Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  “Kill me,” she breathed. Dorian blinked. “You—you pushed it back.” Not the key, but the demon inside her, he realized. Somehow, with that healing magic— “Kill me,” she said, and began sobbing. “Kill me, please.”

  Damaris warmed in his hand. Truth. He gaped at her in horror. “I—I can’t.”

  She began clawing at the collar around her throat. As if she’d rip it free. “Please,” she sobbed. “Please.”

  He did not have time. To find a way to get that collar off. Wasn’t even certain it could come off, without that golden ring Aelin had used on him. “I can’t.”

  Despair and agony flooded her eyes. “Please,” was all she said. “Please.”

  Damaris remained warm. Truth. The pleading was nothing but truth.

  But he had to go—had to go now. He could not take her with him. Knew that thing inside her, however his magic had pushed it back, would emerge again. And scream to Erawan where he was. What he’d stolen.

  She wept, hands ripping at her brutalized body. “Please.”

  Would it be a mercy—to kill her? Would it be a worse crime to leave her here, with Erawan? Enslaved to him and the Valg demon inside her?

  Damaris did not answer his silent questions.

  And he let his hand fall away from the blade entirely as he stared down at the weeping girl.

  Manon would have ended it. Freed her in the only way left. Chaol would have taken her with him and damned the consequences. Aelin … He didn’t know what she would have done.

  Who do you wish to be?

  He was not any of them. He was—he was nothing but himself.

  A man who had known loss and pain, yes. But a man who had known friendship and joy.

  The loss and pain—they had not broken him wholly. Without them, would the moments of happiness be as bright? Without them, would he fight so hard to ensure it did not happen again?

  Who do you wish to be?

  A king worthy of his crown. A king who would rebuild what had been shattered, both within himself and in his lands.

  The girl sobbed and sobbed, and Dorian’s hand drifted toward Damaris’s hilt.

  Then a crack sounded. Bone snapping.

  One moment, the girl was weeping. The next, her head twisted to the side, eyes unseeing.

  Dorian whirled, a cry on his lips as Maeve stepped into the room. “Consider it a wedding gift, Majesty,” she said, her lips curling. “To spare you from that decision.”

  And it was the smile on her face, the predatory gait of her steps that had his magic rallying.

  Maeve nodded toward his pocket. “Well done.”

  Her dark power leapt upon his mind.

  He didn’t have the chance to grab for Damaris before he was snared in her dark web.

  CHAPTER 78

  He was in Erawan’s room, and yet not.

  Maeve purred to him, “The key, if you will.”

  Dorian’s hand slid into his pocket. To the sliver inside.

  “And then we shall retrieve the others,” she continued, and beckoned to the portal through which they had both come. He followed her, pulling the shard from his pocket. “Such things I have planned for us, Majesty. For our union. With the keys, I could keep you eternally young. And with your power, second to none, not even Aelin Galathynius, you will shield us from any who might try to return to this world again.”

  They emerged into their room, and a swipe of Maeve’s hand had the portal fading. “Quickly now,” she ordered him. “We depart. The wyvern awaits.”

  Dorian halted in the middle of the chamber. “Don’t you think it’s rude to leave without a note?”

  Maeve twisted toward him, but too late.

  Too damn late, as the claws she’d hooked into his mind became mired in it. As flame, white-hot and sizzling, closed upon the piece of her she’d unwittingly laid bare in trying to trap him.

  A trap within a trap. One he had formed from the moment he’d seen her. It had been a simple trick. To shift his mind, as if he were shifting his body. To make her see one thing when she glimpsed inside it.

  To make her see what she wished to believe: his jealousy and resentment of Aelin; his desperation; his naive foolishness. He had let his mind become such things, let it lure her in. And every time she had come close, falling for those slips in his power, his magic had studied her own. Just as it had studied Cyrene’s stolen kernel of shape-shifting, so had it learned Maeve’s ability to creep into the mind, seize it.

  It had only been a matter of waiting for her to make her move, to let her lay the trap she’d close to seal him to her forever.

