Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  It had become their tradition—for him to see Lysandra upstairs at night, then come to meet her in the morning. The only bright point in their long, horrible days. Sometimes, Evangeline accompanied them, narrating her time running messages and errands for Darrow. Sometimes, it was only the two of them trudging along.

  Lysandra was silent, her graceful gait heavier with each step they descended.

  “Breakfast?” Aedion asked as they neared the bottom.

  A nod. The eggs and cured meats had given way to gruel and hot broth. Two nights ago, Lysandra had flown off in wyvern form after the fighting had ceased for the day, and returned an hour later with a hart clutched in each taloned foot.

  That precious meat had been gone too soon.

  They hit the bottom of the tower stairwell, and Aedion made to aim for the dining hall when she stopped him with a hand on his arm. In the dimness, he turned toward her.

  But Lysandra, that beautiful face so tired, only slid her arms around his waist and pressed her head to his chest. She leaned enough of her weight into him that Aedion set down his candle on a nearby ledge and wrapped his arms tightly around her.

  Lysandra sagged, leaning on him further. As if the weight of exhaustion was unbearable.

  Aedion rested his chin atop her head and closed his eyes, breathing in her ever-changing scent.

  Her heartbeat thundered against his own as he ran a hand down her spine. Long, soothing strokes.

  They hadn’t shared a bed. There was no place to do so anyway. But this, holding each other—she’d initiated it the night the Thirteen had sacrificed themselves. Had stopped him at this very spot and just held him for long minutes. Until whatever pain and despair eased enough that they could make the trek upstairs.

  Lysandra pulled away, but not wholly out of his arms. “Ready?”

  “We’re running low on arrows,” Petrah Blueblood said to Manon in the blue-gray light just before dawn. They strode through the makeshift aerie atop one of the castle’s towers. “We might want to consider assigning some of the lesser covens to stay behind today to craft more.”

  “Do it,” Manon said, surveying the still-unfamiliar wyverns who shared the space with Abraxos. Her mount was already awake. Staring out, solitary and cold, toward the battlefield beyond the city walls. Toward the blasted stretch of earth that no snow had been able to wipe away entirely.

  She’d spent hours staring at it. Could barely pass over it during the endless fighting each day.

  Her chest, her body, had been hollowed out.

  Only moving, going through every ordinary motion, kept her from curling up in a corner of this aerie and never emerging.

  She had to keep moving. Had to.

  Or else she would cease to function at all.

  She didn’t care if it was obvious to others. Ansel of Briarcliff had sought her out in the Great Hall last night because of it. The red-haired warrior had slid onto the bench beside her, her wine-colored eyes missing none of the food that Manon had barely eaten.

  “I’m sorry,” Ansel had said.

  Manon had only stared at her mostly untouched plate.

  The young queen had surveyed the solemn hall around them. “I lost most of my soldiers,” she said, her freckled face pale. “Before you arrived. Morath butchered them.”

  It had been an effort for Manon to draw her face toward Ansel. To meet her heavy stare. She blinked once, the only confirmation she could bother to make.

  Ansel reached for Manon’s slice of bread, pulling off a chunk and eating it. “We can share it, you know. The Wastes. If you break that curse.”

  Down the long table, some of the witches tensed, but did not look toward them.

  Ansel went on, “I’ll honor the old borders of the Witch Kingdom, but keep the rest.” The queen rose, taking Manon’s bread with her. “Just something to consider, should the opportunity arise.” Then she was gone, swaggering off to her own cluster of remaining soldiers.

  Manon hadn’t stared after her, but the words, the offer, had lingered.

  To share the land, reclaim what they’d had but not the entirety of the Wastes … Bring our people home, Manon.

  The words had not stopped echoing in her ears.

  “You could stay off the battlefield today, too,” Petrah Blueblood now said, a hand on her mount’s flank. “Use the day to help the others. And rest.”

  Manon stared at her.

  Even with two Matrons dead, Iskra with them, and no sign of Petrah’s mother, the Ironteeth had managed to remain organized. To keep Manon, Petrah, and the Crochans busy.

