Kingdom of Ash

CHAPTER 114

She was dead.

Aelin was dead.

Her lifeless body had been spiked to the gates of Orynth, her hair shorn to her scalp.

Rowan knelt before the gates, the armies of Morath streaming past him. It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. Yet the sun warmed his face. The reek of death filled his nose.

He gritted his teeth, willing himself out, away from this place. This waking nightmare.

It didn’t falter.

A hand brushed his shoulder, gentle and small.

“You brought this upon yourself, you know,” said a lilting female voice.

He knew that voice. Would never forget it.

Lyria.

She stood behind him, peering up at Aelin. Clad in Maeve’s dark armor, her brown hair braided back from her delicate, lovely face. “You brought it upon her, too, I suppose,” his mate—his lie of a mate—mused.

Dead. Lyria was dead, and Aelin was the one meant to survive—

“You would pick her over me?” Lyria demanded, her chestnut eyes filling. “Is that the sort of male you have become?”

He couldn’t find any words, anything to explain, to apologize.

Aelin was dead.

He couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to.

Connall was smirking at him. “Everything that happened to me is because of you.”

Kneeling on that veranda in Doranelle, in a palace he’d hoped to never see again, Fenrys fought the bile that rose in his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry, but would you change it? Was I the sacrifice you were willing to make in order to get what you wanted?”

Fenrys shook his head, but it was suddenly that of a wolf—the body he had once loved with such pride and fierceness. A wolf’s form—with no ability to speak.

“You took everything I ever wanted,” his twin went on. “Everything. Did you even mourn me? Did it even matter?”

He needed to tell him—tell his twin everything he’d meant to say, wished he’d been able to convey. But that wolf’s tongue did not voice the language of men and Fae. No voice. He had no voice.

“I am dead because of you,” Connall breathed. “I suffered because of you. And I will never forget it.”

Please. The word burned on his tongue. Please—

She couldn’t endure it.

Rowan kneeling there, screaming.

Fenrys sobbing toward the darkened skies.

And Lorcan—Lorcan in utter silence, eyes unseeing as some untold horror played out.

Maeve hummed to herself. “Do you see what I can do? What they are powerless against?”

Rowan screamed louder, the tendons in his neck bulging. Fighting Maeve with all he had.

She couldn’t endure it. Couldn’t stand it.

This was no illusion, no spun dream. This, their pain—this was real.

Maeve’s Valg powers, at last revealed. The same hellish power that the Valg princes possessed. The same power she’d endured. Defeated with flame.

But she had no flame to help them. Nothing at all.

“There’s indeed nothing left for you to bargain with,” Maeve said simply. “But yourself.”

Anything but this. Anything but this—

“You are nothing.”

Elide stood before him, the lofty towers of a city Lorcan had never seen, the city that should have been his home, beckoning on the horizon. The wind whipped her dark hair, as cold as the light in her eyes.

“A bastard-born nobody,” she went on. “Did you think I’d sully myself with you?”

“I think you might be my mate,” he rasped.

Elide snickered. “Mate? Why would you ever think you were entitled to such a thing after all you have done?”

It couldn’t be real—it wasn’t real. And yet that coldness in her face, the distance …

He’d earned it. Deserved it.

Maeve surveyed them, the three males who had been her slaves, lost to her dark power as it ripped through their minds, their memories, and laughed. “Pity about Gavriel. At least he fell nobly.”

Gavriel—

Maeve turned to her. “You didn’t know, did you?” A click of her tongue. “The Lion will roar no longer, his life the asking price for defending his cub.”

Gavriel was dead. She felt the truth in Maeve’s words. Let them punch a hole through her heart.

“You could not save him, it seems,” Maeve went on. “But you can save them.”

Fenrys screamed now. Rowan had fallen silent, his green eyes vacant. Whatever he beheld had drawn him past screaming, beyond weeping.

Pain. Unspeakable, unimaginable pain. As she had endured—perhaps worse.

And yet …

Aelin didn’t give Maeve time to react. Time to even turn her head as she grabbed Goldryn where it lay beside her and hurled it at the queen.

It missed Maeve by an inch, the Valg queen twisting aside before the blade buried itself deep in the snow, steaming where it landed. Still burning.

It was all Aelin needed.

