Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  “The catapults still work,” provided one of the silver-haired Fae royals. The female one.

  “They’re for inflicting damage far out on the field, though,” said Prince Galan, who, like Aedion, bore Aelin’s eyes. “Not close fighting.”

  “Then we have our swords,” Aedion said hoarsely. “Our courage.”

  The latter, Manon knew, was running low, too.

  “We can keep the Ironteeth at bay,” Manon said, “but cannot also aid you at the walls.”

  They were indeed fighting a relentless tide that did not diminish.

  “So is this the end, then?” Ansel asked. “In four, five days, we offer our necks to Morath?”

  “We fight to the last of us,” Aedion growled. “To the very last one.”

  Even Lord Darrow did not object to that. So they departed, meeting over.

  There wasn’t anything else to discuss. Within a few days, they’d all be a grand feast for the crows.

  CHAPTER 103

  The storm had halted their army entirely.

  On the first morning, it raged so fiercely that Rowan hadn’t been able to see a few feet before him. Ruks had been grounded, and only the hardiest of scouts had been sent out—on land.

  So the army sat there. Not fifty miles over Terrasen’s border. A week from Orynth.

  Had Aelin possessed her full powers—

  Not her full powers. Not anymore, Rowan reminded himself as he sat in their war tent, his mate and wife and queen on the low-lying sofa beside him.

  Aelin’s full powers were now … he didn’t quite know. Where they’d been at Mistward, perhaps. When she still had that self-inflicted damper. Not as little as when she’d arrived, but not as much as when she’d encircled all of Doranelle with her flame.

  Certainly not enough to face Erawan and walk away. And Maeve.

  He didn’t care. Didn’t give a shit whether she had all the power of the sun, or not an ember.

  It had never mattered to him anyway.

  Outside, the wind howled, the tent shuddering.

  “Is it always this bad?” Fenrys asked, frowning at the shaking tent walls.

  “Yes,” Elide and Aelin said, then shared a rare smile.

  A miracle, that smile on Aelin’s mouth.

  But Elide’s faded as she said, “This storm could last days. It could dump three feet.”

  Lorcan, lingering near the brazier, grunted. “Even once the snow stops, there will be that to contend with. Soldiers losing toes and fingers to the cold and wet.”

  Aelin’s smile vanished entirely. “I’ll melt as much as I can.”

  She would. She’d bring herself to the edge of burnout to do it. But together, if they linked their powers, the force of Rowan’s magic might be enough to melt a path. To keep the army warm.

  “We’ll still have an army who arrives at Orynth exhausted,” Gavriel said, rubbing his jaw.

  How many days had Rowan seen him gaze northward, toward the son who fought in Orynth? Wondering, no doubt, if Aedion still lived.

  “They’re professionals,” Fenrys said drily. “They can handle it.”

  “Going the long way around will only increase the exhaustion,” Lorcan said.

  “The last we heard,” Rowan said, “Morath held Perranth.” A pained wince from Elide at that. “We won’t risk crossing too close to it. Not when it would mean potentially getting entangled in a conflict that would only delay our arrival in Orynth and thin our numbers.”

  “I’ve looked at the maps a dozen times.” Gavriel frowned to where they were laid out on the worktable. “There’s no alternative way to Orynth—not without drawing too close to Perranth.”

  “Perhaps we’ll be lucky,” Fenrys said, “and this storm will have hit the entire North. Maybe freeze some of Morath’s forces for us.”

  Rowan doubted they’d be that lucky. He had a feeling that any luck they possessed had been spent with the woman sitting beside him.

  Aelin looked at him, grave and tired. He could not imagine what it felt like. She had yielded all of herself. Had given up her humanity, her magic. He knew it was the former that left that haunted, bruised look in her eyes. That made her a stranger in her own body.

  Rowan had taken the time last night to reacquaint her with certain parts of that body. And his own. Had spent a long while doing so, too. Until that haunted look had vanished, until she was writhing beneath him, burning while he moved in her. He hadn’t stopped his tears from falling, even when they’d turned to steam before they hit her body, and there had been tears on her own face, bright as silver in the flame, while she’d held him tight.

