Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  He wouldn’t kill the wolf, though. Fenrys might try to kill him, but Lorcan wouldn’t do it. Not after what Fenrys had endured—what he’d managed to do.

  Elide emerged from belowdecks, hair braided and smooth. As if she’d been up before the dawn. She barely looked his way, though he knew she was well aware of his location. Lorcan blocked out the hollow pang in his chest.

  But Aelin spied him, and there was more clarity in her face than there’d been these past few days as she stalked for where he stood. More of that swagger in her gait, too.

  The sleeves of her white shirt had been rolled to the elbow, her hair braided back. Goldryn and a long knife hung from her belt. Ready for training. Primed for it, judging by the bristling energy that buzzed around her.

  Lorcan met her halfway, descending the small stairs.

  Whitethorn lingered nearby, also dressed for sparring, the wariness in his eyes telling Lorcan enough: the prince had no idea what this was about.

  But the young queen crossed her arms. “Do you plan to sail with us to Terrasen?”

  An unnecessary question for dawn, and in the middle of the sea. “Yes.”

  “And you plan to join us in this war?”

  “I’m certainly not going there to enjoy the weather.”

  Amusement glittered in her eyes, though her face remained grim. “Then this is how it’s going to work.”

  Lorcan waited for the list of orders and demands, but the queen was only watching him, that amusement fading into something steel-hardened.

  “You were Maeve’s second-in-command,” she said, and Elide turned their way. “And now that you aren’t, it leaves you as a powerful Fae male whose allegiances I don’t know or really trust. Not when Maeve’s army is likely on the move toward the continent at this very moment. So I can’t have you in my kingdom, or traveling with us, when you might very well sell information to get back into Maeve’s good graces, can I?”

  He opened his mouth, bristling at the haughty tone, but Aelin went on. “So I’ll make you an offer, Lorcan Salvaterre.” She tapped her bare forearm. “Swear the blood oath to me, and I’ll let you roam wherever you wish.”

  Fenrys cursed behind them, but Lorcan barely heard it over the roaring in his head.

  “And what, exactly,” he managed to say, “do I get out of it?”

  Aelin’s eyes slid over her shoulder. To where Elide watched, mouth agape. When the queen met Lorcan’s gaze again, a touch of sympathy had softened the steely arrogance. “You will be allowed into Terrasen. That is what you will get. Where you choose to live within Terrasen’s borders will not be my decision.”

  Not her decision, or his. But that of the dark-haired female gawking at them.

  “And if I refuse?” Lorcan dared ask.

  “Then you will never be allowed to set foot in my kingdom, or to travel further with us—not with the keys in the balance, and Maeve’s army at our backs.” That sympathy remained. “I can’t trust you enough to let you join us any other way.”

  “But you’ll let me swear the blood oath?”

  “I want nothing from you, and you want nothing from me. The only order I shall ever give you is the one I would ask of any citizen of Terrasen: to protect and defend our kingdom and its people. You can live in a hut in the Staghorns for all I care.”

  She meant it, too. Swear the blood oath, swear never to harm her kingdom, and she’d give him freedom. And if he refused … He would never see Elide again.

  “I don’t have another choice,” Aelin said quietly, so the others might not hear. “I can’t risk Terrasen.” She still held her arm toward him. “But I would not take something as precious away from you.”

  “What you don’t realize is that is no longer a possibility.”

  Again, that hint of a smile and glance over her shoulder toward Elide. “It is.” Her turquoise eyes were bright as she looked back at him, and there was wisdom on Aelin’s face that he had perhaps never noticed before. A queen’s face. “Believe me, Lorcan, it is.”

  He shut down the hope that filled his chest, foreign and unwanted.

  “But Terrasen will not survive this war, she will not survive this war, without you.”

  And even if the queen before him gave her immortal life to forge the Lock, to stop Erawan, Lorcan’s blood oath to protect her kingdom would hold.

  “It’s your choice,” she said simply.

  Lorcan allowed himself to look to Elide, foolish as it might be.

  She had a hand on her throat, her dark eyes so wide.

  It didn’t matter if she still offered him a home in Perranth, if the queen spoke true.