  Every day, fewer and fewer walked off the battlefield.

  “No one else rests,” Manon said coldly.

  “Everyone else manages to sleep, though,” Petrah said. When Manon held the witch’s gaze, Petrah said unblinkingly, “You think I do not see you, lying awake all night?”

  “I do not need to rest.”

  “Exhaustion can be as deadly as any weapon. Rest today, then rejoin us tomorrow.”

  Manon bared her teeth. “The last I looked, you were not in charge.”

  Petrah didn’t so much as lower her head. “Fight, then, if that is what you wish. But consider that many lives depend on you, and if you fall because you are so tired that you become sloppy, they will all suffer for it.”

  It was sage advice. Sound advice.

  Yet Manon gazed out over the battlefield, the sea of darkness just becoming visible. In an hour or so, the bone drums would beat again, and the screaming din of war would renew.

  She could not stop. Would not stop.

  “I am not resting.” Manon turned to seek out Bronwen in the Crochans’ quarters. She, at least, would not have such ridiculous notions. Even if Manon knew Glennis would side with Petrah.

  Petrah sighed, the sound grating down Manon’s spine. “Then I shall see you on the battlefield.”

  The roar and boom of war had become a distant buzz in Evangeline’s ears by midday. Even with the frigid wind, sweat ran down her back beneath her heavy layers of clothes as she made yet another sprint up the battlement stairs, message in hand. Darrow and the other old lords stood as they had these past two weeks: along the castle’s walls, monitoring the battle beyond the city.

  The message she’d received, straight from a Crochan who had landed so briefly that her feet had hardly touched the ground, had come from Bronwen.

  Rare, Evangeline had learned, for either the Ironteeth or the Crochans to report anything to the humans. That the Crochan soldier had found her, had known who she was … It was pride, more than fear, that had Evangeline running up the stairs, then across the battlements to Lord Darrow.

  Lord Darrow, Murtaugh at his side, had already stretched out a hand by the time Evangeline slid to a stop.

  “Careful,” Murtaugh warned her. “The ice can be treacherous.”

  Evangeline nodded, though she fully planned to ignore him. Even if she’d taken a spill down the stairs yesterday that thankfully no one had witnessed. Especially Lysandra. If she’d glimpsed the bruise that now bloomed over Evangeline’s leg, the matching one on her forearm, she’d have locked her in the tower.

  Lord Darrow read the message and frowned toward the city. “Bronwen reports they’ve spotted Morath hauling a siege tower to the western wall. It will reach us in an hour or two.”

  Evangeline looked past the chaos on the city walls, where Aedion and Ren and the Bane fought so valiantly, out beneath the melee in the skies, where witches fought witches and Lysandra flew in wyvern form.

  Sure enough, a massive shape was lumbering toward them.

  Evangeline’s stomach dropped to her feet. “Is—is it one of those witch towers?”

  “A siege tower is different,” Darrow said with his usual gruffness. “Thank the gods.”

  “Still deadly,” Murtaugh said. “Just in a different way.” The old man frowned at Darrow. “I’ll head down there.”

  Evangeline blinked at that. None—none of the older lords had gone to the fro
nt.

  “To warn them?” Darrow asked carefully.

  Murtaugh patted the hilt of his sword. “Aedion and Ren are stretched thin. Kyllian, too, if you want to keep telling yourself that he’s the one leading them.” Murtaugh didn’t so much as lower his chin to Darrow, who stiffened. “I’ll handle the western wall. And that siege tower.” A wink at Evangeline. “We can’t all be brave messengers, can we?”

  Evangeline made herself smile, even though dread pooled in her. “Should—should I warn Aedion that you’ll be there?”

  “I’ll tell him myself,” Murtaugh said, and ruffled her hair as he walked by. “Be careful on the ice,” he warned her again.

  Darrow didn’t try to stop him as Murtaugh walked off the battlements. Slow. He looked so slow, and old, and frail. And yet he kept his chin high. Back straight.

  If she’d been able to choose a grandfather for herself, it would have been him.

  Darrow’s face was tight when Murtaugh disappeared at last.

