Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

The Ironteeth who fell into the river were dragged to the bottom and pinned to the rocks.

  She’d had to look away each time she did it.

  Lysandra’s snout broke the surface as a sharp horn shattered over the din, right from the city walls. Not a warning call, but an unleashing.

  Lysandra dove to the bottom. Dove and then pushed up, mighty tail thrashing to launch her toward the surface.

  She broke from the ice and the water, arcing through the air, and slammed right into Morath’s eastern flank.

  Soldiers screamed as she unleashed herself in a whirlwind of teeth and claws and a massive, snapping tail.

  Where the white sea dragon moved, black blood sprayed.

  And just when the soldiers mastered their terror enough to launch arrows and spears at the opalescent scales enforced with Spidersilk, she twisted and flipped back into the deep river, vanishing beneath the ice. Spears plunged into the turquoise waters, missing their mark, but Lysandra was already racing past.

  The sea dragon’s body—river dragon, she supposed—didn’t slow. She pushed it to its limit, the great lungs working like a bellows.

  The river curved, and she used it to her advantage as she leaped from the water again.

  The soldiers, so focused on the damage she’d done up ahead, didn’t look her way until she was upon them.

  She had all of a glance to the city walls, where a wave of black now crashed against them, siege ladders rising and arrows flying, bursts of flame amid it all, before she returned to the river’s icy depths.

  Black blood streamed from her maw, from her tails and claws, as she doubled back, the shadow of the witches warring overhead upon the ice above her.

  So she fought, the ice floes her shield. Attacking, then moving; destabilizing the eastern flank with every assault, forcing them to flee from the river’s edge to crowd the center ranks.

  Slowly, the turquoise waters of the Florine clouded blue and black.

  Still, Lysandra kept ripping bites from the side of the behemoth that launched itself upon Orynth.

  The heat off the firelances scorched Aedion’s cheek, warming his helmet to near-discomfort.

  A small price, as the bursts of flame sent the Valg foot soldiers at the walls scrambling back. Where their archers felled the enemy, more came. And where the firelances melted them away, only scorched earth and melted armor remained. But there was not enough—not even close.

  Above, beyond the walls, the Ironteeth and Crochans clashed.

  So violently, so quickly, that a blue mist hung in the skies from the bloodshed.

  He couldn’t determine who had the upper hand. The Thirteen fought amongst them, and where they plunged into the fray, Ironteeth and their mounts tumbled. Crushing Valg foot soldiers beneath them.

  Iron siege ladders rose again, aiming for the city walls. Answering blasts from the firelances sent those already on them to the ground as charred corpses. But more Valg scrambled up, the fear of flame not enough to deter them.

  Sprinting to the nearest ladder, Aedion nocked arrow after arrow, firing at the soldiers creeping up its rungs. Clean shots through the gaps in the dark armor.

  The archers around him did the same, and the Bane soldiers behind him settled into fighting stances, waiting for the first to breach the walls.

  At the city gates, flame blasted and raged. He’d concentrated many of the Mycenians at either of the two gates into Orynth, their most vulnerable weakness along the walls.

  That the fire kept flaring as it did told him enough: Morath was making its push there.

  Rolfe’s order to Conserve fire! set a pit of dread forming in his gut, but Aedion focused on the siege ladder. His bow twanged, and another soldier tumbled away. Then another.

  Down the wall, Ren had taken on the other nearby siege ladder, the lord’s bow singing.

  Aedion dared a glance to the army ahead. They had amassed close enough now.

  Falling back, letting an archer take his place, he lifted his sword, signaling the Bane at the catapults, the Fae royals and archers near them. “Now!”

  Wood snapped and groaned. Boulders as large as wagons soared over the walls. Each had been oiled, and gleamed in the sun while they rose.

  And when the boulders reached their peak, just as they began to plummet toward the enemy, the Fae archers unleashed their flaming arrows.

  They struck the oil-slick boulders right before the stones slammed into the earth.

