Page 277 of Kingdom of Ash

She knew not with mere ropes or chains. Likely with fire and ice and perhaps even Lorcan’s own dark power.

But it did not stop her from shaking, from how small and brittle she became as they turned a corner and beheld Aelin, Rowan, and Lorcan standing before a shut door. Farther down the hall, Nesryn and Sartaq, Lord Chaol with them, waited. Letting them decide what to do.

Letting Elide decide.

Lorcan’s grave face was frozen with rage, his depthless eyes like frigid pools of night. He said quietly, “You don’t need to go in there.”

“We had you brought here,” Aelin said, her own face the portrait of restrained wrath, “so you could choose what to do with him. If you wish to speak to him before we do.”

One look at the knives at Rowan’s and Lorcan’s sides, at the way the queen’s fingers curled, and Elide knew what their sort of talking would include. “You mean to torture him for information?” She didn’t dare meet Aelin’s eyes.

“Before he receives what is due to him,” Lorcan growled.

Elide glanced between the male she loved and the queen she served. And her limp had never felt so pronounced, so obvious, as she took a step closer. “Why is he here?”

“He has yet to reveal that,” Rowan said. “And though we have not confirmed that you are here, he suspects.” A glance toward Lorcan. “The call is yours, Lady.”

“You will kill him regardless?”

Lorcan asked, “Do you wish us to?” Months ago, she had told him to. And Lorcan had agreed to do it. That had been before Vernon and the ilken had come to abduct her—before the night when she had been willing to embrace death rather than go with him to Morath.

Elide peered inward. They gave her the courtesy of silence. “I would like to speak to him before we decide his fate.”

A bow of Lorcan’s head was his only answer before he opened the door behind him.

Torches flickered, the chamber empty save for a worktable against one wall.

And her uncle, bound in thick irons, seated on a wooden chair.

His finery was worn, his dark hair unkempt, as if he’d struggled while they’d bound him. Indeed, blood crusted one of his nostrils, his nose swollen.

Shattered.

A glance to her right confirmed the blood on Lorcan’s knuckles.

Vernon straightened as Elide stopped several feet away, the door shutting, Lorcan and Aelin mere steps behind. The others remained in the hall.

“What mighty company you keep these days, Elide,” Vernon said.

That voice. Even with the broken nose, that silky, horrible voice raked talons along her skin.

But Elide kept her chin up. Kept her eyes upon her uncle. “Why are you here?”

“First you let the brute at me,” Vernon drawled, nodding to Lorcan, “then you send in the sweet-faced girl to coax answers?” A smile toward Aelin. “A technique of yours, Majesty?”

Aelin leaned against the stone wall, hands sliding into her pockets. Nothing human in her face. Though Elide marked the way her hands, even within their confines, shifted.

Bound in irons. Battered.

Only weeks ago, it had been the queen herself in Vernon’s place. And now it seemed she stood here through sheer will. Stood here, ready to pry the information from Vernon, for Elide’s sake.

It strengthened Elide enough that she said to her uncle, “Your breaths are limited. I would suggest you use them wisely.”

“Ruthless.” Vernon smirked. “The witch-blood in your veins ran true after all.”

She couldn’t stand it. To be in this room with him. To breathe the same air as the man who had smiled while her father had been executed, smiled while he locked her in that tower for ten years. Smiled while he’d touched Kaltain, done far worse perhaps, then tried to sell Elide to Erawan for breeding. “Why?” she asked.

It was the only question she could really think of, that really mattered. “Why do any of it?”

---