Book 4 - Page 92 (1/2)

Aelin choked out a laugh. “Careful, Lysandra. You’ve got a h.e.l.lion on your hands.”

Lysandra gave her young ward a long look. “If you’ve finished eating the tarts clean off our plates, Evangeline, go onto the roof and raise h.e.l.l for Aedion and Rowan.”

“Take care with Rowan,” Aelin added. “He’s still on the mend. But pretend that he isn’t. Men get p.i.s.sy if you fuss.”

A wicked gleam in her eye, Evangeline bounded for the front door. Aelin listened to make sure the girl did indeed go upstairs, and then turned to her friend. “She’s going to be a handful when she’s older.”

Lysandra groaned. “You think I don’t know that? Eleven years old, and she’s already a tyrant. It’s an endless stream of Why? and I would prefer not to and why, why, why and no, I should not like to listen to your good advice, Lysandra.” She rubbed her temples.

“A tyrant, but a brave one,” Aelin said. “I don’t think there are many eleven-year-olds who would do what she did to save you.” The swelling had gone down, but bruises still marred Lysandra’s face, and the small, scabbed cut near her lip remained an angry red. “And I don’t think there are many nineteen-year-olds who would fight tooth and nail to save a child.” Lysandra stared down at the table. “I’m sorry,” Aelin said. “Even though Arobynn orchestrated it—I’m sorry.”

“You came for me,” Lysandra said so quietly that it was hardly a breath. “All of you—you came for me.” She had told Nesryn and Chaol in detail of her overnight stay in a hidden dungeon beneath the city streets; already, the rebels were combing the sewers for it. She remembered little of the rest, having been blindfolded and gagged. Wondering if they would put a Wyrdstone ring on her finger had been the worst of it, she said. That dread would haunt her for a while.

“You thought we wouldn’t come for you?”

“I’ve never had friends who cared what happened to me, other than Sam and Wesley. Most people would have let me be taken—dismissed me as just another wh.o.r.e.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Oh?”

Aelin reached into her pocket and pushed a folded piece of paper across the table. “It’s for you. And her.”

“We don’t need—” Lysandra’s eyes fell upon the wax seal. A snake in midnight ink: Clarisse’s sigil. “What is this?”

“Open it.”

Glancing between her and the paper, Lysandra cracked the seal and read the text.

“I, Clarisse DuVency, hereby declare that any debts owed to me by—”

The paper began shaking.

“Any debts owed to me by Lysandra and Evangeline are now paid in full. At their earliest convenience, they may receive the Mark of their freedom.”

The paper fluttered to the table as Lysandra’s hands slackened. She raised her head to look at Aelin.

“Och,” Aelin said, even as her own eyes filled. “I hate you for being so beautiful, even when you cry.”

“Do you know how much money—”

“Did you think I’d leave you enslaved to her?”

“I don’t … I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know how to thank you—”

“You don’t need to.”

Lysandra put her face in her hands and sobbed.

“I’m sorry if you wanted to do the proud and n.o.ble thing and stick it out for another decade,” Aelin began.

Lysandra only wept harder.

“But you have to understand that there was no rutting way I was going to leave without—”

“Shut up, Aelin,” Lysandra said through her hands. “Just—shut up.” She lowered her hands, her face now puffy and splotchy.

Aelin sighed. “Oh, thank the G.o.ds. You can look hideous when you cry.”

Lysandra burst out laughing.

Manon and Asterin stayed in the mountains all day and night after her Second revealed her invisible wound. They caught mountain goats for themselves and their wyverns and roasted them over a fire that night as they carefully considered what they might do.

When Manon eventually dozed off, curled against Abraxos with a blanket of stars overhead, her head felt clearer than it had in months. And yet something nagged at her, even in sleep.

She knew what it was when she awoke. A loose thread in the loom of the Three-Faced G.o.ddess.

“You ready?” Asterin said, mounting her pale-blue wyvern and smiling—a real smile.

Manon had never seen that smile. She wondered how many people had. Wondered if she herself had ever smiled that way.

Manon gazed northward. “There’s something I need to do.” When she explained it to her Second, Asterin didn’t hesitate to declare that she would go with her.