Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  “I need you more.” He didn’t balk from the stark honesty roughening his voice. “And Terrasen will need you, too. Not Lysandra masquerading as you, but you.”

  A shallow nod. “Maeve raised her army. I doubt it was only to guard me while she was away.”

  He’d put the thought aside, to consider later. “It might just be to shore up her defenses, should Erawan win across the sea.”

  “Do you truly think that’s what she plans to do with it?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I don’t.”

  And if Maeve meant to bring that army to Terrasen, to either unite with Erawan or simply be another force battering their kingdom, to strike when they were weakest, they had to hurry. Had to get back. Immediately. His mate’s eyes shone with the same understanding and dread.

  Aelin’s throat bobbed as she whispered, “I’m so tired, Rowan.”

  His heart strained again. “I know, Fireheart.”

  He opened his mouth to say more, to coax her onto land so he might at least hold her if words couldn’t ease her burden, but that’s when he saw it.

  A boat, ancient and every inch of it carved, drifted out of the gloom.

  “Get back to shore.” The boat wasn’t drifting—it was being tugged. He could just barely make out two dark forms slithering beneath the surface.

  Aelin didn’t hesitate, yet her strokes remained steady as she swam for him. She didn’t balk at the hand he extended, and he wrapped his cloak around her while the boat ambled past.

  Black, eel-like creatures about the size of a mortal man pulled it. Their fins drifted behind them like ebony veils, and with each propelling sweep of their long tails, he glimpsed milky-white eyes. Blind.

  They led the flat-bottomed vessel large enough for fifteen Fae males right to the edge of the lake. A flash of short, spindly bodies through the dimness and the Little Folk had it moored to a nearby stalagmite.

  The others must have heard his order to Aelin, because they emerged, swords out. A foot behind them, Elide lingered with Fenrys, the male still in wolf form.

  “They can’t mean for us to take that into the caves,” Lorcan murmured.

  But Aelin turned toward them, hair dripping onto the stone at her bare feet. Half a thought from her could have had her dry, yet she made no move to do so. “We’re being hunted.”

  “We know that,” Lorcan shot back, and were it not for the fact that Aelin was currently allowing him to rest a hand upon her shoulder, Rowan would have thrown the male into the lake.

  But Aelin’s features didn’t shift from that graveness, that unruffled calm. “The only way to the sea is through these caves.”

  It was an outrageous claim. They were a hundred miles inland, and there was no record of these mountains ever connecting to any cave system that flowed to the ocean itself. To do so, they’d have to go northward through this range, then veer westward at the Cambrian Mountains, and sail beneath them right to the coast.

  “And I suppose they told you that?” Lorcan’s face was hard as granite.

  “Watch it,” Rowan snarled. Fenrys indeed bared his teeth at the dark-haired warrior, fur bristling.

  But Aelin said simply, “Yes.” Her chin didn’t dip an inch. “The land above is crawling with soldiers and spies. Going beneath them is the only way.”

  Elide stepped forward. “I will go.” She cut a cold glance toward Lorcan. “You can take your chances above, if you’re so disbelieving.”

  Lorcan’s jaw tightened, and a small part of Rowan relished seeing the delicate Lady of Perranth fillet the centuries-hardened warrior with a few words. “Considering the potential pitfalls of the situation is wise.”

  “We don’t have time to consider,” Rowan cut in before Elide could voice the retort on her tongue. “We need to keep moving.”

  Gavriel stalked forward to study the moored boat and what seemed to be bundles of supplies on its sturdy planks. “How will we navigate our way, though?”

  “We’ll be escorted,” Aelin answered.

  “And if they abandon us?” Lorcan challenged.

  Aelin leveled unfazed eyes upon him. “Then you’ll have to find a way out, I suppose.”

  A hint—just a spark—of temper belied those calm words.

  There was nothing else to debate after that. And they had little to pack. The others gave Aelin privacy to dress by the fire while they inspected the boat, and when his mate emerged again, clad in boots, pants, and various layers beneath her gray surcoat, the sight of her in clothes from Mistward was enough to make his gut clench.

