Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  And that terrible, relentless pressure writhing in her veins—it had eased. Just enough to think, to breathe and act beyond pure instinct.

  She’d siphoned off as much as she dared, but not all. Certainly not all.

  So she had slept. She’d done that, too, in those other dreams. Had lived through days and weeks of stories that then washed away like footprints in the sand.

  Yet when she opened her eyes, the cave remained, dimmer now. The thrumming power had nestled deeper, slumbering. The ache in her ribs had faded, the slice down her forearm had healed—but the scab remained.

  The only mark on her.

  Aelin prodded it with a finger. Dull pain echoed in response.

  Smooth—not the scab, but her finger. Smooth like glass as she rubbed the pads of her thumb and forefinger together.

  No calluses. Not on her fingers, on her palms. Utterly blank, wiped of the imprint from the years of training, or the year in Endovier.

  But this new scab, this faint throbbing beneath it—that remained, at least.

  Curled on the rock floor, she took in the cave.

  The white wolf lay at her back, snoring softly. Their sphere of transparent flame still burned around them, easing the strain ember by ember. But not wholly.

  Aelin swallowed, tasting ash.

  Her magic opened an eye in response.

  Aelin sucked in a breath. Not here—not yet.

  She whispered it to the flame. Not yet.

  But the flame around her and the wolf flared and thickened, blotting out the cave. She clenched her jaw.

  Not yet, she promised it. Not until it could be done safely. Away from them.

  Her magic pushed against her bones, but she ignored it. Leashed it.

  The bubble of flame shrunk, protesting, and grew transparent once more. Through it she could make out a water-carved basin, the slumbering forms of her other companions.

  The warrior-prince slept only a few feet from the edge of her fire, tucked into an alcove in the cave wall. Exhaustion lay heavy upon him, though he had not disarmed himself.

  A sword hung from his belt, its ruby smoldering in the light of her fire.

  She knew that sword. An ancient sword, forged in these lands for a deadly war.

  It had been her sword, too. Those erased calluses had fit its hilt so perfectly. And the warrior-prince now bearing it had found the sword for her. In a cave like this one, full of the relics of heroes long since sent to the Afterworld.

  She studied the tattoo snaking down the side of his face and neck, vanishing into his dark clothes.

  I am your mate.

  She had wanted to believe him, but this dream, this illusion she’d been spun …

  Not an illusion.

  He had come for her.

  Rowan.

  Rowan Whitethorn. Now Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius, her husband and king-consort. Her mate.

  She mouthed his name.

  He had come for her.

  Rowan.

  Silently, so smoothly that not even the white wolf awoke, she sat up, a hand clutching the cloak that smelled of pine and snow. His cloak, his scent woven through the fibers.

  She rose to her feet, legs sturdier than they’d been. A thought had the bubble of flame expanding as she crossed the few feet toward the sleeping prince.

  She peered down at his face, handsome and yet unyielding.

  His eyes opened, meeting hers as if he’d known where to find her even in sleep.

  An unspoken question arose in those green eyes. Aelin?

  She ignored the silent inquiry, unable to bear opening that silent channel between them again, and surveyed the powerful lines of his body, the sheer size of him. A gentle wind kissed with ice and lightning brushed against her wall of flame, an echo of his silent inquiry.

  Her magic flared in answer, a ripple of power dancing through her.

  As if it had found a mirror of itself in the world, as if it had found the countermelody to its own song.

  Not once in those illusions or dreams had it done that. Had her own flame leaped in joy at his nearness, his power.

  He was here. It was him, and he’d come for her.

  The flame melted into nothing but cool cave air. Not melted, but rather sucked inside herself, coiling, a great beast straining at the leash.

  Rowan. Prince Rowan.

  He sat up slowly, a stillness settling over him.

  He knew. He’d said it to her earlier, before she’d let oblivion claim her. I am your mate.