She lashed out, flame spearing into the world.

But not for Maeve.

It slammed into Rowan, into Fenrys and Lorcan. Struck their shoulders, hard and deep.

Burning them. Branding them.

Aelin was dead. She was dead, and he had failed her.

“You are a lesser male,” Lyria said, still studying the gate where Aelin’s body swayed. “You deserved this. After what was done to me, you deserved this.”

Aelin was dead.

He did not wish to live in this world. Not for a heartbeat longer.

Aelin was dead. And he—

His shoulder twinged. And then it burned.

As if someone had pressed a brand to it. A red-hot poker.

A flame.

He looked down, but beheld no wound.

Lyria continued on, “You bring only suffering to those you love.”

The words were distant. Secondary to that burning wound.

It singed him again, a phantom wound, a memory—

Not a memory. Not a memory, but a lifeline thrown into the dark. Into an illusion.

An anchor.

As he had once anchored her, hauling her from a Valg prince’s grip.

Aelin.

His hands curled at his sides. Aelin, who had known suffering as he did. Who had been shown peaceful lives and still chosen him, exactly as he was, for what they had both endured. Illusions—those had been illusions.

Rowan gritted his teeth. Felt the thing wrapped around his mind. Holding him captive.

He let out a low snarl.

She had done this—done it before. Torn into his mind. Twisted and taken from him this most vital thing. Aelin.

He would not let her take it again.

Lorcan roared at the brand that shredded through his senses, through Elide’s mocking words, through the image of Perranth, the home he wanted so badly and might never see.

Roared, and the world rippled. Became snow and darkness and battle.

And Maeve. Poised before them, her pale face livid.

Her power lunged for him, a striking panther—

Elide now lay in a grand, opulent bed, her withered hand reaching for his. An aged hand, riddled with marks, the delicate blue veins intertwining like the many rivers around Doranelle.

And her face … Her dark eyes were filmy, her wrinkles deep. Her thinned hair white as snow.

“This is a truth you cannot outrun,” she said, her voice a croak. “A sword above our heads.”

Her deathbed. That’s what this was. And the hand he brushed against hers—it remained young. He remained young.

Bile coated his throat. “Please.” He put a hand to his chest, as if it’d stop the relentless cracking.

Faint, throbbing pain answered back.

Elide’s breaths rasped against his ears. He couldn’t watch this, couldn’t—

He dug his hand harder into his chest. To the pain there.

Life—life was pain. Pain, and joy. Joy because of the pain.

He saw it in Elide’s face. In every line and age mark. In every white hair. A life lived—together. The pain of parting because of how wonderful it had been.

The darkness beyond thinned. Lorcan dug his hand into the burning wound in his shoulder.

Elide let out a hacking cough that wrecked him, yet he took it into his heart, every bit of it. All that the future might offer.

It did not frighten him.

Again and again, Connall died. Over and over.

Connall lay on the floor of the veranda, his blood leaking toward the misty river far below.

His fate—it should have been his fate.

If he walked over the edge of the veranda, into that roaring river, would anyone mark his passing? If he leaped, his brother in his arms, would the river make a quick end for him?

He didn’t deserve a quick end. He deserved a slow, brutal bloodletting.

His punishment, his just reward for what he’d done to his brother. The life he’d allowed to be set in his shadow, had always known remained in his shadow and hadn’t tried, not really, to share the light.

A burn, violent and unflinching, tore through him. As if someone had shoved his shoulder into a furnace.

He deserved it. He welcomed it into his heart.

He hoped it would destroy him.

Pain. The thing she had dreaded inflicting upon them most, had fought and fought to keep them from.

The scent of their burned flesh stung her nostrils, and Maeve let out a low laugh. “Was that a shield, Aelin? Or were you trying to put them out of their misery?”

As he kneeled beside her, Rowan’s hand twitched at whatever horror he beheld, right over the edge of his discarded hatchet.

Pine and snow and the coppery tang of blood blended, rising to meet her as his palm sliced open with the force of that twitch.

“We can keep at this, you know,” Maeve went on. “Until Orynth lies in ruin.”

Rowan stared sightlessly ahead, his palm leaking blood onto the snow.

His fingers curled. Slightly.

