Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  Then another blow, to her ribs, a cry rasping from her. Fenrys barked.

  Locks clicked, unlocking. Hot breath tickled her ear as she was yanked up, off the table. “Maeve’s orders might hold me at bay, bitch, but let’s see how much you talk after this.”

  Her chained legs failed to get under her before Cairn gripped the back of her head and slammed her face into the edge of the metal table.

  Stars burst, blinding and agonizing, as metal on metal on bone cracked through her. She stumbled, falling back, her chained feet sending her sprawling.

  Fenrys barked again, frantic and raging.

  But Cairn was there, gripping her hair so tightly her eyes watered, and she cried out once more as he dragged her across the floor toward that great, burning brazier.

  He hauled her up by her hair and shoved her masked face forward. “Let’s see how you mock me now.”

  The heat instantly singed her, the flames licking so close to her skin. Oh gods, oh gods, the heat of it—

  The mask warmed on her face, the chains along her body with it.

  Despite herself, her plans, she shoved back, but Cairn held her firm. Pushed her toward the fire as her body strained, fighting for any pocket of cool air.

  “I’m going to melt your face so badly even the healers won’t be able to fix you,” he breathed in her ear, bearing down, her limbs starting to wobble, the heat scorching her skin, the chains and mask.

  He shoved her an inch closer to the flame.

  Aelin’s foot slid back, between his braced legs. Now. It had to be now—

  “Enjoy the fire-breathing,” he hissed, and she let him shove her another inch lower. Let him get off balance, just a fraction, as she slammed her body not up, but back into him, her foot hooking around his ankle as he staggered.

  Aelin whirled, smashing her shoulder into his chest. Cairn crashed to the ground.

  She ran—or tried to. With the chains at her feet, on her legs, she could barely walk, but she stumbled past him, knowing he was already twisting, already rising up.

  Run—

  Cairn’s hands wrapped around her calves and yanked. She went down, teeth singing as they slammed against the mask, drawing blood from her lip.

  Then he was over her, raining blows on her head, her neck, her chest.

  She couldn’t dislodge him, her muscles so drained from disuse, despite the healers keeping the atrophying at bay. Couldn’t flip him, either, though she tried.

  Cairn fumbled behind them—for an iron poker, heating in the brazier.

  Aelin thrashed, trying to get her hands up and over his head, to loop those chains around his neck. But they’d been hooked to the irons at her sides, down her back.

  Fenrys’s snarling barks rang out. Cairn’s hand fumbled again for the poker. Missed.

  Cairn glanced behind him to grab the poker, daring to take his eyes off her for a heartbeat.

  Aelin didn’t hesitate. She rammed her head upward and slammed her masked face into Cairn’s head.

  He knocked back, and she lunged toward the tent flaps.

  He had more restraint than she’d estimated.

  He wouldn’t kill her, and what she’d done just now, provoking him—

  She’d barely made it out of her crouch when Cairn’s hands gripped her hair again.

  When he hurled her with all his strength against the chest of drawers.

  Aelin hit it with a crack that echoed through her body.

  Something in her side snapped and she cried out, the sound small and broken, as she collided with the floor.

  Fenrys had seen his twin drive a knife through his heart. Had watched Connall bleed out onto the tiles and die. And had then been ordered to kneel before Maeve in that very blood as she’d bade him to attend her.

  He’d sat in a stone room for two months, witness to what they’d done to a young queen’s body, her spirit. Had been unable to help her as she’d screamed and screamed. He’d never stop hearing those screams.

  But it was the sound that came out of her as Cairn hurled her into the chest of drawers where Fenrys had watched him arranging his tools, the sound she made as she hit the floor, that shattered him entirely.

  A small sound. Quiet. Hopeless.

  He’d never heard it from her, not once.

  Cairn got to his feet and wiped his bloodied, broken nose.

  Aelin Galathynius stirred, trying to rise onto her forearms.

  Cairn pulled the red-hot poker from the brazier. He pointed it at her like a sword.

