Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  “So your magic is still there?” Elide blurted.

  Aelin slid turquoise eyes over to her. “Is your water warm?”

  Elide snorted, dragging her fingers through the water. “Yes.”

  “You wish to know how much, exactly.”

  “Am I allowed to know?”

  “I wasn’t lying in the meeting,” Aelin said, voice still hollow. She’d stood there and taken every shouted question from Princess Hasar, every frown of disapproval from Prince Sartaq. “It’s …” She lifted her arms, and positioned her hands in the air above each other, a foot of space between them. “Here’s where the bottom was before,” she said, wriggling her lower fingers. She lifted her bottom hand until it hovered two inches from her top hand. “Here’s where it is now.”

  “You’ve tested it?”

  “I can feel it.” Those turquoise eyes, despite all she’d done, were heavy. Solemn. “I’ve never felt a bottom before. Felt it without having to look for it.” Aelin dunked her sudsy scalp in the water, scrubbing free the bubbles and oils. “Not so impressive, is it?”

  “I never cared if you had magic or not.”

  “Why? Everyone else did.” A flat question. Yes, when they’d been children, so many had feared what manner of power Aelin possessed. What she’d grow into.

  “Who you are isn’t your magic,” Elide said simply.

  “Isn’t it?” Aelin rested her head on the back of the tub. “I liked my magic. Loved it.”

  “And being human?” Elide knew she shouldn’t have dared ask, but it slipped out.

  Aelin glanced sidelong at her. “Am I still human, deep down, without a human body to possess?”

  Elide considered. “I suppose you’re the only person who can decide that.”

  Aelin hummed, dunking under the water again.

  When she emerged, Elide asked, “Are you afraid? Of facing Erawan in battle?”

  Aelin hugged her knees, her tattoo flexing across her back. She was quiet for a long while.

  “I am afraid of not reaching Orynth in time,” she said at last. “If Erawan chooses to drag his carcass up there to fight me, I’ll deal with it then.”

  “And Maeve? What if she arrives with Erawan, too?”

  But Elide knew the answer. They would die. All of them.

  There had to be some way—some way to defeat both of them. She supposed Anneith would be of no help now. And perhaps it was time for her to rely upon herself anyway. Even if the timing could have been far better.

  “So many questions, Lady of Perranth.”

  Elide blushed, and reached for the soap, scrubbing her arms down. “Sorry.”

  “Do you now see why I didn’t have you take the blood oath?”

  “The Fae males challenge you all the time.”

  “Yes, but I like having you not bound to me.” A soft sigh. “I didn’t plan for any of this.”

  “For what?”

  “To survive the Lock. The gate. To actually have to … rule. To live. I’m in uncharted territory, it seems.”

  Elide considered. Then pulled the golden ring from her finger. Silba’s ring—not Mala’s.

  “Here,” she said, extending the ring between their tubs, suds dripping off her fingers.

  Aelin blinked at the ring. “Why?”

  “Because between the two of us, you’re more likely to face Erawan or Maeve.”

  Aelin didn’t reach for it. “I’d rather you keep it.”

  “And I’d rather you have it,” Elide challenged, holding the queen’s stare. She asked softly, “Haven’t you given enough, Aelin? Won’t you let one of us do something for you?”

  Aelin glanced down to the ring. “I failed. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “You put the keys back in the gate. That is not failure. And even if you had failed in that, I would give this ring to you.”

  “I owe it to your mother to see that you survive this.”

  Elide’s chest tightened. “You owe it to my mother to live, Aelin.” She leaned closer, practically pushing the ring into Aelin’s face. “Take it. If not for me, then for her.”

  Aelin stared at the ring again. And then took it.

  Elide tried not to sigh as the queen slid it onto her finger.

  “Thank you,” Aelin murmured.

  Elide was about to answer when the tent flaps opened, icy air howling in—along with Borte. “You didn’t invite me for a bath?” the rukhin asked, frowning dramatically at the queen.

  Aelin’s lips curved upward. “I thought rukhin were too tough for baths.”

