Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  “How did you do it?” he whispered. “How did you break free of its control?” He had to know. If he was walking into hell itself, if it was more than likely he’d wind up with a new collar around his throat, he had to know.

  Kaltain studied his neck before she met his stare. “Because I raged against it. Because I did not feel that I deserved the collar.”

  The truth of her words slammed into him as surely as if she’d shoved his chest.

  Kaltain only asked, “You drew the summoning marks for a reason. What is it you wish to know?”

  Dorian tucked away the truth she’d thrown at him, the mirror she held up to all he’d once been and had become. He had not been a true prince—not in spirit, not in deeds. He’d tried to be, but too late. He had acted too late. He doubted he was doing much better as king. Certainly not when he’d dismissed Adarlan out of his own guilt and anger, questioned whether it should be saved.

  As if there were ever a possibility that it didn’t deserve to be.

  He asked at last, “Am I ready to go to Morath?”

  She alone would know. Had witnessed things far worse than any Manon or Elide had beheld.

  Kaltain again glanced to Damaris. “You know the answer.”

  “You won’t try to convince me not to go?”

  But Kaltain’s mouth tightened as her onyx gown began to blend into the gathered night. “You know what you will face there. It is not for me to tell you if you are ready.”

  His mouth went dry.

  Kaltain said, “Everything you have heard about Morath is true. True, and still there is more that is worse than you can imagine. Stay to the keep. It is Erawan’s stronghold, and likely the only place he would trust to store the key.”

  Dorian nodded, his heart beginning to hammer. “I will.”

  She took a step toward him, but halted as her edges rippled further. “Don’t linger too long, and don’t attract his attention. He is arrogant, and wholly self-absorbed, and will not bother to look too closely at what might creep through his halls. Be quick, Dorian.”

  A tremor went through his hands, but he balled them into fists. “If I can kill him, should I take the chance?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You would not walk away from it. He has a chamber deep in the keep—it is where he stores the collars. He will bring you there if he catches you.”

  He straightened. “I—”

  “Go to Morath, as you have planned. Retrieve the key, and nothing more. Or you will find yourself with a collar around your neck again.”

  He swallowed. “I can barely shift.”

  Kaltain gave him a half smile as she dissolved into the moonlight. “Can’t you?”

  And then she was gone.

  Dorian stared at the place she’d stood, the Wyrdmarks already vanished. Only Damaris remained standing there, witness to the truth it had somehow sensed he needed to hear.

  So Dorian felt for that tangle in his magic, the place where raw power eddied and emerged as whatever he wished.

  Let go—the shifting magic’s command. Let go of everything. Let go of that wall he’d built around himself the moment the Valg prince had invaded him, and look within. At himself. Perhaps what the sword had asked him to do in summoning Kaltain instead.

  Who do you wish to be?

  “Someone worthy of my friends,” he said into the quiet night. “A king worthy of his kingdom.” For a heartbeat, snow-white hair and golden eyes flashed into his mind. “Happy,” he whispered, and wrapped a hand around Damaris’s hilt. Let go of that lingering scrap of terror.

  The ancient sword warmed in his hand, a friendly and swift heat.

  It flowed up through his fingers, his wrist. To that place within him where all those truths had dwelled, where it became warmth edged with sharpest pain.

  And then the world grew and expanded, the trees rising, the ground approaching—

  He made to touch his face, but found he had no hands.

  Only soot-black wings. Only an ebony beak that allowed no words past it.

  A raven. A—

  A soft inhale of air had him twisting his neck—far more easily in this form—toward the trees. Toward Manon, standing in the shadows of an oak, her bloody, filthy hand braced against the trunk as she stared at him. At the transformation.

  Dorian fumbled for the thread of power that held him in this strange, light form. Instantly, the world swaying, he grew and grew, back into his human body, Damaris cold and still at his feet. His clothes somehow intact. Perhaps through whatever differences existed between his raw magic and a true shifter’s gift.

