Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  I shall rip you apart, he hissed. Starting with that babe in your—

  A thought and Yrene’s power flared brighter.

  Erawan screamed.

  The power of creation and destruction. That’s what lay within her.

  Life-Giver. World-Maker.

  Bit by bit, she burned him up. Starting at his limbs, working inward.

  And when her magic began to slow, Yrene held out a hand.

  She didn’t feel the sting of her palm cutting open. Barely felt the pressure of the callused hand that linked with hers.

  But when Dorian Havilliard’s raw magic barreled into her, Yrene gasped.

  Gasped and turned into starlight, into warmth and strength and joy.

  Yrene’s power was life itself. Pure, undiluted life.

  It nearly brought Dorian to his knees as it met with his own. As he handed over his power to her, willingly and gladly, Erawan prostrate before them. Impaled.

  The demon king screamed.

  Glad. He should be glad of that pain, that scream. The end that was surely to come.

  For Adarlan, for Sorscha, for Gavin and Elena. For all of them, Dorian let his power flow through Yrene.

  Erawan thrashed, his power rising only to strike against an impenetrable wall of light.

  And yet Dorian found himself saying, “His name.”

  Yrene, focused upon the task before her, didn’t so much as glance his way.

  But Erawan, through his screaming, met Dorian’s stare.

  The hatred in the demon king’s eyes was enough to devour the world.

  But Dorian said, “My father’s name.” His voice did not waver. “You took it.”

  He hadn’t realized that he wanted it. Needed it, so badly.

  A pathetic, spineless man, Erawan seethed. As you are—

  “Tell me his name. Give it back.”

  Erawan laughed through his screaming. No.

  “Give it back.”

  Yrene looked to him now, doubt in her eyes. Her magic paused—just for a heartbeat.

  Erawan leapt, his power erupting.

  Dorian blasted it back, and lunged for the demon king. For Damaris.

  Erawan’s shriek threatened to crack the castle stones as Dorian shoved the blade deeper. Twisted it. Sent their power funneling down through it.

  “Tell me his name,” he panted through his teeth. Yrene, clinging to his other hand, murmured her warning. Dorian barely heard it.

  Erawan only laughed again, choking as their power seared him.

  “Does it matter?” Yrene asked softly.

  Yes. He didn’t know why, but it did.

  His father had been wiped from the Afterworld, from every realm of existence, but he could still have his name given back to him.

  If only to repay the debt. If only so Dorian might grant the man some shred of peace.

  Erawan’s power surged for them again. Dorian and Yrene shoved it back.

  Now. It had to be now.

  “Tell me his name,” Dorian snarled.

  Erawan smiled up at him. No.

  “Dorian,” Yrene warned. Sweat slid down her face. She couldn’t hold him for much longer. And to risk her—

  Dorian sent their power rippling down the blade. Damaris’s hilt glowed.

  “Tell me—”

  It is your own.

  Erawan’s eyes widened as the words came out of him.

  As Damaris drew it from him. But Dorian did not marvel at the sword’s power.

  His father’s name …

  Dorian.

  I took his name, Erawan spat, writhing as the words flowed from his tongue under Damaris’s power. I wiped it away from existence. Yet he only remembered it once. Only once. The first time he beheld you.

  Tears slid down Dorian’s face at that unbearable truth.

  Perhaps his father had unknowingly hidden his name within him, a final kernel of defiance against Erawan. And had named his son for that defiance, a secret marker that the man within still fought. Had never stopped fighting.

  Dorian. His father’s name.

  Dorian let go of Damaris’s hilt.

  Yrene’s breathing turned ragged. Now—it had to be now.

  Even with the Valg king before him, something in Dorian’s chest eased. Healed over.

  So Dorian said to Erawan, his tears burning away beneath the warmth of their magic. “I brought down your keep.” He smiled savagely. “And now we’ll bring you down as well.”

  Then he nodded to Yrene.

  Erawan’s eyes flared like hot coals. And Yrene unleashed their power once more.

