Empire of Storms

Page 100

 
 
Aelin killed one with Goldryn. Beheading.
The other two … They hadn’t been too pleased by it, if their incessant shrieking in the moments following was any indication.
A lion’s roar cleaved the night, and Aelin prayed Gavriel was with Aedion somewhere—
The two in front of her, blocking the way belowdecks, finally stopped their hissy fits long enough to ask, “Where are your flames now?”
Aelin opened her mouth. But then Fenrys leaped out of a patch of night as if he’d simply run through a doorway, and slammed into the one nearest. He had a score to settle, it seemed.
Fenrys’s jaws went around the ilken’s throat, and the other whirled, claws out.
She was not fast enough to stop it as two sets of claws slashed through the white coat, through the shield he kept on himself, and Fenrys’s cry of pain barked across the water.
Twin swords of flame plunged through two ilken necks.
Heads rolled onto the blood-slick deck.
Fenrys staggered back, making it all of a step before he crashed to the planks. Aelin surged for him, swearing.
Blood and bone and greenish slime—poison. Like those on the wyverns’ tails.
Like blowing out a thousand candles, she pushed aside her flame, rallied that healing water. Fenrys shifted back into a male, his teeth clenched, swearing low and vicious, a hand against his torn ribs. “Don’t move,” she told him.
She’d immediately sent Rowan to the other ships, and he’d tried to argue, but … had obeyed. She had no idea where the Wing Leader was—the Crochan Queen. Holy gods.
Aelin readied her magic, trying to calm her raging heart—
“The others,” panted Aedion, limping for them, coated in black blood, “are fine.” She almost sobbed in relief—until she noticed the way her cousin’s eyes shone, and that … that Gavriel, bloodied and limping worse than Aedion, was a step behind his son. What the hell had happened?
Fenrys groaned, and she focused on his wounds, that poison slithering into his blood. She opened her mouth to tell Fenrys to lower his hand when wings flapped.
Not the kind she loved.
Aedion was instantly before them, sword out, grimacing in pain—but one of the ilken lifted a claw-tipped hand. Parley.
Her cousin halted. But Gavriel shifted imperceptibly closer to the ilken as it sniffed at Fenrys and smiled.
“Don’t bother,” the thing told Aelin, laughing quietly. “He won’t have much longer to live.”
Aedion snarled, palming his fighting knives. Aelin rallied her flame. Only the hottest of her fire could kill them—anything less and they remained unscathed. She’d think about the long-term implications of it later.
“I was sent to deliver a message,” the ilken said, smiling over a shoulder toward the horizon. “Thank you for confirming in Skull’s Bay that you carry what His Dark Majesty seeks.”
Aelin’s stomach dropped to her feet.
The key. Erawan knew she had the Wyrdkey.
 
 
47

Rowan hauled ass back to their ship, his magic near-flinging him through the air. The other two ships had been left undisturbed—they’d even had the nerve to demand what the hell all the shouting was about.
Rowan hadn’t bothered to explain other than an enemy attack and to drop anchor until it was over before he’d left. He’d returned to carnage.
Returned with his heart beating so wildly he thought he’d vomit with relief as he swept in for the landing and beheld Aelin kneeling on the deck. Until he saw Fenrys bleeding beneath her hands.
Until that last ilken landed before them.
His rage honed itself into a lethal spear, his magic rallying as he dove through the sky, aiming for the deck. Concentrated bursts, he’d discovered, could get through whatever repellant had been bred into them.
He’d rip the thing’s head right off.
But then the ilken laughed right as Rowan landed and shifted, looking over its thin shoulder. “Morath looks forward to welcoming you,” the creature smirked, and launched skyward before Rowan could lunge for it.
But Aelin wasn’t moving. Gavriel and Aedion, bloodied and limping, were barely moving. Fenrys, his chest a bloody mess with greenish slime—poison …
Power glowed at Aelin’s hands as she knelt over Fenrys, concentrating on that bit of water she’d been given, a drop of water in a sea of fire …
Rowan opened his mouth to offer to help when Lysandra panted from the shadows, “Is anyone going to deal with that thing, or should I?”
Indeed, the ilken was flapping for the distant coast, barely more than a bit of blackness against the darkened sky, hurtling for the coast, no doubt to fly right to Morath to report.
Rowan snatched up Fenrys’s fallen bow and quiver of black-tipped arrows.
None of them stopped him as he strode to the railing, blood splashing beneath his boots.
The only sounds were the tapping waves, the whimpering of the injured, and the groan of the mighty bow as he nocked an arrow and drew back the string. Farther and farther. His arms strained, but he honed in on that dark speck flapping away.
“A gold coin says he misses,” Fenrys rasped.
“Save your breath for healing,” Aelin snapped.
“Make it two,” Aedion said behind him. “I say he hits.”
“You can all go to hell,” Aelin snarled. But then added, “Make it five. Ten says he downs it with the first shot.”
“Deal,” Fenrys groaned, his voice thick with pain.
Rowan gritted his teeth. “Remind me why I bother with any of you.”
Then he fired.
The arrow was nearly invisible as it sailed through the night.
And with his Fae sight, Rowan saw with perfect clarity as that arrow found its mark.
Right through the thing’s head.
Aelin laughed quietly as it hit the water, its splash visible even from the distance.
Rowan turned and scowled down at her. Light shimmered at her fingertips as she held them over Fenrys’s ravaged chest. But he turned his glare on the male, then on Aedion, and said, “Pay up, pricks.”
Aedion chuckled, but Rowan caught the shadow in Aelin’s eyes as she resumed healing his former sentinel. Understood why she’d made light of it, even with Fenrys injured before her. Because if Erawan now knew their whereabouts … they had to move. Fast.
And pray Rolfe’s directions to the Lock weren’t wrong.
 
 
Aedion was sick of surprises.
Sick of feeling his heart stop dead in his chest.
As it had when Gavriel had leaped to save his ass with the ilken, the Lion tearing into them with a ferocity that had left Aedion standing there like a novice with his first practice sword.
The stupid bastard had injured himself in the process, earning a swipe down his arm and ribs that set the male roaring in pain. The venom coating those claws, mercifully, had been used up on other men.
But it was the tang of his father’s blood that launched Aedion into action—that coppery, mortal scent. Gavriel had only blinked at him as Aedion had ignored the throbbing pain in his leg, courtesy of a blow moments before right above his knee, and they’d fought back-to-back until those creatures were nothing but twitching heaps of bone and flesh.
He hadn’t said a word to the male before sheathing sword and shield across his back and stalking to find Aelin.