A beckoning gesture, too small for Maeve to note. For anyone to note—except for her. Except for the silent language between them, the way their bodies had spoken to each other from the moment they’d met in that dusty alley in Varese.

A small act of defiance. As he had once defied Maeve before her throne in Doranelle.

Fenrys sobbed again, and Maeve glanced toward him.

Aelin slid her hand along Rowan’s hatchet, the pain a whisper through her body.

Her mate trembled, fighting the mind that had invaded his once more.

“What a waste,” Maeve said, turning back to them. “For these fine males to leave my service, only to wind up bound to a queen with hardly more than a few drops of power to her name.”

Aelin closed her hand around Rowan’s.

A door flung open between them. A door back to himself, to her.

His fingers locked around hers.

Aelin let out a low laugh. “I may have no magic,” she said, “but my mate does.”

Waiting to strike from the other side of that dark doorway, Rowan hauled Aelin to her feet as their powers, their souls, fused.

The force of Rowan’s magic hit her, ancient and raging. Ice and wind turned to searing flame.

Her heart sang, roaring, at the power that flowed from Rowan and into her. At her side, her mate held fast. Unbreakable.

Rowan smiled—fierce and feral and wicked. A crown of flame, twin to her own, appeared atop his head.

As one, they looked to Maeve.

Maeve hissed, her dark power massing again. “Rowan Whitethorn does not have the brute power that you once did.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t,” Lorcan said from a step behind them, his eyes clear and free, “but together, we do.” He glanced to Aelin, a hand rising to the angry red burn marring his chest.

“And beyond us,” Aelin said, sketching a mark through the snow with the blood she’d spilled—her blood, and Rowan’s—“I think they have plenty, too.”

Light flared at their feet, and Maeve’s power surged—but too late.

The portal opened. Exactly as the Wyrdmarks in the books Chaol and Yrene had brought from the southern continent had promised.

Precisely to where Aelin had intended. Where she had glimpsed as she’d tumbled back through the Wyrdgate. Where she and Rowan had ventured days ago, testing this very portal.

The forest glen was silvered in the moonlight, the snows thick. Strange, old trees—older than even those in Oakwald. Trees that could only be found north of Terrasen, in the hinterlands beyond.

But it was not the trees that made Maeve halt. No, it was the teeming mass of people, their armor and weapons glinting beneath their heavy furs. Amongst them, large as horses, wolves growled. Wolves with riders.

Down the battlefield, portal after portal opened. Right where Rowan and the cadre had drawn them in their own blood as they fought. All to be opened upon this spell. This command. And beyond each portal, that teeming mass of people could be seen. The army.

“I heard you planned to come here, you see,” Aelin said to Maeve, Rowan’s power a symphony in her blood. “Heard you planned to bring the kharankui-princesses with you.” She smiled. “So I thought to bring some friends of my own.”

The first of the figures beyond the portal emerged, riding a great silver wolf. And even with the furs over her heavy armor, the female’s arched ears could be seen.

“The Fae who dwelled in Terrasen were not wiped out so thoroughly,” Aelin said. Lorcan began grinning. “They found a new home—with the Wolf Tribe.” For those were humans also riding those wolves. As all the myths had claimed. “And did you know that while many of them came here with Brannon, there was an entire clan of Fae who arrived from the southern continent? Fleeing you, I think. All of them, actually, don’t really like you, I’m sorry to say.”

More and more Fae and wolf-riders stepped toward the portal, weapons out. Beyond them, stretching into the distance, their host flowed.

Maeve backed away a step. Just one.

“But you know who they hate even more?” Aelin pointed with Goldryn toward the battlefield. “Those spiders. Nesryn Faliq told me all about how their ancestors battled them in the southern continent. How they fled you when you tried to keep their healers chained, and then wound up having to battle your little friends. And when they came to Terrasen, they still remembered. Some of the truth was lost, grew muddled, but they remembered. They taught their offspring. Trained them.”

The Fae and their wolves beyond the portals now fixed their sights on the kharankui hybrids at last emerging onto the plain.

“I told them I’d deal with you myself,” Aelin said, and Rowan chuckled, “but the spiders … Oh, the spiders are all theirs. I think they’ve been waiting a while for it, actually. The Ironteeth witches, too. Apparently, the Yellowlegs weren’t very kind to those trapped in their animal forms these ten years.”

