Peering deep into the workings of the cosmos. Her own world became a cage. She grew tired of her husband’s warring, his casual cruelty. And when he went away to war once again, the queen gathered her closest handmaidens, opened a door to a new world, and left the one she’d been born into.”
“She left?” Aelin blurted. “She—she just left her own world? Permanently?”
“It had never been her world, not really. She had been born to rule others.”
“Where did she go?”
That smile grew a bit. “To a fair, lovely world. Where there was no war, no darkness. Not like that in which she had been born. She was made a queen there, too. Was able to hide herself within a new body so that none could know what she was beneath, so that even her own husband would not recognize her.”
“Did he ever find her again?”
“No, though he looked. Found out all she’d learned, and taught it to himself and his brothers. They tore apart world after world to find her. And when they arrived at the world where she had made her new home, they did not know her. Even as they went to war, she did not reveal herself. She won, and two of the kings, her husband included, were banished back to their own world. The third remained trapped, his power nearly broken. He crawled off into the depths of the earth, and the victorious queen spent her long, long existence preparing for his return, preparing her people for it. For the three kings had gone beyond her methods of world-walking. They had found a way to permanently open a gate between worlds, and had made three keys to do so. To wield those keys was to control all worlds, to have the power of eternity in the palm of your hand. She wished to find them, only so she might possess the strength to banish any enemies, banish her husband’s youngest brother back to his realm. To protect her new, lovely world. It was all she ever wanted: to dwell in peace, without the shadow of her past hunting her.”
From far away, that ghost of memory pushed. As if she’d forgotten to douse a flame left burning in her room. “And did the queen find the keys?”
Maeve’s smile turned sad. “Do you think she did, Aelin?”
Aelin considered. So many of their chats, their lessons in this glen, held deeper puzzles, questions for her to work through, to help her when she one day took her throne, Rowan at her side.
As if she’d summoned him, the pine-and-snow scent of her mate filled the clearing. A rustle of wings, and there he was, perched in hawk form on one of the towering oaks. Her warrior-prince.
She smiled toward him, as she had for weeks now, when he’d come to escort her back to her rooms in the river palace. It was during those walks from forest to mist-shrouded city that she had come to know him, love him. More than she had ever loved anything.
Aelin again faced her aunt. “The queen was clever, and ambitious. I would think she could do anything, even find the keys.”
“So you would believe. And yet they eluded her.”
“Where did they go?”
Maeve’s dark stare unwaveringly held hers. “Where do you think they went?”
Aelin opened her mouth. “I think—”
She blinked. Paused.
Maeve’s smile returned, soft and kind. As her aunt had been to her from the start. “Where do you think the keys are, Aelin?”
She opened her mouth once more. And again halted.
Like an invisible chain yanked her back. Silenced her.
Chain—a chain. She glanced down at her hands, her wrists. As if expecting them to be there.
She had never felt a shackle’s bite in her life. And yet she stared at the empty place on her wrist where she could have sworn there was a scar. Only smooth, sun-kissed skin remained.
“If this world were at risk, if those three terrible kings threatened to destroy it, where would you go to find the keys?”
Aelin looked up at her aunt.
Another world. There was another world. Like a fragment of a dream, there was another world, and in it, she had a wrist with a scar on it. Had scars all over.
And her mate, perched overhead … He had a tattoo down his face and neck and arm in that world. A sad story—his tattoo told a sad, awful story. About loss. Loss caused by a dark queen—
“Where are the keys hidden, Aelin?”
That placid, loving smile remained on Maeve’s