Maeve waved an ivory hand at Connall, frozen beside her throne. Where he’d remained since he’d brought the queen’s food. “Do it.”
Connall drew one of the knives from his belt. Stepped toward Fenrys.
No.
The word was a cold clang through her. Her lips even formed it as she jerked against the chains, lines of liquid fire shooting along her legs.
Connall advanced another step.
Glass crunched and cracked beneath her. No, no—
Connall stopped above Fenrys, his hand shaking. Fenrys only snarled up at him.
Connall raised his knife into the air between them.
She could not surge to her feet. Could not rise against the chains and glass. Could do nothing, nothing—
Cairn gripped her by the neck, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and ground her again into the blood-drenched shards. A rasping, broken scream cracked from her lips.
Fenrys. Her only tether to life, to this reality—
Connall’s blade glinted. He’d come to help at Mistward. He had defied Maeve then; perhaps he’d do it now, perhaps his hateful words had been a deception—
The blade plunged down.
Not into Fenrys.
But Connall’s own heart.
Fenrys moved—or tried to. Maw gaping in what might have been a scream, he tried and tried to lunge for his brother as Connall crashed to the tiled veranda. As blood began to pool.
The owl on Maeve’s throne flapped its wings once, as if in horror. But Cairn let out a low laugh, the sound rumbling past Aelin’s head.
Real. This was real. It had to be.
Something cold and oily lurched through her. Her hands slackened at her sides. The light left Connall’s dark eyes, his black hair spilled on the floor around him in a dark mirror to the blood leaking away.
Fenrys was shaking. Aelin might have been, too.
“You tainted something that belonged to me, Aelin Galathynius,” Maeve said. “And now it must be purged.”
Fenrys was whining, still attempting to crawl to the brother dead on the ground. Fae could heal; perhaps Connall’s heart could mend—
Connall’s chest rose in a rattling, shallow breath.
It didn’t move again.
Fenrys’s howl cleaved the night.
Cairn let go, and Aelin slumped onto the glass, hands and wrists stinging.
She let herself lie there, half sprawled. Let the crown tumble off her head and skitter across the floor, dragon-glass spraying where it bounced. Bounced, then rolled, curving across the veranda. All the way to the stone railing.
And into the roaring, hateful river below.
“There is no one here to help you.” Maeve’s voice was as empty as the gaps between stars. “And there is no one coming for you.”
Aelin’s fingers curled in the ancient glass.
“Think on it. Think on this night, Aelin.” Maeve snapped her fingers. “We’re done here.”
Cairn’s hands wrapped around the chains.
Her legs buckled, feet splitting open anew. She barely felt it, barely felt it through the rage and the sea of fire down deep, deep below.
But as Cairn hauled her up, his savage hands roving, she struck.
Two blows.
A shard of glass plunged into the side of his neck. He staggered back, cursing as blood sprayed.
Aelin whirled, glass ripping her soles apart, and hurled the shard in her other hand. Right at Maeve.
It missed by a hairsbreadth. Scraping Maeve’s pale cheek before clattering off the throne behind her. The owl perched just above it screeched.
Rough hands gripped her, Cairn shouting, raging shrieks of You little bitch, but she didn’t hear them. Not as a trickle of blood snaked down Maeve’s cheek.
Black blood. As dark as night.
As dark as the eyes that the queen fixed on her, a hand rising to her cheek.
Aelin’s legs slackened, and she didn’t fight the guards heaving her away.
A blink, and the blood flowed red. Its scent as coppery as her own.
A trick of the light. A hallucination, another dream—
Maeve peered at the crimson stain coating her pale fingers.
An onyx wind snapped for Aelin, wrapping around her neck.
It squeezed, and she knew no more.
CHAPTER 9
Cairn tied her to the altar and left her.
Fenrys didn’t enter until long after she’d awoken.
The blood was still leaking from where Cairn had also left the glass in her legs, her feet.
It was not a wolf who slipped into the stone chamber, but a male.
