suit into the bedroom. “Let’s go hunt ourselves a pretty little demon.”
39
“Dead as dead can be,” Aelin said, toeing the upper half of the Wyrdhound’s remains. Rowan, crouching over one of the bottom bits, growled his confirmation. “Lorcan doesn’t pull punches, does he?” she said, studying the reeking, blood-splattered sewer crossroads. There was hardly anything left of the Valg captains, or the Wyrdhound. In a matter of moments, Lorcan had massacred them all as if they were chattel. Gods above.
“Lorcan probably spent the entire fight imagining each of these creatures was you,” Rowan said, rising from his crouch bearing a clawed arm. “The stone skin seems like armor, but inside it’s just flesh.” He sniffed at it, and snarled in disgust.
“Good. And thank you, Lorcan, for finding that out for us.” She strode to Rowan, taking the heavy arm from him, and waved at the prince with the creature’s stiff fingers.
“Stop that,” he hissed.
She wriggled the demon’s fingers a bit more. “It’d make a good back-scratcher.”
Rowan only frowned.
“Killjoy,” she said, and chucked the arm onto the torso of the Wyrdhound. It landed with a heavy thump and click of stone. “So, Lorcan can bring down a Wyrdhound.” Rowan snorted at the name she’d coined. “And once it’s down, it seems like it stays down. Good to know.”
Rowan eyed her warily. “This trap wasn’t just to send Lorcan a message, was it?”
“These things are the king’s puppets,” she said, “so his Grand Imperial Majesty now has a read on Lorcan’s face and smell, and I suspect he will not be very pleased to have a Fae warrior in his city. Why, I’d bet that Lorcan is currently being pursued by the seven other Wyrdhounds, who no doubt have a score to settle on behalf of their king and their fallen brother.”
Rowan shook his head. “I don’t know whether to throttle you or clap you on the back.”
“I think there’s a long line of people who feel the same way.” She scanned the sewer-turned-charnel-house. “I needed Lorcan’s eyes elsewhere tonight and tomorrow. And I needed to know whether these Wyrdhounds could be killed.”
“Why?” He saw too much.
Slowly, she met his gaze. “Because I’m going to use their beloved sewer entrance to get into the castle—and blow up the clock tower right from under them.”
Rowan let out a low, wicked chuckle. “That’s how you’re going to free magic. Once Lorcan kills the last of the Wyrdhounds, you’re going in.”
“He really should have killed me, considering the world of trouble that’s now hunting him through this city.”
Rowan bared his teeth in a feral smile. “He had it coming.”
Cloaked, armed, and masked, Aelin leaned against the stone wall of the abandoned building while Rowan circled the bound Valg commander in the center of the room.
“You’ve signed your death warrant, you maggots,” the thing inside the guard’s body said.
Aelin clicked her tongue. “You must not be a very good demon to be captured so easily.”
It had been a joke, really. Aelin had picked the smallest patrol led by the mildest of the commanders. She and Rowan had ambushed the patrol just before midnight in a quiet part of the city. She’d barely killed two guards before the rest were dead at Rowan’s hand—and when the commander tried to run, the Fae warrior had caught him within heartbeats.
Rendering him unconscious had been the work of a moment. The hardest part had been dragging his carcass across the slums, into the building, and down into the cellar, where they’d chained him to a chair.
“I’m—not a demon,” the man hissed, as if every word burned him.
Aelin crossed her arms. Rowan, bearing both Goldryn and Damaris, circled the man, a hawk closing in on prey.
“Then what’s the ring for?” she said.
A gasp of breath—human, labored. “To enslave us—corrupt us.”
“And?”
“Come closer, and I might tell you.” His voice changed then, deeper and colder.
“What’s your name?” Rowan asked.
“Your human tongues cannot pronounce our names, or our language,” the demon said.
She mimicked, “Your human tongues cannot pronounce our names. I’ve heard that one before, unfortunately.” Aelin let out a low laugh as the creature inside the man seethed. “What is your name—your real name?”
The man thrashed, a violent jerking motion that made Rowan step closer. She carefully monitored the battle between the two beings inside that body. At last it said, “Stevan.”
“Stevan,” she said. The man’s eyes were clear, fixed on her. “Stevan,” she said again, louder.
“Quiet,” the demon snapped.
“Where are you from, Stevan?”
“Enough of—Melisande.”
“Stevan,” she repeated. It hadn’t worked on the day