  “Old fool,” Darrow said, worry in his eyes as he turned to the battle raging ahead.

  CHAPTER 101

  Human no more.

  Aelin’s breath rasped in her ears—her permanently arched, immortal ears—with each step back toward the camped army. Rowan remained at her side, a hand around her waist.

  He hadn’t let go of her once. Not once, since she’d come back.

  Since she’d walked through worlds.

  She could see them still. Even walking in silence under the trees, the darkness yielding toward the grayish light before dawn, she could see each and every one of those worlds she’d broken through.

  Perhaps she’d never stop seeing them. Perhaps she alone in this world and all others knew what lay beyond the invisible walls separating them. How much life dwelled and thrived. Loved and hated and struggled to claw out a living.

  So many worlds. More than she could contemplate. Would her dreams forever be haunted by them? To have glimpsed them, but been unable to explore—would that longing take root?

  Oakwald’s branches formed a skeletal lattice overhead. Bars of a cage.

  As her body, and this world, might be.

  She shook off the thought. She had lived—lived, when she should have died. Even if her mortal self … that had been killed. Melted away.

  The outer edges of the camp neared, and Aelin peered down at her hands. Cold—that was a trace of cold now biting into them.

  Altered in every way.

  Dorian said as they approached the first of the rukhin, “What are you going to tell them?”

  The first words any of them had spoken since they’d begun the trek back here.

  “The truth,” Aelin said.

  She supposed it was all she had to offer them, after what she’d done.

  She said to Dorian, “I’m sorry—about your father.”

  The chill wind brushed the strands of Dorian’s hair off his brow. “So am I,” he said, resting a hand atop Damaris’s hilt.

  At his side, Chaol kept silent, though he glanced at the king every now and then. He’d look out for Dorian. As he always had, Aelin supposed.

  They passed the first of the ruks, the birds eyeing them, and found Lorcan, Fenrys, Gavriel, and Elide waiting by the edge of the tents.

  Chaol and Dorian murmured something about gathering the other royals, and peeled away.

  Aelin remained close to Rowan as they approached their court. Fenrys scanned her from head to toe, nostrils flaring as he scented her. He staggered a step closer, horror creeping across his face. Gavriel only paled.

  Elide gasped. “You did it, didn’t you?”

  But it was Lorcan who answered, stiffening, as if sensing the change that had come over her, “You—you’re not human.”

  Rowan snarled in warning. Aelin just looked at them, the people who’d given so much and chosen to follow her here, their doom still remaining. To succeed, and yet to utterly fail.

  Erawan remained. His army remained.

  And there would be no Fire-Bringer, no Wyrdkeys, no gods to assist them.

  “They’re gone?” Elide asked softly.

  Aelin nodded. She’d explain later. Explain it to all of them.

  God-killer. That’s what she was. A god-killer. She didn’t regret it. Not one bit.

  Elide asked Lorcan, “Do you—do you feel any different?” The lack of the gods who’d watched over them.

  Lorcan peered up at the trees overhead, as if reading the answer in their entangled branches. As if searching for Hellas there. “No,” he admitted.

  “What does it mean,” Gavriel mused, the first rays of sun beginning to gild his golden hair, “for them to be gone? Is there a hell-realm whose throne now sits vacant?”

  “It’s too early for that sort of philosophical bullshit,” Fenrys said, and offered Aelin a half smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes. Reproach lay there—not for her choice, but in not telling them. Yet he still tried to make light of it.

  Doomed—that lovely, wolfish grin might be in its final days of existence.

  They might all be in their last days of existence now. Because of her.

  Rowan read it in her eyes, her face. His hand tightened on her waist. “Let’s find the others.”

  Standing inside one of the khagan’s fine war tents, Dorian held his hands out before a fire of his own making and winced. “That meeting could have gone better.”

  Chaol, seated across the fire, Yrene in his lap, toyed with the end of his wife’s braid. “It really could have.”

  Yrene frowned. “I don’t know how she didn’t walk out and leave everyone to rot. I would have.”

