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The weight of Aedion’s lies sits heavier than his armor as he ducks through canvas flaps into a fire-warmed tent. He doesn’t even have a moment to consider knocking the filthy snow from his boots before General Kaine is on him. “Where is the Queen?”
A muscle flickers in Aedion’s jaw. “Resting, I pres—”
“No. Where is the queen we were promised? Where are the Fire-Bringer’s flames?”
Gone. Smothered in iron chains and dragged away to gods-know-where.
The flickering light of the braziers does nothing to hide how haggard Kaine’s face is, making it difficult for Aedion to summon up anything more than pity for the man. He, like the rest of them, lost nearly everything to Adarlan’s conquest before sacrificing his life to the decade-long fight. In his eyes, he gave all he has for a throne he will never sit and a queen with no desire to lift a hand for her people.
Despite her ten-year absence and the fact that Terrassen, in all that time, had been fighting for an empty throne, Aelin believed her death would derail the war effort. What Aedion might have been able to tell her, had she deigned to share her plans, is that a false Galathynius queen who refuses to show even a spark of power would be very poor at keeping loyal allies by her side. A martyred ruler who had made the ultimate sacrifice for her country and its children… that was a cause that would rally a straggling army.
“Damn it, Ashryver!” Aedion’s long silence must not be the answer Kaine’s looking for because he slams a hand down on the strategists’ map. A crudely carved stag’s head representing Terrassen’s largest civilian battalion wobbles from the force of the blow.
They both watch as it falls with clatter. Aedion prays that isn’t an omen.
Kaine’s shoulders bow and he doesn’t lift his gaze from the toppled figurine even as he speaks. “I trust that the queen has her country’s best interests at heart. I trust that she has good reason for fighting with sword and shield instead of fire, for letting us suffer untold casualties rather than burn our enemies to ash. I trust that her unwillingness to so much as light a candle in front of anybody is not a sign of something sinister.” He finally turns a bleak gaze onto Aedion, still standing in front of the tent flaps with his head bowed so it doesn’t brush the ceiling. “I am one of a few who maintains such faith.”
A sharp ache twists in Aedion’s chest, nestling into its home behind his ribs where it seems to have grown comfortable these past months. He’s lived a life of deception, but lying to the few people he could always be truthful with… In Adarlan he had only ever been an outsider; to his own people, a traitor and a whore. It was only with rebels like Kaine that he sincerely felt known , and yet in a cruel twist of fate, he’s here . Keeping his cousin’s secrets from people who may die for her foolish plan.
“I can’t offer the answers you look for,” Aedion replies. “I am not her keeper, and she tells me little of her plans.” He relishes in these small truths he can share, despite their painful nature. “Her Majesty denied me the Blood Oath when we reunited. It seems she places her trust elsewhere these days.” Once again, not a lie.
Kaine’s brow furrows. He leans back in his seat, hands steepled in front of him. “Tell me this, at least: should we plan battles under the assumption that we will have the might of her fire magic?”
“Nevermind our coming battles, sir, I would not factor her fire into our plans for this war .” It’s harsh, and Aelin or Lysandra would probably make him pay for those words if they heard them, but Aedion was a general before he was part of his queen’s court and he doesn’t have it in him to lead men into defeat because of magic he knows Lysandra will never possess. If his blunt assessment surprises Kaine, the general doesn’t show it.
Of equal rank with the older man, Aedion doesn’t need a formal dismissal, yet he waits on one out of respect. A former officer of Adarlan, Kaine left the king’s service after the conquest of Melisand and Fenharrow. He fought for Terrassen ten years ago until she, too, fell to the quickly-growing empire, then continued to fight with the rebellion from the north. He had long been a general by the time Aedion was promoted to the Bane, and his dedication to ending Adarlan’s oppressive reign made him one of the few people to have earned Aedion’s deference.
Kaine appears to have returned his attention to the map, but he must have something more to say because he hasn’t asked Aedion to leave. In the ensuing silence, Aedion decides to take pity on the fallen stag and steps forward to right it, his hand just closing around the wood when one of Kaine’s lands atop it, pinning the limb to the table while his dark gaze locks Aedion in place. “The chains of oppression…” he says, voice low.
“...bind tighter than the ties of blood and country,” Aedion finishes after a long pause. It’s a common saying amongst the rebels, a reminder that no matter where any of them hail from, they all fight for the same noble cause. It’s also Kaine’s way of prodding him to remember his loyalties, to prioritize the bigger fight over his family— a far easier task when he didn’t have family.