  But Manon’s lip curled back from her teeth. Her golden eyes glowed like embers. “When, exactly, were you going to inform me that you were about to retrieve the third Wyrdkey?”

  CHAPTER 34

  “We need to retreat,” Galan Ashryver panted to Aedion as they stood by the water tent deep in their army’s ranks, the Crown Prince splattered with blood both red and black.

  Three days of fighting in the frigid wind and snow, three days of being pushed northward mile by mile. Aedion had the soldiers on rotation to the front lines, and those who managed to catch a few minutes of sleep returned to the fighting with heavier and heavier feet.

  He’d left the front line himself minutes ago, only after Kyllian had ordered him to, going so far as to throw Aedion behind him, the Bane roughly passing him along until he was here, the Crown Prince of Wendlyn gulping down water by the farthest reaches of their forces. The prince’s olive skin was ashen, his Ashryver eyes dim as they monitored soldiers rushing or trudging past.

  “We retreat here, and we stand to be chased all the way to Orynth.” Aedion’s raw throat ached with each word.

  He had never seen an army so large. Even at Theralis, all those years ago.

  Galan handed Aedion his waterskin, and Aedion drank deeply. “I will follow you, cousin, to however this may end, but we cannot keep this up. Not for another full night.”

  Aedion knew that. Had realized it after the fighting had continued under cover of darkness.

  When the men had started asking why Aelin of the Wildfire did not burn away their enemies. Did not at least give them light by which to fight.

  Why she had vanished again.

  Lysandra had donned her wyvern form to battle the ilken, but she had been forced to yield, to fall behind their lines. Good for killing ilken, yes, but also a large target for Morath’s archers and spear-throwers.

  Ahead, too close for comfort, screams and clashing weapons rose toward the sky. Even the Fae royals’ magic was beginning to waver, their soldiers with them. Where it failed, the Silent Assassins lay waiting, shredding apart Valg and ilken alike with swift efficiency. But there were only so many of them. And still no sign of Ansel of Briarcliff’s additional army.

  Soon, the red-haired queen had promised with uncharacteristic graveness only hours ago, the legion with her already dwindling rapidly. The rest of my army will be here soon.

  Snarling rose nearby, cutting through the din of battle. The ghost leopard had not faltered, had barely stopped to rest.

  He had to go back out. Had to eat something and go back out. Kyllian could maintain order for a good while, but Aedion was their prince. And with Aelin nowhere in sight … it was upon him to keep the soldiers in line.

  Though those lines were buckling, like leaks in a dam.

  “The Lanis River by Perranth,” Aedion murmured as Ilias and the Silent Assassins shot ilken out of the sky, their arrows easily finding their marks. Wings first, they’d learned the hard way. To get them out of the air. Then blades to the head, to decapitate fully.

  Or else they’d rise again. And remember who had tried to kill them.

  “If we retreat northward,” Aedion went on, “get to Perranth and cross the river, we could force them to make the crossing, too. Pick them off that way.”

  “Is there a bridge?” Galan’s face tightened as one of the two remaining Valg princes sent a wave of dark power for a clus
ter of their soldiers. Men wilted like flowers in a frost.

  A blast of wind and ice answered—Sellene or Endymion. Maybe one of their many cousins.

  “No bridge big enough. But the river’s frozen solid—we might cross it, then melt it.”

  “With Aelin.” A doubtful, careful question.

  Aedion gestured toward the source of that answering blast of magic, now warring with the Valg princes’ power. “If the Fae royals can make ice, then they can unfreeze it. Right beneath Morath’s feet.”

  Galan’s turquoise eyes flickered, either at the plan or the fact that Aelin would not be the one enacting it. “Morath might see through us.”

  “There’s little other option.” From Perranth, they’d have access to more supplies, perhaps fresh troops rallying to them from the city itself. To retreat, though …

  Aedion surveyed the lines being picked off one by one, the soldiers on their last legs.

  Retreat and live. Fight and die.

