Aelin and Company: Throne of Glass Bonus Chapter

They’d crossed the Terrasen border two days ago.

The little town baking in the midday sun was the first they’d encountered, the gray stones and moss-speckled shingles all weatherworn and near-crumbling. No main road connected to it, at least no road beyond a groove of wagon tracks through hard grass and mud, and freshly tilled farmlands surrounded it for a good mile in either direction.

Atop a grassy, rock-strewn outlook, Aelin surveyed the sprawl of hills through the little valley, the town at its heart, and the ancient ramble of Oakwald Forest flowing on after it.

“The outfitter is small, but surprisingly well stocked,” Lysandra said beside her, still breathless from scouting ahead. Rowan had accompanied her, keeping at a distance, letting the shifter glean what information was vital, then showing what she’d missed. He’d been training her since they’d left Rifthold, not just the scouting, but the flying. Reading the winds, too.

The shifter went on, “The people seemed friendly enough. I could buy what we need and be done in an hour or so. Then meet you in the forest with a wagon.”

Aelin at last drew her attention away from the village and valley. Lysandra wore her human form, rare these days. “I assume you’d do this as…a man?”

Lysandra braced her hands on her hips. “No, as a squirrel.”

Aelin’s mouth twitched. “That’d be a sight.”

“What would be?” Aedion sauntered over from where he’d been rubbing down the horses, Fleetfoot trotting merrily at his heels. Aelin didn’t miss how her cousin raked his gaze over Lysandra, or how the shifter deliberately ignored it. Fleetfoot bounded right up to the shifter, however, and peppered her with sloppy kisses.

Aelin jerked her chin at the shifter, who was now ruffling Fleetfoot’s soft head. “Lysandra plans to barter with acorns for our food, apparently.”

Aedion’s brows furrowed. “What?”

The ladies snorted, right as Rowan said from where he and Evangeline had been gathering buckets of water, “Don’t even bother getting in the middle of that nonsense, Aedion.”

Aelin stuck out her tongue at the Fae Prince. Evangeline giggled, then quickly hid the grin when Rowan shot a look at her. The girl darted to Lysandra, wholly missing the crinkling in Rowan’s eyes as she took over pampering Fleetfoot.

Something tightened in Aelin’s chest at Rowan’s quiet amusement. He and Aedion had both been kind to the girl, knowing when to tease, when to comfort. Two bossy, overbearing older brothers and trained, lethal killers. Gods help Evangeline when she was old enough to be interested in anyone romantically.

Though given the horrors of her childhood, even with Lysandra’s intervention…Aelin supposed they’d all be happy for Evangeline when that day came. But the moment any young man looked too long at Evangeline…Aelin smiled to herself. The man or woman, she supposed, wouldn’t just have Rowan and Aedion snarling at them. Oh, no. They’d have a fire-breathing bitch-queen and a shape-shifter capable of turning into the face of their nightmares waiting to have a little chat.

Honestly, it was enough to make anyone pity the girl.

Fleetfoot seemed rather put out as Evangeline straightened and wrapped her arms around Lysandra’s waist, holding her tightly. The shifter smiled absently down at the girl, stroking her red-gold head.

“If you turn into a squirrel,” Evangeline said into Lysandra’s road-dusty white shirt, “will you travel on my shoulder and let me make an acorn hat for you to wear?”

Aelin bit her lip, striding toward Rowan and the water before she could make the mistake of meeting Lysandra’s gaze and howling. Rowan was indeed clamping his lips together, eyes dazzlingly bright. Aelin linked her arm through his and led the prince toward the copse of trees behind them quickly.

Aelin made it about ten feet into the shaded wood before her cackle burst free, echoing off the trees and scattering the birds, drowsy in the midday heat.

Rowan chuckled, rubbing his neck as Aelin fizzed and gurgled. Laughing at Evangeline was something none of them were particularly inclined to do, but…gods above.

“I’m honestly debating offering Lysandra a gold coin just so I can see her little woodland outfit,” Aelin said when she managed to master herself.

Rowan laughed again. “I don’t think you’d need to pay her anything— she’ll do it just to make the girl happy.”

Indeed, they all were inclined to make the girl happy. Evangeline had suffered enough, seen far more than a child should ever witness. Aelin and Lysandra had as well. As had Aedion, she supposed. But out of all of them…

“You had a fairly happy childhood,” she said, more musing than question.

Rowan nodded nonetheless. “Yes, my parents faded when I was still young. But in all honesty, my uncle’s house was much more…fun. Our education was strict, but there was joy in that house. With six children plus me, plus a horde of my other cousins living nearby, it was a menagerie.”