  “Never underestimate the power of guilt when it comes to Aelin Galathynius,” Dorian said, and sighed. The fire he’d summoned fluttered.

  “She sealed the Wyrdgate.” Yrene scowled. “The least they could do is be grateful for it.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt they are,” Chaol said, frowning now as well. “But the fact remains that Aelin promised one thing, and did the opposite.”

  Indeed. Dorian didn’t quite know what to think of Aelin’s choice. Or that she’d even told them about it—about trading Erawan for Elena. The gods betraying her in turn.

  And then Aelin destroying them for it.

  “Typical,” Dorian said, trying for humor and failing. Some part of him still felt as if he were in that place-of-places.

  Especially when some part of him had been given up.

  The magic that had felt bottomless only yesterday now had a very real, very solid stopping point. A mighty gift, yes, but he did not think he’d ever again be capable of shattering glass castles or enemy strongholds.

  He hadn’t yet decided whether it was a relief.

  It was more power, at least, than Aelin had been left with. Gifted with, it sounded like. Aelin had burned through every ember of her own magic. What she now possessed was all that remained of what Mala had given her to seal the gate—to punish the gods who had betrayed them both.

  The idea of it still made Dorian queasy. And the memory of Aelin choosing to throw him out of that non-place still made him grind his teeth. Not at her choice, but that his father—

  He’d think about his father later. Never.

  His nameless father, who had come for him in the end.

  Chaol hadn’t asked about it, hadn’t pushed. And Dorian knew that whenever he was ready to talk about it, his friend would be waiting.

  Chaol said, “Aelin didn’t kill Erawan. But at least Erawan can never bring over his brothers. Or use the keys to destroy us all. We have that. She—you both did that.”

  There would be no more collars. No more rooms beneath a dark fortress to hold them.

  Yrene ran her fingers through Chaol’s brown hair, and Dorian tried to fight the ache in his chest at the sight. At the love that flowed so freely between them.

  He didn’t resent Chaol for his happiness. But it didn’t stop the sharp slicing in his chest every time he saw them. Every time he saw the Torre
healers, and wished Sorscha had found them.

  “So the world was only partly saved,” Yrene said. “Better than nothing.”

  Dorian smiled at that. He adored his friend’s wife already. Likely would have married her, too, if he’d had the chance.

  Even if his thoughts still drifted northward—to a golden-eyed witch who walked with death beside her and did not fear it. Did she think of him? Wonder what had become of him in Morath?

  “Aelin and I still have magic,” Dorian said. “Not like it was before, but we still have it. We’re not entirely helpless.”

  “Enough to take on Erawan?” Chaol said, his bronze eyes wary. Well aware of the answer. “And Maeve?”

  “We’ll have to figure out a way,” Dorian said. He prayed it was true.

  But there were no gods left to pray to at all.

  Elide kept one eye on Aelin while they washed themselves in the queen’s tent. One eye on the deliciously warm water that had been brought in.

  And kept warm by the woman in the tub beside her own.

  As if in defiance of the horrible meeting they’d had with the khaganate royals upon Aelin’s unexpected return.

  Triumphant. But only in some regards.

  One threat defeated. The other fumbled.

  Aelin had hid it well, but the queen had her tells, too. Her utter stillness—the predatory angle of her head. The former had been present this morning. Utter stillness while she’d been questioned, criticized, shouted at.

  The queen had not been this quiet since the day she’d escaped Maeve.

  And it was not trauma that bowed her head, but guilt. Dread. Shame.

  Nearly shoulder-deep in the high, long tubs, Elide had been the one to suggest a bath. To give Prince Rowan a chance to fly high and wide and take some of the edge off his temper. To give Aelin a moment to settle herself.

  She’d planned to bathe this morning anyway. Though she’d imagined a different partner in the bath beside hers.

  Not that Lorcan knew that. He’d only kissed her temple before striding off into the morning—to join Fenrys and Gavriel in readying the army to move out. Keep plunging northward.

  Aelin scrubbed at her long hair, the flowing mass of it draped over her body. In the light of the braziers, the tattoos on the queen’s back seemed to flow like a living black river.