  For this resistance would founder, if they kept at this. Here, on the southern plains, they’d be ended.

  There was no guarantee Rowan and the others would find Aelin. That Dorian and Manon might retrieve the third Wyrdkey and then give them to his queen, should she get free, should she find them in this mess of a world. No guarantee how many Crochans Manon might rally, if any.

  With the armada spread too thin along Terasen’s coast to be of any use, only Ansel of Briarcliff’s remaining forces could offer some relief. If they weren’t all clean-picked bones by then. There was little choice but to hold out until they arrived. Their last allies.

  Because Rolfe and the Mycenians … there was no guarantee that they would come. No word.

  “Order the retreat,” Aedion said to the prince. “And get word to Endymion and Sellene that we’ll need their power as soon as we begin to run.”

  To throw all their magic into a mighty shield to guard their backs while they tried to put as many miles between them and Morath as possible.

  Galan nodded, shoving his bloody helmet over his dark hair, and stalked through the chaotic mass of soldiers.

  A retreat. This soon, this fast. For all his training, the brutal years of learning and fighting and leading, this was what it had come to.

  Would they even make it to Perranth?

  The order with which the army had marched southward utterly collapsed on the flight back north. The Fae troops stayed at their rear, magic shields buckling, yet holding. Keeping Morath’s forces at bay by the foothills while they retreated toward Perranth.

  The grumbling amongst the limping, exhausted soldiers trickled past Lysandra as she trudged between them, wearing the form of a horse. She’d allowed a young man onto her back when she’d spied his guts nearly hanging out of his rent armor.

  For long miles, his leaking blood had warmed her sides as he lay sprawled over her.

  The warm trickle had long stopped. Frozen.

  So had he.

  She hadn’t the heart to dislodge him, to leave his dead body on the field to be trampled. His blood had frozen him to her anyway.

  Each step was an effort of will, her own wounds healing faster than the soldiers’ around her. Many fell during the march toward Perranth. Some were picked up, hauled by their companions or strangers.

  Some did not rise again.

  The resistance was not supposed to break apart so soon.

  The grumbling worsened the closer to Perranth they got, despite a quick few hours of rest that first night. Where is the queen? Where is her fire?

  She couldn’t fight as Aelin—not convincingly, and not well enough to stay alive. And when the Fire-Bringer fought with no flame … they might know then.

  She has run away. Again.

  Two Silent Assassins noticed on the second night that the dead soldier still lay on Lysandra’s back.

  They said nothing as they gathered warm water to melt the blood and gore that had bound him to her. Then to wash her.

  In her roan mare form, she had no words to offer them, had no way to ask if they knew what she was. They treated her with kindness nonetheless.

  No one made to reach for the lone horse roaming through the ramshackle camp. Some soldiers had erected tents. Many just slept beside the fires, under cloaks and jackets.

  Her ears were ringing. Had been ringing since the first clashing of the battle.

  She didn’t know how she found his tent, but there it was, flaps open to the night to reveal him standing with Galan, Ansel, and Ren.

  The Lord of Allsbrook’s brows rose as she entered, her head nearly hitting the ceiling.

  A horse. She was still a horse.

  Ren staggered toward her, despite the exhaustion surely weighing down every inch of him.

  Lysandra fumbled for the thread inside her, the thread back to her human body, the shimmering light that would shrink her into it.

  The four of them only stared as she found it, fought for it. The magic ripped the last of the strength from her. By the time she was again in her own skin, she was already falling to the hay-covered floor.

  She didn’t feel the cold slam into her bare skin, didn’t care as she collapsed to her knees.

  Ansel was already there, slinging her cloak around her. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Even the Queen of the Wastes was pale, her wine-red hair plastered to her head beneath the dirt and blood.

  Lysandra had no speech left in her. Could only kneel, clutching the cloak.

  “We move an hour before dawn,” Aedion said, the order a clear dismissal.