Aelin lifted a brow. “Literally, with your other forms.”

He pinched her side. “You have no idea. When our tutors and nurses gave us orders, we’d simply fly away. So my uncle installed locks on the windows, and spikes on the chandeliers and bookcases, just to keep us from having anywhere to fly to.”

Aelin laughed. “I have trouble imagining you misbehaving.”

His brows rose. “I was obedient in public. And among strangers, I was quiet. But on my uncle’s estate…Perhaps I was calmer than some of my cousins, but we ran wild.”

“And you all could turn into hawks?”

“Mostly birds of prey fill the Whitethorn bloodline. My cousin, Enda, can shift into a peregrine falcon. Sellene, another cousin from a different uncle, shifts into a golden eagle. But we all bear the ice and wind, which was another source of grief for our tutors.”

Aelin strode for a tree and leaned against it. “But you wanted to avoid them when we went to Doranelle.”

He stiffened slightly. “They…their relationship with Maeve can be fraught. Bringing them into the hell I was sure we were walking toward only added potential casualties.”

“Would they have sided with you, against her?”

“It’s been so long since I bothered to spend more than a few minutes with them that I honestly don’t know. I was not kind to them for a great while. I was worried that they might add more obstacles for you and me.”

She angled her head. “What happened between you?”

“After… Lyria,” he said, still hesitating on his mate’s name as if it snagged on something razor-sharp in him, “when I got back from wandering and swore the blood oath to Maeve, I…I shut out everyone I had associated with before then. The people who had known her, known us together. It was easier to surround myself with the cadre, with armies, than face the pity of my cousins. Enda—he and I were closest while growing up. He came to visit me every week if I was in residence in Doranelle. I refused to see him. Then I went off to war, and when I returned two years later, he didn’t come again.”

He shrugged. “The rest of my cousins would sometimes corner me at events, or show up at my door, but I dismissed it as meddling.”

She considered his words. “I don’t blame you.”

He seemed to sag slightly.

Pushing off the tree and taking a few steps toward him, she asked, “You have an actual house?”

“Many, actually properties owned by my parents, and going back generations.”

“I suppose you redecorated them in warrior-squalor.”

He rolled his eyes, stalking over to her. “I left them precisely how they were given to me. Stuffy, frilly, and utterly useless.”

“Only a Fae brute would find luxury to be that way.”

She let him back her up against the tree, let him brace his hands on either side of her head. “If I weren’t banished from Doranelle for the rest of eternity, I’d invite you to come play house. And I’d give you two days before you were bored out of your mind and grousing to me about it.”

“I happen to love playing house. Nesting is an art form for me.” Her lips twitched.

“Don’t you dare turn that into some joke about birds.”

She clenched her jaw shut, even as her lips shook.

Rowan flicked her nose.

She batted away his hand, laughing under her breath. “Our friends are being suspiciously quiet.”

“I bet they decided to go for a walk in the opposite direction.” He leaned in until his breath warmed her mouth.

“We should get those supplies from the town.” It was a halfhearted offer at best.

Rowan’s lips brushed her own as he murmured, “It can wait a minute or two.”

His first kiss was barely more than a caress. Followed by another, soft and slow, against the corner of her mouth. Then the other.

“Ten minutes,” she murmured, settling against the tree behind her. “Let’s give them ten minutes.”

“Twenty,” was his only response as she lifted her chin so he could have better access to her mouth, letting him place those featherlight kisses over and over.

“Do you remember that day in Mistward,” Aelin breathed, “when I finally mastered shifting, and we raced through the forest?”

Rowan paused his nuzzling long enough to nod.

He leaned in again to kiss her, but she put a finger on his lips. He met her stare, his eyes dark and simmering.

“You looked at me while we were running through the trees, and smiled.” She swallowed. “And you looked…you looked so alive, so wild and alive, and…” She traced the contours of his mouth. “I think that was the moment when I began to want you. I didn’t know it at the time, but… I think it was then. You were real and wicked and as savage as I was, and when you saw my speed and the Fae heritage and you didn’t balk…when you only smiled at me. No one had ever done that before. You saw all of me, yet you still smiled.”

Rowan brushed her unbound hair out of her face. “I think we both tried for a damn long time to convince ourselves of our…neutrality.” He kissed one of her cheekbones, then the other. “I find I prefer this much more.”

