trap.
Rowan poked her cheek gently, and pain rippled. “You’re lucky scraping you is all he did. The next time you sneak out to pick a fight with Lorcan, you will tell me beforehand.”
“I will do no such thing. It’s my damn business, and—”
“It’s not just your business, not anymore. You will take me along with you the next time.”
“The next time I sneak out,” she seethed, “if I catch you following me like some overprotective nursemaid, I will—”
“You’ll what?” He stepped up close enough to share breath with her, his fangs flashing.
In the light of the lantern, she could clearly see his eyes—and he could see hers as she silently said, I don’t know what I’ll do, you bastard, but I’ll make your life a living hell for it.
He snarled, and the sound stroked down her skin as she read the unspoken words in his eyes. Stop being stubborn. Is this some attempt to cling to your independence?
And so what if it is? she shot back. Just—let me do these things on my own.
“I can’t promise that,” he said, the dim light caressing his tan skin, the elegant tattoo.
She punched him in the bicep—hurting herself more than him. “Just because you’re older and stronger doesn’t mean you’re entitled to order me around.”
“It’s exactly because of those things that I can do whatever I please.”
She let out a high-pitched sound and went to pinch his side, and he grabbed her hand, squeezing it tightly, dragging her a step closer to him. She tilted her head back to look at him.
For a moment, alone in that warehouse with nothing but the crates keeping them company, she allowed herself to take in his face, those green eyes, the strong jaw.
Immortal. Unyielding. Blooded with power.
“Brute.”
“Brat.”
She loosed a breathy laugh.
“Did you really lure Lorcan into a sewer with one of those creatures?”
“It was such an easy trap that I’m actually disappointed he fell for it.”
Rowan chuckled. “You never stop surprising me.”
“He hurt you. I’m never going to forgive that.”
“Plenty of people have hurt me. If you’re going to go after every one, you’ll have a busy life ahead of you.”
She didn’t smile. “What he said—about me getting old—”
“Don’t. Just—don’t start with that. Go to sleep.”
“What about you?”
He studied the warehouse door. “I wouldn’t put it past Lorcan to return the favor you dealt him tonight. He forgets and forgives even less easily than you do. Especially when someone threatens to cut off his manhood.”
“At least I said it would be a big mistake,” she said with a fiendish grin. “I was tempted to say ‘little.’”
Rowan laughed, his eyes dancing. “Then you definitely would have been dead.”
37
There were men screaming in the dungeons.
He knew because the demon had forced him to take a walk there, past every cell and rack.
He thought he might know some of the prisoners, but he couldn’t remember their names; he could never remember their names when the man on the throne ordered the demon to watch their interrogation. The demon was happy to oblige. Day after day after day.
The king never asked them any questions. Some of the men cried, some screamed, and some stayed silent. Defiant, even. Yesterday, one of them—young, handsome, familiar—had recognized him and begged. He’d begged for mercy, insisted he knew nothing, and wept.
But there was nothing he could do, even as he watched them suffer, even as the chambers filled with the reek of burning flesh and the coppery tang of blood. The demon savored it, growing stronger each day it went down there and breathed in their pain.
He added their suffering to the memories that kept him company, and let the demon take him back to those dungeons of agony and despair the next day, and the next.
38
Aelin didn’t dare to go back to the sewers—not until she was certain Lorcan was out of the area and the Valg weren’t lurking about.
The next night, they were all eating a dinner Aedion had scraped together from whatever was lying around the kitchen when the front door opened and Lysandra breezed in with a chirped hello that had them all releasing the weapons they’d grabbed.
“How do you do that?” Aedion demanded as she paraded into the kitchen.
“What a miserable-looking meal,” was all Lysandra said, peering over Aedion’s shoulder at the spread of bread, pickled vegetables, cold eggs, fruit, dried meat, and leftover breakfast pastries. “Can’t any of you cook?”
Aelin, who’d been swiping grapes off Rowan’s plate, snorted. “Breakfast, it seems, is the only meal any of us