  “You—” A smile from him, and Maeve stopped being able to speak.

  Dorian said into the dark chasm of her mind, I was a slave once. You didn’t really think I’d allow myself to be so once again, did you?

  She thrashed, but he held her firm. You will free me, she hissed, and the voice was not that of a beautiful queen, but something vicious and cold. Starved and hateful.

  You’re old as the earth, and yet you thought I would truly fall for your offer. He chuckled, letting a wisp of his fire burn her. Maeve shrieked, silent and endless in their minds. I’m surprised you fell for my trap.

  I will kill you for this.

  Not if I kill you first. His fire became a living thing, wrapping around her pale throat. In the real world, in the place where their bodies existed.

  You hurt my friend, he said with lethal calm. It will not be so very difficult to end you for it.

  Is this the king you wish to be? Torturing a helpless female?

  He laughed again. You are not helpless. And if I could, I would seal you in an iron box for eternity. Dorian glanced to the windows. To the night beyond. He had to go—quickly. But he still said, The king I wish to be is the opposite of what you are. He gave Maeve a smile. And there is only one witch who will be my queen.

  A groan rumbled through the mountain beneath them. Morath shuddered.

  Maeve’s eyes widened further.

  A crack louder than thunder echoed through the stones. The tower swayed.

  Dorian’s mouth curved upward. You didn’t think I spent all those hours merely searching, did you?

  He wouldn’t allow it to exist another day—that chamber with the collars. Not one more day.

  So he’d bring down the entire damn keep atop it.

  It had not been hard. Little bits of magic, of coldest ice, that wormed through the cracks of Morath’s foundation. That ate away at the ancient stone. Bit by bit, a web of instability growing with each hall and room he searched. Until the entire eastern half of the keep was balanced upon his will alone.

  Until now. Until half a thought had his magic expanding through those cracks, bearing down upon them.

  And so Morath began to crumble.

  Smiling at Maeve, Dorian pulled out. Pulled away, even as he held her mind.

  The tower shuddered again. Maeve’s breath hitched. You can’t leave me like this. He’ll find me, he’ll take me—

  As you would have taken me? Dorian shifted into a crow, flapping in the air of the chamber.

  Morath groaned again, and above it rose a screech of rage, so piercing and unearthly that his bones quailed.

  Tell Erawan, Dorian said, halting on the windowsill, that I did it for Adarlan.

  For Sorscha and Kaltain and all those destroyed by it. As Adarlan itself had been destroyed.

  But from utter ruin, it might be built again. If not by him, then by others.

  Perhaps that would be his first and only gift to Adarlan as its king: a clean slate, should they survive this war.

  Screaming filled the halls. He’d marked where the human servants worked, where they dwelled. They would find, as they fled, that their passageways remained stable. Until every last one of them was out.

  Please, Maeve begged, staggering to her knees as the tower swayed again. Please.

  He should let Erawan find her. Doom her to the life she’d intended for him. For Aelin.

 
Maeve curled over her knees, her mind and power contained. Waiting in despair for the dark king whom she’d tried so hard to escape. Or for the shuddering fortress to collapse around her.

  He knew he would regret it. Knew he should kill her. But to condemn her to what he’d endured …

  He would not wish it upon anyone. Even if it cost them this war.

  He did not think it made him weak. Not at all.

  Beyond the window, Ironteeth shot to the skies, wyverns shrieking as Morath’s stones began to give way. In the valley below, the army halted to peer at the mountain looming high above them. The shaking tower built atop it.

  Please, Maeve said again. Levels beneath them, another bellow of rage thundered from Erawan—closer now.

  So Dorian soared into the chaotic night.

  Maeve’s silent cry of despair followed on his heels. All the way to the peaks overlooking Morath and that rocky outcropping—to the two Wyrdkeys buried under the shale.

  He could barely remember his own name as he slid them into his other pocket. As all three of the Wyrdkeys now lay upon him.

  Then he reached back into the mind still tethered to his.