  “Do you see how nice the men keep their hair? You think that doesn’t imply an obsession with cleanliness?” Borte strode across the royal tent and plopped onto the stool beside the queen’s tub. Not at all seeming to care that the queen or Elide were naked.

  It took all of Elide’s will not to cover herself up. At least with Aelin in the adjacent tub, the lip of the bath was high enough to offer them privacy. But with Borte sitting above them like this—

  “Here are my thoughts,” Borte declared, flicking the end of one of her braids.

  Aelin smiled slightly.

  “Hasar is cranky and cold. Sartaq is used to these conditions and doesn’t care. Kashin is trying to make the best of it, because he’s so damned nice, but they’re all just a little nervous that we’re marching on a hundred thousand soldiers, potentially more on the way, and that Erawan is not out of commission. Neither is Maeve. So they’re pissed. They like you, but they’re pissed.”

  “I’d gathered as much,” Aelin said drily, “when Hasar called me a stupid cow.”

  It had taken all of Elide’s restraint not to lunge for the princess. And from the growl that had come from the Fae males, even Lorcan, gods above, she knew it had been just as difficult for them.

  Aelin had only inclined her head to the princess and smiled. Just as she was smiling now.

  Borte waved off Aelin’s words. “Hasar calls everyone a stupid cow. You’re in good company.” Another smile from Aelin at that. “But I’m not here to talk about that. I want to talk about you and me.”

  “My favorite subject,” Aelin said, chuckling slightly.

  Borte grinned. “You’re alive. You made it. We all thought you’d be dead.” She drew a line across her neck for emphasis, and Elide cringed. “Sartaq is probably going to have me leading one of the flanks into battle, but I’ve done that. Been good at that.” That grin widened. “I want to lead your flank.”

  “I don’t have a flank.”

  “Then who shall you ride with into battle?”

  “I hadn’t gotten that far,” Aelin said, lifting a brow. “Since I expected to be dead.”

  “Well, when you do, expect me to be in the skies above you. I’d hate for the battle to be dull.”

  Only the fierce-eyed rukhin would have the nerve to call marching on a hundred thousand soldiers dull.

  But before Aelin could say anything, or Elide could ask Borte whether the ruks were ready against the wyverns, the ruk rider was gone.

  When Elide looked to Aelin, the queen’s face was somber.

  Aelin nodded toward the tent flaps. “It’s snowing.”

  “It’s been snowing with little rest for days now.”

  Aelin’s swallow was audible. “It’s a northern snow.”

  The storm slammed into the camp, so fierce that Nesryn and Sartaq had given the ruks orders to hunker down for the day and night.

  As if crossing into Terrasen days earlier had officially put them into brutal winter.

  “We keep going north,” Kashin was saying, lounging by the fire in Hasar’s sprawling tent.

  “Like there is another option,” Hasar snipped, sipping from her mulled wine. “We’ve come this far. We might as well go all the way to Orynth.”

  Nesryn, seated on a low sofa with Sartaq, still wondered what, exactly, she was doing in these meetings. Wondered at the fact that she sat with the royal siblings, the Heir to the khaganate at her side.

  Empr
ess. The word seemed to hang over her every breath, every movement.

  Sartaq said, “Our people have faced odds like this before. We’ll face them again.”

  Indeed, Sartaq had stayed up long into the night these weeks reading the accounts and journals of khaganate warriors and leaders from generations past. They’d brought a trunk of them from the khaganate—for this reason. Most Sartaq had already read, he’d told her. But it never hurt to refresh one’s mind.

  If it bought them a shot against a hundred thousand soldiers, she wouldn’t complain.

  “We won’t be facing them at all if this storm doesn’t let up,” Hasar said, frowning toward her sealed tent flaps. “When I return to Antica, I am never leaving again.”

  “No taste for adventure, sister?” Kashin smiled faintly.

  “Not when it’s in a frozen hell,” Hasar grumbled.

  Nesryn huffed a soft laugh, and Sartaq slipped his arm around her shoulders. A casual, careless bit of contact.