  No longer a naked, escaped captive. Yet none of that wickedness, that joy and unchecked wildness illuminated her face.

  The rest of their party waited on the boat, seated on the benches built into its high-lipped sides. Fenrys and Elide both sat as seemingly far from Lorcan as they could get, Gavriel a golden, long-suffering buffer between them.

  Rowan lingered at the shore’s edge, a hand extended for Aelin while she approached. Each of her steps seemed considered—as if she still marveled at being able to move freely. As if still adjusting to her legs without the burden of chains.

  “Why?” Lorcan mused aloud, more to himself. “Why go to these lengths for us?”

  He got his answer—they all did—a heartbeat later.

  Aelin halted a few feet away from the boat and Rowan’s outstretched hand. She turned back toward the cave itself. The Little Folk peeked from those birch branches, from the rocks, from behind stalagmites.

  Slowly, deeply, Aelin bowed to them.

  Rowan could have sworn all those tiny heads lowered in answer.

  A pair of bony grayish hands rose above a nearby rock, something glittering held between them, and set the object on the stone.

  Rowan went still. A crown of silver and pearl and diamond gleamed there, fashioned into upswept swan’s wings.

  “The Crown of Mab,” Gavriel breathed. But Fenrys looked away, toward the looming dark, his tail curling around him.

  Aelin staggered a step closer to the crown. “It—it fell into the river.”

  Rowan didn’t want to know how she’d encountered it, why she’d seen it fall into a river. Maeve had kept her sisters’ two crowns under constant guard, only bringing them out to be displayed in her throne room on state occasions. In memory of her siblings, she’d intoned. Rowan had sometimes wondered if it was a reminder that she had outlasted them, had kept the throne for herself in the end.

  The grayish hand slipped over the rock’s edge again and nudged the crown in silent gesture. Take it.

  “You want to know why?” Gavriel softly asked Lorcan as Aelin strode for the rock. Nothing but solemn reverence on her face. “Because she is not only Brannon’s Heir, but Mab’s, too.”

  A throwback to her great-great-grandmother, Maeve had taunted her. Who had inherited her strength, her immortal lifespan.

  Aelin’s fingers closed around the crown, lifting it gently. It sparkled like living moonlight between her hands.

  My sister Mab’s line ran true, Elide claimed Maeve had said on the beach. In every way, it seemed.

  But Aelin made no move to don the crown while she approached him once more, her gait steadier this time. Trying not to dwell on the unbearable smoothness of her hand as it wrapped around his, Rowan helped her aboard, then climbed in himself before freeing the ropes tethering them to the shore.

  Gavriel went on, awe in every word, “And that makes her their queen, too.”

  Aelin met Gavriel’s gaze, the crown near-glowing in her hands. “Yes,” was all she said as the boat sailed into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 36

  “How long will it take to reach the coast?” Elide’s whisper echoed off the river-carved cavern walls.

  She’d panicked when the boat had ventured beyond the glow of the shore and into a passageway across the lake, so dark she couldn’t see her own hands before her face. To be trapped in such impenetrable dark for hours, days, possibly longer …

  Had it been like that i
n the iron coffin? Aelin gave no indication that the smothering dark bothered her, and had shown no inclination to illuminate their way. Hadn’t even summoned an ember.

  But the Little Folk, it seemed, had come prepared. And within heartbeats of entering the pitch-black river passage, blue light had kindled on a lantern dangling over the curved prow.

  Not light, not even magic. But small worms that glowed pale blue, as if they’d each swallowed the heart of a star.

  They’d been gathered into the lantern, and their soft light rippled over the water-smooth walls. A gentle, soothing light. At least, for her it was so.

  The Fae males sat alert, eyes gleaming with animalistic brightness, using the illumination to mark the caverns they were tugged down by those strange, serpentine beasts.

  “We’re not traveling swiftly,” Rowan answered from where he sat beside Aelin near the back of the boat, Fenrys dozing at the queen’s feet. It was large enough for each of them to lie down amongst the benches, or gather near the prow to eat the stockpile of fruits and cheeses. “And we don’t know how directly these passageways flow. Several days might be a conservative guess.”