  Erawan could do nothing. Nothing against that raw magic, joining with Yrene’s, weaving into that world-making power.

  The entire city, the plain, became blindingly bright. So bright that Elide and Lysandra shielded their eyes. Even Dorian shut his.

  But Yrene saw it then. What lay at Erawan’s core.

  The twisted, hateful creature inside. Old and seething, pale as death. Pale, from an eternity in darkness so complete it had never seen sunlight.

  Had never seen her light, which now scalded his moon-white, ancient flesh.

  Erawan writhed, contorting on the ground of whatever this place was inside him.

  Pathetic, Yrene simply said.

  Golden eyes flared, full of rage and hate.

  But Yrene only smiled, summoning her mother’s lovely face to her heart. Showing it to him.

  Wishing she knew what Elide’s mother had looked like so she might show him Marion Lochan, too.

  The two women he had killed, directly or indirectly, and never thought twice about it.

  Two mothers, whose love for their daughters and hope for a better world was greater than any power Erawan might wield. Greater than any Wyrdkey.

  And it was with the image of her mother still shining before him, showing him that mistake he’d never known he made, that Yrene clenched her fingers into a fist.

  Erawan screamed.

  Yrene’s fingers clenched tighter, and distantly, she felt her physical hand doing the same. Felt the sting of her nails cutting into her palms.

  She did not listen to Erawan’s pleas. His threats.

  She only tightened her fist. More and more.

  Until he was nothing but a dark flame within it.

  Until she squeezed her fist, one final time, and that dark flame snuffed out.

  Yrene had the feeling of falling, of tumbling back into herself. And she was indeed falling, rocking back into Lysandra’s furry body, her hand slipping from Dorian’s.

  Dorian lunged for her hand to renew contact, but there was no need.

  No need for his power, or Yrene’s.

  Not as Erawan, golden eyes open and unseeing as they gazed at the night sky above, sagged to the stones of the balcony.

  Not as his skin turned gray, then began to wither, to decay.

  A life rotting away from within.

  “Burn it,” Yrene rasped, a hand going to her belly. A pulse of joy, a spark of light, answered back.

  Dorian didn’t hesitate. Flames leaped out, devouring the decaying body before them.

  They were unnecessary.

  Before they’d even begun to turn his clothing to ash, Erawan dissolved. A sagging bit of flesh and brittle bones.

  Dorian burned him anyway.

  They watched in silence as the Valg king turned to ashes.

  As a winter wind swept over the tower balcony, and carried them far, far away.

  CHAPTER 114

  She was dead.

  Aelin was dead.

  Her lifeless body had been spiked to the gates of Orynth, her hair shorn to her scalp.

  Rowan knelt before the gates, the armies of Morath streaming past him. It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. Yet the sun warmed his face. The reek of death filled his nose.

  He gritted his teeth, willing himself out, away from this place. This waking nightmare.

  It didn’t falter.

  A hand brushed his shoulder, gentle and
small.

  “You brought this upon yourself, you know,” said a lilting female voice.

  He knew that voice. Would never forget it.

  Lyria.

  She stood behind him, peering up at Aelin. Clad in Maeve’s dark armor, her brown hair braided back from her delicate, lovely face. “You brought it upon her, too, I suppose,” his mate—his lie of a mate—mused.

  Dead. Lyria was dead, and Aelin was the one meant to survive—

  “You would pick her over me?” Lyria demanded, her chestnut eyes filling. “Is that the sort of male you have become?”

  He couldn’t find any words, anything to explain, to apologize.

  Aelin was dead.

  He couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to.

  Connall was smirking at him. “Everything that happened to me is because of you.”

  Kneeling on that veranda in Doranelle, in a palace he’d hoped to never see again, Fenrys fought the bile that rose in his throat. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry, but would you change it? Was I the sacrifice you were willing to make in order to get what you wanted?”

  Fenrys shook his head, but it was suddenly that of a wolf—the body he had once loved with such pride and fierceness. A wolf’s form—with no ability to speak.

