convincing them that there had been three queens, not two. Including the minds of Mab and Mora, the two sister-queens who had ruled Doranelle. Including Brannon himself.
“The spiders claimed,” Nesryn went on, “that even Brannon didn’t know. Even now, in the Afterworld, he doesn’t know. That was how deep Maeve’s powers went into his mind, into all their minds. She made herself their true queen.”
The words, the truth, pelted Aelin, one after another.
Elide’s face was white as death. “But she fears the healers.” A nod toward Yrene. “She keeps that owl, you said—an enslaved Fae healer—should the Valg ever discover her.”
For that was the other piece of it. The other thing Nesryn had revealed, Chaol and Yrene adding in their own accounts.
The Valg were parasites. And Yrene could cure their human hosts of them. Had done so for Princess Duva. And might be able to do with so many others enslaved with rings or collars.
But what had infested Duva … A Valg princess.
Aelin leaned back into her chair, her head resting against the solid wall of Rowan’s body. His hands shook against her shoulders. Shook as he seemed to realize what, exactly, had ripped into his mind. Where Maeve’s power had come from that allowed her to do so. Why she remained deathless and ageless, and had outlasted any other. Why Maeve’s power was darkness.
“It is also why she fears fire,” Sartaq said, jerking his chin to Aelin. “Why she fears you so.”
And why she’d wanted to break her. To be just like that enslaved healer bound in owl form at her side.
“I thought—I managed to cut her once,” Aelin said at last. That quiet, ancient darkness pushed in, dragging her down, down, down—“I saw her blood flow black. Then it changed to red.” She blew out a breath, pulling out of the darkness, the silence that wanted to devour her whole. Made herself straighten. Peer at Fenrys. “You said that her blood tasted ordinary to you when you swore the oath.”
The white wolf shifted back into his Fae body. His bronze skin was ashen, his dark eyes swimming with dread. “It did.”
Rowan growled, “It didn’t taste any different to me, either.”
“A glamour—like the form she maintains,” Gavriel mused.
Nesryn nodded. “From what the spiders said, it seems entirely possible that she would be able to convince you that her blood looked and tasted like Fae blood.”
Fenrys made a sound like he was going to be sick. Aelin was inclined to do the same.
And from far away—a memory-that-was-not-a-memory stirred. Of summer nights spent in a forest glen, Maeve instructing her. Telling her a story about a queen who walked between worlds.
Who had not been content in the realm in which she’d been born, and had found a way to leave it, using the lost knowledge of ancient wayfarers. World-walkers.
Maeve had told her. Perhaps a skewed, biased tale, but she’d told her. Why? Why do it at all? Some way to win her—or to make her hesitate, should it ever come to this?
“But Maeve hates the Valg kings,” Elide said, and even from the silent, drifting place to which Aelin had gone, she could see the razor-sharp mind churning behind Elide’s eyes. “She’s hidden for this long. Surely she wouldn’t ally with them.”
“She ran at the chance to get hold of a Valg collar,” Fenrys said darkly. “Seemed convinced that she could control the prince inside it.”
Not only through Maeve’s power, but because she was a demon queen.
Aelin forced herself to take another breath. Another. Her fingers curled, gripping an invisible weapon.
Lorcan had not uttered a word. Had done nothing but stand there, pale and silent. As if he’d stopped being in his body, too.
“We don’t know her plans,” Nesryn said. “The kharankui have not seen her for millennia, and only hear whisperings carried by lesser spiders. But they still worship her, and wait for her return.”
Chaol met Aelin’s stare, his gaze questioning.
Aelin said quietly, “I was Maeve’s prisoner for two months.”
Utter silence in the tent. Then she explained—all of it. Why she was not in Terrasen, who now fought there, where Dorian and Manon had gone.
Aelin swallowed as she finished, leaning into Rowan’s touch. “Maeve wished me to reveal the location of the two Wyrdkeys. Wanted me to hand them over, but I managed to get them away before she took me. To Doranelle. She wanted to break me to her will. To use me to conquer the world, I thought. But it perhaps now seems she wanted to use me