  But what did matter was that Aelin Galathynius had meant her promise: he was too powerful, his allegiances too murky, for her to allow him to roam with her, to enter her kingdom unfettered. She’d let him go, keep him out of Terrasen, even if Erawan’s hordes were descending, just to avoid the other threat at their backs: Maeve.

  And Elide would not survive it, this war, if all of them were dead.

  He couldn’t accept it, that possibility. Foolish and useless as it was, he couldn’t allow it to pass. To have either Erawan’s beasts or her uncle Vernon come to claim her again.

  Fool. He was an ancient, stupid fool.

  Yet the god at his shoulder did not tell him to run, or to fight.

  His choice, then. He wondered what the goddess who whispered to Elide made of this.

  Wondered what the woman herself was going to make of this as he said to Aelin, “Fine.”

  “Gods spare us,” Fenrys murmured.

  Aelin’s lips curved in that hint of a smile, amused and yet edged with a touch of cruelty, as she glanced to the wolf. “You’ll have to let him live, you realize,” she said to Fenrys, lifting a brow. “No to-the-death dueling. No vengeance-fighting. Can you stomach it?”

  Lorcan bristled as Fenrys looked him over. Lorcan let him see every bit of dominance in his stare.

  Fenrys sent all of his raging back. Not as much as what Lorcan possessed, but enough to remind him that the White Wolf of Doranelle could bite if he wished. Lethally.

  Fenrys just turned to the queen. “If I tell you he’s a prick and a miserable bastard to be around, will it change your mind?”

  Lorcan snarled, but Aelin snorted. “Isn’t that why we love Lorcan, though?” She gave him a smile that told Lorcan she remembered every detail of their initial encounters in Rifthold—when he’d shoved her face-first into a brick wall. Aelin said to Fenrys, “We’ll only invite him to Orynth on holidays.”

  “So he can ruin the festivities?” Fenrys scowled. “I, for one, cherish my holidays. I don’t need a misanthrope raining on them.”

  Gods above. Lorcan cut Rowan a look, but the warrior-prince was watching his queen carefully. As if he knew precisely what manner of storm brewed beneath her skin.

  Aelin waved a hand. “Fine, fine. You won’t try to kill Lorcan for what happened in Eyllwe, and in exchange, we won’t invite him to anything.” Her grin was nothing short of wicked.

  This was the sort of court he’d be joining—this whirlwind of … Lorcan didn’t know what the word was for it. He doubted any of his five centuries had prepared him for it, though.

  Aelin extended a hand. “You know how this goes, then. Or are you too old to remember?”

  Lorcan glared and knelt, offering up the dagger at his side.

  A fool. He was a fool.

  And yet his hands shook slightly as he gave the queen the knife.

  Aelin weighed the blade, a golden ring capped with an obscenely large emerald adorning her finger. A wedding band. Likely from the barrow-wight trove she’d pilfered. He glanced to where Whitethorn stood to the side. Sure enough, a golden ring lay on the warrior’s own finger, a ruby built into the band. And peeking above the collar of Rowan’s jacket, two fresh scars lay.

  A pair of them now marked the queen’s own throat.

  “Done gawking?” Aelin asked Lorcan coolly.

  He scowled. Even with the hol
y ritual they were about to partake in, the queen found a way to be irreverent. “Say it.”

  Her lips curved again. “Do you, Lorcan Salvaterre, swear upon your blood and eternal soul, to be loyal to me, to my crown, and to Terrasen for the rest of your life?”

  He blinked. Maeve had intoned a lengthy list of questions in the Old Language when he’d sworn her oath. But he said, “I do. I swear it.”

  Aelin sliced the dagger across her forearm, and her blood shone bright as the ruby in the sword at her side. “Then drink.”

  His last chance to back out from this.

  But he glanced toward Elide again. And saw hope—just a glimmer of it—lighting her face.

  So Lorcan took the queen’s arm in his hands and drank.

  The taste of her—jasmine, lemon verbena, and crackling embers—filled his mouth. Filled his soul, as something burned and settled within him.

  An ember of warmth. Like a piece of that raging magic had come to rest inside his very soul.