  They must have told him, then. Their companions. Elide and Lorcan and Gavriel. They’d all been on that beach where everything had gone to hell.

  Her magic surged, and she rolled her shoulders, willing it to sleep, to wait—just a while longer.

  She was here. They were both here.

  What could she ever say to him, to explain it, to make it right? That he’d been used so foully, had suffered so greatly, because of her?

  There was blood on him. So much blood, soaking into his dark clothes. From the smears on his neck, the arcs under his fingernails, it seemed he’d tried to wash some off. But the scent remained.

  She knew that smell—who it belonged to.

  Her spine tightened, her limbs tensing. Working past her clenched jaw, she inhaled sharply. Forced a long breath out through her teeth. Forced herself to work past the scent of Cairn’s blood. What it did to her. Her magic thrashed, howling.

  And she made herself say to him, to her prince who smelled of home, “Is he alive?”

  Cold rage flickered across Rowan’s eyes. “No.”

  Dead. Cairn was dead. The tautness in her body eased—just slightly. Her flame, too, banked. “How?”

  No remorse dimmed his face. “You once told me at Mistward that if I ever took a whip to you, then you’d skin me alive.” His eyes didn’t stray from hers as he said with lethal quiet, “I took it upon myself to bestow that fate on Cairn on your behalf. And when I was done, I took the liberty of removing his head from his body, then burning what remained.” A pause, a ripple of doubt. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you the chance to do it yourself.”

  She didn’t have it in her to feel a spark of surprise, to marvel at the brutality of the vengeance he’d exacted. Not as the words sank in. Not as her lungs opened up once again.

  “I couldn’t risk bringing him here for you to kill,” Rowan went on, scanning her face. “Or risk leaving him alive, either.”

  She lifted her palms, studying the unmarked, empty skin.

  Cairn had done that. Had shredded her apart so badly they needed to put her back together again. Had wiped away all traces of who and what she’d been, what she’d seen and endured.

  She lowered her hands to her sides. “I’m glad,” she said, and the words were true.

  A shudder went through Rowan, and his head dipped slightly. “Are you …” He seemed to grapple with the right word. “Can I hold you?”

  The stark need in his voice ripped at her, but she stepped back. “I …” She scanned the cave, blocking out the way his eyes guttered at her retreat. Across the chamber, the great lake flowed, smooth and flat as a black mirror. “I need to bathe,” she said, her voice low and raw. Even if there wasn’t a mark on her beyond dirty feet. “I need to wash it away,” she tried again.

  Understanding softened his eyes. He pointed with a tattooed hand to the trough nearby. “There are a few extra cloths for you to wash with.” Dragging a hand through his silver hair, longer than she’d last seen it—in this world, this truth, at least—he added, “I don’t know how, but they also found some of your old clothes from Mistward and brought them here.”

  But words were becoming distant again, dissolving on her tongue.

  Her magic rumbled, pressing against her blood, squeezing her bones. Out, it howled. Out.

  Soon, she promised.

  Now. It thrashed. Her hands trembled, curling, as if she could keep it in.

  So she turned away, aiming not toward the trough but the lake b
eyond.

  The air stirred behind her, and she felt him following. When Rowan gleaned where she intended to bathe, he warned, “That water is barely above freezing, Aelin.”

  She just dropped the cloak onto the black stones and stepped into the water.

  Steam hissed, wafting around her in billowing clouds. She kept going, embracing the water’s bite with each step, even if it failed to pierce the heat of her.

  The water was clear, though the gloom veiled the bottom that sloped away as she dove under the frigid surface.

  The water was silent. Cool, and welcome, and calm.

  So Aelin loosened the leash—only a fraction.

  Flame leapt out, devoured by the frigid water. Consumed by it.

  It pulled away that pressure, that endless fog of heat. Soothed and chilled until thoughts took form.

  With each stroke beneath the surface, out into the darkness, she could feel it again. Herself. Or whatever was left of it.

  Aelin. She was Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius, and she was Queen of Terrasen.