  Fenrys strained against his invisible bindings as Aelin glanced at him, toward where he’d sat for the past two days, in that same damned spot by the tent wall.

  Despair shone in her eyes.

  True despair, without light or hope. The sort of despair that wished for death. The sort of despair that began to erode strength, to eat away at any resolve to endure.

  She blinked at him. Four times. I am here, I am with you.

  Fenrys knew it for what it was. The final message. Not before death, but before the sort of breaking that no one would walk away from. Before Maeve returned with the Wyrdstone collar.

  Cairn rotated the poker in his hands, heat rippling off its point.

  And Fenrys couldn’t allow it.

  He couldn’t allow it. In his shredded soul, in what was left of him after all he’d been forced to see and do, he couldn’t allow it.

  The blood oath kept his limbs planted. A dark chain that ran into his soul.

  He would not allow it. That final breaking.

  He pushed upward against the bond’s dark chain, screaming, though no sound came from his open maw.

  He pushed and pushed and pushed against those invisible chains, against that blood-sworn order to obey, to stay down, to watch.

  He defied it. All that the blood oath was.

  Pain lanced through him, into his very core.

  He blocked it out as Cairn pointed the smoldering poker at the young queen with a heart of wildfire.

  He would not allow it.

  Snarling, the male inside him thrashing, Fenrys bellowed at the dark chain binding him.

  He shredded into it, biting and tearing with every scrap of defiance he possessed.

  Let it kill him, wreck him. He would not serve. Not another heartbeat. He would not obey.

  He would not obey.

  And slowly, Fenrys got to his feet.

  Pain shuddered Aelin as she lay sprawled, panting, arms straining to hold her head and chest off the ground.

  It was not Cairn and the poker she stared at.

  But Fenrys, rising upward, his body rippling with tremors of pain, snout wrinkled in rage.

  Even Cairn halted. Looked toward the white wolf. “Stand down.”

  Fenrys snarled, deep and vicious. And still he struggled to his feet.

  Cairn pointed the poker at the rug. “Lie down. That is an order from your queen.”

  Fenrys spasmed, his hackles lifting. But he was standing.

  Standing.

  Despite the order, despite the blood oath’s commands.

  Get up.

  From far away, the words sounded.

  Cairn roared, “Lie down!”

  Fenrys’s head thrashed from side to side, his body bucking against invisible chains. Against an invisible oath.

  His dark eyes met Cairn’s.

  Blood began running from the wolf’s nostril.

  It’d kill him—to sever the oath. It would break his soul. His body would go soon after that.

  But Fenrys put one paw forward. His claws dug into the ground.

  Cairn’s face paled at that step. That impossible step.

  Fenrys’s eyes slid toward hers. Neither needed the silent code between them for the word she beheld in his gaze. The order and plea.

  Run.

  Cairn read the word, too.

  And he hissed, “Not with a shattered spine, she can’t,” before he brought the poker slamming down for Aelin’s back.

  With a roar, F
enrys leaped.

  And with it, he snapped the blood oath completely.

  CHAPTER 27

  Wolf and Fae went tumbling to the carpet, roaring and tearing.

  Fenrys lunged for Cairn’s throat, his enormous body pinning the male, but Cairn got his feet between them and kicked.

  Aelin lurched upright, willing strength to her legs as she came into a kneel beside the chest of drawers. Fenrys slammed into the side of the metal table, but was instantly moving, throwing his body against Cairn.

  A low hiss sounded nearby, and Aelin dared look away to find the poker lying to her right.

  She twisted her feet toward it. Placed the center of the chains binding her ankles atop the red-hot tip.

  Slowly, the links in the center heated.

  Wolf and Fae clashed in a tangle of claws and fists and teeth, then leaped apart.

  Severing the blood oath—it would kill him.

  These were his last breaths, his last heartbeats.

  “I’ll peel the fur from your bones,” Cairn panted.

  Fenrys breathed heavily, blood leaking from between his teeth as he placed one paw over the other, circling. His stare did not break from Cairn’s as they moved, assessing each other for the killing blow.