Her toes curled inside her boots. “Likewise, Prince,” she said onto his mouth, hauling him against her, savoring every hard inch and ripple of muscle. “Likewise.”

***

In the end, Rowan and Aelin were gone for thirty minutes.

Long enough for Aedion and Lysandra to have sorted out that they were all going to the village. One person getting that many supplies might draw attention, both from spies and would-be thieves, and after so long in the wild, Aelin was craving at least some semblance of civilization. How Rowan had wandered the wilds for ten years…

Aelin didn’t like to think about it. Him alone for that long, or the grief and guilt and rage that had thrown him so far into that abyss.

That even when he’d returned to civilization a decade later, he hadn’t really…lived. Yes, he’d gone off to war, gone on a thousand adventures, but…Aelin kept close to Rowan as they made their way into the little village, hooded and cloaked.

Lysandra was indeed wearing the form of a burly, plain man to be their negotiator while they got what they needed. Evangeline was his daughter, Aelin her nursemaid, and the two males their hired guard. Their cover was simple, they were a small party trekking north to visit long-lost kin now that Adarlan’s armies were at last leaving.

With midday edging toward afternoon, many of the village denizens had finished their lunch and returned to the fields to tend the harvest now abundant in the dark soil. The perfect time to come, the main, dirt street was nearly empty. Save for the center of town, where the murmur of quiet talking whispered out, along with the splash of water and flap of wet laundry. Some sort of fountain, no doubt.

They reached the outfitter Lysandra had scouted, the shifter making a stellar show of lumbering up the stairs of the small stone building, then ordering them to wait outside.

Aedion’s quiet huff of laughter at the performance earned him a sharp warning look from Evangeline. Aelin dipped her head, ever the demure nursemaid, to hide her grin as Aedion murmured his apologies to the girl.

They led the horses to the stone trough at the edge of the building, and Aelin casually glanced at the quiet village around them.

One main street flanked by a lone tavern, a clothier that had somehow missed out on the fashions of the last five years, and a blacksmith. All were interspersed with what looked to be one- or two-room cottages. No roads led to the houses beyond the street, only grass and rocks seemed to mark the way.

“Did you ever come here before?” Aelin asked Aedion from the shadows of her hood, stroking her mare’s neck as the horse drank deep.

“No, I don’t even know what here is,” Aedion muttered, glancing over a shoulder. A few villagers eyed them as they hurried from the lichen-choked, gray stone fountain at the heart of town, mostly women with the day’s laundry in their baskets, off to hang them out at home.

“There are some abandoned houses,” she observed. “This close to Adarlan’s border, do you think…”

“I think it’s best if we don’t talk about it here,” Aedion cut in. Aelin straightened. Her cousin added a bit more softly, a hand drifting to the Sword of Orynth hidden beneath the folds of his cloak, “Adarlan plundered—people sometimes fought back. People sometimes vanished. Or left entirely. I doubt any of the explanations are pleasant ones.”

And these were her people. This village was hers.

Her hood turned a bit stifling, but Aelin ran a hand through the mare’s mane. Rowan, his horse drinking greedily across from her own, asked, “Are there many villages like this?”

“These days?” Aedion’s hand lingered on the bone pommel of his sword. “The small ones like this, not connected to any of the main roads, survived with minimal damage. But the villages close to the roads, to the marching armies, many are just bits of rubble. Adarlan took and took, and when they were done, they burned it all.”

Her throat tightened.

“We tried to help,” Aedion added. “But…we were usually too far away, or too late.”

Aelin snapped her head toward him. “You…” The words dried up. “Gods above, Aedion, no one blames you for it.”

“If anything…” She shook her head.

Her cousin patted his bay gelding’s neck. “We couldn’t do much, anyway. Not without crossing a dangerous line with Adarlan. We tried to get the magic wielders into hiding. But Adarlan always found them.”

A shudder went down Aelin’s spine. The King of Adarlan, in his twisted way, had tried to save them, had cut off magic so that the Valg, when they came, could not seek them out as prime vessels. And when that had not worked, he’d executed any with magic simmering in their veins. And those who tried to protect them.

“What about the Fae?” Rowan asked quietly.

Aedion’s turquoise eyes flickered in the shadows of his hood. “Adarlan had hunters, how and where they were trained, I don’t know. But they found the few Fae here. The ones that didn’t flee over the mountains, at least.”

Rowan didn’t respond.

It cracked her heart a bit when Aedion added, “I’m sorry.”

“As Aelin said,” Rowan replied, “it was not your fault. Or your burden to bear.”

