ever hoped for.”
She couldn’t stop the tears that began slipping down her face.
“Whatever you had to do to survive, whatever you did from spite or rage or selfishness … I don’t give a damn. You’re here—and you’re perfect. You always were, and you always will be.”
She hadn’t realized how much she needed to hear that.
She flung her arms around him, careful of his injuries, and squeezed him as tightly as she dared. He wrapped an arm around her, the other bracing them, and buried his face in her neck.
“I missed you,” she whispered onto him, breathing in his scent—that male warrior’s scent she was just learning, remembering. “Every day, I missed you.”
Her skin grew damp beneath his face. “Never again,” he promised.
It was honestly no surprise that after Aelin had trashed the Vaults, a new warren of sin and debauchery had immediately sprung up in the slums.
The owners weren’t even trying to pretend it wasn’t a complete imitation of the original—not with a name like the Pits. But while its predecessor had at least provided a tavern-like atmosphere, the Pits didn’t bother. In an underground chamber hewn from rough stone, you paid for your alcohol with your cover charge—and if you wanted to drink, you had to brave the casks in the back and serve yourself. Aelin found herself somewhat inclined to like the owners: they operated by a different set of rules.
But some things remained the same.
The floors were slick and reeking of ale and piss and worse, but Aelin had anticipated that. What she hadn’t expected, exactly, was the deafening noise. The rock walls and close quarters magnified the wild cheers from the fighting pits the place had been named after, where onlookers were betting on the brawls within.
Brawls like the one she was about to participate in.
Beside her, Chaol, cloaked and masked, shifted on his feet. “This is a terrible idea,” he murmured.
“You said you couldn’t find the Valg nests, anyway,” she said with equal quiet, tucking a loose strand of her hair—dyed red once more—back under her hood. “Well, here are some lovely commanders and minions, just waiting for you to track them home. Consider it Arobynn’s form of an apology.” Because he knew that she would bring Chaol with her tonight. She’d guessed as much, debated not bringing the captain, but in the end she needed him here, needed to be here herself, more than she needed to upend Arobynn’s plans.
Chaol sliced a glare in her direction, but then shifted his attention to the crowd around them, and said again, “This is a terrible idea.”
She followed his stare toward Arobynn, who stood across the sandy pit in which two men were fighting, now so bloodied up she couldn’t tell who was in worse shape. “He summons, I answer. Just keep your eyes open.”
It was the most they’d said to each other all night. But she had other things to worry about.
It had taken just one minute in this place to understand why Arobynn had summoned her.
The Valg guards flocked to the Pits—not to arrest and torture, but to watch. They were interspersed among the crowd, hooded, smiling, cold.
As if the blood and rage fueled them.
Beneath her black mask, Aelin focused on her breathing.
Three days after his rescue, Aedion was still injured badly enough that he remained bedridden, one of Chaol’s most trusted rebels watching over the apartment. But she needed someone at her back tonight, so she’d asked Chaol and Nesryn to come. Even if she knew it would play into Arobynn’s plans.
She’d tracked them down at a covert rebel meeting, to no one’s delight.
Especially when, apparently, the Valg had vanished with their victims and couldn’t be found despite days of tracking them. One look at Chaol’s pursed lips had told her exactly whose antics he thought were to blame for it. So she was glad to talk to Nesryn instead, if only to take her mind off the new task pressing on her, its chiming now a mocking invitation from the glass castle. But destroying the clock tower—freeing magic—had to wait.
At least she’d been right about Arobynn wanting Chaol here, the Valg clearly an offering meant to entice the captain to continue trusting and confiding in him.
Aelin sensed Arobynn’s arrival at her side moments before his red hair slid into her peripheral vision.
“Any plans to wreck this establishment, too?”
A dark head appeared at his other side, along with the wide-eyed male stares that followed it everywhere. Aelin was grateful for the mask that hid