  Yet this morning, when he’d nuzzled her awake with kisses to her jaw, her neck, that haunted look had returned. And lingered.

  First her scars. Then her mortal, human body.

  Enough. She had given enough. He knew she planned to give more.

  A rukhin scout called for the queen from the tent flaps, and Aelin gave a quiet command to enter. But the scout only poked in her head, her eyes wide. Snow covered her hood, her eyebrows, her lashes. “Your Majesty. Majesties,” she corrected, glancing at him. Rowan didn’t bother to tell her he was simply and would forever be Your Highness. “You must come.” The scout panted hard enough for her breath to curl in the chilled air leaking through the tent flaps. “All of you.”

  It took minutes to don their warmer layers and gear, to brace for the snow and wind.

  But then they were all inching through the drifts, the scout guiding them past half-buried tents. Even under the trees, there was little shelter.

  Yet then they were at the edge of the camp, the blinding snows roaring past. Veiling what the scout pointed to as she said, “Look.”

  At his side, Aelin stumbled a step. Rowan reached for her to keep her from falling.

  But she hadn’t been falling. She’d been lurching forward—as if to run ahead.

  Rowan saw at last what she beheld. Who emerged between the trees.

  Against the snow, he was nearly invisible with his white fur. Would have been invisible were it not for the golden flame flickering between his proud, towering antlers.

  The Lord of the North.

  And at his feet, all around him … The Little Folk.

  Snow clinging to her lashes, a small sound came out of Aelin as the creature nearest curled its hand, beckoning. As if to say, Follow us.

  The others gaped in silence at the magnificent, proud stag who had come to greet them.

  To guide home the Queen of Terrasen.

  But then the wind began to whisper, and it was not the song that Rowan usually heard.

  No, it was a voice that they all heard as it streamed past them.

  Doom is upon Orynth, Heir of Brannon. You must hurry.

  A chill that had nothing to do with the cold skittered down Rowan’s skin.

  “The storm,” Aelin blurted, the words swallowed by the snow.

  You must hurry. We will show you the way, swift and unseen.

  Aelin only stilled. Said to that voice, as ancient as the trees, as old as the rocks between them, “You have already helped me so many times.”

  And you have given much yourself, Heir of Brannon. We who remember him know he would have made such a choice, had he been able to do so. Oakwald shall never forget Brannon, or his Heir.

  Aelin straightened, scanned the trees, the snow-whipped wind.

  Dryad. That was the word he sought. Dryad. A tree spirit.

  “What is your cost?” Aelin asked, her voice louder now.

  “Do you really want to ask?” Fenrys muttered. Rowan snarled at him.

  But Aelin had gone still as she waited for the dryad to answer. The voice of Oakwald, of the Little Folk and creatures who had long cared for it.

  A better world, the dryad replied at last. Even for us.

  The army was a flurry of activity as it hauled itself into preparing to march—to race northward.

  But Aelin dragged Rowan into their tent. To the pile of books Chaol and Yren
e had brought from the southern continent.

  She ran a finger over the titles, searching, scanning.

  “What are you doing?” her mate asked.

  Aelin ignored the question and hummed as she found the book she sought. She leafed through it, careful not to tear the ancient pages. “A stupid cow I might be,” she muttered, rotating the book to show Rowan the page she sought, “but not without options.”

  Rowan’s eyes danced. You’re including me in this particular scheme, Princess?

  Aelin smirked. I wouldn’t want you to feel left out.

  He angled his head. “We need to hurry, then.”

  Listening to the ruckus of the readying army beyond their tent, Aelin nodded. And began.

  CHAPTER 104

  The sweat and blood on him quickly freezing, Aedion panted as he leaned against the battered city walls and watched the encamped enemy pull back for the night.

  A sick sort of joke, a cruel torment, for Morath to halt at each sundown. As if it were some sort of civility, as if the creatures who infested so many of the soldiers below required light.

