The reek grew, overpowering the lingering smoke from the glass factories around them, worsening as Aelin dodged the demon’s blow and swiped low. The man’s stomach opened up like a festering wound, and black blood and the gods knew what else sloshed onto the street.
Disgusting. Almost as bad as what wafted from the sewer grate at the other end of the alley—already open. Already oozing that too-familiar darkness.
The rest of the patrol closed in. Her wrath became a song in her blood as she ended them.
When blood and rain lay in puddles on the broken cobblestones, when Aelin stood in a field of fallen men, she began slicing.
Head after head tumbled away.
Then she leaned against the wall, waiting. Counting.
They did not rise.
Aelin stalked from the alley, kicking shut the sewer grate, and vanished into the rainy night.
Dawn broke, the day clear and warm. Aelin had been up half the night scouring the books Chaol had saved, including her old friend The Walking Dead.
Reciting what she’d learned in the quiet of her apartment, Aelin donned the clothes Arobynn had sent over, checking and rechecking that there were no surprises and everything was where she needed it to be. She let each step, each reminder of her plan anchor her, keep her from dwelling too long on what would come when the festivities began.
And then she went to save her cousin.
15
Aedion Ashryver was ready to die.
Against his will, he’d recovered over the past two days, the fever breaking after sunset last night. He was strong enough to walk—albeit slowly—as they escorted him to the dungeon’s washroom, where they chained him down to wash and scrub him, and even risked shaving him, despite his best efforts to slit his own throat on the razor.
It appeared that they wanted him presentable for the court when they cut off his head with his own blade, the Sword of Orynth.
After cleaning his wounds, they shoved him into pants and a loose white shirt, yanked back his hair, and dragged him up the stairs. Guards with dark uniforms flanked him three deep on both sides, four in front and behind, and every door and exit had one of the bastards posted by it.
He was too drained from dressing to provoke them into putting a sword through him, so he let them lead him through the towering doors into the ballroom. Red and gold banners hung from the rafters, springtime blossoms covered every table, and an archway of hothouse roses had been crafted over the dais from which the royal family would watch the festivities before his execution. The windows and doors beyond the platform where he would be killed opened onto one of the gardens, a guard stationed every other foot, others positioned in the garden itself. If the king wanted to set a trap for Aelin, he certainly hadn’t bothered to be very subtle about it.
It was civilized of them, Aedion realized as he was shoved up the wooden steps of the platform, to give him a stool to sit on. At least he wouldn’t have to lounge on the floor like a dog while he watched them all pretend that they weren’t here just to see his head roll. And a stool, he realized with grim satisfaction, would make a good-enough weapon when the time came.
So Aedion let them chain him in the shackles anchored to the floor of the platform. Let them put the Sword of Orynth on display a few feet behind him, its scarred bone pommel glinting in the morning light.
It was just a matter of finding the right moment to meet the end of his own choosing.
16
The demon made him sit on a dais, on a throne beside a crowned woman who had not noticed that the thing using his mouth wasn’t the person who had been born of her flesh. To his other side lounged the man who controlled the demon inside him. And in front of him, the ballroom was full of tittering nobility who could not see that he was still in here, still screaming.
The demon had broken a little farther through the barrier today, and it now looked through his eyes with an ancient, glittering malice. It was starved for this world.
Perhaps the world deserved to be devoured by the thing.
Maybe it was that traitorous thought alone that had caused such a hole to rip in the barrier between them. Maybe it was winning. Maybe it had already won.
So he was forced to sit on that throne, and speak with words that were not his own, and share his eyes with something from another realm, who gazed at his sunny world with ravenous, eternal hunger.
The costume itched like hell. The paint all over her didn’t help.
Most of the important guests had arrived in the days preceding the party, but those who dwelled inside the city or in the outlying foothills now formed a glittering line stretching through the massive front doors. Guards were posted there, checking invitations, asking questions, peering into faces none too keen to be interrogated. The entertainers, vendors, and help, however, were ordered to use one of the side entrances.
That was where Aelin had found Madam Florine and her troupe of dancers, clad in costumes of black tulle and silk and lace, like liquid night in the midmorning sun.
Shoulders back, core tight, arms loose at her sides, Aelin eased into the middle of the flock. With her hair dyed a ruddy shade of brown and her face coated in the heavy cosmetics the dancers all wore, she blended in well enough that none of the others looked her way.