Still, his answer satisfies Kaine, who lets go with a wry smile. “Don’t lose sight of all the good you’ve done, boy… And before I forget, Kyllian was asking after you. Best go and find him before he thinks we left you behind at the last camp.” There’s something knowing in his eyes that Aedion just shakes his head at, taking the dismissal for what it is.
Outside the general’s tent, a shiny black crow is hopping around in the mud and snow, feathers ruffed up against the cold. “Stay warm tonight,” he tells it with a fond little smile, not expecting an answer, but gets just a few steps past it before he hears its rough burr of a call. Something nags at the back of his mind and he finds himself turning slowly to it. The crow’s looking back at him, round eyes bright with more uncanny awareness than he’s ever seen.
Ah .
It turns, wings fluttering in a kind of “come along” gesture, but he’s scooping it up faster than it can react. Aware of what a sight he makes, toting an outraged, squawking crow through the camp, Aedion allows himself a quiet laugh at the absurd situation. It’s not until they’re deep in the forest, far from the welcoming pools of firelight that spill from the edges of the army encampment and any listening ears, that Aedion releases the bird.
Lysandra stands before him a moment later, scowling, naked, and shivering. He unclasps the thick wolf pelt from around his shoulders and holds it out for her, the whole time keeping his line of sight fixed just over her shoulder.
She huffs, impatient. “You could at least look at me when I want to have a conversation.”
Rage rises up in his chest, hot and sudden and impossible to stop as he shifts his eyes to meet hers. “How should I look at you, then? As a friend or a lover or a cousin? As a queen or as a lowborn whore?” The anger spilling out of him leaves no room for regret at his own words. That will come later.
Lysandra’s upper lip curls back from her teeth, feline as ever despite her human skin. “You could look at me as me . I didn’t choose this any more than you but I’m dealing with the consequences like an adult.”
“I didn’t choose this. You made the decision to spend the rest of your life pretending to be Aelin and now I have to play along. I have to watch you strut around with Aelin’s face and Aelin’s name and Aelin’s voice, all the while possessing none of that which makes Aelin so crucial to this war. Men I have fought with, side-by-side for years, are dying in the thousands on those battlefields because the queen they think fights at their backs is really a skulking, spying shifter without a drop of fire magic in her veins!”
He’s hit a nerve, that much he can tell. Lysandra shifts on bare feet that must be going numb in the snow and Aedion has to force himself not to care about her discomfort. Fraught silence stretches between them before Lysandra finally breaks it. “Are you going to turn me in? Reveal the plan?”
That would do more harm than good. Lysandra would be executed (or banished, if she’s lucky) and the deception would dissolve trust amongst rebel leaders and freedom fighters alike until any hope for resistance crumbled.
“No. It’s far too late for anything like that.”
“What are you going to do, then? Besides continuing to punish me for Aelin’s sins.” Her voice is hard as granite. She’s done taking his shit and he’s glad of it.
“She planned to use your body as a vessel for my goddamned Ashryver looks! If she dies and this idiotic charade continues after the war, the plan is for us to fuck we’re like prize livestock.” Unrelated to the argument he was trying to make a moment ago, perhaps, but he’s not sure he even knows what he’s saying anymore. It’s all feeling like more of a chance to unload their resentment on each other than a productive conversation.
Her green eyes narrow, spine straightening as Lysandra squares her shoulders to him. “I know,” she says, voice shaking with suppressed rage, and for the first time Aedion realizes it’s not just him she’s angry at. “You once told me what you’ve been forced into, the things you’ve done to get where you are now. For the sake of your country and its future, she’s asking you to do it again.”
“And you’re happy with that?” Breath clouds in front of Aedion’s face like smoke from a dragon’s nostrils. Fuck the Ashryver gift of water, he’s so enraged he thinks he could probably breathe fire if he tried. “Giving up your entire identity and sense of self just to serve a foreign country and put illegitimate children on Terrassen’s throne? You’ll never be who you’re trying to be, not really.”
“Of course I’m not happy about any of this. I am well aware I don’t carry a gods-given gift of fire, that I don’t have half of what it takes to be Aelin, to rule a country…” Lysandra trails off, suddenly quiet. Her attention turns to the frozen ground. “This is what my queen has asked of me. She’s captured, possibly dead, and I will go to my grave fulfilling this wish for as long as she requires.”
The fight’s clearly gone out of Lysandra but Aedion is just getting started, indignance flaring in his gut at the defeated slump of her shoulders. “She was wrong to do such a thing! There is no lifetime, not one, in which I can fathom asking someone I love to give up so much.” He understands why Lysandra promised to carry out this plan, he understands sacrifice… he doesn’t understand how Aelin could request this of a woman who has never lived her own life.