  “We keep going,” Sartaq said. “All the way to the walls of Orynth. We swore as much, and we do not renege on our promises.”

  Nesryn would have fallen in love with him for that statement alone. She leaned into him, savoring his warmth, in silent thanks.

  “Then let us pray,” Kashin said, “that this storm does not slow us so much that there’s nothing left of Orynth to defend.”

  CHAPTER 102

  They had cleared a small chamber near the Great Hall for his viewing.

  The room lit by whatever candles could be spared, the ancient stones were cast in flickering relief around the table where they’d laid him.

  Lysandra lingered in the doorway as she gazed toward the sheet-draped body at the back of the room.

  Ren knelt before him, head bowed. As he had done for hours now. Ever since word had come at sundown that Murtaugh had fallen.

  Hewn down by Valg foot soldiers as he sought to staunch their flow over the city walls courtesy of one of their siege towers.

  They had carried Murtaugh back from the city wall, a throng of soldiers around him.

  Even from the skies, flying in with the witches after Morath had given the order to halt once more, Lysandra had heard Ren’s scream. Had seen from high above as Ren ran down the battlements to the body borne through the city streets.

  Aedion had been there within seconds. Had kept Ren upright as the young lord had sobbed, and had half carried him here, despite the fresh wounds on the prince.

  And so Aedion had stayed. Standing vigil beside Ren all this time, a hand on his shoulder.

  Lysandra had come with Evangeline. Had held the stunned girl while she cried, and lingered while Evangeline strode to Murtaugh’s body to press a kiss to his brow. As much as the sheet would allow them to see, after what the Valg had done.

  She had escorted her ward from the chamber just as Darrow and the others arrived.

  Lysandra hadn’t bothered to look at Darrow, at any of them who hadn’t dared to do what Murtaugh had done. His death, they’d learned, had rallied the men at the wall. Made them topple that siege tower. A lucky, costly victory.

  Lysandra had helped Evangeline bathe, made sure she got a hot meal, and tucked her into bed before returning.

  Finding Aedion still beside Ren, his hand still on the kneeling lord’s shoulder.

  So she’d lingered here, at the doorway. Her own vigil, while the well of her power refilled, while the wounds she’d sustained healed over inch by inch.

  Aedion murmured something to Ren, and withdrew his hand. She wondered if they were his first words in hours.

  Aedion turned toward her then, blinking. Hollowed out. Gutted. Exhausted and grieving and bearing a weight she couldn’t stand to see.

  Even Aedion’s usual stalking gait was barely more than a trudge.

  She followed him out, glancing back only once to where Ren still knelt, head bowed.

  Such terrible silence around him.

  Lysandra kept pace beside Aedion as he turned toward the dining hall. At this hour, food would be scarce, but she’d find it. For both of them. Would go hunting if she needed to.

  She opened her mouth to tell Aedion just that.

  But tears slid down his face, cutting through blood and grime.

  Lysandra stopped, tugging him into a halt.

  He didn’t meet her eyes as she wiped his tears away from one cheek. Then the other.

  “I should have been at the western wall,” he said, voice breaking.

  She knew no words would comfort him. So she wiped Aedion’s tears again, tears he would only show in this shadowed hall, after all others had found their beds.

  And when he still didn’t meet her stare, she cupped his face, lifting his head.

  For a heartbeat, for eternity, they stared at each other.

  She couldn’t stand it, the bleakness, the grief, in his face. Couldn’t endure it.

  Lysandra rose onto her toes and brushed her mouth over his.

  A whisper of a kiss, a promise of life when death hovered.

  She pulled away, finding Aedion’s face as distraught as it had been before.

  So she kissed him again. And lingered by his mouth as she whispered, “He was a good man. A brave and noble man. So are you.” She kissed him a third time. “And when this war is over, however it may end, I will still be here, with you. Whether in this life or the next, Aedion.”

  He closed his eyes, as if breathing in her words. His chest indeed heaved, his broad shoulders shaking.

  Then he opened his eyes, and they were pure turquoise flame, fueled by that grief and anger and defiance at the death around them.