Aelin might have echoed the sentiment had she not heard it—the sound that crackled through the town.

Laughter, children laughing.

And she had not heard it, had not expected it here of all places, in so long that she turned from her horse to seek the source.

There were five of them, the eldest no more than eleven and the youngest perhaps six, all bobbing and scrambling around the town fountain. Shrieking with delight as they were chased by-

Aelin left the mare behind, head angled as she walked toward the fountain.

Butterflies of water, pure water, flitted and chased after the children, emerging from the fountain and sparkling in the midday sun.

Adults had stopped their washing and chatting to watch, the children wholly unaware of their audience. Delight cast their faces near glowing, their shrieking laughter and sprinting steps the only sounds amid the burbling fountain.

And in the heart of their merry storm, a dirty-faced girl around eight wriggled her fingers, eyes scrunched in concentration, as her creatures fluttered to life from the fountain.

“Powerful,” Rowan murmured, appearing at Aelin’s side with that preternatural silence. “She’ll grow into a powerful wielder if she can already muster this much control, likely without training.”

Indeed, Aelin could barely summon more than a ribbon of water, let alone actual animated creatures. She noted the faces of the adults, at the same moment they realized strangers were in their midst.

Wary amusement shifted into something hard and cold. Aelin met the eyes of an older woman near the fountain, the others seeming to look to her for guidance. Their leader, or some person of authority. The woman’s tan, lined face hardened. Aelin only inclined her head, offering a small smile to the gathered women.

A hissed word from another washer had the girl halting. The other children picked up on the ripple of quiet—and went still.

Aelin held out a palm toward them. Toward the girl now ducking behind the skirts of the washer who had shushed her.

With the blazing midday sun, Aelin’s fire raged and roared in her veins, and she willed it to cool, to settle. Sweat beaded on her brow, but she held steady as a droplet of water formed in the air above her palm.

The girl let out a gasp that echoed through the silent square.

Aelin smiled a bit more, letting the water grow into the size of an apple, then setting it spinning.

The adults murmured, glancing at one another—and at that woman who had met Aelin’s stare. Already, the magic was quaking a bit, the smooth orb rippling and sagging in spots.

They all watched as a small water butterfly flapped out of the fountain and alit atop Aelin’s sphere, its wings flexing.

A laugh of joy lodged in Aelin’s throat as she surveyed the fine details up close. The girl wasn’t just strong. She was creative. She’d used different currents to shape patterns into the wings, the entire butterfly in constant motion within its form.

Aelin kept perfectly still, concentrating so hard on keeping that sphere intact that she barely registered the scuffle between the girl and her guardian. From the corner of her eye, she noted the girl approaching, the other children peering around their keepers’ skirts, but she didn’t dare break her focus until the girl was before her and whispered, “You’re like me?”

The accent—the Terrasen accent, the lilt to the words…

She had not spoken to one of her people, in her own land, in…a very long time.

She wondered if the girl noticed that the sphere splashed to the earth not entirely for show. The water butterfly, however, took off, flapping around them as if it were drunk on nectar.

Aelin met the girl’s brown-eyed gaze and said, “Not as talented, but yes.”

And the sound of her accent, the mix of Terrasen and Adarlan…The girl’s chin lifted. Mistrust, a bit of fear. But courage. A great well of courage. The girl did not back down.

“We were playing,” the girl said, as if they needed defending. As if…the empty homes, the wary faces, flashed before Aelin’s eyes.

“I saw,” Aelin said gently. Calmly. “You are very skilled.”

A one-shouldered shrug.

“How old are you?”

“Nine.”

“A good age.” Small, for nine. Perhaps years of poverty had taken their toll. Aelin’s stomach tightened.

“How old are you?”

One of the women choked behind them.

Aelin huffed a laugh. “Nineteen.”

“A good age,” the girl said, nodding sagely. Aelin laughed again.

Behind them, Aelin sensed Rowan and Aedion monitoring—but it wasn’t the males that drew the girl’s attention. “What happened to her face?”

Aelin knew who she meant, but she still looked over her shoulder to Evangeline, who stood between Aedion and Rowan, each warrior with a hand on her shoulder.

In the bright sun, the girl’s scars were stark—brutal.

“Bad people tried to hurt her,” Aelin said.

“Mama says that with my magic, I could be a great healer.”

“You indeed could,” Aelin replied, flicking her attention over to where the woman now monitored them with a stone face.

“I could heal her scars one day, maybe.”