  “You took everything I ever wanted,” his twin went on. “Everything. Did you even mourn me? Did it even matter?”

  He needed to tell him—tell his twin everything he’d meant to say, wished he’d been able to convey. But that wolf’s tongue did not voice the language of men and Fae. No voice. He had no voice.

  “I am dead because of you,” Connall breathed. “I suffered because of you. And I will never forget it.”

  Please. The word burned on his tongue. Please—

  She couldn’t endure it.

  Rowan kneeling there, screaming.

  Fenrys sobbing toward the darkened skies.

  And Lorcan—Lorcan in utter silence, eyes unseeing as some untold horror played out.

  Maeve hummed to herself. “Do you see what I can do? What they are powerless against?”

  Rowan screamed louder, the tendons in his neck bulging. Fighting Maeve with all he had.

  She couldn’t endure it. Couldn’t stand it.

  This was no illusion, no spun dream. This, their pain—this was real.

  Maeve’s Valg powers, at last revealed. The same hellish power that the Valg princes possessed. The same power she’d endured. Defeated with flame.

  But she had no flame to help them. Nothing at all.

  “There’s indeed nothing left for you to bargain with,” Maeve said simply. “But yourself.”

  Anything but this. Anything but this—

  “You are nothing.”

  Elide stood before him, the lofty towers of a city Lorcan had never seen, the city that should have been his home, beckoning on the horizon. The wind whipped her dark hair, as cold as the light in her eyes.

  “A bastard-born nobody,” she went on. “Did you think I’d sully myself with you?”

  “I think you might be my mate,” he rasped.

  Elide snickered. “Mate? Why would you ever think you were entitled to such a thing after all you have done?”

  It couldn’t be real—it wasn’t real. And yet that coldness in her face, the distance …

  He’d earned it. Deserved it.

  Maeve surveyed them, the three males who had been her slaves, lost to her dark power as it ripped through their minds, their memories, and laughed. “Pity about Gavriel. At least he fell nobly.”

  Gavriel—

  Maeve turned to her. “You didn’t know, did you?” A click of her tongue. “The Lion will roar no longer, his life the asking price for defending his cub.”

  Gavriel was dead. She felt the truth in Maeve’s words. Let them punch a hole through her heart.

  “You could not save him, it seems,” Maeve went on. “But you can save them.”

  Fenrys screamed now. Rowan had fallen silent, his green eyes vacant. Whatever he beheld had drawn him past screaming, beyond weeping.

  Pain. Unspeakable, unimaginable pain. As she had endured—perhaps worse.

  And yet …

  Aelin didn’t give Maeve time to react. Time to even turn her head as she grabbed Goldryn where it lay beside her and hurled it at the queen.

  It missed Maeve by an inch, the Valg queen twisting aside before the blade buried itself deep in the snow, steaming where it landed. Still burning.

  It was all Aelin needed.

  She lashed out, flame spearing into the world.

  But not for Maeve.

  It slammed into Rowan, into Fenrys and Lorcan. Struck their shoulders, hard and deep.

  Burning them. Branding them.

  Aelin was dead. She was dead, and he had failed her.

  “You are a lesser male,” Lyria said, still studying the gate where Aelin’s body swayed. “You deserved this. After what was done to me, you deserved this.”

  Aelin was dead.

  He did not wish to live in this world. Not for a heartbeat longer.

  Aelin was dead. And he—

  His shoulder twinged. And then it burned.

  As if someone had pressed a brand to it. A red-hot poker.

  A flame.

  He looked down, but beheld no wound.

  Lyria continued on, “You bring only suffering to those you love.”

  The words were distant. Secondary to that burning wound.

  It singed him again, a phantom wound, a memory—

  Not a memory. Not a memory, but a lifeline thrown into the dark. Into an illusion.

  An anchor.

  As he had once anchored her, hauling her from a Valg prince’s grip.

  Aelin.