  The links in the center of the chain began glowing.

  Overhead, the sky lightened to gray.

  Fenrys and Cairn circled again, step after step.

  Wearing him out, wearing him down. Cairn knew the cost of severing the blood oath. Knew he had only to wait it out before Fenrys was dead.

  Fenrys knew it, too.

  He charged, teeth snapping for Cairn’s throat as his paws swiped for the male’s shins.

  Aelin grabbed the poker, planted her heels, and drove the rod upward. It strained against the heated links in the chain, and she shoved and shoved her feet downward, her arms buckling.

  Cairn and Fenrys rolled, and Aelin gritted her teeth, bellowing.

  The chain between her legs snapped.

  It was all she needed.

  She scrambled to her feet, but halted. Fenrys, pinned by Cairn, met her gaze. Snarled in warning and command.

  Run.

  Cairn whipped his head toward her. Toward the chain hanging free between her ankles. “You—”

  But Fenrys surged up, his jaws clamping around Cairn’s shoulder.

  Cairn shouted, arching, grabbing for Fenrys’s back.

  Fenrys met her stare again, ripping into Cairn’s shoulder even as the male shoved them into the edge of the table. Hammered Fenrys’s spine into the metal, hard enough that bone cracked.

  Run.

  Aelin did not hesitate. She sprinted for the tent flaps.

  And into the morning beyond.

  Half a mile to the center of the camp. To the tent.

  The soldiers had responded as Rowan anticipated, and he’d killed them accordingly.

  Birds of prey dove for him, attacking with wind and ice from above. He shattered their magic with a surge of his own, sending them scattering.

  A cluster of warriors charged from behind a row of tents.

  Some beheld him and ran back the way they’d come. All soldiers whom he’d trained. And some he hadn’t. Yet many stayed to fight.

  Rowan ripped through their shields, ripped the air from their lungs. Some found his hatchet swinging for their necks.

  Close. So close to that tent. He would signal Lorcan and Gavriel in a moment. When he was close enough to need the diversion for the way out.

  Another onslaught of soldiers barreled for him, and Rowan angled his long knife. His power blasted away their fired arrows, then blasted away the archers.

  Turning them all to bloodied splinters.

  CHAPTER 28

  Aelin ran.

  Her weakened legs stumbled on the grass, her still-bound hands restricting the full range of motion, but she ran. Picked a direction, any direction but the river mists to her left, and ran.

  The sun was rising, and the army camp … There was motion behind her. Shouting.

  She blocked it out and aimed right. Toward the rising sun, as if it were Mala’s own welcoming embrace.

  She couldn’t get down enough air through the mask’s thin slit, but she kept moving, racing past tents, past soldiers who whipped their heads toward her, as if puzzled. She clenched the poker in her ironclad hands, refusing to see what the commotion was, if Cairn raged behind her.

  But then she heard them. Bellowed orders.

  Rushing steps in the grass behind, closing in. People ahead alerted by their cries.

  Bare feet flying over the ground, her exhausted legs screamed to stop.

  Still Aelin aimed for the eastern horizon. Toward the trees and mountains, toward the sun cresting over them.

  And when the first of the soldiers blocked her path, shouting to stop, she angled the iron poker and did not falter.

  Death sang to Lorcan.

  From the birds of prey that speared farther and farther into the camp, he knew Whitethorn was close to Cairn’s tent.

  Soon now, they’d get the signal.

  Lorcan and Gavriel steadied their breathing, readying their power. It thrummed through them, twin waves cresting.

  But death began beckoning elsewhere in the camp.

  Closer to them. Moving fast.

  Lorcan scanned the brightening sky, the line of the first tents. The entrance with the guards.

  “Someone’s making a move this way,” Lorcan murmured to Gavriel. “But Whitethorn’s still over there.”

  Fenrys. Or Connall, perhaps. Maybe Essar’s sister, who he’d never liked. But he wouldn’t give a shit about that if she hadn’t betrayed them.

  He pointed north of the entrance. “You take that side. Be ready to strike from the flank.”

