Kingdom of Ash
The thumping from within the coffin didn’t cease.
“That box will never open,” they said.
She blinked, and she was inside that box—the stone so cold, the air stifling. Blinked, and she was pounding on the lid, screaming and screaming. Blinked, and there were chains on her, a mask clamped over her face—
Aelin awoke to dim braziers and the pine-and-snow scent of her mate wrapped around her. Outside their tent, the wind howled, setting the canvas walls swaying and swelling.
Tired. She was so, so tired.
Aelin stared into the dark for long hours and did not sleep again.
Even with the cover of Oakwald, despite the wider path that Aelin incinerated on either side of the ancient road running up through the continent like a withered vein, she could feel Endovier looming. Could feel the Ruhnn Mountains jutting toward them, a wall against the horizon.
She rode near the front of the company, not saying much as the morning, then the afternoon passed. Rowan stayed by her side, always remaining on her left—as if he might be a shield between her and Endovier—while she sent out plumes of flame that melted ancient trees ahead. Rowan’s wind stifled any smoke from alerting the enemy of their approach.
He’d finished the tattoos the night before. Had taken a small hand mirror to show her what he’d done. The tattoo he’d made for them.
She’d taken one look at the spread wings—a hawk’s wings—across her back and kissed him. Kissed him until his own clothes were gone, and she was astride him, neither bothering with words, or capable of finding them.
Her back had healed by morning, though it remained tender in a few spots along her spine, and in the hours that they’d ridden closer to Endovier, she’d found the invisible weight of the ink to be steadying.
She’d gotten out. She’d survived.
From Endovier—and Maeve.
And now it was upon her to ride like hell for the North, to try to save her people before Morath wiped them away forever. Before Erawan and Maeve arrived to do just that.
But it did not stop the heaviness, that tug toward the west. To look to the place that she had taken so long to escape, even after she’d been physically freed.
After lunch, she found Elide on her right, riding in silence under the trees. Riding taller than she’d seen the girl before. A blush on her cheeks.
Aelin had a feeling she knew precisely why that blush bloomed there, that if she looked behind to where Lorcan rode, she’d find him with a satisfied, purely male smile.
But Elide’s words were anything but those of a lovesick maiden.
“I didn’t think I’d really get to see Terrasen again, once Vernon took me out of Perranth.”
Aelin blinked. And even the blush on Elide’s face faded, her mouth tightening.
Of all of them, only Elide had seen Morath. Lived there. Survived it.
Aelin said, “There was a time when I thought I’d never see it again, too.”
Elide’s face grew contemplative. “When you were an assassin, or when you were a slave?”
“Both.” And maybe Elide had come to her side just to get her to talk, but Aelin explained, “It was a torture of another kind, when I was at Endovier, to know that home was only miles away. And that I would not be able to see it one last time before I died.”
Elide’s dark eyes shone with understanding. “I thought I’d die in that tower, and no one would remember that I had existed.”
They had both been captives, slaves—of a sort. They had both worn shackles. And bore the scars of them.
Or, Elide did. The lack of them on Aelin still ripped at her, an absence that she’d never thought she’d regret.
“We made it out in the end, though,” Aelin said.
Elide reached over to squeeze Aelin’s hand. “Yes, we did.”
Even if she now wished for it to be over. All of it. Her every breath felt weighed down by it, that wish.
They continued on after that, and just as Aelin spied the fork in the road—the crossroads that would take them to the salt mines themselves—a warning cry went up from the rukhin, soaring along the edge between the forest and mountains.
Aelin instantly had Goldryn drawn. Rowan armed himself beside her, and the entire army pausing as they scanned the woods, the skies.
She heard the warning just as a dark shape shot past, so large it blotted out the sun above the forest canopy.
Wyvern.
Bows groaned, and the ruks were racing by, chasing after that wyvern. If an Ironteeth scout spotted them—
Aelin readied her magic. The wyvern banked toward them, barely visible through the latticework of branches.
But light flared then. Blasted back the rukhin—harmlessly.
Not light. But ice, flickering and flashing before it turned to flame.
Rowan recognized it, too. Roared the order to hold their fire.
It was not Abraxos who landed at the crossroads. And there was no sign of Manon Blackbeak.
Light flashed again. And then Dorian Havilliard stood there, his jacket and cape stained and worn.
Aelin galloped down the road toward him, Rowan and Elide beside her, the others at their backs.
Dorian lifted a hand, his face grave as death, even as his eyes widened at the sight of her.
But Aelin sensed it then.
What Dorian carried.
The Wyrdkeys.
All three of them.
CHAPTER 88
Aedion’s arm and ribs were on fire.
Worse than the searing heat of the firelances, worse than any level of Hellas’s burning realm.
He’d regained consciousness as the healer began her first stitches. Had clamped down on the leather bit she’d offered and roared around the pain while she sewed him up.
By the time she’d finished, he’d fainted again. He woke minutes later, according to the soldiers assigned to make sure he didn’t die, and found the pain somewhat eased, but still sharp enough that using his sword arm would be nearly impossible. At least until his Fae heritage healed him—faster than mortal men.
That he hadn’t died of blood loss and could attempt to move his arm as he ordered his armor strapped back on him and stumbled into the city streets, aiming for the wall, was thanks to that Fae heritage. His mother’s, yes, but mostly from his father.
Had Gavriel heard, across the sea or wherever their hunt for Aelin had taken him, that Terrasen was about to fall? Would he care?
It didn’t matter. Even if part of him wished the Lion were there. Rowan and the others certainly, but the steady presence of Gavriel would have been a balm to these men. Perhaps to him.
Aedion gritted his teeth, swaying as he scaled the blood-slick stairs to the city walls, dodging bodies both human and Valg. An hour—he’d been down for an hour.
Nothing had changed. Valg still swarmed the walls and both the southern and western gates; but Terrasen’s forces held them off. In the skies, the number of Crochans and Ironteeth had thinned, but barely. The Thirteen were a distant, vicious cluster, ripping apart whoever flew in their path.
And down at the river … red blood stained the snowy banks. Too much red blood.
He stumbled a step, losing sight of the river for a moment while soldiers dispatched the Valg grunts before him. When they passed, Aedion could scarcely breathe while he scanned the bloodied banks. Soldiers lay dead all around, but—there. Closer to the city walls than he’d realized.