Their Fireheart

Chapter Forty One

Aelin

The sun was hot on my back, beaming off the shining silver manacles clamped heavily around Chaol's wrists. They clanked and swayed in the mid morning light as I tugged him along the crowded street, a dagger poised to sink into his side. Only a block remained before we would reach the iron fence that would lead us up the sloping hill to that grotesque glass monstrosity they called a castle.

Crowds streamed past, not noticing the chained man or the black-cloaked woman who hauled him closer and closer to the castle. We cut through the ignorant public like butter, even as my heart thudded heavily in my chest.

"You remember the plan?" I murmured, keeping my head down, dagger pressed against the captain's ribs.

"Yes," He breathed.

His pulse jumped beneath my fingers, but his steps were steady as we pushed onward. With my court in the sewers beneath us, Dorian in the castle ahead, there was no room for hesitation. There would be no turning back. Not today, not ever again.

The crowds quieted near the fence, as if wary of the black-uniformed guards that monitored the entrance. I craned my neck to get a better look at our first obstacle, when a flash of red and gold caught my attention.

I stiffened, freezing in place so suddenly that Chaol almost slammed into me. "Chaol -"

The crowd shifted before I could finish voicing my warning, and Chaol got his first good look at the castle fence.

At the corpses that hung from the towering wrought-iron bars. Corpses in red and gold uniforms.

"Chaol -" I tried again.

He was already moving. I swore under my breath and kept pace with him, keeping up the charade that I was dragging him along by the chains, my dagger tight to his ribs.

I didn't know how I hadn't heard the crows jabbering as they picked at the dead flesh clinging to the iron posts. Perhaps I was too focused on our task, allowing the racket of the crowd to distract me. Or maybe I'd just grown used to the cawing of the heartless scavengers as they glutted themselves on the misery evident in every corner of the city.

Either way, I should have known to scout out our approach this morning. If I had, I could have spared Chaol, or at least prepared him. Because it wasn't just nameless victims on display. It was his men strung up like carrion.

Sixteen of them. The ones I knew to be his closest companions, his most loyal guards. The rare few who had proven their loyalty not to their king, but to their kingdom, to its people.

The first one had the collar of his uniform unbuttoned, revealing the torture he'd clearly endured, his chest crisscrossed with welts and cuts and brands.

Ress.

And next to him, Brullo. His eyes were gone, either from torture or the crows. His hands were swollen and twisted - part of his ears were missing.

My heartbeat thudded in my ears, my throat thick, eyes stinging with unshed tears.

These men, these honest, loyal men had been butchered, all at the behest of a mad, tyrannical king. Devoted soldiers who had sworn their lives to this kingdom, to these people. And two, in particular, who had seen past the mask of the swaggering, arrogant assassin and found something decent enough to call her a friend.

It wasn't fair. None of it.

They deserved to live, to see the reclamation of their kingdom, the freeing of their people. To grow old, and fat, and happy.

I pushed down my grief, because I knew that whatever heart-rending sorrow I felt, it paled in comparison to that of the captain at my side. Because this was no meaningless slaughter. No, it was a message. Not to Aelin Galathynius or Aedion Ashryver, but to Chaol Westfall.