An odd thing for the warrior to say, given that they’d barely spoken beyond councils, but Chaol bowed his head. “Thank you.”

Gavriel stared toward the snow and mountains—toward the distant north. “I was not granted the opportunity you have, to be present from the start. To see my son grow into a man.”

Chaol thought of it—of the life growing in Yrene’s womb, of the child they’d raise. Thought of what Gavriel had not experienced. “I’m sorry.” It was the only thing, really, to say.

Gavriel shook his head, tawny eyes glowing golden, flecks of emerald emerging in the blinding sun. “I did not tell you for sympathy.” The Lion looked at him, and Chaol felt the weight of every one of Gavriel’s centuries weighing upon him. “But rather to tell you what you perhaps already know: to savor every moment of it.”

“Yes.” If they survived this war, he would. Every damn second.

Gavriel angled the reins, as if to lead his horse back to his companions, but Chaol said, “I’m guessing that Aedion has not made it easy for you to appear in his life.”

Gavriel’s grave face tightened. “He has every reason not to.”

And though Aedion was Gavriel’s son, Chaol said, “I’m sure you already know this, but Aedion is as stubborn and hotheaded as they come.” He jerked his chin toward Aelin, riding ahead, saying something to Fenrys that made Rowan snicker—and Fenrys bark a laugh. “Aelin and Aedion might as well be twins.” That Gavriel didn’t stop him told Chaol he’d read the lingering wound in the Lion’s eyes well enough. “Both of them will often say one thing, but mean something else entirely. And then deny it until their last breath.” Chaol shook his head. “Give Aedion time. When we reach Orynth, I have a feeling that Aedion will be happier to see you than he lets on.”

“I am bringing back his queen, and riding with an army. I think he’d be happy to see his most hated enemy, if they did that for him.” Worry paled the Lion’s tanned features. Not for the reunion, but for what his son might be facing in the North.

Chaol considered. “My father is a bastard,” he said quietly. “He has been in my life from my conception. Yet he never once bothered to ask the questions you pose,” Chaol said. “He never once cared enough to do so. He never once worried. That will be the difference.”

“If Aedion chooses to forgive me.”

“He will,” Chaol said. He’d make Aedion do it.

“Why are you so certain?”

Chaol considered his words carefully before he again met Gavriel’s striking gaze. “Because you are his father,” he said. “And no matter what might lie between you, Aedion will always want to forgive you.” There it was, his own secret shame, still warring within him after all his father had done. Even after the trunk full of his mother’s letters. “And Aedion will realize, in his own way, that you went to save Aelin not for her sake or Rowan’s, but for his. And that you stayed with them, and march in this army, for his sake, too.”

The Lion gazed northward, eyes flickering. “I hope you are right.” No attempt at denial—that all Gavriel had done and would do was for Aedion alone. That he was marching north, into sure hell, for Aedion.

The warrior began to edge his horse past him again, but Chaol found himself saying, “I wish—I wish I had been so lucky to have you as my father.”

Surprise and something far deeper passed across Gavriel’s face. His tattooed throat bobbed. “Thank you. Perhaps it is our lot—to never have the fathers we wish, but to still hope they might surpass what they are, flaws and all.”

Chaol refrained from telling Gavriel he was already more than enough.

Gavriel said quietly, “I shall endeavor to be worthy of my son.”

Chaol was about to mutter that Aedion had better deem the Lion worthy when two forms took shape in the skies high above. Large, dark, and moving fast.

Chaol grabbed for the bow strapped across his back as soldiers cried out, Gavriel’s own bow already aimed skyward, but Rowan shouted above the fray, “Hold your fire!” Galloping hooves thundered toward them, then Aelin and the Fae Prince were there, the latter announcing, “It’s Nesryn and Borte.”

Within minutes, the two women had descended, their ruks crusted with ice from the air high above the peaks.

“How bad is it?” Aelin asked, now joined by Fenrys, Lorcan, and Elide.

Borte winced. “It makes no sense. None of it.”

Nesryn explained before Chaol could tell the girl to get to the point, “We’ve gone through the Gap thrice now. Even landed in the Omega.” She shook her head. “It’s empty.”

“Empty?” Chaol asked. “Not a soul there?”

The Fae warriors glanced to one another at that.

“A few of the furnaces were still going, so someone must be there,” Borte said, “but there wasn’t one witch or wyvern. Whoever remains behind is minimal—likely no more than trainers or breeders.”

The Ferian Gap was empty. The Ironteeth legion gone.

Rowan scanned the peak ahead. “We need to learn what they know, then.”

Nesryn’s nod was grim. “Sartaq already has people on it.”

CHAPTER 73

Dorian hunted through Morath in a hundred different skins.

On the silent feet of a cat, or scuttling along the floors as a cockroach, or hanging from a rafter as a bat, he spent the better part of a week listening. Looking.

Erawan still remained unaware of his presence. Perhaps the nature of his raw magic indeed provided him with anonymity—and Maeve had only known to recognize it thanks to whatever she’d pried from Aelin’s mind.

At night, Dorian returned to Maeve’s tower chamber, where they would go over all he had seen. What she did during the day to keep Erawan from noticing the small, ever-changing presence hunting through his halls, she did not reveal.

She’d brought the spiders, though. Dorian had heard the servants’ terrified whispers about the fleeting portal that the queen had opened to allow in six of the creatures to the catacombs. Where they, through some terrible magic, allowed in the Valg princesses.

Dorian couldn’t decide whether it was a relief that he had not encountered these hybrids yet. Though he’d seen the emaciated human bodies, mere husks, that were occasionally hauled down the corridors. Dinner, the guards carrying them had hissed to the petrified servants. To feed a bottomless hunger. To prime them for battle.

What the spider-princess creations could do, what they would do to his friends in the North … Dorian couldn’t stop recalling what Maeve had said to Erawan. That the Valg princesses had been held here for the second phase of whatever he was planning. Perhaps to ensure that they were well and truly destroyed once the bulk of his armies came through.

It honed his focus as he hunted. Pushed and nudged him onward, even when reason and instinct told him to flee this place. But he would not. Could not. Not without the key.

Sometimes, he could have sworn he felt it. The key. The horrible, otherworldly presence.

But when he’d chase after that wretched power down stairwells and along ancient corridors, only dust and shadows would greet him.

Often, it led him back to Erawan’s tower. To the locked iron door and Valg guards posted outside. One of the few remaining places he had not dared to search. Though other possibilities did still remain.