He’s angry for Lysandra’s sake as much as his own, but knowing it’s not fair to take his frustrations out on Lysandra doesn’t change the fact that she’s here and complicit in this foul plan and willing to rise to the bait when he fights with her. Maybe she too needs an outlet for the fear and the anger. Perhaps she just refuses to take abuse lying down.
“I’m not your enemy, Aedion, and neither is she.” There’s a tired emphasis on the word she , like it hurts too much to actually say Aelin’s name.
“You’re not; for now, our common enemy holds us fast. But once this is over, however it may end…I’m not sure how to return to what we were.” Aelin’s plan and Lysandra’s silence; both betrayals he feels too deeply to forget in this lifetime.
His words get swallowed up by the night. Somewhere far away, an owl’s lamenting call echoes through the trees.
“The chains of oppression and all that, then?”
He’s not surprised she was listening to his conversation with Kaine. All he can muster in reply is, “You must be freezing. You should go back to your tent.” Aelin’s tent. Lysandra tilts her chin up to better meet his eyes, the sorrow clear on her face even in the dark. He wonders how much of his own face she can read with those human eyes, if this whole time she’s been speaking to a shade of a man cloaked in shadow. Her lips press thin with displeasure but she doesn’t offer him any more words before shifting back into her corvid form.
The wolf’s-pelt cloak drops to the ground as she takes off. He scoops it up, catching her scent on it as he fastens it at his throat and goes in search of Kyllian.
The commander is found in his tent, still awake despite the late hour, and once they’ve talked their way through the Bane’s crucial next movements he fists a hand in the front of Kyllian’s shirt and pulls him in close. It doesn’t feel right , not the way it used to with him, but it’s good . It’s good to be able to close his eyes without confusion over whose hand is on him, Kyllian’s face and body his and his alone. It’s good to sink to his knees of his own volition, to permit the fingers that pull his hair as hard as they do. It’s good to know that this sweat-slick, desperate tangle of limbs and mouths is because they want to and they can and the fates of throne and country have absolutely nothing to do with any of it.
✴
“Get out of my way.”
Rowan doesn’t say anything, just levels Aedion with a stare colder than Amaroth’s frost-kissed nighttimes. Aedion doesn’t back down from the obvious strong-arming, relishing in smug, childish satisfaction that he’s taller than the king, if just by a hair.
“Boys, please,” Aelin drawls from behind Rowan’s hulking mass.
“Anything you so clearly want to get off your chest can be done in front of me,” Rowan snarls. Aedion resists the urge to roll his eyes. They may have mended that old rift between them, but the Fae’s ridiculous protective posturing was getting old.
“I am her cousin and her general, and I have sat by her side since childhood. Your marriage of a few months gives you no claim to private grievances between her and I.”
“That’s quite enough.” The steel in Aelin’s voice leaves no room for argument. “Rowan, out.”
He obeys with a low rumble of dissent, yet even Aedion’s growing respect for one of his father’s oldest comrades doesn’t stop him from hissing, “You ever consider muzzling that attack dog of yours?”
Aelin’s brows knit together as she draws herself up to her full height. “You’re angry, Aedion. Why?”
The peaceful period of gratitude for Aelin’s survival is over — he’s spitting mad and finally able to unload about three dozen of his heaviest concerns. “Your scheme to make Lysandra wear your face was bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.”
Aelin actually looks taken aback, but her surprise is quickly smoothed over with an assured amusement. “Well, then. Tell me how you truly feel, cousin dearest.”
The urge to smash something to pieces grows exponentially. Aedion understands what it is to don a mask of humor and arrogance, but gods does he fucking wish she wouldn’t do it with him. “Can you tell me what I’ve done to lose your trust? What sins I’ve committed that make me unworthy of knowing your plans? Twice now, you’ve deceived me in moments where my ignorance could have cost us everything.”
“The plan didn’t concern you,” Aelin replies, cool and calm in the face of Aedion’s rising ire.
“ Didn’t concern me ? You were planning to breed me like a stud bull so the bastard children you’d put on Terrassen’s throne would at least have your face and the plan didn’t concern me ? You would have the woman I love, a woman who has only gotten the barest taste of freedom, give up her entire life for a farce, and it didn’t concern me ?” Aedion steps into her space, forcing her to look up at him. He lowers his voice, words quieter but no less sharp. “I had to lie to the Bane, to rebels, to the only people with whom I have ever been honest, and I watched them die because the Fire-Bringer fighting at their backs couldn’t light a cooking fire without flint and steel. I’m furious that you didn’t trust me, I’m furious that you planned to use my body like that without permission or warning, and I’m furious that you could ever ask such a thing of Lysandra because you knew , even before you asked, that she wouldn’t refuse you.”
