Soldiers were spilling out of the camp, and Lorcan sent a black wind whipping for them. Where it touched them, they died. And those who did not found an impenetrable shield barring the way to the field.
He spread it as wide as he could. Blood oath or no, they were still his people. His soldiers. He’d prevent their deaths, if he could. Save them from themselves.
Aelin was stumbling now, and Lorcan cleared the last of the hills between them.
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.
No sign o
f Rowan or Gavriel. But no grief on Lorcan’s face, nothing beyond urgency, given how he monitored the sky, the trees. Searching for any pursuit.
Aelin halted at the edge of the clearing. Her feet were bare, and the thin, short shift she wore revealed no major injuries.
But there was little recognition in Aelin’s eyes, shadowed with the mask.
Lorcan said to the queen, “We’ll wait here for them.”
Aelin, as if her body didn’t quite belong to her, lifted her shackled, metal-encased hands. The chain linking them had been severed, and hung in pieces off either manacle. The same with those at her ankles.
She tugged at one of the metal gauntlets. It didn’t budge.
She tugged again. The gauntlet didn’t so much as shift.
“Take it off.”
Her voice was low, gravelly.
Elide didn’t know which one of them she’d ordered, but before she could cross the clearing, Lorcan gripped the queen’s wrist to examine the locks.
One corner of his mouth tightened. There was no easy way to free them, then.
Elide approached, her limp deep once more with Gavriel’s magic occupied.
The gauntlets had been locked at her wrist, overlapping slightly with the shackle. Both had small keyholes. Both were made from iron.
Elide shifted slightly, bracing her weight on her uninjured leg, to get a view of where the mask was bound to the back of Aelin’s head.
That lock was more complicated than the others, the chains thick and ancient.
Lorcan had fitted the tip of a slender dagger into the lock of the gauntlet, and was now angling it, trying to pick the mechanism.
“Take it off.” The queen’s guttural words were swallowed by the moss-crusted trees.
“I’m trying,” Lorcan said—not gently, though certainly without his usual coldness.
The dagger scraped in the lock, but to no avail.
“Take it off.” The queen began trembling.
“I’m—”
Aelin snatched the dagger from him, metal clicking on metal as she fitted the blade’s tip into the lock. The dagger shook in her ironclad hand. “Take it off,” she breathed, lips curling back from her teeth. “Take it off. ”
Lorcan made to grab the dagger, but she angled away. He snapped, “These locks are too clever. We need a proper locksmith.”
Panting through her clenched teeth, Aelin dug and twisted the dagger into the gauntlet’s lock. A snap cracked through the clearing.
But not the lock. Aelin withdrew the dagger to reveal the broken, chipped point. A shard of metal tumbled from the lock and into the moss.
Aelin stared at the broken blade, at the shard in the greenery cushioning her bare, bloodied feet, her breaths coming faster and faster.
Then she dropped the dagger into the moss. Began clawing at the shackles on her arms, the gauntlets on her hands, the mask on her face. “Take it off,” she begged as she scratched and tugged and yanked. “Take it off!”
Elide reached a hand for her, to stop her before she ripped the skin clean off her bones, but Aelin dodged away, staggering deeper into the clearing.
The queen dropped to her knees, bowing over them, and clawed at the mask.
It didn’t so much as move.
Elide glanced to Lorcan. He was frozen, eyes wide as Aelin knelt in the moss, as her breathing became edged with sobs.
He had done this. Led them to this.
Elide stepped toward Aelin.
The queen’s gauntlets drew blood where they scraped into her neck, her jaw, as she heaved against the mask. “Take it off!” The plea turned into a scream. “Take it off!”
Over and over, the queen screamed it. “Take it off, take it off, take it off!”
She was sobbing amid her screaming, the sounds shattering through the ancient forest. She said no other words. Pleaded to no gods, no ancestors.
Only those words, again and again and again.
Take it off, take it off, take it off.
Movement broke through the trees behind them, and the fact that Lorcan did not go for his weapons told Elide who it was. But any relief was short-lived as Rowan and Gavriel emerged, a massive white wolf hauled between them. The wolf whose jaws had clamped around Elide’s arm, tearing flesh to the bone. Fenrys.
He was unconscious, tongue lagging from his bloodied maw. Rowan had barely entered the clearing before he set down the wolf and stalked for Aelin.
The prince was covered in blood. From his unhindered steps, Elide knew it wasn’t his.
From the blood coating his chin, his neck … She didn’t want to know.
Aelin ripped at the immovable mask, either unaware or uncaring of the prince before her. Her consort, husband, and mate.
“Aelin.”
Take it off, take it off, take it off.
