Kingdom of Ash

The glass, the blood, the veranda and moonlight eddied in her vision.

“I have seen many wars. Sent my warriors to fight in them, end them. I have seen how destructive they are. The very glass you lay on comes from one of those wars, you know. From the glass mountains in the South. They once were sand dunes, but dragons burned them to glass during an ancient and bloody conflict.” A hum of amusement. “Some claim it’s the hardest glass in the world. The most unyielding. I thought, given your own fire-breathing heritage, you might appreciate its origins.”

A click of the tongue, and then Cairn was there again, hands on her shoulders.

Pushing.

Harder and harder. Gods, gods, gods—

There were no gods to save her. Not really.

Aelin’s screams echoed off rock and water.

Alone. She was alone in this. It would be of no use to beg the white wolf to help her.

The hands on her shoulders pulled away.

Heaving, bile burning her throat, Aelin once more curled over her knees.

Endure; outlast—

Maeve simply continued, “The dragons didn’t survive that war. And they never rose again.” Her lips curved, and Aelin knew Maeve had ensured it.

Other fire-wielders—hunted and killed.

She didn’t know why she felt it then. That shred of sorrow for creatures that had not existed for untold centuries. Who would never again be seen on this earth. Why it made her so unspeakably sad. Why it mattered at all, when her very blood was shrieking in agony.

Maeve turned to Connall, remaining in Fae form beside the throne, raging eyes still fixed on his brother. “Refreshments.”

Aelin knelt in that glass as food and drink were gathered. Knelt as Maeve dined on cheese and grapes, smiling at her the entire time.

Aelin couldn’t stop the shaking that overtook her, the brutal numbness.

Deep, deep, she drifted.

It did not matter if Rowan wasn’t coming. If the others had obeyed her wishes to fight for Terrasen.

She would save it in her own way, too. For as long as she could. She owed Terrasen that much. Would never fully repay that debt.

From far away, the words echoed, and memory shimmered. She let it pull her back, pull her out of her body.

She sat beside her father on the few steps descending into the open-air fighting ring of the castle.

It was more temple than brawling pit, flanked by weathered, pale columns that for centuries had witnessed the rise of Terrasen’s mightiest warriors. This late in the summer afternoon, it was empty, the light golden as it streamed in.

Rhoe Galathynius ran a hand down his round shield, the dark metal scarred and dinged from horrors long since vanquished. “Someday,” he said as she traced one of the long scratches over the ancient surface, “this shield will pass to you. As it was given to me, and to your great-uncle before me.”

Her breath was still jagged from the training they’d done. Only the two of them—as he’d promised. The hour once a week that he set aside for her.

Her father placed the shield on the stone step below them, its thunk reverberating through her sandaled feet. It weighed nearly as much as she did, yet he carried it as if it were merely an extension of his arm.

“And you,” her father went on, “like the many great women and men of this House, shall use it to defend our kingdom.” Her eyes rose to his face, handsome and unlined. Solemn and kingly. “That is your charge, your sole duty.” He braced a hand on the rim of the shield, tapping it for emphasis. “To defend, Aelin. To protect.”

She had nodded, not understanding. And her father had kissed her brow, as if he half hoped she’d never need to.

Cairn ground her into the glass again.

No sound remained in her for screaming.

“I am growing bored of this,” Maeve said, her silver tray of food forgotten. She leaned forward on her throne, the owl behind her rustling its wings. “Do you believe, Aelin Galathynius, that I will not make the sacrifices necessary to obtain what I seek?”

She had forgotten how to speak. Had not uttered a word here, anyway.

“Allow me to demonstrate,” Maeve said, straightening. Fenrys’s eyes flared with warning.

Maeve waved an ivory hand at Connall, frozen beside her throne. Where he’d remained since he’d brought the queen’s food. “Do it.”

Connall drew one of the knives from his belt. Stepped toward Fenrys.

No.

The word was a cold clang through her. Her lips even formed it as she jerked against the chains, lines of liquid fire shooting along her legs.

Connall advanced another step.

Glass crunched and cracked beneath her. No, no—

Connall stopped above Fenrys, his hand shaking. Fenrys only snarled up at him.

Connall raised his knife into the air between them.

She could not surge to her feet. Could not rise against the chains and glass. Could do nothing, nothing—

Cairn gripped her by the neck, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and ground her again into the blood-drenched shards. A rasping, broken scream cracked from her lips.

Fenrys. Her only tether to life, to this reality—

Connall’s blade glinted. He’d come to help at Mistward. He had defied Maeve then; perhaps he’d do it now, perhaps his hateful words had been a deception—

The blade plunged down.

Not into Fenrys.

But Connall’s own heart.

Fenrys moved—or tried to. Maw gaping in what might have been a scream, he tried and tried to lunge for his brother as Connall crashed to the tiled veranda. As blood began to pool.

The owl on Maeve’s throne flapped its wings once, as if in horror. But Cairn let out a low laugh, the sound rumbling past Aelin’s head.

Real. This was real. It had to be.

Something cold and oily lurched through her. Her hands slackened at her sides. The light left Connall’s dark eyes, his black hair spilled on the floor around him in a dark mirror to the blood leaking away.

Fenrys was shaking. Aelin might have been, too.

“You tainted something that belonged to me, Aelin Galathynius,” Maeve said. “And now it must be purged.”

Fenrys was whining, still attempting to crawl to the brother dead on the ground. Fae could heal; perhaps Connall’s heart could mend—

Connall’s chest rose in a rattling, shallow breath.

It didn’t move again.

Fenrys’s howl cleaved the night.

Cairn let go, and Aelin slumped onto the glass, hands and wrists stinging.

She let herself lie there, half sprawled. Let the crown tumble off her head and skitter across the floor, dragon-glass spraying where it bounced. Bounced, then rolled, curving across the veranda. All the way to the stone railing.

And into the roaring, hateful river below.

“There is no one here to help you.” Maeve’s voice was as empty as the gaps between stars. “And there is no one coming for you.”

Aelin’s fingers curled in the ancient glass.

“Think on it. Think on this night, Aelin.” Maeve snapped her fingers. “We’re done here.”

Cairn’s hands wrapped around the chains.

Her legs buckled, feet splitting open anew. She barely felt it, barely felt it through the rage and the sea of fire down deep, deep below.

But as Cairn hauled her up, his savage hands roving, she struck.

Two blows.