That seems to finally reach Aelin through her detached attitude, shame flickering across her face. There and then gone. “You’re right to be angry…about all of it. And you’re right that I knew Lysandra would agree.” Aedion isn’t placated, but he has the grace to draw away from her. He stands with arms crossed, feet planted, braced for more fighting. Aelin just rubs a hand across her brow and heaves a sigh. “However, I also knew I couldn’t leave Terrassen without a queen. I’ve committed horrible acts in the name of my country and will continue to protect it by any means necessary.”
The absolute gall of what she’s saying stops Aedion’s racing mind in its tracks. “Is that what this is? Some convoluted attempt at proving how great your love for your country is? You will never know the extent to which I suffered for Terrassen, but I do hope you understand that I am willing to suffer infinitely more to see her thrive.”
And that is the heart of the issue. After everything he’s done, everything he’s endured, he was still somehow not worthy of her trust. “If you had come to me, shared your worries about leaving an empty throne behind, I could have helped . I could have told you that your death, your sacrifice, would do more to rally a dying army than the shell of a queen who can’t summon a single ember. I could have told you that more of Terrassen’s lords survived than the records indicate, and that there are distant members of both Ashryver and Galathynius lineages that could have sat that throne in your place — royals far more qualified to rule a country than a former prostitute who doesn’t even know her own family name.”
In the waning daylight, Aelin’s eyes look more gold than turquoise, reflecting just a hint of Aedion’s irritation back at him. “I did what I thought was right. I’m sorry that you and your feelings for the Lady were caught in the crossfire.”
That kind of callous obstinacy served Celaena Sardothien well: it would do little for Aelin Galathynius. Rather than lecture her on a lesson she would learn in time, he cocks his head in question. “Do you know what they call me?”
Aelin doesn’t have to ask what he means. “Adarlan’s Whore.”
“Hm. Do you know why?”
She looks at him for a long moment. “Because the people believed you were whoring yourself out to a conquering king for fame and gold.”
“I suppose that’s certainly part of it.” He reaches for the dagger in his belt, curls one hand loosely around the hilt to try and steady himself. “I stand here, alive and at your side, because of who I am. My strength, my sword-skill, my intelligence and mind for strategy. I survived because of my hatred, which kept me alive even when I wanted nothing more than to lay down and die.”
Aelin’s chin dips; a minute, silent acknowledgement that she understands the feeling well.
“I was also an effective tool for the King with his Wyrdstone rings, a potent symbol of his ability to break the will and honor of even the strongest men. But none of that meant anything when I was an overgrown half-breed Nobody from a decimated country. I was fifteen, face-down in the frozen mud and realizing that there was no one to offer me a hand up — the only person who could drag me out of that horrible place was me .
“I started from nothing, doing my best to impress, garnering favors.” One side of his mouth curls in a self-deprecating smile at Aelin’s look of dawning realization. “Showing off my many useful skills didn’t always get me the attention I needed, and when that failed…I learned to get on my knees for the right men.” Aelin’s hand flies to her mouth, emerald-and-gold ring winking cheerily at him despite her horrified countenance. Aedion isn’t done, every word driving home like a hammer on the head of a nail. He needs her to understand. “If I was truly desperate, cousin dearest, I just might get on my hands and knees.”
Despite his unaffected delivery, Aedion’s hand trembles where he clutches his dagger like a lifeline: at least his voice stays steady.
“Aedion—”
The pity in her eyes is already too much. “I don’t want your pain and I don’t regret a single thing I’ve done that’s led me back to you. I only want to know one thing: if you had known this about me prior to your capture, would you have gone about your plan the same way? Would you have asked me to whore myself out for crown and country then?”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, he can read the answer in her eyes. Yes.
It makes something twist in his gut, that old sick feeling he’d sworn he would never feel again.
“Years ago, I told myself I would take a knife to my own heart before letting another person use me in such a way, and yet despite how much I hated your plan, I would have done it. If you died in that iron coffin and Terrassen needed heirs, I would have done it.
“I tell you this so you understand that you’re not the only one who has endured horrors for the sake of Terrassen’s freedom. Whatever you’re willing to sacrifice, you won’t do it alone, but whatever you ask of your loved ones…” Shaking his head, he takes a long, slow breath. “We’ll do anything, for you and for Terrassen. Just be sure you can live with yourself when we are facing consequences of your making.”
He suddenly can’t bear being near her for a single second more, turning on his heel, already several steps away when he pauses. He knows his voice is cold as he says, “I hope this conversation serves as a reminder, next time you want to keep essential plans from me and your court.”