  “It would take three weeks on foot if we were above,” Gavriel explained, his golden hair silvered by the lantern’s light. “Perhaps longer.”

  Elide fiddled with the ring on her finger, twisting the band around and around. She’d rather travel for a month on foot than remain trapped in these dark, airless passages.

  But they had no choice. Anneith had not whispered in warning—had not said anything at all before they’d climbed into this boat. Before Aelin had been given an ancient Faerie Queen’s crown, her birthright and heritage.

  The queen had stashed Mab’s crown in one of their packs, as if it were no more than an extra sword belt. She hadn’t spoken, and they had not asked her any questions, either.

  Instead, she’d spent these past few hours sitting in the back of the boat, studying her unmarked hands, occasionally peering into the black waters beneath them. What she expected to see beyond her own rippling reflection, Elide didn’t want to know. The fell and ancient creatures of these lands were too numerous to count, and most not friendly toward mortals.

  Leaning against their pile of packs, Elide glanced to her left. Lorcan had positioned himself there, along the edge of the boat. Closer to her than he’d sat in weeks.

  Sensing her attention, his dark eyes slid to her.

  For long heartbeats, she let herself look at him.

  He’d crawled after Maeve on the beach to save Aelin. And he had found her during her escape—had ensured Aelin made it out. Did it wipe away what he’d done in summoning Maeve in the first place? Even if Maeve had set the trap, even if he hadn’t known what Maeve intended for Aelin, did it erase his decision to call for her?

  The last time they’d spoken as friends, it had been aboard that ship in the hours before Maeve’s armada had arrived. He’d told her they needed to talk, and she’d assumed it was about their future, about them.

  But perhaps he’d been about to tell her what he’d done, that he’d been wrong in acting before Aelin’s plans played out. Elide stopped twisting the ring.

  He’d done it for her. She knew it. He’d summoned Maeve’s armada because he’d believed they were about to be destroyed by Melisande’s fleet. He’d done it for her, just as he’d dropped the shield around them that day Fenrys had ripped a chunk out of her arm, in exchange for Gavriel’s healing her.

  But the queen sitting silently behind them, no trace of that sharp-edged fire to be seen, nor that wicked grin she’d flashed at all who crossed her path … Two months with a sadist. With two sadists. That had been the cost, and the burden that Aelin and all of them would bear.

  That silence, that banked fire was because of him. Not entirely, but in some ways.

  Lorcan’s mouth tightened, as if he read the thoughts on her face.

  Elide looked ahead again, to where the cavern ceiling dipped so low she could have touched it if she stood. The space squeezed tighter and tighter—

  “It’s likely a pass-through to a larger cavern,” Lorcan murmured, as if he could see that fear on her face, too. Or scent it.

  Elide didn’t bother responding. But she couldn’t help the flicker of gratitude.

  They continued on into the ancient, silent darkness, and no one spoke for a while after that.

  The collar had not been real.

  But the army Maeve had summoned was.

  And Dorian, Manon with him, was in pursuit of the final Wyrdkey. Should he attain it from Erawan himself, wherever the Valg king stored it, should he gain possession of all three …

  The lapping of the river against their boat was the only sound, had been the only sound for a while.

  Gavriel kept his watch at the prow, Lorcan monitoring from the starboard side, his jaw tight. Fenrys and Elide dozed, the lady’s head leaning against his flank, inky black hair spilling over a coat of whitest snow.

  Aelin glanced to Rowan, seated beside her, but not touching. Her fingers curled in her lap. A blink into the gloom was the only indication that he was aware of her every movement.

  Aelin breathed in his scent, let its strength settle into her a bit deeper.

  Dorian and Manon might be anywhere. To hunt for the witch and king would be a fool’s errand. Their paths would meet again, or they would not. And if he found the final key and then brought it to her, she would pay what the gods demanded. What she owed Terrasen, the world.

  Yet if Dorian chose to end it himself, to forge the Lock … her stomach churned. He had the power. As much as she did, if not more so.