  It was simple as an incision. To sever the link between their minds—and to sever another part of her.

  To tie off the gift that allowed her to jump between places. To open those portals.

  World-walker no longer, he said as his raw magic shifted her own. Changed its very essence. I suggest you invest in a good pair of shoes.

  Then he let go of Maeve’s mind.

  A hateful, unending scream was the only response.

  Dorian shifted again, becoming large and vicious, no more than a pack wyvern flying northward to bring supplies to the aerial legion.

  A king—he could be a king to Adarlan in these last days that remained for him. Wipe away the stain and rot of what it had become. So it might start anew. Become who it wished to be.

  Dorian caught a swift wind, sailing hard and fast.

  And when he looked behind him, at the mountain and valley that reeked of death, at the place where so many terrible things had begun, Dorian smiled and brought Morath’s towers crashing down.

  CHAPTER 79

  Yrene hated the Ferian Gap. Hated the tight air between the two gargantuan peaks, hated the bones and wyvern refuse littering the rocky floor, hated the reek that slithered from whatever openings had been carved into the mountains.

  At least it was empty. Though they had not yet decided if that was a blessing.

  The two armies now filled the Gap, Hasar’s soldiers already preparing to make the crossing back over the Avery into the tangle of Oakwald. That trek would take an age, even with the rukhin carrying the wagons and heavier supplies. And then the push northward through the forest, taking the ancient road that lay along the Avery’s northern branch.

  “Pass me that knife there,” Yrene said to Lady Elide, pointing with her chin to her supply kit. Spread on a blanket on the bottom of the covered wagon, a Darghan soldier lay unconscious, cold sweat beading his brow. He hadn’t seen a healer after getting a slice to the thigh at the battle for Anielle, and when he’d fallen clean off his horse this morning, he’d been hauled in here.

  Elide’s hands remained steady as she plucked up the thin knife and passed it to Yrene.

  “Will it wake him?” she asked while Yrene bent over the unconscious warrior and examined the infected wound that was gruesome enough to turn most stomachs.

  “My magic has him in a deep sleep.” Yrene angled the knife. “He’ll stay out until I wake him.”

  Elide, to her credit, didn’t retch as Yrene began to clean out the wound, scraping away the dead, infected bits.

  “No sign of blood poisoning, thank the gods,” Yrene announced as the cloth beside the man became covered in the discarded rot. “But we’ll need to put him on a special brew to make sure.”

  “Your magic can’t just do a sweep through him?” Elide tossed the soiled cloth into the nearby waste bucket, and laid down another.

  “It can, and I will,” Yrene said, fighting her gag as the reek from the wound stuffed itself up her nostrils, “but that might not be enough, if the infection truly wishes to make an appearance.”

  “You talk about illnesses as if they were living creatures.”

  “They are, to some degree,” Yrene said. “With their own secrets and temperaments. You sometimes have to outsmart them, just as you would any foe.”

  Yrene took the mirrored lantern from beside the bed and adjusted the plates within to shine a beam of light on the infected slice. When the brightness revealed no further signs of rotting skin, she set down both lantern and knife. “That wasn’t as bad as I’d feared,” she admitted, and held out her hands over the bloody wound.

  Warmth and light rose within her, like a memory of the summer in this frigid mountain pass, and as her hands glowed, Yrene’s magic guided her within the man’s body. It flowed along blood and sinew and bone, knitting and mending, listening to the aches and fever now running rampant. Soothing them, calming them. Wiping them away.

  She was panting when she finished, but the man’s breathing had eased. The sweat on his brow had dried.

  “Remarkable,” Elide whispered, gaping at the now-smooth leg of the warrior.

  Yrene just turned her head to the side and vomited into the waste bucket.

  Elide leapt to her feet.

  But Yrene held up a hand, wiping her mouth with the other. “As joyful as it is to know I shall soon be a mother, the realities of the first few months are … not so joyous.”

