He nodded. “But if you could … would you?”

For a heartbeat, she could see it—see her face, carved into statues in kingdoms so far away they did not even know Terrasen existed. A living god—Mala’s heir and conqueror of the known world. She would bring music and books and culture, wipe out the corruption festering in corners of the earth …

She said softly, “Not now.”

“But later?”

“Perhaps if being queen bores me … I’ll think about making myself empress. To give my offspring not one kingdom to inherit, but as many as the stars.”

There was no harm in saying it, anyway. In thinking about it, stupid and useless as it was. Even if wondering about the possibilities … perhaps it made her no better than Maeve or Erawan.

Rowan jerked his chin toward the nearest map—toward the Wastes. “Why did you forgive Ansel? After what she did to you and the others in the desert?”

Aelin crouched again. “Because she made a bad choice, trying to heal a wound she couldn’t ever mend. Trying to avenge the people she loved.”

“And you really set all this in motion when we were in Rifthold? When you were fighting in those pits?”

She gave him a roguish wink. “I knew if I gave the name Ansel of Briarcliff, it’d somehow make its way to her that a red-haired young woman was using her name to slaughter trained soldiers in the Pits. And that she’d know it was me.”

“So the red hair back then—not just for Arobynn.”

“Not even close.” Aelin frowned at the maps, dissatisfied she hadn’t spotted any other armies hiding out around the world.

Rowan dragged a hand through his hair. “Sometimes I wish I knew every thought in that head, each scheme and plot. Then I remember how much it delights me when you reveal it—usually when it’s most likely to make my heart stop dead in my chest.”

“I knew you were a sadist.”

He kissed her mouth once, twice, then the tip of her nose, nipping it with his canines. She hissed and batted him away, and his deep chuckle rumbled against the wooden walls. “That’s for not telling me,” he said. “Again.”

But despite his words, despite everything, he looked so … happy. So perfectly content and happy to be there, kneeling among those maps, the lantern down to its last dregs, the world going to hell.

The joyless, cold male she’d first met, the one who had been waiting for an opponent good enough to bring him death … He now looked at her with happiness in his face.

She took his hand, gripping it hard. “Rowan.”

The spark died from his eyes.

She squeezed his fingers. “Rowan, I need you to do something for me.”

Manon lay curled on her side in her narrow bed, unable to sleep.

It was not from the piss-poor sleeping conditions—no, she’d slept in far worse, even considering the shoddily patched hole in the side of the wall.

She stared at that gap in the wall, at the moonlight leaking in on the salty summer breeze.

She would not go find the Crochans. No matter what the Terrasen Queen called her, admitting to her bloodline was different from … claiming it. She doubted the Crochans would be willing to serve anyway, given that she’d killed their princess. Her own half sister.

And even if the Crochans did choose to serve her, fight for her … Manon put a hand to the thick scar now across her belly. The Ironteeth would not share the Wastes.

But it was that mentality, she supposed as she twisted onto her back, peeling her hair from her sweat-sticky neck, that had sent them all into exile.

She again peered through the gaps in that hole to the sea beyond. Waiting to spot a shadow in the night sky, to hear the boom of mighty wings.

Abraxos should have been here already. She shut out the coiling dread in her stomach.

But instead of wings, footsteps creaked in the hall outside.

A heartbeat later, the door opened on near-silent hinges, then shut again. Locked.

Manon didn’t sit up as she said, “What are you doing here.”

The moonlight sifted through the king’s blue-black hair. “You don’t have chains anymore.”

She sat up at that, examining where the irons draped down the wall. “Is it more enticing for you if they’re on?”

Sapphire eyes seemed to glow in the dark as he leaned against the shut door. “Sometimes it is.”

She snorted, but found herself saying, “You never weighed in.”

“On what?” he asked, though he knew what she’d meant.

“What I am. Who I am.”

“Does my opinion matter to you, witchling?”

Manon stalked toward him, stopping a few feet away, aware of every inch of night between them. “You do not seem outraged that Aelin sacked Melisande without telling anyone, you do not seem to care that I am a Crochan—”

“Do not mistake my silence for lack of feeling. I have good reason to keep my thoughts to myself.”

Ice glittered at his fingertips. Manon tracked it. “Will it be you or the queen against Erawan in the end, I wonder.”

“Fire against darkness makes for a better story.”

“Yes, but so would ripping a demon king to shreds without using your hands.”

A half smile. “I can think of better uses for my hands—invisible and flesh.”

An invitation and a question. She held his gaze.

“Then finish what you started,” Manon breathed.

Dorian’s answering smile was soft—edged with that glimmer of cruelty that made her blood heat as if the Fire-Queen herself had breathed flame into it.

She let Dorian back her against the wall. Let him hold her gaze while he tugged the top laces of her white shirt free.

One. By. One.

Let him lean in to brush his mouth against her bare neck, right under her ear.

Manon arched slightly at that caress. At the tongue that flicked against where his lips had been. Then he pulled back. Away.

Even as those phantom hands continued to trail up her hips, over her waist. His mouth parted slightly, body trembling with restraint. Restraint, where most males took and took when she offered it, gorging themselves on her. But Dorian Havilliard said, “The Bloodhound was lying that night. What she said about your Second. I felt her lie—tasted it.”

Some tight part in her chest eased. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

He stepped closer again, and those phantom hands trailed under her breasts. She gritted her teeth. “And what do you want to talk about, Manon?”

She wasn’t sure he’d ever said her name before. And the way he’d said it …

“I don’t want to talk at all,” she countered. “And neither do you,” she added with a pointed glance.

Again, that dark, edged smile appeared. And when he stepped close once more, his hands replaced those phantom ones.

Tracing her hips, her waist, her breasts. Unhurried, indolent circles that she allowed him to make, simply because no one had ever dared. Each brush of his skin against hers left a wake of fire and ice. She found herself transfixed by it—by each coaxing, luxurious stroke. She did not even consider objecting as Dorian slid off her shirt and surveyed her bare, scar-flecked flesh.

His face turned ravenous as he took in her breasts, the plane of her stomach—the scar slicing across it.