Each of Fenrys’s steps told her enough before she beheld the deadness of his eyes, the pallor of his usually golden skin. He stared at nothing, even as he stopped before where she lay chained.
Beyond words, unsure her throat would even work, Aelin blinked three times. Are you all right?
Two blinks answered. No.
Lingering salt tracks streaked his cheeks.
Her chains rustled as she stretched a shaking finger toward him.
Silently, he slid his hand into hers.
She mouthed the words, even though he likely couldn’t make them out with the slit of the mask’s mouth. I’m sorry.
His grip only tightened.
His gray jacket was unbuttoned at the top. It gaped open wide enough to reveal a hint of the muscled chest beneath. As if he hadn’t bothered to seal it back up in his hurry to leave.
Her stomach turned over. What he’d undoubtedly had to do afterward, with his twin’s body still lying on the veranda tiles behind him …
“I didn’t know he hated me so much,” Fenrys rasped.
Aelin squeezed his hand.
Fenrys closed his eyes, drawing in a shaking breath. “She gave me leave only to take out the glass. When it’s out, I—I go back over there.” He pointed with his chin toward the wall where he usually sat. He made to examine her legs, but she squeezed his hand again, and blinked twice. No.
Let him stay in this form for a while longer, let him mourn as a male and not a wolf. Let him stay in this form so she could hear a friendly voice, feel a gentle touch—
She began to cry.
She couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop it once it started. Hated every tear and shuddering breath, every jerk of her body that sent lightning through her legs and feet.
“I’ll get them out,” he said, and she couldn’t tell him, couldn’t start to explain that it wasn’t the glass, the shredded skin down to the bone.
He wasn’t coming. He wasn’t coming to get her.
She should be glad. Should be relieved. She was relieved. And yet … and yet …
Fenrys drew out a pair of pincers from the tool kit that Cairn had left on a table nearby. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, Aelin turned her head away while the first piece of glass slid from her knee. Flesh and sinew sundered anew.
Salt overpowered the tang of her blood, and she knew he was crying. The scent of their tears filled the tiny room as he worked.
Neither of them said a word.
CHAPTER 10
The world had become only freezing mud, and red and black blood, and the screams of the dying rising to the frigid sky.
Lysandra had learned these months that battle was no orderly, neat thing. It was chaos and pain and there were no grand, heroic duels. Only the slashing of her claws and the rip of her fangs; the clash of dented shields and bloodied swords. Armor that had once been distinguishable quickly turned gore-splattered, and were it not for the dark of her enemy’s colors, Lysandra wasn’t entirely certain how she would have discerned ally from foe.
Their lines held. At least they had that much.
Shield to shield and shoulder to shoulder in the snowy field that had since become a mud pit, they’d met the legion Erawan had marched through Eldrys.
Aedion had picked the field, the hour, the angle of this ba
ttle. The others had pushed for instant attack, but he’d let Morath march far enough inland—right to where he wanted them. Location was as important as numbers, was all he’d said.
Not to Lysandra, of course. He barely said a damn word to her these days.
Now certainly wasn’t the time to think of it. To care.
Their allies and soldiers believed Aelin Galathynius remained en route to them, allowing Lysandra to don the ghost leopard’s form. Ren Allsbrook had even commissioned plated armor for the leopard’s chest, sides, and flanks. So light as to not be a hindrance, but solid enough that the three blows she’d been too slow to stop—an arrow to the side, then two slashes from enemy swords—had been deflected.
Little wounds burned along her body. Blood matted the fur of her paws from the slaughtering she’d done amongst the front lines and being torn open on fallen swords and snapped arrows.
But she kept going, the Bane holding firm against what had been sent to meet them.
Only five thousand.
Only seemed like a ridiculous word, but it was what Aedion and the others had used.
Barely enough to be an army, considering Morath’s full might, but large enough to pose a threat.
To them, Lysandra thought as she lunged between two Bane warriors and launched herself upon the nearest Valg foot soldier.