  Elide limped to the ewer of drinking water and poured a cup. “Here. Is there anything I can get you? Can—can you heal your own sickness, or do you need someone else to?”

  Yrene sipped at the water, letting it wash away the bitter bile. “The vomiting is a sign that things are progressing with the babe.” A hand drifted to her middle. “It’s not something that can really be cured, not unless I had a healer at my side day and night, easing the nausea.”

  “It’s become that bad?” Elide frowned.

  “Terrible timing, I know.” Yrene sighed. “The best options are ginger—anything ginger. Which I would rather save for the upset stomachs of our soldiers. Peppermint can help, too.” She gestured toward her satchel. “I have some dried leaves in there. Just put some in a cup with the hot water and I’ll be fine.” Behind them, a small brazier held a steaming kettle, used for disinfecting supplies rather than making tea.

  Elide was instantly moving, and Yrene watched in silence while the lady prepared the tea.

  “I could heal your leg, you know.”

  Elide stilled, a hand reaching for the kettle. “Really?”

  Yrene waited until the lady had pressed a cup of the peppermint tea into her hands before she nodded to the lady’s boots. “Can I see the injury?”

  Elide hesitated, but took her seat on the stool beside Yrene and tugged off her boot, then the sock beneath.

  Yrene surveyed the scarring, the twisted bone. Elide had told her days ago why she had the injury.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get an infection yourself.” Yrene sipped from her tea, deemed it still too hot, and set it aside before patting her lap. Elide obeyed, putting her foot on Yrene’s thigh. Carefully, Yrene touched the scars and mangled bones, her magic doing the same.

  The brutality of the injury was enough to take Yrene’s breath away. And to make her grind her teeth, knowing how young Elide had been, how unbearably painful it was—knowing that her very uncle had done this to her.

  “What’s wrong?” Elide breathed.

  “Nothing—I mean, beyond what you already know.”

  Such cruelty. Such terrible, unforgivable cruelty.

  Yrene coiled her magic back into herself, but kept her hands on Elide’s ankle. “This injury would require weeks of work to repair, and with our current circumstances, I don’t think either of us can undergo it.” Elide nodded. “But if we survive this war, I can help you, if you wi
sh.”

  “What would it entail?”

  “There are two roads,” Yrene said, letting some of her magic seep into Elide’s leg, soothing the aching muscles, the spots where bone ground against bone with no buffer. The lady sighed. “The first is the hardest. It would require me to completely restructure your foot and ankle. Meaning, I would have to break apart the bone, take out the parts that healed or fused incorrectly, and then regrow them. You could not walk while I did it, and even with the help I could give you for the pain, the recovery would be agonizing.” There was no way around that truth. “I’d need three weeks to take apart your bones and put them back together, but you’d need at least a month of resting and learning to walk on it again.”

  Elide’s face had gone pale. “And the other option?”

  “The other option would be to not do the healing, but to give you salve—like the one you said Lorcan gave you—to help with the aches. But I will warn you: the pain will never entirely leave you. With the way your bones grind together here”—she gently touched the spot on Elide’s upper foot, then a spot down by her toes—“arthritis is already setting in. As the bones continue to grind together, the arthritis, that pain you feel when you walk, will only worsen. There may come a point in a few years—maybe five, maybe ten, it’s hard to tell—when you find the pain to be so bad that no salve can help you.”

  “So I would need the healing then, regardless.”

  “It’s up to you whether you want the healing at all. I only want you to have a better idea of the road ahead.” She smiled at the lady. “It’s up to you to decide how you wish to face it.”

  Yrene tapped Elide’s foot, and the lady lowered it back to the floor before putting her sock back on, then her boot. Efficient, easy motions.

  Yrene sipped from her tea, cool enough now to drink. The fresh verve of the peppermint zapped through her, clearing her mind and calming her stomach.

  Elide said, “I don’t know if I can face that pain again.”

  Yrene nodded. “With that sort of injury, it would require facing a great many things inside yourself.” She smiled toward the wagon entrance. “My husband and I just went through one such journey together.”