  Gavriel sped off, a predator ready to pounce unseen when Lorcan attacked head-on.

  Death glimmered. Whitethorn was nearly at the camp’s center. And that force approaching their eastern entrance …

  To hell with waiting.

  Lorcan broke from the cover of trees, dark power swirling, primed to meet whatever broke through the line of tents.

  Freeing the sword at his side, he searched the sky, the camp, the world as death flickered, as the rising sun gilded the rolling grasses and set the dew steaming.

  Nothing. No indication of what, of who—

  He’d reached the first of the hollows that flowed to the camp edge, the dips narrow and steep, when Aelin Galathynius appeared.

  Lorcan didn’t expect the sob in his throat as she raced between the tents, as he beheld the iron mask and the chains on her, hands still bound.

  As he beheld the blood soaking her skin, the short white shift, her hair, longer than he’d last seen and plastered to her head with gore.

  His knees stopped working, and even his magic faltered at the sight of her wild, desperate race for the camp’s edge.

  Soldiers ran toward her.

  Lorcan surged into motion, flaring his magic up and wide. Not to her, but to Whitethorn, still charging for the center of the camp.

  She’s here, she’s here, she’s here, he signaled.

  But Lorcan was too far, the grassy bumps and hollows between them now endless, as ten soldiers converged on Aelin, blocking her path toward the open field.

  One swung his sword, a strike that would cleave her skull in two.

  The fool didn’t realize who he faced. What he faced.

  That it wasn’t a fire-breathing queen bound in iron who charged at him, but an assassin.

  With a twist, arms lifting, Aelin met that sword head-on.

  Just as she’d planned.

  The male’s sword fell short of his intended target, but hit precisely where she wished.

  In the center of the chains that bound her hands.

  Iron snapped.

  Then the male’s sword was in her freed hands. Then his throat was spraying blood.

  Aelin whirled, slamming into the other soldiers who stood between her an
d freedom. Even as he ran for her, Lorcan could only gape at what unfolded.

  She struck before they knew where to turn. Slash, duck, lunge.

  She got her other hand on one of their daggers.

  Then it was over. Then there was nothing between her and the camp entrance but the six guards drawing their weapons—

  Lorcan lashed out with his magic, a lethal net of power that had those guards crashing to their knees. Necks snapped.

  Aelin didn’t falter as they wilted to the ground. She charged past, aiming straight for the field and hills. To where Lorcan ran for her.

  He signaled again. To me, to me.

  Whether Aelin recognized it, or him, she still raced his way.

  Whole. Her body looked whole, and yet she was so thin, her blood-splattered legs straining to keep her upright.

  A rolling field of steep bumps and hollows lay between them. Lorcan swore.

  She wouldn’t make it, not over that terrain, not drained like that—

  But she did.

  Aelin vanished into the first dip, and Lorcan’s magic flared over and over. To her, to Whitethorn.

  And then she was up, cresting the hill, and he could see the slowness taking over, the sheer exhaustion from a body at its limit.

  Arrows twanged from bows, and a wall of them shot into the sky. Aiming for her on those exposed hills.

  Lorcan sent a wave of his power snapping them away.

  Still more fired. Single shots this time, from so many directions he couldn’t trace their sources. Trained archers, some of Maeve’s best. Aelin had to—

  She already was.

  Aelin began zagging, depriving them of an easy target.

  Left to right, she darted over the hills, slower with each bump she cleared, each step toward Lorcan as he raced to her, a hundred yards remaining between them.

  An arrow speared for her back, but Aelin lunged to the side, skidding in grass and dirt. She was up again in a heartbeat, weapons still in hand, charging for the hills and hollows between them.

  Another arrow aimed for her, and Lorcan made to snap it away. A wall of glittering gold got there first.

  From the north, leaping over the hollows, charged Gavriel. Aelin disappeared into a dip in the earth, and when she emerged, the Lion ran at her side, a golden shield around her. Not close to her—but in the air around them. Unable to fully touch her with the iron mask, the chains draped around her torso. The iron gauntlets on her hands.