Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  The wound to his neck was so much worse than she’d thought.

  And still he’d fought for her. Stayed in the skies.

  Manon shoved her hands against the deep bite wound, blood rushing past her fingers like water through a cracked dam. “Help is coming,” she told him, and found her voice to be a broken rasp. “They’re coming.”

  The Thirteen landed, Sorrel sprinting into the castle to no doubt drag a healer out if she had to, and then there were eleven pairs of hands on Abraxos’s neck.

  Staunching the flow of his blood. Pressing as one, to keep that precious blood inside him while the healer was found.

  Manon couldn’t look at them, couldn’t do anything but close her eyes and pray to the Darkness, to the Three-Faced Mother as she held her hands over the bleeding gashes.

  Racing footsteps sounded over the battlement stones, and then Sorrel was there beside Manon, her hands rising to cover his wounds, too.

  An older woman unpacked a kit, warning them to keep applying pressure.

  Manon didn’t bother to tell her that they weren’t going anywhere. None of them were.

  Even while the battle raged in the skies and on the land below.

  Lysandra could barely draw in breath, each flap of her wings heavier than the last as she aimed for the place where she’d seen Manon Blackbeak and her coven go crashing to the castle battlements.

  She’d shifted into a wyvern herself, using the chaos of the Ironteeth rebels’ arrival as a distraction, but the draining of her magic had taken its toll. And the fighting, the wounds that even she could not staunch …

  Lysandra spied the two figures hauling a familiar golden-haired warrior up the castle stairs just as she hit the battlements, the witches whirling toward her.

  But Lysandra willed herself to shift, forcing her body to do it one last time, to return to that human form. She’d barely finished shoving on the pants and shirt she’d stashed in a pack by the castle wall when Ren Allsbrook and a Bane soldier reached the top of the battlements, a half-conscious Aedion between them.

  There was so much blood on him.

  Lysandra ran for them, ignoring her deep limp, the splintering pain rippling in her left leg, in her right shoulder. Down the battlements, a healer worked on the injured Abraxos, the Thirteen, coated in his blood, now standing vigil.

  “What happened?” Lysandra skidded to a halt before Aedion, who managed to lift his head to give her a grim smile.

  “Valg prince,” Ren said, his own body coated in blood, face pale with exhaustion.

  Oh gods.

  “He didn’t walk away,” Aedion rasped.

  Ren snapped, “And you didn’t rest long enough, you stupid bastard. You tore your stitches.”

  Lysandra ran her hands over Aedion’s face, his brow. “Let’s get you to a healer—”

  “I’ve already seen one,” Aedion grunted, setting his feet on the ground and trying to straighten. “They brought me up here to rest.” As if such a thing was a ridiculous idea.

  Ren indeed unlooped Aedion’s arm from around his shoulder. “Sit down, before you fall and crack your head on the stones.” Lysandra was inclined to agree, but then Ren said, “I’m heading back to the walls.”

  “Wait.”

  Ren turned toward her, but Lysandra didn’t speak until the Bane soldier helped Aedion to sit against the side of the castle itself.

  “Wait,” she said again to Ren when he opened his mouth, her heart thundering, nausea coiling in her gut. She whistled, and Manon Blackbeak and the Thirteen looked her way. She waved them over, her arm barking in pain.

  “You’re hurt,” Aedion growled.

  Lysandra ignored him as the witches stalked over, so much blood and gore on all of them.

  She asked Manon, “Will Abraxos live?”

  A shallow nod, the Witch-Queen’s golden eyes dull.

  Lysandra didn’t have it in her for relief. Not with the news she’d flown back so desperately to deliver. She swallowed the bile in her throat, then pointed to the battlefield. To its dark, misty heart. “They have the witch tower up again. It’s moving this way. I just saw it myself. The witches have gathered atop it.”

  Absolute silence.

  And as if in answer, the tower erupted.

  Not toward them, but skyward. A flash of light, a boom louder than thunder, and then a portion of the sky became empty.

