Their Fireheart

Chapter Three

Aelin

I watched the entrance Vaults from where I crouched on the opposite rooftop, twirling a throwing knife in my hand. Dark glee coursed through me as the king's new guards finally found the winding trail I'd left from the docks, converging on the derelict hall.

Shouts and cries rang from inside as it exploded into bloodshed, the clang of clashing weapons clear with my enhanced senses.

Idly, I wondered how furious Arobynn would be when he discovered what was left of the pleasure hall that had brought him so much money.

He wouldn't be pleased, but considering the disgusting place had also filled the coffers of the people who had slaughtered Sam, I was enjoying watching it be reduced into bloody splinters far too much to care. My position on the roof also afforded me a front row seat to the current owner of the Vaults, a former underling of Sam's murderer and a dealer of flesh, had caught a knife to the throat.

Such a shame that my hand had slipped, I really was out of practice with throwing knives.

Confident the destruction would be absolute, I brushed my now-empty hands on my dark cloak before standing. Ambling along the rooftops of the city, I traveled south, having caught Chaol's distantly familiar scent after leaving the Vaults earlier in the day.

Why he was playing around in the sewer tunnels, I had no idea. Clearly, much had changed with him, and I intended to figure out why.

With feline ease, I shimmied down the drainpipe anchored to the side of a building. Latching my fingers under the lid of the nearby sewer grate, I hauled it open and slipped inside. I bit back a gag at the reek that rose to meet me.

I crept through the dim, moonlight tunnels, silent and swift.

I loathed the sewers, even if I could admit they were a convenient way to get around Rifthold unseen. I'd hated them since I'd been bound up and left to die, courtesy of a bodyguard who wasn't pleased with my plans to kill his master. The sewers had flooded that night, and after freeing myself I'd had to swim - actually swim - through the festering water, nearly drowning thanks to a sealed exit.

It had taken me days to feel clean again. I hadn't been in the sewers since then, and I'd assumed my first time back would come with echoes of the fear I'd felt as I almost died. But that memory had nothing on my most recent trauma.

An ash bolt shot through a chest -

Wings, shredded and bleeding -

Blinking, I forced the memories down as I headed down one of the main arteries of the system. An intersection of four different tunnels loomed ahead, and I slowed my steps, scenting someone just ahead, approaching from the southeast tunnel.

But from the southeast - the one that headed straight towards the castle - darkness was leaking from it, not the usual sort. A thicker, oily darkness that had the hairs on the back of my neck rising. The moonlight peering through the grates above didn't pierce it, and no sound could be heard - not even the scampering of rats.

I hissed out a quiet curse as I stepped closer, a familiar foreboding rising, reaching out with my senses to try to get any kind of idea about what lay within.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

I turned, smiling at the cool female voice. The hooded guard from the Vaults stood in the tunnel not twenty paces behind her. Which meant Chaol wouldn't be far behind.

I held up a knife as I stalked slowly towards the guard. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to sneak up on strangers?'

The woman lifted her hands when I got between a few feet, her hands delicate but scarred. So she had some skill. I cocked my head at her, "Although, considering you appear to frequent pleasure halls and sewers, manners may not be in your wheelhouse."