Kingdom of Ash
He opened his mouth, to shout what, he didn’t know, but a cry pierced the blue sky.
The sob that came out of Aelin at the hawk’s bellow of fury cracked Lorcan’s chest.
But she kept running for the trees, for their cover. Lorcan and Gavriel fell into step beside her, and when she again stumbled, those too-thin legs giving out, Lorcan gripped her under the arm and hauled her along.
Fast as a shooting star, Rowan dove for them. He reached them as they passed the first of the trees, shifting as he landed. They threw themselves into a halt, Aelin sprawling onto the pine-covered ground.
Rowan was instantly before her, hands going to the mask on her face, the chains, the blood coating her arms, her torn body—
Aelin let out another sob, and then moaned, “Fenrys.”
It took Lorcan a moment to understand. Took her pointing behind them, to the camp, as she said again, as if speech was beyond her, “Fenrys.” Her breath was a wet rasp. A plea. A broken, bloody plea.
Fenrys remained with Cairn. In the camp. Aelin pointed again, sobbing.
Rowan turned from his mate.
The rage in Rowan’s eyes could devour the world. And that rage was about to extract the sort of vengeance only a mated male could command.
Rowan’s canines flashed, but his voice was deadly soft as he said to Lorcan, “Take her to the glen.” A jerk of his chin to Gavriel. “You’re with me.”
With a final look toward Aelin, his frozen rage a brewing storm on the wind, the prince and the Lion were gone, charging back toward the chaotic, bloody camp.
CHAPTER 29
With the camp in outright chaos, it was far easier to slip in.
Rowan’s power blasted to the western edge, shattering tent and bone. Any soldiers lingering between the camp’s eastern edge and the center ran toward it.
Clearing the way. Right to the tent he’d been so close to reaching when Lorcan’s power had flared. A signal.
That they’d found her. Or she had found them, it seemed.
And when Rowan had seen her, first from the skies and then beside her, when he smelled the blood, both her own and others’, when he beheld the chains and the iron mask clamped over her face, when she was sobbing at the sight of him, terror and despair coating her scent—
The rage that roiled through him had no space for mercy. No room for compassion.
There was neither in him as he and Gavriel snuck past the last cluster of tents to the large one situated in a cleared circle of grass. As if no one could stomach being near Cairn.
Fenrys was with her. Or had been.
From the quiet inside, he wondered if the wolf was dead.
Gavriel shifted into his Fae form, and freed a knife at his hip. An exchanged glance conveyed the order for silence as Rowan sent a wisp of wind floating into the tent.
It sang back to him of two life-forms. Both injured. Blood thick in the air. It was all he needed.
Silent as the breeze in the grass, they slipped between the tent flaps. Rowan didn’t know where to look first.
At the wolf and Fae male sprawled on the floor.
Or at the iron coffin across the tent.
The iron box they’d locked her in.
Had to reinforce, it seemed, from the sloppy welding on the thick slabs atop it.
The box was so small. So narrow.
The smell of her blood, her fear, saturated the tent. Emanated from that box.
A metal table lay nearby.
And beneath it …
Rowan took in the three unlit braziers set beneath it, the chain anchors at the head and foot of the table, and at last looked toward the Fae male left bloodied, but still alive, on the floor across from Fenrys.
Fenrys, whom Gavriel was already crouched over, the golden light of his power wrapped around the blood-soaked fur. Healing him. The white wolf did not rise to consciousness, but his breathing steadied. Good enough.
“Heal him,” Rowan said with lethal softness. The Lion looked up, and found that Rowan’s gaze was no longer on the wolf. But on Cairn.
Chunks of flesh had been torn from Cairn’s body. A lump on his temple told Rowan it had been the blow that had rendered him unconscious. As if Fenrys had slammed Cairn’s skull into the side of that metal table. And then collapsed himself mere feet away.
Collapsed, perhaps not from the wounds themselves, but … Rowan started. What had happened here, what had been so terrible that the wolf had been able to do the impossible to spare Aelin from enduring it?
Gavriel’s tawny eyes flashed with wariness. Rowan pointed at Cairn again. “Heal him.”
They did not have much time. Not to do what he wanted. What he needed.
Some of the drawers in the tall chest had been knocked free. Polished tools glinted within.
A pouch of them had also been set on a piece of black velvet beside the metal table.
Her blood sang to him of pain and despair, of utter terror.
His Fireheart.
Gavriel’s magic shimmered, golden light settling over Cairn.
Rowan surveyed the tools Cairn had laid out, the ones in the drawer. Carefully, thoughtfully, he selected one.
A thin, razor-sharp knife. A healer’s tool, meant for sleek incisions and scraping out rot.
Cairn groaned as unconsciousness gave way. By the time Cairn awoke, chained to that metal table, Rowan was ready.
Cairn beheld who stood over him, the tool in Rowan’s tattooed hand, the others he had also laid out on that piece of velvet, and began thrashing. The iron chains held firm.
Then Cairn beheld the frozen rage in Rowan’s eyes. Understood what he intended to do with that sharp, sharp knife. A dark stain spread across the front of Cairn’s pants.
Rowan wrapped an ice-kissed wind around the tent, blocking out all sound, and began.
CHAPTER 30
The clash of conflict echoed across the land, even from miles away. Deep in the rough hills of an ancient forest, Elide had waited for hours. First shivering in the dark, then watching the sky bleed to gray, then at last blue. And with that final transition, the clamor had started.
She’d alternated between pacing through the mossy glen, weaving amongst the gray boulders strewn between the trees, and sitting in the thrumming silence against one of the towering, wide-trunked trees, making herself as small and quiet as possible. Gavriel had sworn none of the strange or fell beasts in these lands would prowl so close to Doranelle, but she didn’t want to risk it. So she remained in the glen, where she’d been told to wait.
Wait for them. Or wait for things to go badly enough that she had to find her own way. Perhaps she’d seek out Essar if it should come to that—
It wouldn’t come to that. She swore it over and over. It couldn’t come to that.
The morning sun was beginning to warm the chilled shade when she saw them.
Saw them, before she heard them, because their feet were silent on the forest floor, thanks to their immortal grace and training. The breath shuddered out of her as Lorcan emerged between two moss-crusted trees, eyes already fixed on her. And a step behind him, staggering along …
Elide didn’t know what to do. With her body, her hands. Didn’t know what to say as Aelin stumbled over root and rock, the mask and the chains clanking, blood soaking her. Not just blood from her own wounds, but those of others.
She was thin, her golden hair so much longer. Too long, even with the time apart. It fell nearly to her navel, most of it dark with caked blood. As if she’d run through a rain of it.