  He gripped her waist in one hand, the other plunging into her hair, and tipped her head back as his mouth met hers.

  The kiss seared her down to her ever-changing bones, and she wrapped her arms around his neck as she held him tightly.

  Alone in the dark, quiet hall, death squatting on the battlefield nearby, Lysandra gave herself to that searing kiss, to Aedion, unable to stop her moan as his tongue flicked against hers.

  The sound was his unleashing, and Aedion twisted them, backing her against the wall. She arched, desperate to feel him against all of her. He growled into her mouth, and the hand at her hip slid to her thigh, hoisting it around his waist as he ground into her, exactly where she needed him.

  Aedion tore his mouth from hers and began to explore her neck, her jaw, her ear. She breathed his name, running her hands down his powerful back as it flexed under her touch.

  More. More. More.

  More of this life, this fire to burn away all shadows.

  More of him.

  Lysandra slid her hands to his chest, fingers digging into the breast of his jacket, seeking the warm skin beneath. Aedion only nipped at her ear, dragged his teeth along her jaw, and seized her mouth in another plundering kiss that had her moaning again.

  Footsteps scuffed down the hall, along with a pointed cough, and Aedion stilled.

  Loud—they must have been so loud—

  But Aedion didn’t budge, though Lysandra unwrapped her leg from around his waist. Just as the sentry walked past, eyes down.

  Walked past quickly.

  Aedion tracked the man the entire time, nothing human in Aedion’s eyes. An apex predator who had found his prey at last.

  No, not prey. Never with him.

  But his partner. His mate.

  When the sentry had vanished around the corner, no doubt running to tell everyone what he’d interrupted, when Aedion leaned to kiss her again, Lysandra halted him with a gentle hand to his mouth. “Tomorrow,” she said softly.

  Aedion let out a snarl—though one without any bite.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, stepping out of his arms. “Live through tomorrow, fight through tomorrow, and we’ll … continue.”

  His breathing was ragged, eyes wary. “Was this from pity?” A broken, miserable question.

  Lysandra slid her hand against his stubble-coated cheek an
d pressed her mouth against his. Let herself taste him again. “It is because I am sick of all this death. And I needed you.”

  Aedion made a low, pained sound, so Lysandra kissed him a final time. Went so far as to run her tongue along the seam of his lips. He opened for her, and then they were tangled in each other again, teeth and tongues and hands roaming, touching, tasting.

  But Lysandra managed to extract herself again, her breathing as jagged as his own.

  “Tomorrow, Aedion,” she breathed.

  “We have enough left in our arsenal for our archers to use for another three days, maybe four if they conserve their stores,” Lord Darrow said, arms crossed as he read through the tally.

  Manon didn’t dislike the old man—part of her even admired his iron-fisted control. But these war councils each evening were beginning to tire her.

  Especially when they brought bleaker and bleaker news.

  Yesterday, there had been one more standing in this chamber. Lord Murtaugh.

  Today, only his grandson sat in a chair, his eyes red-rimmed. A living wraith.

  “Food stores?” Aedion asked from the other side of the table. The general-prince had seen better days, too. They all had. Every face in this room had the same bleak, battered expression.

  “We have food for a month at least,” Darrow said. “But none of that will matter without anyone to defend the walls.”

  Captain Rolfe stepped up to the table. “The firelances are down to the dregs. We’ll be lucky if they last through tomorrow.”

  “Then we conserve them, too,” Manon said. “Use them only for any higher-ranking Valg that make it over the city walls.”

  Rolfe nodded. Another man she begrudgingly admired—though his swaggering could grate.

  It was an effort not to look to the sealed doors to the chamber. Where Asterin and Sorrel should have been waiting. Defending.

  Instead, Petrah and Bronwen stood there. Not as her new Second and Third, but just representatives from their own factions.

  “Let’s say we make the arrows last for four days,” Ansel of Briarcliff said, frowning deeply. “And make the firelances last for three, if used conservatively. Once they’re out, what remains?”