  Ansel and Galan nodded, peeling out of the tent. Ren only murmured, “I’ll find you some food, Lady,” before he exited the tent.

  Boots crunched in hay, and then he was knee to knee before her. Aedion.

  There was nothing kind on his face. No pity or warmth.

  For a long minute, they only stared at each other.

  Then the prince growled softly, “Your plan was bullshit.”

  She said nothing, and couldn’t stop her shoulders from curving inward.

  “Your plan was bullshit,” he breathed, his eyes sparking. “How could you ever be her, wear her skin, and think to get away with it? How could you ever think you’d get around the fact that our armies are counting on you to burn the enemy to ashes, and all you can do is run away and emerge as some beast instead?”

  “You don’t get to pin this retreat on me,” she rasped. The first words she’d spoken in days and days.

  “You agreed to let Aelin go to her death, and leave us here to be slashed to bloody ribbons. You two told no one of this plan, told none of us who might have explained the realities of this war, and that we would need a gods-damned Fire-Bringer and not an untrained, useless shape-shifter against Morath.”

  Blow after blow, the words landed upon her weary heart. “We—”

  “If you were so willing to let Aelin die, then you should have let her do it after she incinerated Erawan’s hordes!”

  “It would not have stopped Maeve from capturing her.”

  “If you’d told us, we might have planned differently, acted differently, and we would not be here, damn you!”

  She stared at the muddy hay. “Throw me out of your army, then.”

  “You ruined everything.” His words were colder than the wind outside. “You, and her.”

  Lysandra closed her eyes.

  Hay rustled, and she knew he’d risen to his feet, knew it as his words speared from above her bowed head. “Get out of my tent.”

  She wasn’t certain she could move enough to obey, though she wished to. Needed to.

  Fight back. She should fight back. Rage at him as he lashed at her, needing an outlet for his fear and despair.

  Lysandra opened her eyes, peering up at him. At the rage on his face, the hatred.

  She managed to stand, her body bleating in pain. Managed to look him in the eye, even as Aedion said again with quiet cold, “Get out.”

  Barefoot in the snow, naked beneath
her cloak. Aedion glanced at her bare legs, as if realizing it. And not caring.

  So Lysandra nodded, clutching Ansel’s cloak tighter, and strode into the frigid night.

  “Where is she?” Ren asked, a mug of what smelled like watery soup in one hand, a chunk of bread in the other. The lord scanned the tent as if he would find her under the cot, the hay.

  Aedion stared at the precious few logs burning in the brazier, and said nothing.

  “What have you done?” Ren breathed.

  Everything was about to end. Had been doomed since Maeve had stolen Aelin. Since his queen and the shifter had struck their agreement.

  So it didn’t matter, what he’d said. He hadn’t cared if it wasn’t fair, wasn’t true.

  Didn’t care if he was so tired he couldn’t muster shame at his pinning on her the blame for the sure defeat they’d face in a matter of days before Perranth’s walls.

  He wished she’d smacked him, had screamed at him.

  But she had let him rage. And had walked out into the snow, barefoot.

  He’d promised to save Terrasen, to hold the lines. Had done so for years.

  And yet this test against Morath, when it had counted … he had failed.

  He’d muster the strength to fight again. To rally his men. He just … he needed to sleep.

  Aedion didn’t notice when Ren left, undoubtedly in search of the shifter with whom he was so damned enamored.

  He should summon his Bane commanders. See how they thought to manage this disaster.

  But he couldn’t. Could do nothing but stare into that fire as the long night passed.

  CHAPTER 35

  She had not trusted this world, this dream. The companions who had walked with her, led her here. The warrior-prince with pine-green eyes and who smelled of Terrasen.

  Him, she had not dared to believe at all. Not the words he spoke, but the mere fact that he was there. She did not trust that he’d removed the mask, the irons. They had vanished in other dreams, too—dreams that had proved false.

  But the Little Folk had told her it was true. All of this. They had said it was safe, and she was to rest, and they would look after her.