  It was meant to be her sacrifice. Her blood shed to save them all. To let him claim it …

  She could. She must. With Erawan no doubt unleashing himself on Terrasen, with Maeve’s army likely to cause them untold grief, she could let Dorian do this. She trusted him.

  Even if she might never forgive herself for it.

  Her debt, it was supposed to have been her debt to pay. Perhaps the punishment for failing to do so would be having to live with herself. Having to live with all that had been done to her these months, too.

  The blackness of the subterranean river pressed in, wrapped its arms around her and squeezed.

  Different from the blackness of the iron box. The darkness she’d found inside herself.

  A place she might never escape, not really.

  Her power stirred, awakening. Aelin swallowed, refusing to acknowledge it. Heed it.

  She wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not yet. Until she was ready.

  She had seen Rowan’s face when she spoke of what his deception with the collar had prompted her to do. Had noted the way her companions looked at her, pity and fear in their eyes. At what had been done to her, what she’d become.

  A new body. A foreign, strange body, as if she’d been ripped from one and shoved into another. Different from moving between her forms, somehow. She hadn’t tried shifting into her human body yet. Didn’t see the point.

  Sitting in silence as the boat was pulled through the gloom, she felt the weight of those stares. Their dread. Felt them wondering just how broken she was.

  You do not yield.

  She knew that had been true—that it had been her mother’s voice who had spoken and none other.

  So she would not yield to this. What had been done. What remained.

  For the companions around her, to lift their despair, their fear, she wouldn’t yield.

  She’d fight for it, claw her way back to it, who she’d been before. Remember to swagger and grin and wink. She’d fight against that lingering stain on her soul, fight to ignore it. Would use this journey into the dark to piece herself back together—just enough to make it convincing.

  Even if this fractured darkness now dwelled within her, even if speech was difficult, she would show them what they wished to see.

  An unbroken Fire-Bringer. Aelin of the Wildfire.

  She would show the world that lie as well. Make t
hem believe it.

  Maybe she’d one day believe it, too.

  CHAPTER 37

  Days of near-silent travel passed.

  Three days, if whatever senses Rowan and Gavriel possessed proved true. Perhaps the latter carried a pocket watch. Aelin didn’t particularly care.

  She used each of those days to consider what had been done, what lay before her. Sometimes, the roar of her magic drowned out her thoughts. Sometimes it slumbered. She never heeded it.

  They sailed through the darkness, the river below so black that they might as well have been drifting through Hellas’s realm.

  It was near the end of the fourth day through the dark and rock, their escorts hauling the boat tirelessly, that Rowan murmured, “We’re entering barrow-wight territory.”

  Gavriel twisted from his spot by the prow. “How can you tell?”

  Sprawled beside him, still in wolf form, Fenrys cocked his ears forward.

  She hadn’t asked him why he remained in his wolf’s body. No one asked her why she remained in her Fae form, after all. But she supposed that if he donned his Fae form, he might feel inclined to talk. To answer questions that he was perhaps not yet ready to discuss. Might begin simply screaming and screaming at what had been done to them, to Connall.

  Rowan pointed with a tattooed finger toward an alcove in the wall. Shadow veiled its recesses, but as the blue light of the lantern touched it, gold glittered along the rocky floor. Ancient gold.

  “What’s a barrow-wight?” Elide whispered.

  “Creatures of malice and thought,” Lorcan answered, scanning the passageway, a hand drifting to the hilt of his sword. “They covet gold and treasure, and infested the ancient tombs of kings and queens so they might dwell amongst it. They hate light of any kind. Hopefully, this will keep them away.”

  Elide cringed, and Aelin felt inclined to do the same.

  Instead, she dredged up enough speech to ask Rowan, “Are these the same ones beneath the burial mounds we visited?”

  Rowan straightened, eyes sparking at her question—or at the fact that she’d spoken at all. He’d kept by her these days, a silent, steady presence. Even when they’d slept, he’d remained a few feet away, still not touching, but just there. Close enough that the pine-and-snow scent of him eased her into slumber.