Chaol gave a short laugh. “Not an option. We go in because we’re the only ones who can.”
The sewers began to reek of brine. They had to be nearing the Avery, if she’d correctly counted the turns. “Explain.”
“They don’t notice or really care about the presence of ordinary humans—only people with magic in their bloodline. Even dormant carriers.” He glanced sidelong at her. “It’s why I sent Ren to the North—to get out of the city.”
She almost tripped over a loose stone. “Ren … Allsbrook?”
Chaol nodded slowly.
The ground rocked beneath her. Ren Allsbrook. Another child of Terrasen. Still alive. Alive.
“Ren’s the reason we learned about it in the first place,” Chaol said. “We went into one of their nests. They looked right at him. Ignored Nesryn and me entirely. We barely got out. I sent him to Terrasen— to rally the rebels there—the day after. He wasn’t too happy about it, believe me.”
Interesting. Interesting, and utterly insane. “Those things are demons. The Valg. And they—”
“Drain the life out of you, feed on you, until they make a show of executing you?”
“It’s not a joke,” she snapped. Her dreams were haunted by the roaming hands of those Valg princes as they fed on her. And every time she would awaken with a scream on her lips, reaching for a Fae warrior who wasn’t there to remind her that they’d made it, they’d survived.
“I know it’s not,” Chaol said. His eyes flicked to where Goldryn peeked over her shoulder. “New sword?”
She nodded. There were perhaps only three feet between them now—three feet and months and months of missing and hating him. Months of crawling out of that abyss he’d shoved her into. But now that she was here … Everything was an effort not to say she was sorry. Sorry not for what she’d done to his face, but for the fact that her heart was healed—still fractured in spots, but healed—and he … he was not in it. Not as he’d once been.
“You figured out who I am,” she said, mindful of how far ahead his companions were.
“The day you left.”
She monitored the darkness behind them for a moment. All clear.
He didn’t move closer—didn’t seem at all inclined to hold her or kiss her or even touch her. Ahead, the rebels veered into a smaller tunnel, one she knew led directly toward the ramshackle docks in the slums.
“I grabbed Fleetfoot,” he said after a moment of silence.
She tried not to exhale too loudly. “Where is she?”
“Safe. Nesryn’s father owns a few popular bakeries in Rifthold, and has done well enough that he’s got a country house in the foothills outside the city. He said his staff there would care for her in secret. She seemed more than happy to torture the sheep, so—I’m sorry I couldn’t keep her here, but with the barking—”
“I understand,” she breathed. “Thank you.” She cocked her head. “A land-owning man’s daughter is a rebel?”
“Nesryn is in the city guard, despite her father’s wishes. I’ve known her for years.”
That didn’t answer her question. “She can be trusted?”
“As you said, we’d all be dead already if she was here on the king’s orders.”
“Right.” She swallowed hard, sheathing her knives and tugging off her gloves, if only because it gave her something to do with her hands. But then Chaol looked—to the empty finger where his amethyst ring had once been. The skin was soaked with the blood that had seeped in through the fabric, some red, some black and reeking.
Chaol gazed at that empty spot—and when his eyes rose to hers again, it became hard to breathe. He stopped at the entrance to the narrow tunnel. Far enough, she realized. He’d taken her as far as he was willing to allow her to follow.
“I have a lot to tell you,” she said before he could speak. “But I think I’d rather hear your story first. How you got here; what happened to Dorian. And Aedion. All of it.” Why you were meeting with Arobynn tonight.
That tentative tenderness in his face hardened into a cold, grim resolve—and her heart cracked a bit at the sight of it. Whatever he had to say wasn’t going to be pleasant.
But he just said, “Meet me in forty minutes,” and named an address in the slums. “I have to deal with this first.”
He didn’t wait for a response before jogging down the tunnel after his companions.
Aelin followed anyway.
Aelin watched from a rooftop, monitoring the docks of the slums as Chaol and his companions approached the small boat. The crew didn’t dare lay anchor—only tying the boat to the rotted posts long enough for the rebels to pass the sagging victims into the arms of the waiting sailors. Then they were rowing hard, out into the dark curve of the Avery and hopefully to a larger ship at its mouth.