Her screams were unbearable. Worse than those that day on the beach in Eyllwe.
Gavriel came to stand beside Elide, his golden skin pale as he took in the frantic queen.
Slowly, Rowan knelt before her. “Aelin.”
She only tipped her head up to the forest canopy and sobbed.
Blood ran down her neck from the scratches she’d dug into her skin, mingling with what already coated her.
Rowan reached out a trembling hand, the only sign of the agony Elide had little doubt was coursing through him. Gently, he laid his hands on her wrists; gently, he closed his fingers around them. Halting the brutal clawing and digging.
Aelin sobbed, her body shuddering with the force of it. “Take it off. ”
Rowan’s eyes flickered, panic and heartbreak and longing shining there. “I will. But you have to be still, Fireheart. Just for a few moments.”
“Take it off. ” The sobs ebbed, tricking into something broken and raw. Rowan ran his thumbs over her wrists, over those iron shackles. As if it were nothing but her skin. Slowly, her shaking eased.
No, not eased, Elide realized as Rowan rose to his feet and stalked behind the queen. But contained, turned inward. Tremors rippled through Aelin’s tense body, but she kept still as Rowan examined the lock.
Yet something like shock, then horror and sorrow, flashed over his face, as he surveyed her back. It was gone as soon as it appeared.
A glance, and Gavriel and Lorcan drifted to his side, their steps slow. Unthreatening.
Across the small clearing, Fenrys remained out, his white coat soaked with blood.
Elide only walked to Aelin and took up the spot where Rowan had been.
The queen’s eyes were closed, as if it took all her concentration to remain still for another heartbeat, to allow them to look, to not claw at the irons.
So Elide said nothing, demanded nothing from her, save for a companion if she needed one.
Behind Aelin, Rowan’s blood-splattered face was grim while he studied the lock fastening the mask’s chains to the back of her head. His nostrils flared slightly. Rage—frustration.
“I’ve never seen a lock like this,” Gavriel murmured.
Aelin began shaking again.
Elide put a hand on her knee. Aelin had scraped it raw, mud and grass stuck in her blood-crusted skin.
She waited for the queen to shove her hand away, but Aelin didn’t move. Kept her eyes shut, her ragged breathing holding steady.
Rowan gripped one of the chains binding the mask and nodded to Lorcan. “The other one.”
Silently, Lorcan grasped the opposite end. They’d sever the iron if they had to.
Elide held her breath as both males strained, arms shaking.
Nothing.
They tried again. Aelin’s breathing hitched. Elide tightened her hand on the queen’s knee.
“She managed to snap the chains on her ankles and hands,” Gavriel observed. “They’re not indestructible.”
But with the chains on the mask so close to her head, a swipe of a sword was impossible. Or perhaps the mask had been made from far stronger iron.
Rowan and Lorcan grunted as they heaved against the
chains. It was of little use.
Panting softly, they paused. Red welts shone on their hands.
They’d tried to use their magic to break the iron.
Silence fell through the clearing. They couldn’t linger here—not for much longer. But to take Aelin in the chains, when she was so frantic to be free of them …
Aelin’s eyes opened.
They were empty. Wholly drained. A warrior accepting defeat.
Elide blurted, scrambling for anything to banish that emptiness, “Was there ever a key? Did you see them using a key?”
Two blinks. As if that meant something.
Rowan and Lorcan yanked again, straining.
But Aelin’s stare fell to the moss, the stones. Narrowed slightly, as if the question had settled. Through the small hole in her mask, Elide could barely see her mouth the words. A key.
“I don’t have it—we don’t have them,” Elide said, sensing the direction of Aelin’s thoughts. “Manon and Dorian do.”
“Quiet,” Lorcan hissed. Not at the level of her voice, but the deadly information Elide revealed.
Aelin again blinked twice with that strange intentionality.
Rowan snarled at the chains, heaving again.
But Aelin stretched out a hand to the moss and traced a shape.
“What is that?” Elide leaned forward as the queen did it again, her hollow face unreadable.
The Fae males paused at her question, and watched Aelin’s finger move through the green.
“A Wyrdmark,” Rowan said softly. “To open.”
Aelin traced it again, mute and still. As if none of them stood there.
“They work on iron?” Gavriel asked, tracking Aelin’s finger.
“She unlocked iron doors in Adarlan’s royal library with that symbol,” Rowan murmured. “But she needed …”
He let his words hang unfinished as he picked up the broken knife Aelin had discarded in the moss nearby and sliced it across his palm.
Kneeling before her, he extended his bloodied hand. “Show me, Fireheart. Show me again.” He tapped her ankle—the shackle there.
Kingdom of Ash Page 24