  He knew why Erawan had ordered it so. To wear them down day by day, to break their spirits rather than let them go out in raging glory.

  It wasn’t just the victory or conquest that Erawan desired, but their complete surrender. Their begging for it to be over, for him to end them, rule them.

  Aedion ground his teeth as he limped down the battlements, the light quickly fading, the temperature plummeting.

  Five days.

  The weapons they’d estimated running out in three or four days had lasted until today. Until now.

  Down the wall, one of the Mycenians sent a plume of flame onto the Valg still trying to scale the siege ladder. Where it burned, demons fell away.

  Rolfe stood by the woman wielding the firelance, his face as bloodied and sweaty as Aedion’s.

  A black-armored hand clamped onto the battlement beside Aedion as he passed by, grappling for purchase.

  Barely looking, Aedion slammed out his ancient shield. A yelp and fading cry was his only confirmation that the rogue soldier had gone tumbling to the ground.

  Rolfe smiled grimly as Aedion halted, the weight of his armor like a thousand stones. Overhead, Crochans and Ironteeth flew slowly back across the city walls, red capes drooping over brooms, leathery wings beating irregularly. Aedion watched the sky until he saw the riderless wyvern he looked for every day, every night.

  Spotting him, too, Lysandra banked and began a slow, pained descent toward the city wall.

  So many dead. More and more each day. Those lost lives weighed his every step. Nothing he could do would ever make it right—not really.

  “The archers are out,” Aedion said to Rolfe by way of greeting as Lysandra drew closer, blood both her own and from others on her wings, her chest. “No more arrows.”

  Rolfe jerked his chin toward the Mycenian warrior still setting off her firelance in sputtering fits and bursts.

  Lysandra landed, shifting in a flash, and was instantly at Aedion’s side, tucked under his shield arm. A soft, swift kiss was their only greeting. The only thing he looked forward to every night.

  Sometimes, once they’d been bandaged and eaten something, he’d manage to get more than that. Often, they didn’t bother to wash up before finding a shadowed alcove. Then it was nothing but her, the sheer perfection of her, the small sounds she made when he licked up her throat, when his hands slowly, so slowly, explored each inch of her. Letting her set the pace, show him and tell him how far she wished to go. But not that final joining, not yet.

  Something for them both to live for—that was their unspoken vow.

  She reeked of Valg blood, but Aedion still pressed another kiss to Lysandra’s temple before he looked back at Rolfe. The Pirate Lord smiled grimly.

  Well aware that these would likely be their final days. Hours.

  The Mycenian warrior aimed her firelance again, and the lingering Valg tumbled away into the darkness, little more than melted bones and fluttering cloth.

  “That’s the last of it,” Rolfe said quietly.

  It took Aedion a heartbeat to realize he didn’t mean the final soldier of the evening.

  The Mycenian warrior set down her firelance with a heavy, metallic thud.

  “The firelances are done,” Rolfe said.

  Darkness fell over Orynth, so thick even the flames of the castle shriveled.

  On the castle battlements, Darrow silent at her side, Evangeline watched the trudging lines of soldiers come in from the walls, from the skies.

  Bone drums began to beat.

  A heartbeat, as if the enemy army on the plain were one massive, rising beast now readying to devour them.

  Most days, they only beat from sunup to sundown, the noise blocked out by the din of battle. That they had started it anew as the sun vanished … Her stomach churned.

  “Tomorrow,” Lord Sloane murmured from where he stood beside Darrow. “Or the day after. It will be done then.”

  Not victory. Evangeline knew that now.

  Darrow said nothing, and Lord Sloane clapped him on the shoulder before heading inside.

  “What happens at the end?” Evangeline dared ask Darrow.

  The old man gazed across the city, the battlefield full of such terrible darkness.

  “Either we surrender,” he said, voice hoarse, “and Erawan makes slaves of us all, or we fight until we’re all carrion.”

  Such stark, harsh words. Yet she liked that about him—that he did not soften anything for her. “Who shall decide what we do?”