  Swaying a bit, he let go of her arm.

  “Welcome to the court,” Aelin said. “Here’s your first and only order: protect Terrasen and its people.”

  The command settled in him, too, another little spark that glowed down deep.

  Then the queen pivoted on her heel and walked away—no, walked up to Elide.

  Lorcan tried and failed to stand. His body, it seemed, still needed a moment.

  So he could only watch as Aelin said to Elide, “I am not offering you the blood oath.”

  Vow or no, he debated throwing the queen into the ocean for the devastation that clouded Elide’s face. But the Lady of Perranth kept her chin high. “Why?”

  Aelin took Elide’s hand with a gentleness that cooled Lorcan’s rising temper. “Because when we return to Terrasen, if I am to be given the throne, then you cannot be bound to me.” Elide’s brows crossed. “Perranth is the second-most powerful House in Terrasen,” Aelin explained. “Four of its lords have decided that I am unfit for the throne. I need a majority to win it back.”

  “And if I am sworn to you, it jeopardizes the integrity of my vote,” Elide finished.

  Aelin nodded, and let go of her hand to turn to all of them. In the rising sun, the queen was bathed in gold. “Terrasen is over two weeks away, if the winter storms don’t interfere. We’ll use this time to train and plan.”

  “Plan for what?” Fenrys asked, coming closer.

  A member of this court. Of Lorcan’s own court. The three of them once again bound—and yet freer than they’d ever been. Lorcan half wondered why the queen didn’t offer the oath to Gavriel, but she spoke again.

  “My task cannot be completed without the keys. I assume that their new bearers will eventually seek me out, if the third is found and they decide not to finish things themselves.” She glanced to Rowan, who nodded. As if they’d already discussed this. “So rather than waste vital time roaming the continent in pursuit of them, we will indeed go to Terrasen. Especially if Maeve is bringing her army to its shores as well. And if I am not allowed to lead from my throne, then I shall just have to do so from the battlefields.”

  She meant to fight. The queen—Lorcan’s queen—meant to fight against Morath. And Maeve, should the worst happen. And then she’d die for them all.

  “To Terrasen, then,” Fenrys said.

  “To Terrasen,” Elide echoed.

  Aelin gazed westward, toward the kingdom that was all that stood between Erawan and conquest. Toward Lorcan’s new home. As if she could see the dread-lord’s legions unleashing upon it. And Maeve’s immortal host creeping at their backs, a host Lorcan and his companions had once commanded.

  Aelin merely strode to the center of the deck, the sailors giving them a wide berth. She unsheathed Goldryn and her dagger, then lifted her brows at Whitethorn in silent challenge.

  The warrior-prince obeyed, unsheathing his blade and hatchet before sinking into a defensive crouch.

  Training—retraining her body. No whisper of her power manifested, yet her eyes burned bright.

  Aelin angled her weapons. “To Terrasen,” she said at last.

  And began.

  CHAPTER 43

  Dorian began small.

  First, by changing his eyes to black. Solid black, like the Valg. Then by turning his skin into an icy, pale shade, the sort that never saw sunlight. His hair, he left dark, but he managed to make his nose more crooked, his mouth thinner.

  Not a full shift, but one done in pieces. Weaving the image together in himself, forming the tapestry of his new face, new skin, during the long, silent flight up the spine of the Fangs.

  He hadn’t told Manon it was likely a suicide mission, too. He’d barely talked to her at all since the forest clearing. They’d left with the dawn, when she’d announced to Glennis and the Crochans what she planned to do. They could fly to the Ferian Gap and return to that hidden camp within the Fangs in four days, if they were lucky.

  She’d asked the Crochans to meet them there. To trust her enough to return to their mountain camp and wait.

  They had said yes. Maybe it was the grave the Thirteen had dug all day, but the Crochans said yes. A tentative trust—just this once.

  So Dorian had flown with Asterin. Had used each frigid hour northward to slowly alter his body.

  You want to go to Morath so badly, Manon had hissed again before they’d left, then let’s see if you can do it.

  A test. One he was glad to excel at. If only to throw in her face.

