Kingdom of Ash

She lifted her bound hands to the solid wall of iron mere inches above her face. Traced the whorls and suns embossed onto its surface. Even on the inside, Maeve had ordered them etched. So Aelin might never forget that this box had been made for her, long before she’d been born.

But—those were her own bare fingertips brushing over the cool, rough metal.

He’d taken off the iron gauntlets. Or had forgotten to put them back on after what he’d done. The way he’d held them over the open brazier, until the metal was red-hot around her hands and she was screaming, screaming—

Aelin pressed her palms flat against the metal lid and pushed.

The shattered arm, the splinters of bone jutting from her skin: gone.

Or had never been. But it had felt real.

More so than the other memories that pressed in, demanding she acknowledge them. Accept them.

Aelin shoved her palms against the iron, muscles straining.

It didn’t so much as shift.

She tried again. That she had the strength to do so was thanks to the other services Maeve’s healers provided: keeping her muscles from atrophying while she lay here.

A soft whine echoed into the box. A warning.

Aelin lowered her hands just as the lock grated and the door groaned open.

Cairn’s footsteps were faster this time. Urgent.

“Relieve yourself in the hall and wait by this door,” he snapped at Fenrys.

Aelin braced herself as those steps halted. A grunt and hiss of metal, and firelight poured in. She blinked against it, but kept still.

They’d anchored her irons into the box itself. She’d learned that the hard way.

Cairn didn’t say anything as he unfastened the chains from their anchor.

The most dangerous time for him, right before he moved her to the anchors on the altar. Even with her feet and hands bound, he took no chances.

He didn’t today, either, despite not bothering with the gauntlets.

Perhaps they’d melted away over that brazier, along with her skin.

Cairn yanked her upright as half a dozen guards silently appeared in the doorway. Their faces held no horror at what had been done to her.

She’d seen these males before. On a bloodied bit of beach.

“Varik,” Cairn said, and one of the guards stepped forward, Fenrys now at his side by the door, the wolf as tall as a pony. Varik’s sword rested against Fenrys’s throat.

Cairn gripped her chains, tugging her against his chest as they walked toward the guards, the wolf. “You make a move, and he dies.”

Aelin didn’t tell him she wasn’t entirely sure she had the strength to try anything, let alone run.

Heaviness settled into her.

She didn’t fight the black sack shoved over her head as they passed through the arched doorway. Didn’t fight as they walked down that hall, though she counted the steps and turns.

She didn’t care if Cairn was smart enough to add in a few extras to disorient her. She counted them anyway. Listened to the rush of the river, growing louder with each turn, the rising mist that chilled her exposed skin, slicking the stones beneath her feet.

Then open air. She couldn’t see it, but it grazed damp fingers over her skin, whispering of the gaping openness of the world.

Run. Now.

The words were a distant murmur.

She had no doubt the guard’s blade remained at Fenrys’s throat. That it would spill blood. Maeve’s order of restraint bound Fenrys too well—along with that strange gift of his to leap between short distances, as if he were moving from one room to another.

She’d long since lost hope he’d find some way to use it, to bear them away from here. She doubted he’d miraculously reclaim the ability, should the guard’s sword strike.

Yet if she heeded that voice, if she ran, was the cost of his life worth her own?

“You’re debating it, aren’t you,” Cairn hissed in her ear. She could feel his smile even through the sack blinding her. “If the wolf’s life is a fair cost to get away.” A lover’s laugh. “Try it. See how far you get. We’ve a few minutes of walking left.”

She ignored him. Ignored that voice whispering to run, run, run.

Step after step, they walked. Her legs shook with the effort.

It told her enough about how long she had been here. How long she had not been able to properly move, even with the healers’ ministrations to keep her muscles from wasting away.

Cairn led her up a winding staircase that had her rasping for breath, the mist fading away to cool night air. Sweet smells. Flowers.

Flowers still existed. In this world, this hell, flowers bloomed somewhere.

The water’s bellow faded behind them to a blessedly dull rushing, soon replaced by merry trickling ahead. Fountains. Cold, smooth tiles bit into her feet, and through the hood flickering fire cast golden ripples. Lanterns.

The air tightened, grew still. A courtyard, perhaps.

Lightning pulsed down her thighs, her calves, warning her to slow, to rest.

Then open air yawned again wide around her, the water once more roaring.

Cairn halted, yanking her against his towering body, his various weapons digging into her chains, her skin. The other guards’ clothes rustled as they stopped, too. Fenrys’s claws clicked on stone, the sound no doubt meant to signal her that he remained nearby.

She realized why he’d feel the need to do so as a female voice that was both young and old, amused and soulless, purred, “Remove the hood, Cairn.”

It vanished, and Aelin needed only a few blinks to take everything in.

She had been here before.

Had been on this broad veranda overlooking a mighty river and waterfalls, had walked through the ancient stone city she knew loomed at her back.

Had stood in this very spot, facing the dark-haired queen lounging on a stone throne atop the dais, mist wreathing the air around her, a white owl perched on the back of her seat.

Only one wolf lay sprawled at her feet this time. Black as night, black as the queen’s eyes, which settled on Aelin, narrowing with pleasure.

Maeve seemed content to let Aelin look. Let her take it in.

Maeve’s deep purple gown glistened like the mists behind her, its long train draped over the few steps of the dais. Pooling toward—

Aelin beheld what glittered at the base of those steps and went still.

Maeve’s red lips curved into a smile as she waved an ivory hand. “If you will, Cairn.”

The male didn’t hesitate as he hauled Aelin toward what lay on the ground.

Shattered glass, piled and arranged in a neat circle.

He halted just outside, the first of the thick shards an inch from Aelin’s bare toes.

Maeve motioned to the black wolf at her feet and he rose, plucking up something from the throne’s broad arm before trotting to Cairn.

“I thought your rank should at least be acknowledged,” Maeve said, that spider’s smile never faltering as Aelin beheld what the wolf offered to the guard beside Cairn. “Put it on her,” the queen ordered.

A crown, ancient and glimmering, shone in the guard’s hands. Crafted of silver and pearl, fashioned into upswept wings that met in its peaked center, encircled with spikes of pure diamond, it shimmered like the moon’s rays had been captured within as the guard set it upon Aelin’s head.

A terrible, surprising weight, the cool metal digging into her scalp. Far heavier than it looked, as if it had a core of solid iron.