Kingdom of Ash

CHAPTER 20

“Do you know the story of the queen who walked through worlds?”

Seated on the mossy carpet of an ancient glen, one hand toying with the small white flowers strewn across it, Aelin shook her head.

In the towering oaks that formed a lattice over the clearing, small stars blinked and shimmered, as if they’d been snared by the branches themselves. Beyond them, bathing the forest with light bright enough to see by, a full moon had risen. All around them, faint, lilting singing floated on the warm summer air.

“It is a sad story,” her aunt said, one corner of her red-painted mouth curling upward as she leaned back on her seat carved into a granite boulder. Her usual place, while they had these lessons, these long, peaceful chats deep into the balmy summer nights. “And an old one.”

Aelin lifted an eyebrow. “Aren’t I a little old for faerie stories?” She’d indeed just celebrated her twentieth birthday three days ago, in another clearing not too far from here. Half of Doranelle had come, it had seemed, and yet her mate had found a way to sneak her from the revelry. All the way to a secluded pool in the forest’s heart. Her face still warmed to think of that moonlit swim, what Rowan had made her feel, how he’d worshipped her in the sun-warmed water.

Mate. The word was still a surprise. As it had been to arrive here at spring’s end and see him beside her aunt’s throne and simply know. And in the months since, their courting … Aelin indeed blushed at the thought of it. What they’d done in that forest pool had been the culmination of those months. And an unleashing. The mating marks on her neck—and on Rowan’s—proved it. She would not be returning to Terrasen alone when autumn arrived.

“No one is too old for faerie stories,” her aunt said, faint smile growing. “And as you are part faerie yourself, I would think you’d have some interest in them.”

Aelin smiled back, bowing her head. “Fair enough, Aunt.”

Aunt wasn’t entirely accurate, not with generations and millennia separating them, but it was the only thing the queen had suggested Aelin call her.

Maeve settled further into her seat. “Long ago, when the world was new, when there were no human kingdoms, when no wars had marred the earth, a young queen was born.”

Aelin folded her legs beneath her, angling her head.

“She did not know she was a queen. Amongst her people, power was not inherited, but simply born. And as she grew, her strength rose with her. She found the land she dwelled in to be too small for that power. Too dark and cold and grim. She had gifts similar to many wielded by her kind, but she had been given more, her power a sharper, more intricate weapon—enough that she was different. Her people saw that power and bowed to it, and she ruled them.

“Word spread of her gifts, and three kings came to seek her hand. To form an alliance between their throne and the one she had built for herself, small as it might have been. For a time, she thought it would be the newness, the challenge that she had always craved. The three kings were brothers, each mighty in his own right, their power vast and terrifying. She picked the eldest among them, not for any particular skill or grace, but for his countless libraries. What she might learn in his lands, what she might do with her power … It was that knowledge she craved, not the king himself.”

A strange story. Aelin’s brows rose, but her aunt continued on.

“So they were wed, and she left her small territory to join him in his castle. For a time, she was contented, both by her husband and the knowledge his home offered her. He and his two brothers were conquerors, and spent much of their time away, leashing new lands to their shared throne. She did not mind, not when it gave her freedom to learn as she would. But her husband’s libraries contained knowledge even he did not realize was held within. Lore and wisdom from worlds long since turned to dust. She learned that there were indeed other worlds. Not the dark, blasted realm in which they lived, but worlds beyond that, living atop one another and never realizing it. Worlds where the sun was not a watery trickle through the ash-clouds, but a golden stream of warmth. Worlds where green existed. She had never heard of such a color. Green. Nor had she heard of blue—not the shade of sky that was described. She could not so much as picture it.”

Aelin frowned. “A pitiful existence.”

Maeve nodded grimly. “It was. And the more she read about these other worlds, where long-dead wayfarers had once roamed, the more she wanted to see them. To know the kiss of the sun on her face. To hear the morning songs of sparrows, the crying of gulls over the sea. The sea—that, too, was foreign to her. An endless sprawl of water, with its own moods and hidden depths. All they had in her lands were shallow, murky lakes and half-dried streams. So while her husband and his two brothers were off waging yet another war, she began to ponder how she might find a way into one of those worlds. How she might leave.”

“Is such a thing even possible?” Something nagged at her, as if it might indeed be true, but perhaps that was one of her own mother’s tales, or even Marion’s, tugging on her memory.

Maeve nodded. “It was. Using the very language of existence itself, doors might be opened, however briefly, between worlds. It was forbidden, outlawed long before her husband and his brothers were born. Once the last of the ancient wayfarers had died out, the paths between realms were sealed, their methods of world-walking lost with them. Or so all had thought. But deep in her husband’s private library, she found the old spells. She began with small experiments. First, she opened a door to the realm of resting, to find one of those wayfarers and ask her how it was properly done.” A knowing smile. “The wayfarer refused to tell her. So the queen began to teach herself. Opening and closing doors long since forgotten or sealed. Peering deep into the workings of the cosmos. Her own world became a cage. She grew tired of her husband’s warring, his casual cruelty. And when he went away to war once again, the queen gathered her closest handmaidens, opened a door to a new world, and left the one she’d been born into.”

