As he had not detected Dorian earlier. Perhaps the raw magic in him also erased any traceable scent.

Dorian bowed his head. “I had returned to my chambers, but I realized I had a lingering question, milord.”

He prayed Erawan didn’t notice the different clothes. The sword that he kept half-hidden beneath his cloak. Prayed Erawan decided that Vernon had gone back to his room, changed, and returned. And prayed that he spoke enough like the Lord of Perranth to be convincing.

A sniveling, groveling man—the sort who’d sell his own niece to a demon king.

“What is it.” Erawan stalked down the hall to his tower, a nightmare wrapped in a beautiful body.

Strike him now. Kill him.

And yet Dorian knew he hadn’t come here for that. Not at all.

He kept his head down, voice low. “Why?”

Erawan slid golden, glowing eyes toward him. Manon’s eyes. “Why what?”

“You might have made yourself lord of a dozen other territories, and yet you graced us with this one. I have long wondered why.”

Erawan’s eyes narrowed to slits, and Dorian kept his face the portrait of groveling curiosity. Had Vernon asked this before?

A stupid gamble. If Erawan noticed the sword at his side—

“My brothers and I planned to conquer this world, to add it to the trove that we’d already taken.” Erawan’s golden hair danced with the light of the torches as he walked the long hall. Dorian had a feeling that when they reached the tower at the far end, the conversation would be through. “We arrived at this one, encountered a surprising amount of resistance, and they were banished back. I could do nothing less while trapped here than to repay this world for the blow they dealt us. So I will make this world into a mirror of our homeland—to honor my brothers, and to prepare it for their return.”

Dorian sifted through countless lessons on the royal houses of their lands and said, “I, too, know what it is to have a brotherly rivalry.” He gave the king a simpering smile.

“You killed yours,” Erawan said, bored already. “I love my brothers dearly.”

The idea was laughable.

Half the hallway remained until the tower door. “Will you truly decimate this world, then? All who dwell in it?”

“Those who do not kneel.”

Maeve, at least, wished to preserve it. To rule, but to preserve it.

“Would they receive collars and rings, or a clean death?”

Erawan surveyed him sidelong. “You have never wondered for the sake of your people. Not even the sake of your niece, failure that she was.”

Dorian made himself cringe, and bowed his head. “I apologize again for that, milord. She is a clever girl.”

“So clever, it seems, that one confrontation with you and you were scared away.”

Dorian again bowed his head. “I will go hunt for her, if that is what you wish.”

“I am aware that she no longer has what I seek, and it is now lost to me. A loss you brought about.” The Wyrdkey Elide had carried, given to her by Kaltain.

Dorian wondered if Vernon had indeed been lying low for months now—avoiding this conversation. He cringed again. “Tell me how to rectify it, milord, and it will be done.”

Erawan halted, and Dorian’s mouth went dry. His magic coiled within him, bracing.

But he made himself look the king in the face. Meet the eyes of the creature who had brought about so much suffering.

“Your bloodline proved useless to me, Vernon,” Erawan said a shade too softly. “Shall I find another use for you here at Morath?”

Dorian knew precisely what sort of uses the man would have. He lifted supplicating hands. “I am your servant, milord.”

Erawan stared at him for long heartbeats. Then he said, “Go.”

Dorian straightened, letting Erawan stride a few more feet toward the tower. The blank-faced guards posted at its door stepped aside as he approached.

“Do you truly hate them?” Dorian blurted.

Erawan half-turned toward him.

Dorian asked, “The humans. Aelin Galathynius. Dorian Havilliard. All of them. Do you truly hate them?” Why do you make us suffer so greatly?

Erawan’s golden eyes guttered. “They would keep me from my brothers,” he said. “I will let nothing stand in the way of my reunion with them.”

“Surely there might be another way to reunite you. Without such a great war.”

Erawan’s stare swept over him, and Dorian held still, willing his scent to remain unremarkable, the shift to keep its form. “Where would the fun be in that?” the Valg king asked, and turned back toward the hall.

“Did the former King of Adarlan ask such questions?” The words broke from him.

Erawan again paused. “He was not so faithful a servant as you might believe. And look what it cost him.”

“He fought you.” Not quite a question.

“He never bowed. Not completely.” Dorian was stunned enough that he opened his mouth. But Erawan began walking again and said without looking back, “You ask many questions, Vernon. A great many questions. I find them tiresome.”

Dorian bowed, even with Erawan’s back to him. But the Valg king continued on, opening the tower door to reveal a lightless interior, and shut it behind him.

A clock chimed midnight, off-kilter and odious, and Dorian strode back down the hall, finding another route to Maeve’s chambers. A quick shift in a shadowed alcove had him scuttling along the floor again, his mouse’s eyes seeing well enough in the dark.

Only embers remained in the fireplace when he slid beneath the door.

In the dark, Maeve said from the bed, “You are a fool.”

Dorian shifted again, back into his own body. “For what?”

“I know where you went. Who you sought.” Her voice slithered through the darkness. “You are a fool.” When he didn’t reply, she asked, “Did you plan to kill him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You couldn’t face him and live.” Casual, stark words. Dorian didn’t need to touch Damaris to know they were true. “He would have put another collar around your throat.”

“I know.” Perhaps he should have learned where the Valg king kept them and destroyed the cache.

“This alliance shall not work if you are sneaking off and acting like a reckless boy,” Maeve hissed.

“I know,” he repeated, the words hollow.

Maeve sighed when he didn’t say more. “Did you at least find what you were seeking?”

Dorian lay down before the fire, curling an arm beneath his head. “No.”

CHAPTER 72

From a distance, the Ferian Gap did not look like the outpost for a good number of Morath’s aerial legion.

Nor did it look, Nesryn decided, like it had been breeding wyverns for years.

She supposed that the lack of any obvious signs of a Valg king’s presence was part of why it had remained secret for so long.

Sailing closer to the towering twin peaks that flanked either side—the Northern Fang on one, the Omega on the other—and separated the White Fangs from the Ruhnn Mountains, Nesryn could barely make out the structures built into either one. Like the Eridun aerie, and yet not at all. The Eridun’s mountain home was full of motion and life. What had been built in the Gap, connected by a stone bridge near its top, was silent. Cold and bleak.