Aelin let out a flare of light. The only signal she needed to give.

For a people who had asked for only one thing when Aelin had begged them to fight, to join this last battle: to return home. To return to Orynth after a decade of hiding.

Her flame danced over the battlefield. And the lost Fae of Terrasen, the fabled Wolf Tribe who had welcomed and protected them at their sides, charged through the portals. Right into Morath’s unsuspecting ranks.

Maeve had gone deathly pale. Paled further as magic sparked and surged and those spider-hybrids went down, their shrieks of surprise silenced under Asterion blades.

Yet Rowan’s hand tightened on Aelin’s, and she peered up at her mate. But his eyes were on Fenrys. On the dark power Maeve still had wrapped around him.

The male remained sprawled in the snow, his tears silent and unending. His face a bloodied ruin.

Through the roar of Rowan’s power, Aelin felt for the threads leading from her heart, her soul.

Look at me. Her silent command echoed down the blood oath—to Fenrys.

Look at me.

“I suppose you think you can now finish me off in some grand fashion,” Maeve said to her and Rowan, that dark power swelling. “You, who I have wronged the most.”

Look at me.

His shredded face leaking blood, Fenrys looked, his eyes blindly turning toward hers. And clearing—just slightly.

Aelin blinked four times. I am here, I am with you.

No reply.

“Do you understand what a Valg queen is?” Maeve asked them, triumph on her face despite the long-lost Fae and wolf-riders charging onto the battlefield beyond them. “I am as vast and eternal as the sea. Erawan and his brothers sought me for my power.” Her magic flowed around her in an unholy aura. “You believe yourself to be a God-Killer, Aelin Galathynius? What were they but vain creatures locked into this world? What were they but things your human mind cannot comprehend?” She lifted her arms. “I am a god.”

Aelin blinked again at Fenrys, Rowan’s power gathering within her veins, readying for the first and likely final strike they’d be able to land, Lorcan’s power rallying beside theirs. Yet over and over, Aelin blinked to Fenrys, to those half-vacant eyes.

I am here, I am with you.

I am here, I am with you.

A queen had said that to him. In their secret, silent language. During the unspeakable hours of torment, they had said that to each other.

Not alone.

He had not been alone then, and neither had she.

The veranda in Doranelle and bloodied snows outside Orynth blended and flashed.

I am here, I am with you.

Maeve stood there. Before Aelin and Rowan, burning with power. Before Lorcan, his dark gifts a shadow around him. Fae—so many Fae and wolves, some riding them—pouring on to the battlefield through holes in the air.

It had worked, then. Their mad plan, to be enacted when all went to hell, when they had nothing left.

Yet Maeve’s power swelled.

Aelin’s eyes remained upon him, anchoring him. Pulling him from that bloodied veranda. To a body trembling in pain. A face that burned and throbbed.

I am here, I am with you.

And Fenrys found himself blinking back. Just once.

Yes.

And when Aelin’s eyes moved again, he understood.

Aelin looked to Rowan. Found her mate already smiling at her. Aware of what likely awaited them. “Together,” she said quietly. Rowan’s thumb brushed against hers. In love and farewell.

And then they erupted.

Flame, white-hot and blinding, roared toward Maeve.

But the dark queen had been waiting. Twin waves of darkness arched and cascaded for them.

Only to be halted by a shield of black wind. Beaten aside.

Aelin and Rowan struck again, fast as an asp. Arrows and spears of flame that had Maeve conceding a step. Then another.

Lorcan battered her from the side, forcing Maeve to retreat another step.

“I’d say,” Aelin panted, speaking above the glorious roar of magic through her, the unbreakable song of her and Rowan, “that you haven’t wronged us the most at all.”

Like alternating punches, Lorcan struck with them. Fire, then midnight death.

Maeve’s dark brows narrowed.

Aelin flung out a wall of flame that pushed Maeve back another step. “But him—oh, he has a score to settle with you.”

Maeve’s eyes went wide, and she made to turn. But not fast enough.

Not fast enough at all as Fenrys vanished from where he knelt, and reappeared—right behind Maeve.

Goldryn burned bright as he plunged it through her back.

Into the dark heart within.