  His gray eyes scanned her face. “It would fall upon us, the Lords of Terrasen.”

  Evangeline nodded. Enemy campfires flickered to life, their flames seeming to echo the beat of their bone drums.

  “What would you decide?” Darrow’s question was quiet, tentative.

  She considered it. No one had ever asked her such a thing.

  “I should have very much liked to live at Caraverre,” Evangeline admitted. She knew he did not recognize it, but it didn’t matter now, did it? “Murtaugh showed me the land—the rivers and mountains right nearby, the forests and hills.” An ache throbbed in her chest. “I saw the gardens by the house, and I would have liked to have seen them in spring.” Her throat tightened. “I would have liked for that to have been my home. For this … for all of Terrasen to have been my home.”

  Darrow said nothing, and Evangeline set a hand on the castle stones, gazing to the west now, as if she could see all the way to Allsbrook and the small territory in its shadow. To Caraverre.

  “That’s what Terrasen has always meant to me, you know,” Evangeline went on, speaking more to herself. “As soon as Aelin freed Lysandra, and offered to let us join her court, Terrasen has always meant home. A place where … where the sort of people who hurt us don’t get to live. Where anyone, regardless of who they are and where they came from and what their rank is can dwell in peace. Where we can have a garden in the spring, and swim in the rivers in the summer. I’ve never had such a thing before. A home, I mean. And I would have liked for Caraverre, for Terrasen, to have been mine.” She chewed on her lip. “So I would choose to fight. Until the very end. For my home, new as it is. I choose to fight.”

  Darrow was silent for so long that she peered up at him.

  She’d never seen his eyes so sad, as if the weight of all his years truly settled upon them.

  Then he only said, “Come with me.”

  She followed him down the battlements and into the warmth of the castle, along the various winding hallways, all the way to the Great Hall, where a too-small evening meal was being laid out. One of their last.

  No one bothered to look up from their plates as Evangeline and Darrow passed between the long tables crammed with drained and injured soldiers.

  Darrow didn’t look at them, either, as he went right up to the line of people waiting for their food. Right up to Aedion and Lysandra, their arms looped around each
other while they waited their turn. As it should have been from the start—the two of them together.

  Aedion, sensing Darrow’s approach, turned. The general looked worn through.

  He knew, then. That tomorrow or the day after would be their last. Lysandra gave Evangeline a small smile, and Evangeline knew that she was aware, too. Would try to find a way to get her out before the end.

  Even if Evangeline would never allow it.

  Darrow unbuckled the sword at his side and extended it to Aedion.

  Silence began to ripple through the hall at the sight of the sword—Aedion’s sword. The Sword of Orynth.

  Darrow held it between them, the ancient bone pommel gleaming. “Terrasen is your home.”

  Aedion’s haggard face remained unmoved. “It has been since the day I arrived here.”

  “I know,” Darrow said, gazing at the sword. “And you have defended it far more than any natural-born son would ever be expected to. Beyond what anyone might ever reasonably be asked to give. You have done so without complaint, without fear, and have served your kingdom nobly.” He extended the sword. “You will forgive a proud old man who sought to do so as well.”

  Aedion slid his arm from Lysandra’s shoulder, and took the sword in his hands. “Serving this kingdom has been the great honor of my life.”

  “I know,” Darrow repeated, and glanced down to Evangeline before he looked to Lysandra. “Someone very wise recently told me that Terrasen is not merely a place, but an ideal. A home for all those who wander, for those who need somewhere to welcome them with open arms.” He inclined his head to Lysandra. “I formally recognize Caraverre and its lands, and you as its lady.”

  Lysandra’s fingers found Evangeline’s and squeezed tight.

  “For your unwavering courage in the face of the enemy gathered at our doorstep, for all you have done to defend this city and kingdom, Caraverre shall be recognized, and yours forevermore.” A glance between her and Aedion. “Any heirs you bear shall inherit it, and their heirs after them.”

  “Evangeline is my heir,” Lysandra said thickly, resting a warm hand on her shoulder.