Aelin gaped at the Rowan doppelganger, her eyes as wide as saucers. He was the spider, Gagamba, and a shifter. And the man he had talked of, the merchant from Xandria. How ironic, she thought, we were both hiding who we were, and yet neither had realised what the other was. She tripped and fell onto the gravelly earth, her hands screaming as they scraped against sharp rocks littering the floor. The wind picked up and it whistled through the trees around her, whipping through her blond hair and streaming it in front of her face, cutting bars in her vision. She tucked it behind her ear hastily, pushing herself up off the ground into a low fighting stance. A blue fire dagger appeared in her hand and snarled at him her teeth flashing in the moonlight.
"Where the hell is Rowan?" she growled at him, "I swear, if you've hurt one hair on his head, I'll rip your throat out."
But Gagamba smiled darkly, in the same way that the Valg Prince she had fought only four months before, and it turned Rowans face into a twisted assortment of features that made her flinch away, but grip her dagger tighter. The warm flames licked her hand, and a cold certainty filled her body.
She was not going to die here.
Not when she hadn't fulfilled her vow to Nehemia. Not when she hadn't found the Wyrdkeys or defeated Erawan. Not when Terresan had been brought so close to freedom, to hope of a new future.
She would fight to her last dying breath for her people.
So she launched herself at him.
So here Rowan was, naked and strapped to a tree, his body paralysed and his mouth gagged. Almost completely invisible as well, he realised, due to the special spider silk wrapped around his body. All he could do was watch as Aelin stumbled back and trip over a small rock on the ground. He was going crazy, trying desperately to get his body to cooperate, to move one inch. But he couldn't. Whatever was in the silk was pinning him still, forcing him to watch as the shapeshifter advanced towards her, with dead eyes and a cruel smile. His Fae instincts were telling him protect, protect, protect but the only this moving was his eyes which were darting everywhere, looking for a way out, a way to help. But there was nothing.
He had no idea where the shifter had come from. It had just appeared, with an obvious grudge and hatred of Aelin. He could have been anyone from her life as an assassin, with her never noticing.
He just hoped that he wasn't a very strong fighter.
In his struggle to get free, his mind began to wonder.
Could it use his powers? Would Aelin be able to beat him if it did? Where had it even come from? Had it watched the fight they had just had? Or had it tracked them from Terresan?
He was about to find out.