Page 33 of Curse of Darkness
Edain finally seems to notice my attire. “And where areyougoing?”
“None of your business,” Finn growls out.
Edain’s eye skips over the leather breeches I wear when I spar, the thick dark green doublet, and the black fur cloak that ripples over my shoulder. And then his gaze returns to my boots, which are lined with fur. “Somewhere where you can expect to be cold,” he finally says. “North.” His eyes glitter. “Into Unseelie.”
It’s a reasonable assumption.
If I’m not going north to the goblins, then I have to be travelling farther than that.
I rest one hand on Edain’s stirrup. He doesn’t know exactly where my mother’s warriors will have taken Andraste, so they’re going to have to follow their tracks. All he’s been able to discover is that they took the Hallow to Mistmere, and from there went on foot.
“Find her,” I whisper. “And bring her back to me.”
Lysander pauses at my side, reining in his horse. “We’ll find her, Vi. Or die trying.”
Edain glances beneath his lashes at my friend.
“If you come back without Lysander,” I point out, “then I am going to be most displeased with you.”
“He can’t die,” Edain returns, arching a crisp brow. “So unless I chain him to the bottom of a mine and bury the bloody thing with rubble, he’s going to be haunting my fucking steps anyway.”
“That sounds remarkably well thought out.”
A slight hint of a smile. “When you can’t kill someone, Vi, you have to come up with alternatives. If there’s one thing your mother taught me, it’s to have a plan to kill everyone in the room.”
“Even Adaia?”
He stills, gathering the reins in his hands. “Especially Adaia.”
I think of everything she’s done to me. “You might have to stand in line.”
Edain actually winks at me. “Maybe, once this is all said and done, we can both hold the knife?”
8
“So this is your plan,” Finn says, whistling under his breath as he examines the landscape.
The ancient seat of Malagath looms over the forest like a watchful vulture, the broken ridges of its walls crumbling into the forest. A single tower stands tall, and there’s a beacon of light in the window there. A shadow moves behind the glass as if someone watches.
The last time I was here was my first visit into Unseelie. Blaedwyn—the queen of these lands—captured Thiago and the others, and in order to free them, Eris and I stole the Sword of Mourning and set the Erlking free from his prison world.
In return, he granted me two boons and took the keep from Blaedwyn. From what Thalia has managed to glean from her network of demi-fae spies, the queen herself is tucked away in that tower as a prisoner within her own court.
Suffice it to say, I’m no doubt head of the list of fae she’d like to see dead.
“It’s time to call in an old debt,” I mutter, staring up at that window.
She’s definitely watching us.
“Seems cozy,” Finn mutters. “I like the changes the Erlking’s made to the place.”
“Changes?” I tear my gaze away.
“No mistletoe in the trees,” he points out. “It’s been cut down.”
Because mistletoe is dangerous to the Erlking.
“The stables have been repaired.” He points to a low thatched roof as we cross the drawbridge. “Some of the vines encircling the castle have been cut away. Lines of sight have been cleared.”