“She left?” Aelin blurted. “She—she just left her own world? Permanently?”

“It had never been her world, not really. She had been born to rule others.”

“Where did she go?”

That smile grew a bit. “To a fair, lovely world. Where there was no war, no darkness. Not like that in which she had been born. She was made a queen there, too. Was able to hide herself within a new body so that none could know what she was beneath, so that even her own husband would not recognize her.”

“Did he ever find her again?”

“No, though he looked. Found out all she’d learned, and taught it to himself and his brothers. They tore apart world after world to find her. And when they arrived at the world where she had made her new home, they did not know her. Even as they went to war, she did not reveal herself. She won, and two of the kings, her husband included, were banished back to their own world. The third remained trapped, his power nearly broken. He crawled off into the depths of the earth, and the victorious queen spent her long, long existence preparing for his return, preparing her people for it. For the three kings had gone beyond her methods of world-walking. They had found a way to permanently open a gate between worlds, and had made three keys to do so. To wield those keys was to control all worlds, to have the power of eternity in the palm of your hand. She wished to find them, only so she might possess the strength to banish any enemies, banish her husband’s youngest brother back to his realm. To protect her new, lovely world. It was all she ever wanted: to dwell in peace, without the shadow of her past hunting her.”

From far away, that ghost of memory pushed. As if she’d forgotten to douse a flame left burning in her room. “And did the queen find the keys?”

Maeve’s smile turned sad. “Do you think she did, Aelin?”

Aelin considered. So many of their chats, their lessons in this glen, held deeper puzzles, questions for her to work through, to help her when she one day took her throne, Rowan at her side.

As if she’d summoned him, the pine-and-snow scent of her mate filled the clearing. A rustle of wings, and there he was, perched in hawk form on one of the towering oaks. Her warrior-prince.

She smiled toward him, as she had for weeks now, when he’d come to escort her back to her rooms in the river palace. It was during those walks from forest to mist-shrouded city that she had come to know him, love him. More than she had ever loved anything.

Aelin again faced her aunt. “The queen was clever, and ambitious. I would think she could do anything, even find the keys.”

“So you would believe. And yet they eluded her.”

“Where did they go?”

Maeve’s dark stare unwaveringly held hers. “Where do you think they went?”

Aelin opened her mouth. “I think—”

She blinked. Paused.

Maeve’s smile returned, soft and kind. As her aunt had been to her from the start. “Where do you think the keys are, Aelin?”

She opened her mouth once more. And again halted.

Like an invisible chain yanked her back. Silenced her.

Chain—a chain. She glanced down at her hands, her wrists. As if expecting them to be there.

She had never felt a shackle’s bite in her life. And yet she stared at the empty place on her wrist where she could have sworn there was a scar. Only smooth, sun-kissed skin remained.

“If this world were at risk, if those three terrible kings threatened to destroy it, where would you go to find the keys?”

Aelin looked up at her aunt.

Another world. There was another world. Like a fragment of a dream, there was another world, and in it, she had a wrist with a scar on it. Had scars all over.

And her mate, perched overhead … He had a tattoo down his face and neck and arm in that world. A sad story—his tattoo told a sad, awful story. About loss. Loss caused by a dark queen—

“Where are the keys hidden, Aelin?”

That placid, loving smile remained on Maeve’s face. And yet …

And yet.

“No,” Aelin breathed.

Something slithered in the depths of her aunt’s stare. “No what?”

This wasn’t her existence, her life. This place, these blissful months learning in Doranelle, finding her mate—

Blood and sand and crashing waves.

“No.”

Her voice was a thunderclap through the peaceful glen.

Aelin bared her teeth, fingers curling in the moss.

Maeve let out a soft laugh. Rowan flapped from the branches to land on the queen’s upraised arm.

He didn’t so much as fight it when she wrapped her thin white hands around his neck. And snapped it.

Aelin screamed. Screamed, clutching at her chest, at the shredding mating bond—

Aelin arched off the altar, and every broken and torn part of her body screamed with her.

Above her, Maeve was smiling. “You liked that vision, didn’t you?”

Not real. That had not been real. Rowan was alive, he was alive—

She tried to move her arm. Red-hot lightning lashed her, and she screamed again.

Only a broken rasp came out. Broken, just as her arm now lay—

Now lay—

Bone gleamed, jutting upward along more places than she could count. Blood and twisted skin, and—

No shackle scars, even with the wreckage.

In this world, this place, she did not have scars, either.

Another illusion, another spun dreamscape—

She screamed again. Screamed at her ruined arm, the unscarred skin, screamed at the lingering echo of the severed mating bond.

“Do you know what pains me most, Aelin?” Maeve’s words were soft as a lover’s. “It’s that you believe I’m the villain in this.”

Aelin sobbed through her teeth as she tried and failed to move her arm. Both arms. She cast her gaze through the space, this real-yet-not room.