The man had his sword upraised, poised to strike the Bane soldier before him. With the angle of his head as he brought the blade up, the Valg grunt didn’t spy his oncoming death until her jaws were around his exposed neck.
Hours into this battle, it was instinct to clamp down, flesh splitting like a piece of ripe fruit.
She was moving again before he hit the earth, spitting his throat onto the mud, leaving the advancing Bane to decapitate his corpse. How far away that courtesan’s life in Rifthold now seemed. Despite the death around her, she couldn’t say she missed it.
Down the line, Aedion bellowed orders to the left flank. They’d let rest some of the Bane upon hearing how few Erawan had sent, and had filled the ranks with a mixture of soldiers from the Lords of Terrasen’s own small forces and those from Prince Galan Ashryver and Queen Ansel of the Wastes, both of whom had additional warriors on the way.
No need to reveal they had a small battalion of Fae soldiers courtesy of Prince Endymion and Princess Sellene Whitethorn, or that the Silent Assassins of the Red Desert were amongst them, too. There would be a time when the surprise of their presence would be needed, Aedion had argued during the quick war council they’d conducted upon returning to the camp. Lysandra, winded from carrying him, Ren, and Murtaugh without rest from Allsbrook to the edges of Orynth, had barely listened to the debate. Aedion had won, anyway.
As he won everything, through sheer will and arrogance.
She didn’t dare look down the lines to see how he was faring, shoulder to shoulder in the mud with his men. Ren led the right flank, where Lysandra had been stationed. Galan and Ansel had taken the left, Ravi and Sol of Suria fighting amongst them.
She didn’t dare see whose swords were still swinging.
They would count their dead after the battle.
There weren’t many of the enemy left now. A thousand, if that. The soldiers at her back numbered far more.
So Lysandra kept killing, the blood of her enemy like spoiled wine on her tongue.
They won, though Aedion was well aware that victory against five thousand troops was likely fleeting, considering Morath’s full host had yet to come.
The rush of battle hadn’t yet worn off any of them—which was how Aedion wound up in his war tent an hour after the last of the Valg had fallen, standing around a map-covered table with Ren Allsbrook and Ravi and Sol of Suria.
Where Lysandra had gone, he didn’t know. She’d survived, which he supposed was enough.
They hadn’t washed away the gore or mud coating them so thoroughly that it had caked beneath their helmets, their armor. Their weapons lay in a discarded pile near the tent flaps. All would need to be cleaned. But later.
“Losses on your side?” Aedion asked Ravi and Sol. The two blond brothers both ruled over Suria, though Sol was technically its lord. They’d never fought in the wars before now, despite being around Aedion’s age, but they’d held their own well enough today. Their soldiers had, too.
The Lords of Suria had lost their father to Adarlan’s butchering blocks a decade ago, their mother surviving the wars and Adarlan’s occupation through her cunning and the fact that her prosperous port-city was too valuable to the empire’s trade route to decimate.
Sol, it seemed, took after their even-keeled, clever mother.
Ravi, coltish and brash, took after their late father.
Both, however, hated Adarlan with a deep-burning intensity belied by their pale blue eyes.
Sol, his narrow face flecked with mud, loosed a breath through his nose. An aristocrat’s nose, Aedion had thought when they were children. The lord had always been more of a scholar than a warrior, but it seemed he’d learned a thing or two in the grim years since. “Not many, thank the gods. Two hundred at most.”
The soft voice was deceptive—Aedion had learned that these weeks. Perhaps a weapon in its own right, to make people believe him gentle-hearted and weak. To mask the sharp mind and sharper instincts behind it.
“And your flank?” Aedion asked Ren.
Ren ran a hand through his dark hair, mud crumbling away. “One hundred fifty, if that.”
Aedion nodded. Far better than he’d anticipated. The lines had held, thanks to the Bane he’d interspersed amongst them. The Valg had tried to maintain order, yet once human blood began spilling, they had descended into battle lust and lost control, despite the screaming of their commanders.