  Where Ironteeth, rebels and the faithful alike, had been fighting, where Crochans had been weaving between them, there was nothing.

  Just ash.

  Lysandra’s voice broke as the tower continued moving. A straight, unbreakable line toward Orynth. “They mean to blast apart the city.”

  Hands and arms coated in Abraxos’s blood, Manon stared at the battlefield. Stared at where all those witches, Ironteeth and Crochan fighting for either army, had just … vanished.

  Everything her grandmother had claimed about the witch towers was true.

  And it was not Kaltain and her shadowfire that fueled that blast of destruction, but Ironteeth witches.

  Young Ironteeth witches who offered themselves up. Who made the Yielding as they leaped into the mirror-lined pit within the tower.

  An ordinary Yielding might take out twenty, thirty witches around her. Maybe more, if she was older and more powerful.

  But a Yielding amplified by the power of those witch mirrors … One blast, and the castle looming above them would be rubble. Another blast, maybe two, and Orynth would follow it.

  Ironteeth swarmed the tower, a vicious wall keeping the Crochans and rebel Ironteeth out.

  A few Crochans indeed tried to break through those defenses.

  Their red-clad bodies fell to the earth in pieces.

  Petrah, now within the confines of her coven, even made a run for the tower. To rip it down.

  They were beaten back by a swarm of Ironteeth.

  The tower advanced. Closer and closer.

  It would be within range soon. Another few minutes, and that tower would be close enough for its blast to reach the castle. To wipe away this army, this remnant of resistance, forever.

  There would be no survivors. No second chances.

  Manon turned to Asterin and said quietly, “I need another wyvern.”

  Her Second only stared at her.

  Manon repeated, “I need another wyvern.”

  Abraxos was in no shape to fly. Wouldn’t be for hours or days.

  Aedion Ashryver rasped, “No one is getting through that wall of Ironteeth.”

  Manon bared her teeth. “I am.” She pointed at the shape-shifter. “You can carry me.”

  Aedion snarled, “No.”

  But Lysandra shook her head, sorrow and despair in her green eyes. “I can’t—the magic is drained. If I had an hour—”

  “We have five minutes,” Manon snapped. She whirled to the Thirteen. “We have trained for this. To break apart enemy ranks. We can get through them. Take apart that tower.”

  But they all looked at one another. Like they’d had some unspoken conversation and agreement.

  The Thirteen stalked toward their own mounts. Sorrel clasped Manon’s shoulder as she passed, then climbed onto her wyvern’s back. Leaving Asterin before Manon.

  Her Second, her cousin, her friend, smiled, eyes bright as stars. “Live, Manon.”

  Manon blinked.

  Asterin smiled wider, kissed Manon’s brow, and whispered again, “Live.”

  Manon didn’t see the blow coming.

  The punch to her gut, so hard and precise that it knocked the wind from her. Sent her to her knees.

  She was struggling to get a breath down, to get up, when Asterin reached Narene and mounted the blue mare, gathering the reins. “Bring our people home, Manon.”

  Manon knew then. What they were going to do.

  Her legs failed her, her body failed her, as she tried to get to her feet. As she rasped, “No.”

  But Asterin and the Thirteen were already in the skies.

  Already
in formation, that battering ram that had served them so well. Spearing toward the battlefield. Toward the approaching witch tower.

  Manon clawed her way to the battlement ledge, and hauled herself to her feet. Leaned against the stones, panting, trying to get air into her lungs so she might find some way to get airborne, find some Crochan and steal her broom—

  But there were no witches here. No brooms to be found. Abraxos remained unconscious.

  Manon was distantly aware of the shifter and Prince Aedion coming up beside her, Lord Ren with them. Distantly aware of the silence that fell over the castle, the city, the walls.

  As all of them watched that witch tower approach, their doom gathering within it.

  As the Thirteen raced for it, raced against the wind and death itself.

  A wall of Ironteeth rose up before the tower, blocking their path.

  A hundred against twelve.

  Inside the witch tower, close enough now that Manon could see through the open archway of the uppermost level, a young witch in black robes stepped toward the hollowed interior.