  Manon knew of a back door that only the wyverns took into the Northern Fang, along with any human grunts unlucky enough to be bound to this place. Asterin and Manon had left the Thirteen farther in the mountains before approaching, and even then they’d stopped far away enough from any scouts that they’d spent hours hiking on foot, taking Asterin’s mare with them. Abraxos had snarled and tugged on the reins, but Sorrel had held him firmly.

  The two mammoth peaks flanking the Gap grew larger with each passed mile. Yet as he approached the southern side of the Fang, he hadn’t realized how massive, exactly, they were.

  Large enough to hold an aerial host. To train and breed them.

  This was what his father and Erawan had built. What Adarlan had become.

  No wyverns circled in the skies, but their roars and shrieks echoed from the pass as he strode for the ancient gates that opened into the mountain itself. Behind him, led by a chain, Asterin’s blue mare followed.

  Another trainer bringing back his mount after a trip for some air. The few guards—mortal men—at the gates barely blinked as he appeared around a rocky bend.

  Dorian’s palms turned sweaty within his gloves. He prayed the shifting held.

  He would have no way of knowing, though he supposed few here would recognize his natural face. He’d picked coloring close enough to his own that should the tapestry within himself unravel, someone might dismiss the altering of his skin tone, his eyes, as a trick of the light.

  Narene huffed, yanking on the reins. Not wanting to go near this place.

  He didn’t blame her. The reek from the mountain set his knees wobbling.

  But he’d spent years schooling his expression against the headache-inducing perfumes his mother’s courtiers wore. How far away that world seemed—that palace of perfume and lace and lilting music. Had they not resisted Erawan, would he have allowed it to still exist? Had they bowed to him, would Erawan have maintained his ruse as Perrington and ruled as a mortal king?

  Dorian’s legs burned, the hours of walking taking their toll. Manon and Asterin lurked nearby, hidden in the snow and stone. They no doubt marked his every move while he inched closer to the gates.

  His parting words with Manon had been brief. Terse.

  He’d dropped the two Wyrdkeys into her awaiting palm, the Amulet of Orynth clinking faintly against her iron nails. Only a fool would bring them into one of Erawan’s strongholds. “They might not be your priority,” Dorian said, “but they remain vital to our success.”

 
Manon’s eyes had narrowed as she pocketed the keys, utterly unfazed at holding in her jacket a power great enough to level kingdoms. “You think I’d toss them away like rubbish?”

  Asterin suddenly found the snow to be in need of her careful attention.

  Dorian shrugged, and unbuckled Damaris, the sword too fine for a mere wyvern trainer. He passed it to Manon, too. An ordinary dagger would be his only weapon—and the magic in his veins. “If I don’t come back,” he said while she tied the ancient blade to her belt, “the keys must go to Terrasen.” It was the only place he could think of—even if Aelin wasn’t there to take them.

  “You’ll come back,” Manon said. It sounded like more of a threat than anything.

  Dorian smirked. “Would you miss me if I didn’t?”

  Manon didn’t reply. He didn’t know why he expected her to.

  He’d taken all of a step, when Asterin clasped his shoulder. “In and out, quick as you can,” she warned him. “Take care of Narene.” Worry indeed shone in the Second’s gold-flecked black eyes.

  Dorian bowed his head. “With my life,” he promised as he approached her mount and grasped the dangling reins. He didn’t fail to miss the gratitude that softened Asterin’s features. Or that Manon had already turned away from him.

  A fool to start down this path with her. He should have known better.

  The guards’ faces became clear. Dorian embraced the portrait of a tired, bored handler.

  He waited for the questioning, but it never came.

  They simply waved him through, equally tired and bored. And cold.

  Asterin had given him a layout of the Northern Fang and the Omega across from it, so he knew to turn left upon entering the towering hallway. Wyvern bellows and grunts sounded all around, and that rotting scent stuffed itself up his nose.

  But he found the stables precisely where Asterin said they’d be, the blue mare patient while he loosely tied her chains to the anchor in the wall.

  Dorian left Narene with a soothing pat to her neck, and went to see what the Ferian Gap might reveal.

  The hours that passed were some of the longest of Manon’s existence.