Kingdom of Ash

Slowly, the turquoise waters of the Florine clouded blue and black.

Still, Lysandra kept ripping bites from the side of the behemoth that launched itself upon Orynth.

 

The heat off the firelances scorched Aedion’s cheek, warming his helmet to near-discomfort.

A small price, as the bursts of flame sent the Valg foot soldiers at the walls scrambling back. Where their archers felled the enemy, more came. And where the firelances melted them away, only scorched earth and melted armor remained. But there was not enough—not even close.

Above, beyond the walls, the Ironteeth and Crochans clashed.

So violently, so quickly, that a blue mist hung in the skies from the bloodshed.

He couldn’t determine who had the upper hand. The Thirteen fought amongst them, and where they plunged into the fray, Ironteeth and their mounts tumbled. Crushing Valg foot soldiers beneath them.

Iron siege ladders rose again, aiming for the city walls. Answering blasts from the firelances sent those already on them to the ground as charred corpses. But more Valg scrambled up, the fear of flame not enough to deter them.

Sprinting to the nearest ladder, Aedion nocked arrow after arrow, firing at the soldiers creeping up its rungs. Clean shots through the gaps in the dark armor.

The archers around him did the same, and the Bane soldiers behind him settled into fighting stances, waiting for the first to breach the walls.

At the city gates, flame blasted and raged. He’d concentrated many of the Mycenians at either of the two gates into Orynth, their most vulnerable weakness along the walls.

That the fire kept flaring as it did told him enough: Morath was making its push there.

Rolfe’s order to Conserve fire! set a pit of dread forming in his gut, but Aedion focused on the siege ladder. His bow twanged, and another soldier tumbled away. Then another.

Down the wall, Ren had taken on the other nearby siege ladder, the lord’s bow singing.

Aedion dared a glance to the army ahead. They had amassed close enough now.

Falling back, letting an archer take his place, he lifted his sword, signaling the Bane at the catapults, the Fae royals and archers near them. “Now!”

Wood snapped and groaned. Boulders as large as wagons soared over the walls. Each had been oiled, and gleamed in the sun while they rose.

And when the boulders reached their peak, just as they began to plummet toward the enemy, the Fae archers unleashed their flaming arrows.

They struck the oil-slick boulders right before the stones slammed into the earth.

Flame erupted, flowing right into the holes that Aedion had ordered drilled into the rock, right into the nest of the explosive powders they’d again taken from the precious reserves of Rolfe’s firelances.

The boulders blasted apart in balls of flame and stone.

Along the city walls, soldiers cheered at the carnage that the smoking ruins revealed. Nothing but melted, squashed, or shattered Valg grunts. Every place the six catapults had fired upon now had a ring of charred ground around it.

“Reposition!” Aedion roared. The Bane were already heaving against the wheels that would rotate the catapults on their wooden stands. Within seconds, they had aimed at another spot; within seconds, the Fae royals were lifting more oiled boulders from the stockpile Darrow had acquired over weeks and weeks.

He didn’t give Morath a chance to recover. “Fire!”

Boulders soared, flaming arrows following.

The explosions on the battlefield shook the city walls this time.

Another cheer went up, and Aedion motioned the Bane and Fae royals to halt. Let Morath think that their stock was depleted, that they only had a few lucky shots in their arsenal.

Aedion turned back to the siege ladder as the first of the Valg grunts cleared the walls.

The man was killed before his feet finished touching the ground, courtesy of a waiting Bane soldier.

Aedion unstrapped the shield from across his back and angled his sword as the wave of soldiers crested the walls.

But it was not a Valg foot soldier who appeared next, climbing over the ladder with ease.

The young man’s face was cold as death, his black eyes lit with unholy hunger.

A black collar was clasped around his throat.

A Valg prince had come.

CHAPTER 86



“Focus on the ladder,” Aedion snarled to the soldiers shrinking from the handsome demon prince who stepped onto the city walls as if he were merely entering a room.

He wore no armor. Nothing but a black tunic cut to his lithe body.

The Valg prince smiled. “Prince Aedion,” purred the thing inside it, drawing a sword from a dark sheath at his side. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Aedion struck.

He did not have magic, did not have anything to combat the dark power in the prince’s veins, but he had speed. He had strength.

Aedion feinted with his sword, that ordinary, nameless sword, and the prince swung with his own blade—just as Aedion slammed his shield into the man’s side.

Driving him back. Not toward the ladder, but to the Mycenian who wielded the firelance—

The Mycenian was dead.

The prince chuckled, and a whip of dark power lashed for Aedion.

Aedion ducked, shield rising. As if it would do anything against that power.

Darkness struck metal, and Aedion’s arm sang with the reverberations.

But the pain, the life-draining agony, did not occur.

Aedion instantly parried, a slash upward that the Valg prince dodged with a hop to the side.

The demon’s eyes were wide as he took in the shield. Then Aedion.

Then the Valg prince hissed, “Fae bastard.”

Aedion didn’t know what it meant, didn’t care as he took another blast upon his shield, the battlements already slick with blood both black and red. If the Mycenian nearby was dead, then there was another down by Ren’s ladder—

The Valg prince unleashed blast after blast of power.

Aedion took each one upon his shield, the prince’s power bouncing off as if it were a spray of water upon stone. And for every burst of power sent his way, Aedion swung his sword.

Steel met steel; darkness clashed with ancient metal. Aedion had the vague sense of soldiers Valg and human alike halting as he and the demon prince battled their way across the city wall.

He kept his feet beneath him, as Rhoe had taught him. As Quinn had taught him, and Cal Lochan. As all his mentors and the warriors he’d admired above all others had taught him. For this moment, when he would be called to defend Orynth’s very walls.

It was for them he swung his sword, for them he took blow after blow.

The Valg prince hissed with every blast, as if enraged that his power could not break that shield.

Rhoe’s shield.

There was no magic in it. Brannon had never borne it. But one of them had forged it, one of the unbroken line of kings and queens who had come after him, who had loved their kingdom more than their own lives. Who had carried this shield into battle, into war, to defend Terrasen.

And as Aedion and the Valg prince fought along the walls, as that ancient shield refused to yield, he wondered if there was a different sort of power in the metal. One that the Valg could never and would never understand. Not true magic, not as Brannon and Aelin had. But something just as strong—stronger.

That the Valg might never break, no matter how they tried.

Aedion’s sword sang, and the Valg prince roared as Aedion connected with his arm, slashing deep.