  Stepped toward where Manon’s grandmother stood, gesturing to the pit below.

  The Thirteen neared the enemy in their path and did not falter.

  Manon dug her fingers into the stones so hard her iron nails cracked. Began shaking her head, something in her chest fracturing completely.

  Fracturing as the Thirteen slammed into the Ironteeth blockade.

  The maneuver was perfect. More flawless than any they’d done. A lethal phalanx that speared through the enemy’s ranks. Aiming right for the tower.

  Seconds. They had seconds until that young witch summoned the power and unleashed the Yielding in a blast of blackness.

  The Thirteen punched through the Ironteeth, spreading wide, pushing them to the side.

  Clearing a path right to the tower as Asterin swept in from the back, aiming for the uppermost level.

  Imogen went down first.

  Then Lin.

  And Ghislaine, her wyvern swarmed by their enemy.

  Then Thea and Kaya, together, as they had always been.

  Then the green-eyed demon twins, laughing as they went. Then the Shadows, Edda and Briar, arrows still firing. Still finding their marks.

  Then Vesta, roaring her defiance to the skies.

  And then Sorrel. Sorrel, who held the way open for Asterin, a solid wall for Manon’s Second as she soared in. A wall against whom the waves of Ironteeth broke and broke.

  The young witch inside the tower began glowing black, steps from the pit.

  Beside Manon, Lysandra and Aedion wrapped their arms around each other. Ready for the end heartbeats away.

  And then Asterin was there. Asterin was barreling toward that open stretch of air, for the tower itself, bought with the lives of the Thirteen. With their final stand.

  Manon could only watch, watch and watch and watch, shaking her head as if she could undo it, as Asterin removed her leathers, the shirt beneath.

  As Asterin rose in the saddle, freed of the buckles, a dagger in hand as her wyvern aimed straight for the tower.

  Manon’s grandmother turned then. Away from the pit, the acolyte about to leap inside and destroy them all.

  Asterin hurled her dagger.

  The blade flew true.

  It plunged into the acolyte’s back, sending the witch sprawling to the stones. A foot away from the drop to the pit.

  Asterin drew the twin swords from the sheaths at her hips and slammed her wyvern into the side of the tower. The crack of bone on rock echoed across the world.

  But Asterin was already leaping. Already arching through the air, swords raised, wyvern tumbling away beneath, Narene’s body broken on impact.

  Manon began screaming then.

  Screaming, endless and wordless, as that thing in her chest, as her heart, shattered.

  As Asterin landed in the witch tower’s open archway, swords swinging at the witches who rushed to kill her. They might as well have been blades of grass. Might as well have been mist, for how easily Asterin cut them down, one after another, driving forward, toward the Matron who had branded the letters on stark display across Asterin’s abdomen.

  UNCLEAN

  Twirling, twisting, blades flying, Asterin slaughtered her way toward Manon’s grandmother.

  The High Witch of the Blackbeak Clan backed away, shaking her head. Her mouth moved, as if she breathed, “Asterin, no—”

  But Asterin was already there.

  And it was not darkness, but light—light, bright and pure as the sun on snow, that erupted from Asterin.

  Light, as Asterin made the Yielding.

  As the Thirteen, their broken bodies scattered around the tower in a near-circle, made the Yielding as well.

  Light. They all burned with it. Radiated it.

  Light that flowed from their souls, their fierce hearts as they gave themselves over to that power. Became incandescent with it.

  Asterin tackled the Blackbeak Matron to the ground, Manon’s grandmother little more than a shadow against the brightness. Then little more than a scrap of hate and memory as Asterin exploded.

  As she and the Thirteen Yielded completely, and blew themselves and the witch tower to smithereens.

  CHAPTER 90

  Manon sank to the stones of the castle battlements and did not move for a long, long while.

  She didn’t hear those who spoke to her, who touched her shoulder. Didn’t feel the cold.

  The sun arced and descended.