  More magic rippled out, but she held her grip. Not all—not yet.

  She had been captured by Maeve, tortured by her. Tortured by Cairn, her sentinel. But she had escaped, and her mate had come for her. Had found her, just as they had found each other despite centuries of bloodshed and loss and war.

  Aelin. She was Aelin, and this was not some illusion, but the real world.

  Aelin.

  She swam out into the lake, and Rowan followed the jutting lip of stone along the shore’s edge.

  She dropped beneath the surface, letting herself sink and sink and sink, toes grasping only open, cool water, straining for a bottom that did not arrive.

  Down into the dark, the cold.

  The ancient, icy water pulled away the flame and heat and strain. Pulled and sucked and waved it off.

  Cooled that burning core of her until she took form, a blade red-hot from the fire plunged into water.

  Aelin. That’s who she was.

  That lake water had never seen sunlight, had flowed from the dark, cold heart of the mountains themselves. It would kill even the most hardened of Fae warriors within minutes.

  Yet there was Aelin, swimming as if it were a sun-warmed forest pool.

  She treaded water, dipping her head back every now and then to scrub at her hair.

  He hadn’t realized that she was burning so hotly until she’d stepped into the frigid lake and steam had risen.

  Silently, she’d dove in, swimming beneath the surface, the water so clear he could see every stroke of her faintly glowing body. As if the water had peeled away the skin of the woman and revealed the blazing soul beneath.

  But that glow faded with each passing breath she emerged to take, dimming further each time she plunged beneath the surface.

  Had she wished for him not to touch her because of that internal inferno, or simply because she first wanted to wash away the stain of Cairn? Perhaps both. At least she’d begun speaking, her eyes clearing a bit.

  They remained clear as she treaded water, the glow still barely clinging, and peered up at where he stood on a sliver of black rock jutting into the lake.

  “You could join me,” she said at last.

  No heat in her words, yet he felt the invitation. Not to taste her body the way he yearned to, needed to in order to know she was here with him, but rather to be with her. “Unlike you,” he said, trying to steady his voice as the recognition on her face threatened to buckle his knees, “I don’t think my magic would warm me so well if I got in.”

  He wanted to, though. Gods, he wanted to leap in. But he made himself add, “This lake is ancient. You should get out.” Before something came creeping along.

  She did no such thing, her arms continuing their sweeping circles in the water. Aelin only stared at him again in that grave, cautious way. “I didn’t break,” she said quietly. His heart cracked at the words. “I didn’t tell them anything.”

  She didn’t say it for praise, to boast. But rather to tell him, her consort, of where they stood in this war. What their enemies might know.

  “I knew you wouldn’t,” he managed to say.

  “She … she tried to convince me that this was the bad dream. When Cairn was done with me, or during it, I don’t know, she’d try to worm her way into my mind.” She glanced around the cave, as if she could see the world beyond it. “She spun fantasies that felt so real …” She bobbed under the surface. Perhaps she’d needed the cooling water of the lake to be able to hear her own voice again; perhaps she needed the distance between them so she could speak these words. She emerged, slicking back her hair with a hand. “They felt like this.”

  Half of him didn’t want to know, but he asked, “What sort of illusions?”

  A long pause. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  Too soon to push—if ever.

  Then she asked softly, “How long?”

  It took the entirety of his three centuries of training to keep the devastation, the agony for her, from his face. “Two months, three days, and seven hours.”

  Her mouth tightened, either at the length of time, or the fact that he’d counted every single one of those hours apart.

  She ran her fingers through her hair, its strands floating around her in the water. Still too long for two months to have passed. “They healed me after each … session. So that I stopped knowing what had been done and what was in my mind and where the truth lay.” Erase her scars, and Maeve stood a better chance at convincing her none of this was real. “But the healers couldn’t remember how long my hair was, or Maeve wanted to confuse me further, so they grew it out.” Her eyes darkened at the memory of why, perhaps, they had needed to regrow her hair in the first place.