She observed Chaol speak quickly to the rebels, Nesryn lingering when he’d finished. A short, clipped fight about something she couldn’t hear, and then the captain was walking alone, Nesryn and the others headed off in the opposite direction without so much as a backward glance.Chaol made it a block before Aelin silently dropped down beside him. He didn’t flinch. “I should have known better.”
“You really should have.”
Chaol’s jaw tightened, but he kept walking farther into the slums.
Aelin examined the night-dark, sleeping streets. A few feral urchins darted past, and she eyed them from beneath her hood, wondering which were on Arobynn’s payroll and might report to him that she’d been spotted blocks away from her old home. There was no point in trying to hide her movements—she hadn’t wanted to, anyway.
The houses here were ramshackle but not wrecked. Whatever working-class families dwelled within tried their best to keep them in shape. Given their proximity to the river, they were likely occupied by fishermen, dockworkers, and maybe the occasional slave on loan from his or her master. But no sign of trouble, no vagrants or pimps or would-be thieves lurking about.
Almost charming, for the slums.
“The story isn’t a pleasant one,” the captain began at last.
Aelin let Chaol talk as they strode through the slums, and it broke her heart.
She kept her mouth shut as he told her how he’d met Aedion and worked with him, and then how the king had captured Aedion and interrogated Dorian. It took considerable effort to keep from shaking the captain to demand how he could have been so reckless and stupid and taken so long to act.
Then Chaol got to the part where Sorscha was beheaded, each word quieter and more clipped than the last.
She had never learned the healer’s name, not in all the times the woman had patched and sewn her up. For Dorian to lose her … Aelin swallowed hard.
It got worse.
So much worse, as Chaol explained what Dorian had done to get him out of the castle. He’d sacrificed himself, revealing his power to the king. She was shaking so badly that she tucked her hands into her pockets and clamped her lips together to lock up the words.
But they danced in her skull anyway, around and around.
You should have gotten Dorian and Sorscha out the day the king butchered those slaves. Did you learn nothing from Nehemia’s death? Did you somehow think you could win with your honor intact, without sacrificing something? You shouldn’t have left him; how could you let him face the king alone? How could you, how could you, how could you?
The grief in Chaol’s eyes kept her from speaking.
She took a breath as he fell silent, mastering the anger and the disappointment and the shock. It took three blocks before she could think straight.
Her wrath and tears would do no good. Her plans would change again—but not by much. Free Aedion, retrieve the Wyrdkey … she could still do it. She squared her shoulders. They were mere blocks away from her old apartment.
At least she could have a place to lie low, if Arobynn hadn’t sold the property. He probably would have taunted her about it if he had—or perhaps left her to find it had a new owner. He loved surprises like that.
“So now you’re working with the rebels,” she said to Chaol. “Or leading them, from the look of it.”
“There are a few of us in charge. My territory covers the slums and docks—there are others responsible for different sections of the city. We meet as often as we dare. Nesryn and some of the city guards have been able to get in contact with a few of my men. Ress and Brullo, mostly. They’ve been looking for ways to get Dorian out. And Aedion. But that dungeon is impenetrable, and they’re watching the secret tunnels. We only went into their nest in the sewer tonight because we’d received word from Ress that there was some big meeting at the palace. Turns out they’d left more sentries behind than we’d anticipated.”
The castle was impossible to get into—unless she accepted Arobynn’s help. Another decision. For tomorrow. “What have you heard about Dorian since you fled?”
A flicker of shame shone in his bronze eyes. He had fled, though. He’d left Dorian in his father’s hands.
She clenched her fingers into fists to keep from slamming his head into the side of a brick building. How could he have served that monster? How could he not have seen it, not have tried to kill the king anytime he got within striking range?
She hoped that whatever Dorian’s father had done to him, however he’d been punished, the prince knew he was not the only one grieving. And after she retrieved Dorian, she would let him know, when he was ready to listen, that she understood—and that it would be hard and long and painful, but he might come back from it, the loss. When he did, with that raw magic of his, free when hers was not … It could be critical in defeating the Valg.