  His hands curled at his sides. Aelin, who had known suffering as he did. Who had been shown peaceful lives and still chosen him, exactly as he was, for what they had both endured. Illusions—those had been illusions.

  Rowan gritted his teeth. Felt the thing wrapped around his mind. Holding him captive.

  He let out a low snarl.

  She had done this—done it before. Torn into his mind. Twisted and taken from him this most vital thing. Aelin.

  He would not let her take it again.

  Lorcan roared at the brand that shredded through his senses, through Elide’s mocking words, through the image of Perranth, the home he wanted so badly and might never see.

  Roared, and the world rippled. Became snow and darkness and battle.

  And Maeve. Poised before them, her pale face livid.

  Her power lunged for him, a striking panther—

  Elide now lay in a grand, opulent bed, her withered hand reaching for his. An aged hand, riddled with marks, the delicate blue veins intertwining like the many rivers around Doranelle.

  And her face … Her dark eyes were filmy, her wrinkles deep. Her thinned hair white as snow.

  “This is a truth you cannot outrun,” she said, her voice a croak. “A sword above our heads.”

  Her deathbed. That’s what this was. And the hand he brushed against hers—it remained young. He remained young.

  Bile coated his throat. “Please.” He put a hand to his chest, as if it’d stop the relentless cracking.

  Faint, throbbing pain answered back.

  Elide’s breaths rasped against his ears. He couldn’t watch this, couldn’t—

  He dug his hand harder into his chest. To the pain there.

  Life—life was pain. Pain, and joy. Joy because of the pain.

  He saw it in Elide’s face. In every line and age mark. In every white hair. A life lived—together. The pain of parting because of how wonderful it had been.

  The darkness beyond thinned. Lorcan dug his hand into the burning wound in his shoulder.

  Elide let out a hacking cough that wrecked him, yet he took it into his heart, every bit of it. All that the future might offer.

  It did not frighten him.

  Again and again, Connall died. Over and ove
r.

  Connall lay on the floor of the veranda, his blood leaking toward the misty river far below.

  His fate—it should have been his fate.

  If he walked over the edge of the veranda, into that roaring river, would anyone mark his passing? If he leaped, his brother in his arms, would the river make a quick end for him?

  He didn’t deserve a quick end. He deserved a slow, brutal bloodletting.

  His punishment, his just reward for what he’d done to his brother. The life he’d allowed to be set in his shadow, had always known remained in his shadow and hadn’t tried, not really, to share the light.

  A burn, violent and unflinching, tore through him. As if someone had shoved his shoulder into a furnace.

  He deserved it. He welcomed it into his heart.

  He hoped it would destroy him.

  Pain. The thing she had dreaded inflicting upon them most, had fought and fought to keep them from.

  The scent of their burned flesh stung her nostrils, and Maeve let out a low laugh. “Was that a shield, Aelin? Or were you trying to put them out of their misery?”

  As he kneeled beside her, Rowan’s hand twitched at whatever horror he beheld, right over the edge of his discarded hatchet.

  Pine and snow and the coppery tang of blood blended, rising to meet her as his palm sliced open with the force of that twitch.

  “We can keep at this, you know,” Maeve went on. “Until Orynth lies in ruin.”

  Rowan stared sightlessly ahead, his palm leaking blood onto the snow.

  His fingers curled. Slightly.

  A beckoning gesture, too small for Maeve to note. For anyone to note—except for her. Except for the silent language between them, the way their bodies had spoken to each other from the moment they’d met in that dusty alley in Varese.

  A small act of defiance. As he had once defied Maeve before her throne in Doranelle.

  Fenrys sobbed again, and Maeve glanced toward him.

  Aelin slid her hand along Rowan’s hatchet, the pain a whisper through her body.

  Her mate trembled, fighting the mind that had invaded his once more.

  “What a waste,” Maeve said, turning back to them. “For these fine males to leave my service, only to wind up bound to a queen with hardly more than a few drops of power to her name.”