  Flame erupted, flowing right into the holes that Aedion had ordered drilled into the rock, right into the nest of the explosive powders they’d again taken from the precious reserves of Rolfe’s firelances.

  The boulders blasted apart in balls of flame and stone.

  Along the city walls, soldiers cheered at the carnage that the smoking ruins revealed. Nothing but melted, squashed, or shattered Valg grunts. Every place the six catapults had fired upon now had a ring of charred ground around it.

  “Reposition!” Aedion roared. The Bane were already heaving against the wheels that would rotate the catapults on their wooden stands. Within seconds, they had aimed at another spot; within seconds, the Fae royals were lifting more oiled boulders from the stockpile Darrow had acquired over weeks and weeks.

  He didn’t give Morath a chance to recover. “Fire!”

  Boulders soared, flaming arrows following.

  The explosions on the battlefield shook the city walls this time.

  Another cheer went up, and Aedion motioned the Bane and Fae royals to halt. Let Morath think that their stock was depleted, that they only had a few lucky shots in their arsenal.

  Aedion turned back to the siege ladder as the first of the Valg grunts cleared the walls.

  The man was killed before his feet finished touching the ground, courtesy of a waiting Bane soldier.

  Aedion unstrapped the shield from across his back and angled his sword as the wave of soldiers crested the walls.

  But it was not a Valg foot soldier who appeared next, climbing over the ladder with ease.

  The young man’s face was cold as death, his black eyes lit with unholy hunger.

  A black collar was clasped around his throat.

  A Valg prince had come.

  CHAPTER 86

  “Focus on the ladder,” Aedion snarled to the soldiers shrinking from the handsome demon prince who stepped onto the city walls as if he were merely entering a room.

  He wore no armor. Nothing but a black tunic cut to his lithe body.

  The Valg prince smiled. “Prince Aedion,” purred the thing inside it, drawing a sword from a dark sheath at his side. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Aedion struck.

  He did not have magic, did not have anything to combat the dark power in the prince’s veins, but he had speed. He had strength.

  Aedion feinted with his sword, that ordinary, nameless sword, and the prince swung with his own blade—just as Aedion slammed his shield into the man’s side.

  Driving him back. Not toward the ladder, but to the Mycenian who wielded the firelance—

  The Mycenian was dead.

  The prince chuckled, and a whip of dark power lashed for Aedion.

  Aedion ducked, shield rising. As if it would do anything against that power.

  Darkness struck metal, and Aedion’s arm sang with the reverberations.

  But the pain, the life-draining agony, did not occur.

  Aedion instantly parried, a slash upward that the Valg prince dodged with a hop to the side.

  The demon’s eyes were wide as he took in the shield. Then Aedion.

  Then the Valg prince hissed, “Fae bastard.”

  Aedion didn’t know what it meant, didn’t care as he took another blast upon his shield, the battlements already slick with blood both black and red. If the Mycenian nearby was dead, then there was another down by Ren’s ladder—

  The Valg prince unleashed blast after blast of power.

  Aedion took each one upon his shield, the prince’s power bouncing off
as if it were a spray of water upon stone. And for every burst of power sent his way, Aedion swung his sword.

  Steel met steel; darkness clashed with ancient metal. Aedion had the vague sense of soldiers Valg and human alike halting as he and the demon prince battled their way across the city wall.

  He kept his feet beneath him, as Rhoe had taught him. As Quinn had taught him, and Cal Lochan. As all his mentors and the warriors he’d admired above all others had taught him. For this moment, when he would be called to defend Orynth’s very walls.

  It was for them he swung his sword, for them he took blow after blow.

  The Valg prince hissed with every blast, as if enraged that his power could not break that shield.

  Rhoe’s shield.

  There was no magic in it. Brannon had never borne it. But one of them had forged it, one of the unbroken line of kings and queens who had come after him, who had loved their kingdom more than their own lives. Who had carried this shield into battle, into war, to defend Terrasen.

