Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass) (74 page)

But what would she even say to Aelin?
Hello? How do you do? Please don’t burn me? Sorry I’m so filthy and lamed?

A gentle hand touched her shoulder.
Pay attention. Look around.

Elide glanced up from where she’d been wincing at her dirty clothes. Lorcan was perhaps twenty feet ahead, the others mere figures near the horizon.

The invisible hand on her shoulder squeezed.
Observe. See.

See what? Ash and ice rained to the right, ruins rose up on the left, nothing but open marshes spreading ahead. But Elide halted, scanning the world around her.

Something was wrong. Something made any creatures that had survived the maelstrom of magic go silent again. The burnt grasses rustled and sighed.

Lorcan kept walking, his back stiff, though he hadn’t reached for his weapons.

See see see.

See
what
? She turned in place but found nothing. She opened her mouth to call to Lorcan.

Golden eyes flickered in the brush not thirty paces ahead.

Enormous golden eyes, fixed on Lorcan as he strode mere feet away. A mountain lion, ready to pounce, to shred flesh and sever bone—

No
—

The beast exploded from the burnt grasses.

Elide screamed Lorcan’s name.

He whirled, but not to the lion. Toward her, that furious face shooting toward
her
—

But she was running, leg shrieking in pain, as Lorcan finally sensed the attack about to swoop down on him.

The mountain lion reached him, those thick claws going low while its teeth went right for his throat.

Lorcan drew his hunting knife, so fast it was only the glint of gray light on steel.

Beast and Fae male went down, right into the muddy water.

Elide hurtled for him, a wordless scream breaking from her. Not
a normal mountain lion. Not even close. Not with the way it knew Lorcan’s every move as they rolled through the water, as they dodged and swiped and lunged, blood spurting, magic clashing, shield against shield—

Then the wolf attacked.

A massive white wolf, sprinting out of nowhere, wild with rage and all of it focused on Lorcan.

Lorcan broke from the lion, blood streaming down his arm, his leg, panting. But the wolf had vanished into
nothing
. Where was it, where was it—

It appeared out of thin air, as if it had stepped through an invisible bridge, ten feet from Lorcan.

Not an attack. An execution.

Elide cleared a gap between two mounds of land, icy grass slicing into her palms, something crunching in her leg—

The wolf leaped for Lorcan’s vulnerable back, eyes glazed with bloodlust, teeth shining.

Elide surged up the little hill, time spinning out beneath her.

No no no no no no.

Vicious white fangs neared Lorcan’s spine.

Lorcan heard her then, heard the shuddering sob as she threw herself into him.

His dark eyes flared in what looked like terror as she slammed into his unprotected back.

As he noticed the death blow not coming from the lion at his front, but the wolf whose jaws closed around her arm instead of Lorcan’s neck.

She could have sworn the wolf’s eyes flared in horror as it tried to pull back the physical blow, as a dark, hard shield slammed into her, stealing her breath with its unflinching solidity—

Blood and pain and bone and grass and bellowing fury.

The world tilted as she and Lorcan went down, her body thrown over his, the wolf’s jaws wrenching out of her arm.

She curled over Lorcan, waiting for the wolf and mountain lion to end it, to take her neck in their jaws and crunch down.

No attack came. Silence cleaved the world.

Lorcan flipped her over, his breathing ragged, his face bloody and pale as he took in her face, her arm.
“ElideElideElide—”

She couldn’t draw breath, couldn’t see around the sensation that her arm was mere shredded flesh and splintered bone—

Lorcan grabbed her face before she could look and snapped, “Why did you do that?
Why?
” He didn’t wait for an answer. He lifted his head, his snarl so vicious it echoed in her bones, made the pain in her arm surge violently enough that she whimpered.

He growled to the lion and the wolf, his shield a swirling, obsidian wind around them, “You’re dead. You’re both
dead
—”

Elide shifted her head enough to see the white wolf staring at them. At Lorcan. See the wolf change in a flash of light into the most beautiful man she’d ever beheld. His golden-brown face tightened as he took in her arm. Her arm, her arm—

“Lorcan, we were ordered,” said an unfamiliar, gentle male voice from where the lion, too, had transformed into a Fae male.

“Damn your orders to hell, you stupid bastard—”

The wolf-warrior hissed, chest heaving, “We can’t fight against the command much longer, Lorcan—”

“Put the shield down,” the calmer one said. “I can heal the girl. Let her get away.”

“I’ll kill you both,” Lorcan swore. “I’ll
kill you
—”

Elide looked at her arm.

There was a piece missing. From her forearm. There was blood gushing into the burnt remnants of grass. White bone jutting out—

Maybe she started screaming or sobbing or silently shaking.

“
Don’t look
,” Lorcan snapped, squeezing her face again to draw her eyes to his own. His face was lined with such wrath she barely recognized it, but he made no move against the males.

His power was drained. He’d nearly wiped it out shielding against Aelin’s flame and whoever had borne that other magic on the field. This shield … this was all Lorcan had left.

And if he lowered it so they could heal her … they’d kill him. He had warned them of the attack, and they’d still kill him.

Aelin—where was
Aelin
—

The world was blackening at the edges, her body begging to submit rather than endure the pain that reordered everything in her life.

Lorcan tensed as if sensing the oblivion that threatened. “You heal her,” he said to the gentle-eyed male, “and then we continue—”

“No,” she got out. Not for this, not for
her
—

Lorcan’s onyx eyes were unreadable as he scanned her face. And then he said quietly, “I wanted to go to Perranth with you.”

