not me. But consider this: Shall you kneel, or shall you rule, Maeve?” He tapped his neck, right over the pale band across it. “I have knelt, and found I have no interest in doing so again. Not for Erawan, or for Aelin, or anyone.” Another shrug. “The woman I love is dead. My kingdom is in pieces. What do I have to lose?” He let some of the old ice, the hollowness in his chest, rise to his face. “I’m willing to play this game. Are you?”
Maeve fell silent again. And slowly, those phantom hands crept into the corners of his mind.
He let her see. See the truth she sought.
He withstood it, that probing touch.
At last, Maeve loosed a breath through her nose. “You came to Morath for a key and will leave with a bride.”
He nearly sagged with relief. “I will leave with both. And quickly.”
“And how do you propose we are to find what we seek?”
Dorian smiled at the Fae Queen. The Valg Queen. “Leave that to me.”
Atop Morath’s highest tower hours later, Dorian peered at the army campfires littering the valley floor, his raven’s feathers ruffled in the frozen wind off the surrounding peaks.
The screams and snarling had quieted, at least. As if even Morath’s dungeon-masters maintained ordinary hours of working. He might have found the idea darkly funny, if he didn’t know what manner of thing was being broken and bred here.
His cousin, Roland, had wound up here. He knew it, though no one had ever confirmed it. Had he survived the transition to Valg prince, or had he merely been a meal for one of the terrors who prowled this place?
He lifted his head, scanning the cloudy sky. The moon was a pale blur behind them, a trickle of light that seemed keen to remain hidden from Morath’s watchful eyes.
A dangerous game. He was playing one hell of a dangerous game.
Did Gavin watch him now, from wherever he rested? Had he learned what manner of monster Dorian had allied himself with?
He didn’t dare to summon the king here. Not with Erawan so close.
Close enough that Dorian might have attacked. Perhaps he’d been a fool not to. Perhaps he’d be a fool to attempt it, as Kaltain had warned, when it might reveal their mission. When Erawan had those collars on hand.
Dorian cast a glance to the adjacent tower, where Maeve slept. A dangerous, dangerous game.
The dark tower beyond hers seemed to throb with power. The council room down the hall from it was still lit, however. And in the hall—motion. People striding past the torches. Hurrying.
Stupid. Utterly stupid, and yet he found himself flapping into the frigid night. Found himself banking, then swooping to a cracked window along the hallway.
He pushed the window open a bit farther with his beak, and listened.
“Months I’ve been here, and now he refuses my counsel?” A tall, thin man stomped down the hall. Away from Erawan’s council room. Toward the tower door at the end of the hall and the blank-faced guards stationed there.
At his side, two shorter men struggled to keep up. One of them said, “Erawan’s motives are mysterious indeed, Lord Vernon. He does nothing without reason. Have faith in him.”
Dorian froze.
Vernon Lochan. Elide’s uncle.
His magic surged, ice cracking over the windowsill.
Dorian tracked the lanky lord while he stormed past, his dark fur cape drooping to the stones. “I have had faith in him beyond what could be expected,” Vernon snapped.
The lord and his lackeys gave the tower door a wide berth as they passed it, turned the corner, and vanished, their voices fading with them.
Dorian surveyed the empty hall. The council room at the far end. The door still ajar.
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t give himself time to reconsider as he crafted his plan. And waited.
Erawan emerged an hour later.
Dorian’s heart thundered through him, but he kept his position in the hall, kept his shoulders straight and hands behind his back. Precisely how he’d appeared to the guards when he’d rounded the corner, having flown off to a quiet hall before shifting and striding here.
The Valg king surveyed him once, and his mouth tightened. “I thought I’d dismissed you for the night, Vernon.”
Dorian bowed his head, willing his breathing steady with each step Erawan made toward him. His magic stirred, recoiling in terror at the creature who approached, but he forced it down deep. To a place where Erawan would not detect it.
As he had not detected Dorian earlier. Perhaps the raw magic in him also erased any traceable scent.
Dorian bowed his head. “I had returned to my chambers, but I realized I had a lingering question, milord.”
He prayed Erawan didn’t notice the different clothes. The sword that he kept half-hidden beneath his cloak. Prayed Erawan decided that Vernon had gone back to his room, changed, and returned. And prayed that he spoke enough like the Lord of Perranth to be convincing.
A sniveling, groveling man—the sort who’d sell his own niece to a demon king.
“What is it.” Erawan stalked down the hall to his tower, a nightmare wrapped in a beautiful body.
Strike him now. Kill him.
And yet Dorian knew he hadn’t come here for that. Not at all.
He kept his head down, voice low. “Why?”
Erawan slid golden, glowing eyes toward him. Manon’s eyes. “Why what?”
“You might have made yourself lord of a dozen other territories, and yet you graced us with this one. I have long wondered why.”
Erawan’s eyes narrowed to slits, and Dorian kept his face the portrait of groveling curiosity. Had Vernon asked this before?
A stupid gamble. If Erawan noticed the sword at his side—
“My brothers and I planned to conquer this world, to add it to the trove that we’d already taken.” Erawan’s golden hair danced with the light of the torches as he walked the long hall. Dorian had a feeling that when they reached the tower at the far end, the conversation would be through. “We arrived at this one, encountered a surprising amount of resistance, and they were banished back. I could do nothing less while trapped here than to repay this world for the blow they dealt us. So I will make this world into a mirror of our homeland—to honor my brothers, and to prepare it for their return.”
Dorian sifted through countless lessons on the royal houses of their lands and said, “I, too, know what it is to have a brotherly rivalry.” He gave the king a simpering smile.
“You killed yours,” Erawan said, bored already. “I love my brothers dearly.”
The idea was laughable.
Half the hallway remained until the tower door. “Will you truly decimate this world, then? All who dwell in it?”
“Those who do not kneel.”
Maeve, at least, wished to preserve it. To rule, but to preserve it.
“Would they receive collars and rings, or a clean death?”
Erawan surveyed him sidelong. “You have never wondered for the sake of your people. Not even the sake of your niece, failure that she was.”
Dorian made himself cringe, and bowed his head. “I apologize again for that, milord. She is a clever girl.”
“So clever, it seems, that one confrontation with you and you were scared away.”
Dorian again bowed his head. “I will go hunt for her, if that is what you wish.”
“I am aware that she no longer has what I seek, and it is now lost to me. A loss you brought about.” The Wyrdkey Elide had carried, given to her by Kaltain.
Dorian wondered if Vernon had indeed been lying low for months now—avoiding this conversation. He cringed again. “Tell me how to rectify it, milord, and it will be done.”
Erawan halted, and Dorian’s mouth went dry. His magic coiled within him, bracing.
But he made himself look the king in the face. Meet the eyes of the creature who had brought about so much suffering.
“Your bloodline proved useless to me, Vernon,” Erawan said a shade too softly. “Shall I find another use for you here at Morath?”