Heir of Fire

It had to be Maeve. No one ­else could do anything like that, or know that such a demonstration—­in front of the King of Adarlan, who already loathed magic—­would be detrimental.

She did not want to talk, even once she was again capable of walking and speaking and acting like a princess. Insisting some normalcy might help, her mother made her go to a tea the next afternoon with Prince Dorian, carefully guarded and monitored, with Aedion sitting between them. And when Dorian’s flawless manners faltered and he knocked over the teapot, spilling on her new dress, she’d made a good show of having Aedion threaten to pummel him.

But she didn’t care about the prince, or the tea, or the dress. She could barely walk back to her room, and that night she dreamt of the maggot invading her mind, waking with screams and flames in her mouth.

At dawn, her parents took her out of the castle, headed for their manor two days away. Their foreign visitors might have caused too much stress, the healer said. She suggested Lady Marion take her, but her parents insisted they go. Her uncle approved. The King of Adarlan, it seemed, would not stay in the castle with her magic running rampant, either.

Aedion remained in Orynth, her parents promising he would be sent for when she was settled again. But she knew it was for his safety. Lady Marion went with them, leaving her husband and Elide at the palace—­for their safety, too.

A monster, that was what she was. A monster who had to be contained and monitored.

Her parents argued the first two nights at the manor, and Lady Marion kept her company, reading to her, brushing her hair, telling her stories of her home in Perranth. Marion had been a laundress in the palace from her childhood. But when Evalin arrived, they had become friends—­mostly because the princess had stained her new husband’s favorite shirt with ink and wanted to get it cleaned before he noticed.

Evalin soon made Marion her lady-in-waiting, and then Lord Lochan had returned from a rotation on the southern border. Handsome Cal Lochan, who somehow became the dirtiest man in the castle and constantly needed Marion’s advice on how to remove various stains. Who one day asked a bastard-­born servant to be his wife—­and not just wife, but Lady of Perranth, the second-­largest territory in Terrasen. Two years later, she had borne him Elide, heir of Perranth.

She loved Marion’s stories, and it was those stories she clung to in the quiet and tension of the next few days, when winter still gripped the world and made the manor groan.

The ­house was creaking in the brisk winds the night her mother walked into her bedroom—­far less grand than the one in the palace, but still lovely. They only summered ­here, as the ­house was too drafty for winter, and the roads too perilous. The fact that they’d come . . .

“Still not asleep?” her mother asked. Lady Marion ­rose from beside the bed. After a few warm words, Marion left, smiling at them both.

Her mother curled up on the mattress, drawing her in close. “I’m sorry,” her mother whispered onto her head. For the nightmares had also been of drowning—­of icy water closing over her head. “I am so sorry, Fireheart.”

She buried her face in her mother’s chest, savoring the warmth.

“Are you still frightened of sleeping?”

She nodded, clinging tighter.

“I have a gift, then.” When she didn’t move, her mother said, “Don’t you wish to see it?”

She shook her head. She didn’t want a gift.

“But this will protect you from harm—­this will keep you safe always.”

She lifted her head to find her mother smiling as she removed the golden chain and heavy, round medallion from beneath her nightgown and held it out to her.

She looked at the amulet, then at her mother, eyes wide.

The Amulet of Orynth. The heirloom honored above all others of their ­house. Its round disk was the size of her palm, and on its cerulean front, a white stag had been carved of horn—­horn gifted from the Lord of the Forest. Between his curling antlers was a burning crown of gold, the immortal star that watched over them and pointed the way home to Terrasen. She knew every inch of the amulet, had run her fingers over it countless times and memorized the shape of the symbols ­etched into the back—­words in a strange language that no one could remember.

“Father gave this to you when you ­were in Wendlyn. To protect you.”

The smile remained. “And before that, his uncle gave it to him when he came of age. It is a gift meant to be given to people in our family—­to those who need its guidance.”

She was too stunned to object as her mother slipped the chain over her head and arranged the amulet down her front. It hung almost to her navel, a warm, heavy weight. “Never take it off. Never lose it.” Her mother kissed her brow. “Wear it, and know that you are loved, Fireheart—­that you are safe, and it is the strength of this”—­she placed a hand on her heart—“that matters. Wherever you go, Aelin,” she whispered, “no matter how far, this will lead you home.”

•

She had lost the Amulet of Orynth. Lost it that very same night.

She could not bear it. She tried begging the Valg princes to put her out of her misery and drain her into nothing, but she had no voice ­here.

Hours after her mother had given her the Amulet of Orynth, a storm had struck.

It was a storm of unnatural darkness, and in it she felt that wriggling, horrific thing pushing against her mind again. Her parents remained unconscious along with everyone ­else in the manor, even though a strange smell coated the air.

She had clutched the amulet to her chest when she awoke to the pure dark and the thunder—­clutched it and prayed to every god she knew. But the amulet had not given her strength or courage, and she had slunk to her parents’ room, as black as her own, save for the window flapping in the gusting wind and rain.

The rain had soaked everything, but—­but they had to be exhausted from dealing with her, and from the anxiety they tried to hide. So she shut the window for them, and carefully crawled into their damp bed so that she did not wake them. They didn’t reach for her, didn’t ask what was wrong, and the bed was so cold—­colder than her own, and reeking of copper and iron, and that scent that did not sit well with her.

It was to that scent that she awoke when the maid screamed.

Lady Marion rushed in, eyes wide but clear. She did not look at her dead friends, but went straight to the bed and leaned across Evalin’s corpse. The lady-in-waiting was small and delicately boned, but she somehow lifted her away from her parents, holding her tightly as she rushed from the room. The few servants at the manor ­were in a panic, some racing for help that was at least a day away—­some fleeing.