She trembled, shaking her head.

   “That’s enough,” Dorian snapped, sweat gleaming on his brow. The prince winced in pain as his magic was repressed by the iron in his system. “Aedion confessed; now let her go.”

   “Why should I release the true traitor in this castle?”

   •

   Sorscha ­couldn’t stop shaking as the king spoke.

   All her years of remaining invisible, all her training, first from those rebels in Fenharrow, then the contacts they’d sent her family to in Rifthold . . . all of it ruined.

   “Such interesting letters you send to your friend. Why, I might not ever have read them,” the king said, “if you hadn’t left one in the rubbish for your superior to find. See—­you rebels have your spies, and I have mine. And as soon as you decided to start using my son . . .” She could feel the king smirking at her. “How many of his movements did you report to your rebel friends? What secrets of mine have you given away over the years?”

   “Leave her alone,” Dorian growled. It was enough to set her crying. He still thought she was innocent.

   And maybe, maybe he could get out of this if he was surprised enough by the truth, if the king saw his son’s shock and disgust.

   So Sorscha lifted her head, even as her mouth trembled, even as her eyes burned, and stared down the King of Adarlan.

   “You destroyed everything that I had, and you deserve everything that’s to come,” she said. Then she looked at Dorian, whose eyes ­were indeed wide, his face bone-­white. “I was not supposed to love you. But I did. I do. And there is so much I wish . . . I wish we could have done together, seen together.”

   The prince just stared at her, then walked to the foot of the dais and dropped to his knees. “Name your price,” he said to his father. “Ask it of me, but let her go. Exile her. Banish her. Anything—say it, and it will be done.”

   She began shaking her head, trying to find the words to tell him that she hadn’t betrayed him—­not her prince. The king, yes. She had reported his movements for years, in each carefully written letter to her “friend.” But never Dorian.

   The king looked at his son for a long moment. He looked at the captain and Aedion, so quiet and so tall—­beacons of hope for their future.

   Then he looked again at his son, on his knees before the throne, on his knees for her, and said, “No.”

   •

   “No.”

   Chaol thought he had not heard it, the word that cleaved through the air just before the guard’s sword did.

   One blow from that mighty sword.

   That was all it took to sever Sorscha’s head.

   The scream that erupted out of Dorian was the worst sound that Chaol had ever heard.

   Worse even than the wet, heavy thud of her head hitting the red marble.

   Aedion began roaring—­roaring and cursing at the king, thrashing against his chains, but the guards hauled him away, and Chaol was too stunned to do anything other than watch the rest of Sorscha’s body topple to the ground. And then Dorian, still screaming, was scrambling through the blood toward it—­toward her head, as if he could put it back.

   As if he could piece her together.

   65

   Chaol hadn’t been able to move a muscle from the moment the guard cut off Sorscha’s head to the moment Dorian, still kneeling in a pool of her blood, stopped screaming.

   “That is what awaits traitors,” the king said to the silent room.

   And Chaol looked at the king, at his shattered friend, and drew his sword.

   The king rolled his eyes. “Put away your sword, Captain. I’ve no interest in your noble antics. You’re to go home to your father tomorrow. Don’t leave this castle in disgrace.”

   Chaol kept his sword drawn. “I will not go to Anielle,” he growled. “And I will not serve you a moment longer. There is one true king in this room—­there always has been. And he is not sitting on that throne.”

   Dorian stiffened.

   But Chaol went on. “There is a queen in the north, and she has already beaten you once. She will beat you again. And again. Because what she represents, and what your son represents, is what you fear most: hope. You cannot steal it, no matter how many you rip from their homes and enslave. And you cannot break it, no matter how many you murder.”

   The king shrugged. “Perhaps. But maybe I can start with you.” He flicked his fingers at the guards. “Kill him, too.”

   Chaol whirled to the guards behind him and crouched, ready to fight a path out for himself and Dorian.

   Then a crossbow snapped and he realized there had been others in the room—­hidden behind impossibly thick shadows.

   He had only enough time to twist—­to see the bolt firing for him with deadly accuracy.

   Only enough time to see Dorian’s eyes widen, and the ­whole room plunge into ice.

   •

   The arrow froze midflight and dropped to the floor, shattering into a hundred pieces.

   Chaol stared at Dorian in mute horror as his friend’s eyes glowed a deep, raging blue, and the prince snarled at the king, “Don’t you touch him.”

   The ice spread across the room, up the legs of the shocked guards, freezing over Sorscha’s blood, and Dorian got to his feet. He raised both hands, and light shimmered along his fingers, a cold breeze whipping through his hair.

   “I knew you had it, boy—” the king started, standing, but Dorian threw out a hand and the king was blasted into his chair by a gust of frozen wind, the window behind him shattering. Wind roared into the room, drowning out all sound.

   All sound except Dorian’s words as he turned to Chaol, his hands and clothes soaked with Sorscha’s blood. “Run. And when you come back . . .” The king was getting to his feet, but another wave of Dorian’s magic slammed into him, knocking him down. There ­were tears staining Dorian’s bloody cheeks now. “When you come back,” the prince said, “burn this place to the ground.”

   A wall of crackling black hurtled toward them from behind the throne.

   “Go,” Dorian ordered, turning toward the onslaught of his father’s power.

   Light exploded from Dorian, blocking out the wave, and the entire castle shook.

   People screamed, and Chaol’s knees buckled. For a moment, he debated making a stand with his friend, right there and then.

   But he knew that this had been the other trap. One for Aedion and Aelin, one for Sorscha. And this one—­this one to draw out Dorian’s power.

   Dorian had known it, too. Known it, and still walked into it so Chaol could escape—­to find Aelin and tell her what had happened ­here today. Someone had to get out. Someone had to survive.