Lorcan dropped the shield.

It was not a hard choice. And it did not frighten him. Not nearly as much as the fatal wound in her arm did.

Fenrys had hit an artery. She’d bleed out in minutes.

Lorcan had been born from and gifted with darkness. Returning to it was not a difficult task.

But letting that glimmering, lovely light before him die out … In his ancient, bitter bones, he could not accept it.

She had been forgotten—by everyone and everything. And still she had hoped. And still she had been kind to him.

And still she had offered him a glimpse of peace in the time he’d known her.

She had offered him a home.

He knew Fenrys wouldn’t be able to fight Maeve’s kill order. Knew Gavriel would stay true to his word and heal her, but Fenrys couldn’t hold out against the blood oath’s command.

He knew the bastard would regret it. Knew the wolf had been horrified the moment Elide had jumped between them.

Lorcan let go of his shield, praying she wouldn’t watch when the bloodletting started. When he and Fenrys went claw-to-claw and fang-to-fang. He’d last against the warrior. Until Gavriel joined back in.

The shield vanished, and Gavriel was instantly kneeling, reaching with his broad hands for her arm. Pain paralyzed her, but she tried telling Lorcan to run, to put the shield back up—

Lorcan stood, shutting out her pleading.

He faced Fenrys. The warrior was trembling with restraint, his hands clenched at his sides to keep from going for any of his blades.

Elide was still sobbing, still begging him.

Fenrys’s taut features were lined with regret.

Lorcan just smiled at the warrior.

It snapped Fenrys’s leash.

His sentinel leaped for him, sword out, and Lorcan lifted his own, already knowing the move Fenrys planned to use. He’d trained him how to do it. And he knew the guard Fenrys let drop on his left side, just for a heartbeat, exposing his neck—

Fenrys landed before him, swiping low and dodging right.

Lorcan angled his blade for that vulnerable neck.

They were both blown back by an icy, unbreakable wind. Whatever was left of it after the battle.

Fenrys was up, lost to the blood fury, but the wind slammed into him. Again. Again. Holding him down. Lorcan struggled against it, but the shield Whitethorn had thrown over them, the raw power he now used to keep them pinned, was too strong when his own magic was depleted.

Boots crunched on the burnt grass. Sprawled on the bank of a little
hill, Lorcan lifted his head. Whitethorn stood between him and Fenrys, the prince’s eyes glazed with wrath.

Rowan surveyed Gavriel and Elide, the latter still weeping, still begging for it to stop. But her arm …

A scratch marred that moon-white arm, but Gavriel’s rough battlefield healing had filled the holes, the missing flesh and broken bones. He must have used all his magic to—

Gavriel swayed ever so slightly.

Whitethorn’s voice was like gravel. “This ends now. You two don’t touch them. They’re under the protection of Aelin Galathynius. If you harm them, it will be considered an act of war.”

Specific, ancient words, the only way a blood order could be detained. Not overridden—just delayed for a little while. To buy them all time.

Fenrys panted, but relief flickered in his eyes. Gavriel sagged a bit.

Elide’s dark eyes were still glassy with pain, the smattering of freckles on her cheeks stark against the unnatural whiteness of her skin.

Whitethorn said to Fenrys and Gavriel, “Are we clear on what the hell will happen if you step out of line?”

To Lorcan’s eternal shock, they lowered their heads and said, “Yes, Prince.”

Rowan let the shields drop, and then Lorcan was hurtling to Elide, who struggled to sit up, gaping at her nearly healed arm. Gavriel, wisely, backed away. Lorcan examined her arm, her face, needing to touch her, smell her—

He didn’t notice that the light footsteps in the grass didn’t belong to his former companions.

But he knew the female voice that said from behind him, “What the rutting hell is going on?”

Elide had no words to express to Lorcan what she’d felt in that moment he’d let the shield drop. What she’d felt when the silver-haired, tattooed warrior-prince had halted that fatal bloodshed.

But she had no breath in her body when she looked over Lorcan’s broad shoulder and beheld the golden-haired woman striding toward them.

Young, and yet her face … It was an ancient face, wary and cunning and limned with power. Beautiful, with the sun-kissed skin, the vibrant turquoise eyes. Turquoise eyes, with a core of gold around the pupil.

Ashryver eyes.

The same as the golden-haired, handsome man who came up beside her, muscled body tense as he assessed whether he’d need to spill blood, a bow dangling from his hand.

Two sides of the same golden coin.

Aelin. Aedion.

They were both staring at her with those Ashryver eyes.

Aelin blinked. And her golden face crumpled as she said, “Are you Elide?”

It was all Elide could do to nod. Lorcan was taut as a bowstring, his body still half angled over her.

Aelin strode closer, eyes never leaving Elide’s face. Young—she felt so young compared to the woman who approached. There were scars all over Aelin’s hands, along her neck, around her wrists … where shackles had been.

Aelin slid to her knees not a foot away, and it occurred to Elide that she should be bowing, head to the dirt—

“You look … so much like your mother,” Aelin said, her voice cracking. Aedion silently knelt, putting a broad hand on Aelin’s shoulder.

Her mother, who had gone down swinging, who had died fighting so this woman could live—

“I’m sorry,” Aelin said, shoulders curving inward, head dropping low as tears slid down her flushed cheeks. “I’m so sorry.” How many years had those words been locked up?