Rowan bared his teeth in a feral smile. “He had it coming.”

Cloaked, armed, and masked, Aelin leaned against the stone wall of the abandoned building while Rowan circled the bound Valg commander in the center of the room.

“You’ve signed your death warrant, you maggots,” the thing inside the guard’s body said.

Aelin clicked her tongue. “You must not be a very good demon to be captured so easily.”

It had been a joke, really. Aelin had picked the smallest patrol led by the mildest of the commanders. She and Rowan had ambushed the patrol just before midnight in a quiet part of the city. She’d barely killed two guards before the rest were dead at Rowan’s hand—and when the commander tried to run, the Fae warrior had caught him within heartbeats.

Rendering him unconscious had been the work of a moment. The hardest part had been dragging his carcass across the slums, into the building, and down into the cellar, where they’d chained him to a chair.

“I’m—not a demon,” the man hissed, as if every word burned him.

Aelin crossed her arms. Rowan, bearing both Goldryn and Damaris, circled the man, a hawk closing in on prey.

“Then what’s the ring for?” she said.

A gasp of breath—human, labored. “To enslave us—corrupt us.”

“And?”

“Come closer, and I might tell you.” His voice changed then, deeper and colder.

“What’s your name?” Rowan asked.

“Your human tongues cannot pronounce our names, or our language,” the demon said.

She mimicked, “Your human tongues cannot pronounce our names. I’ve heard that one before, unfortunately.” Aelin let out a low laugh as the creature inside the man seethed. “What is your name—your real name?”

The man thrashed, a violent jerking motion that made Rowan step closer. She carefully monitored the battle between the two beings inside that body. At last it said, “Stevan.”

“Stevan,” she said. The man’s eyes were clear, fixed on her. “Stevan,” she said again, louder.

“Quiet,” the demon snapped.

“Where are you from, Stevan?”

“Enough of—Melisande.”

“Stevan,” she repeated. It hadn’t worked on the day of Aedion’s escape—it hadn’t been enough then, but now … “Do you have a family, Stevan?”

“Dead. All of them. Just as you will be.” He stiffened, slumped, stiffened, slumped.

“Can you take off the ring?”

“Never,” the thing said.

“Can you come back, Stevan? If the ring is gone?”

A shudder that left his head hanging between his shoulders. “I don’t want to, even if I could.”

“Why?”

“The things—things I did, we did … He liked to watch while I took them, while I ripped them apart.”

Rowan stopped his circling, standing beside her. Despite his mask, she could almost see the look on his face—the disgust and pity.

“Tell me about the Valg princes,” Aelin said.

Both man and demon were silent.

“Tell me about the Valg princes,” she ordered.

“They are darkness, they are glory, they are eternal.”

“Stevan, tell me. Is there one here—in Rifthold?”

“Yes.”

“Whose body is it inhabiting?”

“The Crown Prince’s.”

“Is the prince in there, as you are in there?”

“I never saw him—never spoke to him. If—if it’s a prince inside him … I can’t hold out, can’t stand this thing. If it’s a prince … the prince will have broken him, used and taken him.”

Dorian, Dorian …

The man breathed, “Please,” his voice so empty and soft com- pared to that of the thing inside him. “Please—just end it. I can’t hold it.”

“Liar,” she purred. “You gave yourself to it.”

“No choice,” the man gasped out. “They came to our homes, our families. They said the rings were part of the uniform, so we had to wear them.” A shudder went through him, and something ancient and cold smiled at her. “What are you, woman?” It licked its lips. “Let me taste you. Tell me what you are.”

Aelin studied the black ring on its finger. Cain—once upon a time, months and lifetimes ago, Cain had fought the thing inside him. There had been a day, in the halls of the castle, when he’d looked hounded, hunted. As if, despite the ring …

“I am death,” she said simply. “Should you want it.”

The man sagged, the demon vanishing. “Yes,” he sighed. “Yes.”

“What would you offer me in exchange?”

“Anything,” the man breathed. “Please.”

She looked at his hand, at his ring, and reached into her pocket. “Then listen carefully.”

Aelin awoke, drenched in sweat and twisted in the sheets, fear clenching her like a fist.

She willed herself to breathe, to blink—to look at the moon-bathed room, to turn her head and see the Fae Prince slumbering across the bed.

Alive—not tortured, not dead.

Still, she reached a hand out over the sea of blankets between them and touched his bare shoulder. Rock-hard muscle encased in velvet-soft skin. Real.

They’d done what they needed to, and the Valg commander was locked in another building, ready and waiting for tomorrow night, when they would bring him to the Keep, Arobynn’s favor at last fulfilled. But the words of the demon rang through her head. And then they blended with the voice of the Valg prince that had used Dorian’s mouth like a puppet.

I will destroy everything that you love. A promise.

Aelin loosed a breath, careful not to disturb the Fae Prince sleeping beside her. For a moment, it was hard to pull back the hand touching his arm—for a moment, she was tempted to stroke her fingers down the curve of muscle.

But she had one last thing to do tonight.

So she withdrew her hand.

And this time, he didn’t wake when she crept out of the room.

It was almost four in the morning when she slipped back into the bedroom, her boots clutched in one hand. She made it all of two steps—two immensely heavy, exhausted steps—before Rowan said from the bed, “You smell like ash.”

She just kept going, until she’d dropped her boots off in the closet, stripped down into the first shirt she could find, and washed her face and neck.

“I had things to do,” she said as she climbed into bed.

“You were stealthier this time.” The rage simmering off him was almost hot enough to burn through the blankets.

“This wasn’t particularly high risk.” Lie. Lie, lie, lie. She’d just been lucky.

“And I suppose you’re not going to tell me until you want to?”

She slumped against the pillows. “Don’t get pissy because I out-stealthed you.”

His snarl reverberated across the mattress. “It’s not a joke.”

She closed her eyes, her limbs leaden. “I know.”

“Aelin—”

She was already asleep.

Rowan wasn’t pissy.

No, pissy didn’t cover a fraction of it.

The rage was still riding him the next morning, when he awoke before she did and slipped into her closet to examine the clothes she’d shucked off. Dust and metal and smoke and sweat tickled his nose, and there were streaks of dirt and ash on the black cloth. Only a few daggers lay scattered nearby—no sign of Goldryn or Damaris having been moved from where he’d dumped them on the closet floor last night. No whiff of Lorcan, or the Valg. No scent of blood.

Either she hadn’t wanted to risk losing the ancient blades in a fight, or she hadn’t wanted the extra weight.

She was sprawled across the bed when he emerged, his jaw clenched. She hadn’t even bothered to wear one of those ridiculous nightgowns. She must have been exhausted enough not to bother with anything other than that oversized shirt. His shirt, he noticed with no small amount of male satisfaction.

It was enormous on her. It was so easy to forget how much smaller she was than him. How mortal. And how utterly unaware of the control he had to exercise every day, every hour, to keep her at arm’s length, to keep from touching her.