Kingdom of Ash
Lysandra pressed a kiss to the top of her red-gold hair. “No harm shall come to you.”
“I am not afraid for myself,” Evangeline said. “But for my friends.”
Those citrine eyes indeed shone with tears of terror, and Lysandra brushed one away before watching the advancing witch towers creep toward them. She had no words to comfort the girl.
“Any minute now,” Aedion murmured, and Lysandra glanced down to the snowy plain.
To the figures that emerged from beneath the snow, clad in white. Flaming arrows nocked in their bows. Morath’s front lines were nearly upon them, but those soldiers were not their target.
Down the wall, Murtaugh gripped the ancient stones as a figure that had to be Ren gave the order. Flaming arrows arched and flew, Morath soldiers ducking under their shields.
They did not bother to look beneath their feet.
Neither did the witches leading their three towers.
The flaming arrows struck the earth with deadly accuracy, thanks to the Silent Assassins who wielded those bows.
Right atop the fuse lines that flowed directly into the pits they’d dug. Just as the witch towers passed over them.
Blinding flashes broke apart the black sea of the army. Then the mighty boom.
And then a rain of stone, all Morath’s forces whirling to see. Providing the right distraction as Ren, Ilias, and the Silent Assassins raced on foot to the white horses hidden behind a snowdrift.
When the flash cleared, when the smoke was gone, a sigh of relief went down the walkway.
Two of those witch towers had been directly over the pits. Pits that they had filled with the chemical reactors and powders that fueled Rolfe’s firelances, then concealed beneath the earth—waiting for a spark to ignite them.
Those two towers now lay in scattered ruin, their wyverns broken beneath them, soldiers squashed under falling stone.
Yet one still stood, the pit it had been closest to exploding too soon. One of the wyverns who had pulled it had been hit by debris from another tower—and lay either dead or injured.
And that third remaining tower had stopped.
A wicked, low horn sounded from the enemy host, and the army halted, too.
“Thank the rutting gods,” Rolfe said, head bowing.
But Aedion was still staring at the plain—at the figures on horseback galloping to Orynth’s walls. Making sure they all returned.
“How long will that stop them?” Evangeline asked.
Everyone, Darrow included, turned to the girl. No one had an answer. No lie to offer.
So they again faced the army gathered on the plain, its farthest reaches now visible.
“One hundred thousand,” Ansel of Briarcliff announced softly.
CHAPTER 76
“It’s possible—to show a different world?” Dorian asked Maeve when they were again in their tower room.
Maeve slid into a chair, her face distant. “Using mirrors, yes.”
Dorian lifted a brow.
“You have seen yourself the power of witch mirrors. What it did to Aelin Galathynius and Manon Blackbeak. Who do you think taught the witches such power? Not the Fae.” A small laugh. “And how do you think I have been able to see so far, hear the voices of my eyes, all the way from Doranelle? There are mirrors to spy, to travel, to kill. Even now, Erawan wields them to his advantage with the Ironteeth.” With the witch towers.
Maeve lounged, a queen with no crown. “I can show him what he wishes to see.”
Dorian opened his mouth, then considered the words.
“An illusion. You don’t plan to show him Orcus or Mantyx at all.”
She cut him a cool stare. “A sleight of hand—while you enter the tower.”
“I can’t get in.”
“I am a world-walker,” Maeve said. “I have traveled between universes. Do you think moving between rooms will be so hard?”
“Something kept you from going to Terrasen all these years.”
Maeve’s jaw tightened. “Brannon Galathynius was aware of my gifts to move between places. The wards around his kingdom prevent me from doing so.”
“So you could not transport Erawan’s armies there for him.”
“No. I can only enter on foot. There are too many of them, anyway, for me to hold the portal that long.”
“Erawan is aware of your gift, so he’ll likely have taken steps to guard his own room.”
“Yes, and I have spent my time here slowly unraveling them. He is not so skilled a spellworker as he thinks.” A smug, triumphant smile.
Yet Dorian asked, “Why not do this from the start?”
“Because I had not yet decided it was worth the risk. Because he had not yet pushed me to bring my handmaidens here, to be mere foot soldiers.”
“You care about them—the spiders.”
“You will find, Your Majesty, that a loyal friend is a rare thing indeed. They are not so easy to sacrifice.”
“You offered up six of them to those princesses.”
“And I shall remember that for as long as I live,” Maeve said, and some kernel of emotion indeed danced over her face. “They went willingly. I tell myself that whenever I look upon them now and see nothing of the creatures I knew. They wished to help me.” Her eyes met his. “Not all Valg are evil.”
“Erawan is.”
“Yes,” she said, and her eyes darkened. “He and his brothers … they are the worst of our kind. Their rule was through fear and pain. They delight in such things.”
“And you do not?”
Maeve twirled an inky strand around a finger. And didn’t answer.
Fine. Dorian went on, “So you shall break past Erawan’s wards on his room, open the portal for me, and I’ll slip in while you distract him with an illusion about his brothers.” He frowned. “As soon as I find the key, he’ll know you’ve deceived him. We’ll have to leave quickly.”
Her mouth curved. “We will. And go to wherever you have hidden the others.”
Dorian kept every expression off his face. “You’re certain he won’t know he’s being tricked?”
“Orcus is his brother. But Orcus was also my husband. The illusion will be real enough.”
Dorian considered. “What time do we make our move?”
Nightfall.
That was when Maeve had told Erawan to meet. That liminal space between light and dark, when one force yielded to another. When she would open the portal for Dorian from rooms away.
As the sun set—not that Dorian could see it with the clouds and gloom of Morath—he found himself staring at the wall of Maeve’s chamber.
She had left minutes ago, with nothing more than a farewell glance. Their escape route had been plotted, an alternative with it. All should go according to plan.
And the body he now wore, the golden hair and golden eyes … Should anyone but Erawan himself stumble into the tower, they would find it occupied by their master.
He did not have room in himself for fear, for doubt. Did not think of the Wyrdstone collars beneath the fortress, or every twisted room and dungeon he’d passed through. Darkness fell beyond the room.
Dorian stepped back as the stones turned dark, dark, dark—then vanished.
The stench of death, of rot, of hate flowed out. Far more putrid than the tomb levels below.