Right between her eyes, it ached and pressed at her head, trying to get in. She rubbed her brows. Her throat closed up, and she reached for the water, thinking of coolness, of calm and cold, exactly as her tutors and the court had told her. But the magic was churning in her gut—­burning up. Each pulse of pain in her head made it worse.

“Princess,” Quinn said again. She got to her feet, legs wobbling. The blackness in her vision grew with each blow from the pain, and she swayed. Distantly, as if she ­were underwater, she heard Lady Marion say her name, reach for her, but she wanted her mother’s cool touch.

Her mother turned in her seat, face drawn, her golden earrings catching in the light. She stretched out an arm, beckoning. “What is it, Fireheart?”

“I don’t feel well,” she said, barely able to get the words out. She gripped her mother’s velvet-­clad arm, for comfort and to keep her buckling knees from giving out.

“What feels wrong?” her mother asked, even as she put a hand to her forehead. A flicker of worry, then a glance back at her father, who watched from beside the King of Adarlan. “She’s burning up,” she said softly. Lady Marion was suddenly behind her, and her mother looked up to say, “Have the healer go to her room.” Marion was gone in an instant, hurrying to a side door.

She didn’t need a healer, and she gripped her mother’s arm to tell her as much. Yet no words would come out as the magic surged and burned. Her mother hissed and jerked back—­smoke rising from her dress, from where she had gripped her. “Aelin.”

Her head gave a throb—­a blast of pain, and then . . .

A wriggling, squirming inside her head.

A worm of darkness, pushing its way in. Her magic roiled, thrashing, trying to get it out, to burn it up, to save them both, but—“Aelin.”

“Get it out,” she rasped, pushing at her temples as she backed away from the table. Two of the foreign lords grabbed Dorian from the table and swept him from the room.

Her magic bucked like a stallion as the worm wriggled farther in. “Get it out.”

“Aelin.” Her father was on his feet now, hand on his sword. Half the others ­were standing too, but she flung out a hand—­to keep them away, to warn them.

Blue flame shot out. Two people dove in time to avoid it, but everyone was on their feet as the vacated seats went up in flames.

The worm would latch into her mind and never let go.

She grabbed at her head, her magic screaming, so loud it could shatter the world. And then she was burning, a living column of turquoise flame, sobbing as the dark worm continued its work and the walls of her mind began to give.

Above her own voice, above the shouting in the hall, she heard her father’s bellow—­a command to her mother, who was on her knees, hands outstretched toward her in supplication. “Do it, Evalin!”

The pillar of flame grew hotter, hot enough that people ­were fleeing now.

Her mother’s eyes met her own, full of pleading and pain.

Then water—­a wall of water crashing down on her, slamming her to the stones, flowing down her throat, into her eyes, choking her.

Drowning her. Until there was no air for her flame, only water and its freezing embrace.

The King of Adarlan looked at her for a third time—­and smiled.

•

The Valg princes enjoyed that memory, that terror and pain. And as they paused to savor it, Celaena understood. The King of Adarlan had used his power on her that night. Her parents could not have known that the person responsible for that dark worm, which had vanished as soon as she’d lost consciousness, was the man sitting beside them.

There was another one of them now—­a fourth prince, living inside Narrok, who said, “The soldiers have almost taken the tunnel. Be ready to move soon.” She could feel him hovering over her, observing. “You’ve found me a prize that will interest our liege. Do not waste her. Sips only.”

She tried to summon horror—­tried to feel anything at the thought of where they would take her, what they would do to her. But she could feel nothing as the princes murmured their understanding, and the memory tumbled onward.

•

Her mother thought it was an attack from Maeve, a vicious reminder of what­ever debt she owed, to make them look vulnerable. In the hours afterward, as she’d lain in the ice-­cold bath adjacent to her bedroom, she had used her Fae ears to overhear her parents and their court debating it from the sitting room of their suite.

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.