All Valg grunts, no princes among them. He knew it wasn’t a blessing.
Knew the five thousand troops Erawan had sent, ambushing Galan Ashryver’s ships by Ilium before setting upon Eldrys, were just to wear them down. No ilken, no Ironteeth, no Wyrdhounds.
They had still been hard to kill. Had fought longer than most men.
Ravi eyed the map. “Do we pull back to Orynth now? Or head to the border?”
“Darrow ordered us to Orynth, if we survived,” Sol countered, frowning at his brother. At the light in Ravi’s eyes that so clearly voiced where he wished to go.
Darrow, who was too old to fight, had lingered in the secondary camp twenty miles behind theirs. To be the next line of defense, if five thousand troops somehow managed to destroy one of the most skilled fighting units Terrasen had ever seen. With word now undoubtedly arriving that the battle had gone in their favor, Darrow would likely head back to the capital.
Aedion glanced to Ren. “Do you think your grandfather can persuade Darrow and the other lords to press southward?”
War by committee. It was absurd. Every choice he made, every battlefield he picked, he had to argue for it. Convince them.
As if these troops weren’t for their queen, hadn’t come for Aelin when she’d called. As if the Bane served anyone else.
Ren blew out a breath toward the tent’s high ceiling. A large space, but unadorned. They hadn’t time or resources to furnish it into a proper war tent, setting up only a cot, a few braziers, and this table, along with a copper tub behind a curtain in the rear. As soon as this meeting was over, he’d find someone to fill it for him.
Had Aelin been here, she might have heated it within a heartbeat.
He shut out the tightness in his chest.
Had Aelin been here, one breath from her and the five thousand troops they’d exhausted themselves killing today would have been ash on the wind.
None of the lords around him had questioned where their queen was. Why she hadn’t been on the field today. Perhaps they hadn’t dared.
Ren said, “If we move the armies south without permission from Darrow and the other lords, we’ll be committing treason.”
“Treason, when we’re saving our own damn kingdom?” Ravi demanded.
> “Darrow and the others fought in the last war,” Sol said to his brother.
“And lost it,” Ravi challenged. “Badly.” He nodded toward Aedion. “You were at Theralis. You saw the slaughter.”
The Lords of Suria had no love for Darrow or the other lords who had led the forces in that final, doomed stand. Not when their mistakes had led to the deaths of most of their court, their friends. It was of little concern that Terrasen had been so outnumbered that there had never been any hope anyway.
Ravi continued, “I say we head south. Mass our forces at the border, rather than let Morath creep so close to Orynth.”
“And let any allies we might still have in the South not have so far to travel when joining with us,” Ren added.
“Galan Ashryver and Ansel of the Wastes will go where we tell them—the Fae and assassins, too,” Ravi pushed. “The rest of Ansel’s troops are making their way northward now. We could meet them. Perhaps have them hammer from the west while we strike from the north.”
A sound idea, and one Aedion had contemplated. Yet to convince Darrow … He’d head to the other camp tomorrow, perhaps catch Darrow before he returned to the capital. Once he saw to it that the injured were being cared for.
But it seemed Darrow didn’t want to wait for the morning.
“General Ashryver.” A male voice sounded from outside—young and calm.
Aedion grunted in answer, and it was certainly not Darrow who entered, but a tall, dark-haired, and gray-eyed man. No armor, though his mud-splattered dark clothes revealed a toned body beneath. A letter lay in his hands, which he extended to Aedion as he crossed the tent with graceful ease, then bowed.
Aedion took the letter, his name written on it in Darrow’s handwriting.
“Lord Darrow bids you to join him tomorrow,” the messenger said, jerking his chin toward the sealed letter. “You, and the army.”
“What’s the point of the letter,” Ravi muttered, “if you’re just going to tell him what it says?”
The messenger threw the young lord a bemused glance. “I asked that, too, milord.”
“Then I’m surprised you’re still employed,” Aedion said.
“Not employed,” the messenger said. “Just … collaborating.”
Kingdom of Ash Page 10