  And as Aedion and the Valg prince fought along the walls, as that ancient shield refused to yield, he wondered if there was a different sort of power in the metal. One that the Valg could never and would never understand. Not true magic, not as Brannon and Aelin had. But something just as strong—stronger.

  That the Valg might never break, no matter how they tried.

  Aedion’s sword sang, and the Valg prince roared as Aedion connected with his arm, slashing deep.

  Black blood sprayed. Aedion leaped upon the advantage, shoving with the shield and stabbing with his blade.

  But the prince had been waiting.

  Had set a trap, his own body as the bait.

  And as Aedion slammed into the Valg prince, the demon drew a dagger from his sword belt and struck. Right where Aedion’s armor exposed just a sliver near his armpit, vulnerable with the outstretched position of his arm.

  The knife plunged in, rending flesh and muscle and bone.

  Pain, white-hot and blinding, threatened to make him splay his hand, to drop his sword. Only Aedion’s training, only those years of work, kept his feet under him as he leaped back, wrenching free of the knife.

  The Valg prince chuckled, and Aedion was dimly aware of the fighting along the walls, the shouting and dying and flares of fire, as the prince smiled down at the bloodied dagger.

  Bringing it to his sensual mouth, the prince dragged his tongue along the blade. Licked Aedion’s blood clean off. “Exquisite,” the demon breathed, shuddering with pleasure.

  Aedion backed away another step, his arm burning and burning and burning, blood pooling inside his armor.

  The prince stalked after him.

  A whip of dark power launched for Aedion, and he again took it on his shield. Let it send him tumbling to the ground, landing atop the ironclad body of one of the Bane.

  His breath turned sharp as the knife that had stabbed him.

  The prince paused before Aedion. “Feasting on you will be a delight.”

  Aedion hefted his shield over himself, bracing for the blow.

  The prince made to lift the bloodied dagger to his mouth again, eyes rolling back in his head.

  Those eyes went wide as an arrow broke the skin of his throat. Right above the collar.

  The prince gagged, whirling toward the arrow that had come not from Aedion, but from behind. Right into the path of Ren Allsbrook and the firelance he bore in his arms.

  Ren slammed his hand into the release hatch, and flame erupted.

  Aedion ducked, coiling his body beneath his shield as the flame threatened to melt his own bones.

  The world was heat and light. Then nothing. Only the shouts of battle and dying men.

  Aedion managed to lower his shield.

  Where the Valg prince had been, a pile of ashes and a black Wyrdstone collar remained.

  Aedion panted, a hand going to his bleeding side. “I had him.”

  Ren only shook his head, and pivoted on a boot, unleashing the firelance upon the nearest Valg soldiers.

  The Lord of Allsbrook turned back to him, mouth open to say something. But Aedion’s head swam, his body plunging into a coldness he’d never known. Then there was nothing.

  The battle was so much worse than Evangeline had imagined.

  The sound alone made her quake in her bones, and only delivering messages to Lord Darrow where he stood on one of the higher castle balconies saved her from curling into a ball.

  Her breath was a ragged, dry thing as she raced back onto the balcony, to where Darrow stood by the stone railing, two other Terrasen lords beside him. “From Kyllian,” Evangeline managed to say, bobbing a curtsy, as she had each time she’d delivered a message.

  Battles were no place for manners, she knew—Aelin certainly would have said that. But she kept doing it, the curtsying, even when her legs trembled. Couldn’t stop herself.

  Kyllian’s messenger had met her at the castle stairs, and now waited for Darrow’s reply. It was as close to the fighting as she’d gotten. Not that being up here was any better.

  Pressing herself against the stones of the tower wall, Evangeline let Darrow read the letter. The Crochans and wyverns were so much closer up here. This high, she stood on their level, the world a blur below. Evangeline laid her palms flat against the icy stones, as if she could draw some strength from them.

  Even with the roar of battle, she heard Darrow declare to the other lords, “Aedion has been wounded.”

  Evangeline’s stomach dropped, nausea—oily and thick—surging. “Is he all right?”