  At some point, she lay down upon the stones, curled against the wall. When she awoke, a wing had covered her, and warm breath whispered across her head as Abraxos dozed.

  She had no words in her. Nothing but a ringing silence.

  Manon got to her feet, easing past the wing that had shielded her.

  The dawn was breaking.

  And where that witch tower had stood, where the army had been, only blasted earth remained.

  Morath had drawn back. Far back.

  The city and walls still stood.

  She roused Abraxos with a hand to his side.

  He couldn’t fly, not yet, so they walked together.

  Down the battlement steps. Out through the castle gates and into the city streets beyond.

  She didn’t care that others followed. More and more of them.

  The streets were filled with blood and rubble, all of it gilded by the rising sun.

  She didn’t feel the warmth of that sun on her face while they walked through the southern gate and onto the plain beyond. She didn’t care that someone had opened the gate for them.

  At her side, Abraxos nudged aside piles of Valg soldiers, clearing a path for her. For all those who trailed in their wake.

  It was so quiet. Inside her, and on the plain.

  So quiet, and empty.

  Manon crossed the still battlefield. Didn’t stop until she reached the center of the blast radius. Until she stood in its heart.

  Not a trace of the tower. Or those who had been in it, around it. Even the stones had been melted into nothing.

  Not a trace of the Thirteen, or their brave, noble wyverns.

  Manon fell to her knees.

  Ashes rose, fluttering, soft as snow as they clung to the tears on her face.

  Abraxos lay beside her, his tail curling around her while she bowed over her knees and wept.

  Behind her, had she looked, she would have seen Glennis. And Bronwen. Petrah Blueblood.

  Aedion Ashryver and Lysandra and Ren Allsbrook.

  Prince Galan and Captain Rolfe and Ansel of Briarcliff, Ilias and the Fae royals beside them.

  Had she looked, she would have seen the small white flowers they bore. Would have wondered how and where they had gotten them in the dead heart of winter.

  Had she looked, she would have seen the people gathered behind them, so many they streamed all the way to the city gates. Would have seen the humans standing side by side with the Crochans and Ironteeth.

 
; All come to honor the Thirteen.

  But Manon did not look. Even when the leaders who had come with her, walked with her all this way, began to lay their flowers upon the blasted, bloodied earth. Even when their tears flowed, dropping into the ashes alongside their offerings of tribute.

  They didn’t speak. And neither did the streaming line of people who came after them. A few bore flowers, but many brought small stones to lay on the site. Those who had neither laid down whatever personal effects they could offer. Until the blast site was covered, as if a garden had grown from a field of blood.

  Glennis stayed until the end.

  And when they were alone on the silent battlefield, Manon’s great-grandmother put a hand on her shoulder and said quietly, her voice somehow distant, “Be the bridge, be the light. When iron melts, when flowers spring from fields of blood—let the land be witness, and return home.”

  Manon didn’t hear the words. Didn’t notice when even Glennis returned to the city looming at her back.

  For hours, Manon knelt on the battlefield, Abraxos at her side. As if she might stay with them, her Thirteen, for a little while longer.

  And far away, across the snow-covered mountains, on a barren plain before the ruins of a once-great city, a flower began to bloom.

  CHAPTER 91

  Dorian hadn’t believed it—hadn’t dared to hope for what he saw.

  A foreign army, marching northward. An army he’d grown up studying. There were the khagan’s foot soldiers, and the Darghan cavalry. There were the legendary ruks, magnificent and proud, soaring above them in a sea of wings.

  He’d aimed as close to the head of the army as he could get, wondering which of the royals had come. Wondering if Chaol was with them. If the presence of this miraculous army meant his friend had succeeded against all odds.

  The ruks had spied him then.

  Chased him, and he’d begun signaling as he’d neared. Hoping they’d pause.

  But then he’d landed at the crossroads. And then he’d seen them. Seen her.

  Aelin, galloping for him. Rowan at her side, Elide and the others with her.

  Maeve had believed Aelin had headed to Terrasen. And here she was, with the khagan’s army.