  “Do you want me to cut it back to the length it was when I last saw you?” His words were near-guttural.

  “No.” Ripples shivered around her. “I want it so I can remember.”

  What had been done to her, what she’d survived and what she had protected. Even with all he’d done to Cairn, the way he’d made sure the male was kept alive and screaming throughout, Rowan wished the male were still breathing, if only so he could take longer killing him.

  And when he found Maeve …

  That was not his kill. He’d ended Cairn, and didn’t regret it. But Aelin … Maeve was hers.

  Even if the woman treading water before him didn’t seem to have vengeance on her mind. Not so much as a hint of the burning rage that fueled her.

  He didn’t blame her. Knew it would take time, time and distance, to heal the internal wounds. If they could ever really heal at all.

  But he’d work with her, help in whatever way he could. And if she never returned to who she had been before this, he would not love her any less.

  Aelin dunked her head, and when she emerged, she said, “Maeve was about to put a Valg collar around my neck. She left to retrieve it.” The scent of her lingering fear drifted toward him, and Rowan lurched a step closer to the water’s edge. “It’s why I—why I got away. She had me moved to the army camp for safekeeping, and I …” Her voice stalled, yet she met his stare. Let him read the words she could not say, in that silent way they’d always been able to communicate. Escape wasn’t my intention.

  “No, Fireheart,” he breathed, shaking his head, horror creeping over him. “There … there was no collar.”

  She blinked, head angling. “That was a dream, too?”

  His heart cracked as he struggled for the words. Made himself voice them. “No—it was real. Or Maeve thought it was. But the collars, the Valg presence … It was a lie that we crafted. To draw Maeve out, hopefully away from you and Doranelle.”

  Only the faint lapping of water sounded. “There was no collar?”

  Rowan lowered himself to his knees and shook his head. “I—Aelin, if I’d known what she’d do with the knowledge, what you’d decide to do—”

  He might have lost her. Not from Maeve or the gods or the Lock, but fr
om his own damned choices. The lie he’d spun.

  Aelin drifted beneath the surface again. So deep that when the flare happened, it was little more than a flutter.

  The light burst from her, rippling across the lake, illumining the stones, the slick ceiling above. A silent eruption.

  His breathing turned ragged. But she swam toward the surface again, light streaming off her body like tendrils of clouds. It had nearly vanished when she emerged.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed to say.

  Again, that angle of the head. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  He did, though. He’d added to her terror, her desperation. He’d—

  “If you had not planted that lie for Maeve, if she had not told me, I don’t think we’d be here right now,” she said.

  He tried to rein in the twisting in his gut, the urge to reach for her, to beg for her forgiveness. Tried and tried.

  She only asked, “What of the others?”

  She didn’t know—couldn’t know how and why and where they’d all parted ways. So Rowan told her, as succinctly and calmly as he could.

  When he finished, Aelin was quiet for long minutes.

  She stared out into the blackness, the rippling of her treading water the only sound. Her body had nearly lost that freshly forged glow.

  Then she pivoted back toward him. “Maeve said you and the others were in the North. That you’d been spotted by her spies there. Did you plant that deception for her, too?”

  He shook his head. “Lysandra has been thorough, it seems.”

  Aelin’s throat bobbed. “I believed her.”

  It sounded like a confession, somehow.

  So Rowan found himself saying, “I told you once that even if death separated us, I would rip apart every world until I found you.” He gave her a slash of a smile. “Did you really believe this would stop me?”

  She pursed her mouth, and at last, those agonizing emotions began to surface in her eyes. “You were supposed to save Terrasen.”

  “Considering that the sun shines, I’d say Erawan hasn’t won yet. So we’ll save it together.”

  He didn’t let himself think of the final cost of destroying Erawan. And Aelin seemed in no hurry to discuss it, either, as she said, “You should have gone to Terrasen. It needs you.”