  The two other lords ignored her, but Darrow looked her way. “He has lost consciousness, and they have moved him into a building near the wall. Healers are working on him as we speak. They will move him here as soon as he is capable of withstanding it.”

  Evangeline staggered to the balcony rail, as if she might see that building amid the sea of chaos by the city walls.

  She had never had a brother, or a father. She hadn’t yet decided which one she would like Aedion to be. And if he was so injured that it warranted a message to Darrow—

  She pressed a hand to her stomach, trying to contain the bile that burned her throat.

  Murmuring sounded, and then there was a hand on her shoulder. “Lord Gunnar will see to delivering my reply,” Darrow said. “You will remain here with me. I might have need of you.”

  The words were stern, but the hand on her shoulder was kind.

  Evangeline only nodded, sick and miserable, and clung to the balcony rail, as if her grip might somehow keep Aedion on this side of life.

  “Hot refreshments, Sloane,” Darrow ordered, his voice brooking no room for argument.

  The other lord peeled away. Evangeline didn’t know how long passed after that. How long it took until the lord arrived, and Darrow pressed a scalding mug into her fingers. “Drink.”

  Evangeline obeyed, finding it to be broth of some sort. Beef, maybe. She didn’t care.

  Her friends were down there. Her family, the one she’d made.

  Far out, near the river, a blur of motion was her only indication that Lysandra still lived.

  No word arrived about Aedion’s fate.

  So Evangeline lingered on the tower, Darrow silent beside her, and prayed.

  CHAPTER 87

  Even moving as fast as they could, the khagan’s army was too slow. Too slow, and too large, to reach Terrasen in time.

  In the week that they’d been pushing northward, Aelin begging Oakwald, the Little Folk, and Brannon for forgiveness as she razed a path through the forest, they were only just now nearing Endovier, and the border mere miles beyond it. From there, if they were lucky, it’d be another ten days to Orynth. And would likely become a disaster if Morath had kept forces stationed at Perranth after the city’s capture.

  So they’d chosen to skirt the city on its western flank, going around the Perranth Mountains rather than cutting to the lowlands for the easier trek across the land. With Oakwald as their cover, they mi
ght be able to sneak up on Morath at Orynth.

  If there was anything left of Orynth by the time they arrived. They were still too far for the ruk riders to do any sort of scouting, and no messengers had crossed their paths. Even the wild men of the Fangs, who had remained with them and now swore to march to Orynth to avenge their kin did not know of a faster path.

  Aelin tried not to think of it. Or about Maeve and Erawan, wherever they might be. Whatever they might have planned.

  Endovier, the only outpost of civilization they’d seen in a week, would be their first news since leaving the Ferian Gap.

  She tried not to think of that, either. Of the fact that they would be passing through Endovier tomorrow, or the day after. That she’d see those gray mountains that had housed the salt mines.

  Lying on her stomach atop her cot—no point in making anyone set up a royal bed for her and Rowan when they would be marching within a few hours—Aelin winced against the stinging burn along her back.

  The clink of Rowan’s tools and the crackle of the braziers were the only sounds in their tent.

  “Will it be done tonight?” she asked as he paused to dip his needle in the pot of salt-laced ink.

  “If you stop talking,” was his dry reply.

  Aelin huffed, rising onto her elbows to peer over a shoulder at him. She couldn’t see what he inked, but knew the design. A replica of what he’d written on her back this spring, the stories of her loved ones and their deaths, written right where her scars had been. Exactly where they’d been, as if he had their memory etched in his mind.

  But another tattoo lay there now. A tattoo that sprawled across her shoulder bones as if it were a pair of spread wings. Or so he’d sketched for her.

  The story of them. Rowan and Aelin.

  A story that had begun in rage and sorrow and become something entirely different.

  She was glad to have him leave it at that. At the happiness.

  Aelin rested her chin atop her hands. “We’ll be near Endovier soon.”

  Rowan resumed working, but she knew he’d listened to every word, thought through his response. “What do you want to do about it?”

  She winced at the sting of a particularly sensitive spot near her spine.