Aelin considered. “That is very generous of you. I suppose it would be up to my friend, though, whether she wishes to remove them.” With magic based healing, it’d still be a brutal process, but…perhaps it was possible.

“I could fix yours, too.”

Clever eyed little thing.

“You could do that, and a great many more things,” Aelin said. She went on a bit louder, just so the adults could hear, “You could ensure your fields and farms get proper water. You could keep the fountain’s well safe. And yes, you could learn to heal and tend to the sick and injured.”

“Where?” said a low female voice.

Aelin looked to the older woman seated on the cracked fountain lip—the town’s matron.

“Where does she learn such things?” the woman pushed.

Aelin paused. She didn’t know. Had no idea.

“They burned the magic academy,” the woman said. “There’s no place left to learn.”

“I know,” Aelin said.

“Then don’t put dreams in her head,” the woman snapped.

Aelin’s cheeks heated. But Aedion said behind her, still hidden beneath his hood, “Terrasen will be rebuilt. Give it a few years, and there will be a place.”

“If war doesn’t destroy us,” the woman said, jerking her chin to the others to resume their washing. “Best be on the road soon if you want to make it to the next town by dark.”

A curt, if not polite, dismissal.

Aelin didn’t blame them. She looked down at the girl before her, looked into those large brown eyes. And she whispered so no one could hear, not the women washing or the Fae males monitoring, “If war comes, if we survive, wait a year after it ends. Then come to Orynth, and find Celaena Sardothien. Go to the castle and tell them you’re looking for her, and have come at last for magic lessons.”

“Phedre,” the older woman barked. An order.

But Aelin leaned down, whispering into Phedre’s ear as she slipped a gold coin into her pocket, “Do not be afraid of what makes you shine brightly.”

Whether the girl felt or identified the sudden weight in her pocket, she didn’t let on. Phedre only nodded, eyes so bright, and scampered off. Lysandra soon finished at the outfitter’s, and they left the village immediately after, a group of women and men trailing them toward the forest to make sure they were gone for good.

But for half a mile down the grassy slopes and to the threshold of Oakwald, a water butterfly flitted at Aelin’s shoulder.

Seated around a fire of Aelin’s own making hours later, Oakwald a tangled nest around them, they dined on fresh berries and a few fine cuts of beef that Lysandra had procured for them. A rare, indulgent treat when they could hunt for themselves, but…none of them objected.

The shifter stayed in her human form long enough to devour her share, but now lounged in ghost leopard form at Evangeline’s feet. Fleetfoot, however, sat at the girl’s side, eyes riveted to the bit of meat still in Evangeline’s fingers.

Evangeline paused eating and said to none of them in particular, “Could a healer fix me?”

“There is nothing to fix,” Aedion said a bit too quietly.

Lysandra growled her agreement, but seemed to be listening, waiting for an answer.

They all looked to Rowan, who frowned slightly. “The process would require extensive treatments, with…” He checked himself, and said carefully, “With the scars being so deep.”

Lysandra tensed. Aedion was not the only one of them who blamed himself for the past. Evangeline ran a finger down the side of her face. “What kind of treatments?”

Those citrine eyes were so large, so full of…hope. Fear, yes, but hope.

“The kind that might hurt you a great deal before the scars get better.”

“But they would go away?”

“Perhaps.”

Aedion scuffed his boot against the dirt. “You don’t need it, Evangeline. You’re perfect as you are.”

Evangeline smiled at Aedion—broadly and happily. Aelin glanced to Rowan, who looked as she did, like someone had punched him in the gut.

Lysandra was just staring at her young ward, devastation in those pale green eyes. Devastation and yet… Lysandra glanced at Aedion, who had moved to sit beside Evangeline and was showing her how to make a proper daisy chain. Aelin didn’t miss the change in Lysandra’s expression, even in ghost leopard form, as she took in the warrior.

Aelin met Rowan’s eyes again, and he leaned in to press a soft kiss to her neck. He said, so quietly none of them could hear, “You told that girl to come to Orynth, didn’t you?”

She nodded. Rowan pulled back to look at her face, to study her. The pride in his eyes made her throat tighten. “It is an honor to serve you.”

But Aelin shook her head, looking at him, at Aedion, at Evangeline, and Lysandra, watching over them all. “The honor is all mine,” she said softly.

The next morning, Evangeline’s squeal of delight was nearly loud enough to wake the dead slumbering in their hill tombs to the south.

Lysandra remained in squirrel form throughout the day, and the next one after that, and wore her acorn hat as proudly as any fine lady while she rode atop Evangeline’s shoulder.