They’d repaired the box. Had welded a new slab of iron over the lid. Then over the sides. The bottom. Less air trickled in, the hours or days now spent inside in near-suffocating heat. It had been a relief when she’d finally been chained to the altar.

Whenever that had been. If it had even happened at all.

“I have no doubt that your mate or Elena or even Brannon himself filled your head with lies about what I’ll do with the keys.” Maeve ran a hand over the stone lip of the altar, right through her splattered blood and shards of bone. “I meant what I said. I like this world. I do not wish to destroy it. Only improve it. Imagine a realm where there is no hunger, no pain. Isn’t that what you and your cohorts are fighting for? A better world?”

The words were a mockery. A mockery of what she’d promised so many. What she had promised Terrasen, and still owed it.

Aelin tried not to shift against the chains, against her broken arms, against the tight pressure pushing on her skin from the inside. A rising intensity along her bones, in her head. A little more, every day.

Maeve heaved a small sigh. “I know what you think of me, Fire-Bringer. What you assume. But there are some truths that cannot be shared. Even for the keys.”

Yet the growing strain cracking within her, smothering the pain … perhaps worse.

Maeve cupped her cheek over the mask. “The Queen Who Was Promised. I wish to save you from that sacrifice, offered up by a headstrong girl.” A soft laugh. “I’d even let you have Rowan. The two of you here, together. While you and I work to save this world.”

The words were lies. She knew it, though she couldn’t quite remember where one truth ended and the lie began. If her mate had belonged to another before her. Been given away. Or had that been the nightmare?

Gods, the pressure in her body. Her blood.

You do not yield.

“You can feel it, even now,” Maeve went on. “The urge of your body to say yes.” Aelin opened her eyes, and confusion must have glittered there, because Maeve smiled. “Do you know what being encased in iron does to a magic-wielder? You wouldn’t feel it immediately, but as time goes on … your magic needs release, Aelin. That pressure is your magic screaming it wants you to come free of these chains and release the strain. Your very blood tells you to heed me.”

Truth. Not the submission part, but the deepening pressure she knew would be worse than any pain from burnout. She’d felt it once, when plunging as far into her power as she’d ever gone.

That would be nothing compared to this.

“I am leaving for a few days,” Maeve said.

Aelin stilled.

Maeve shook her head in a mockery of disappointment. “You are not progressing as quickly as I wished, Aelin.”

Across the room, Fenrys let out a warning snarl. Maeve didn’t so much as glance at him.

“It has come to my attention that our mutual enemy has been spotted again on these shores. One of them, a Valg prince, was contained a few days’ journey from here, near the southern border. It brought with it several collars, no doubt to use on my own people. Perhaps even on me.”

No. No—

Maeve brushed a hand over Aelin’s neck, as if tracing a line where the collar would go. “So I will go myself to retrieve that collar, to see what Erawan’s minion might say for itself. I ripped apart the Valg princes who encountered me in the first war,” she said quietly. “It shall be rather easy, I suppose, to instead bend them to my will. Well, bend one to my will and wrest it from Erawan’s control, once I put its collar around your neck.”

No.

The word was a steady chant, a rising shriek within her.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,” Maeve mused.

No.

Maeve poked Aelin’s shattered wrist, and Aelin swallowed her scream. “Think on it. And when I return, let’s discuss my proposition again. Maybe all that growing strain will make you see more clearly, too.”

A collar. Maeve was going to retrieve a Wyrdstone collar—

Maeve turned, black gown swirling with her. She crossed the threshold, and her owl swooped from its perch atop the open door to land upon her shoulder. “I’m sure Cairn will find ways to entertain you while I’m away.”

She didn’t know how long she lay on the altar after the healers swept in with their sweet-smelling smoke. They’d put the metal gauntlets back on her.

With each hour, the pressure beneath her skin grew. Even in that heavy, drugged sleep. As if once she’d acknowledged it, it wouldn’t be ignored. Or contained.

It would be the least of her problems, if Maeve put a collar around her neck.

Fenrys sat by the wall, concern bright in his eyes as he blinked. Are you all right?

She blinked twice. No.

No, she was not anywhere near to all right. Maeve had been waiting for this, waiting for this pressure to begin, worse than anything Cairn might do. And with the collar Maeve now went to personally retrieve …

She couldn’t let herself contemplate it. A more horrific form of slavery, one she might never escape, never be able to fight. Not a breaking of the Fire-Bringer, but an erasure.

To take all she was, power and knowledge, and rip it from her. To have her trapped inside while she witnessed her own voice yield the location of the Wyrdkeys. Swear the blood oath to Maeve. Wholly submit to her.

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

She answered in kind. I am here, I am with you.

Her magic surged, seeking a way out, filling the gaps between her breath and bones. She couldn’t find room for it, couldn’t do anything to soothe it.

You do not yield.

She focused on the words. On her mother’s voice.

Perhaps the magic would devour her from the inside before Maeve returned.

But she did not know how she’d endure it. Endure another few days of this, let alone the next hour. To ease the strain, just a fraction …

She shut down the thoughts that snaked into her mind. Her own or Maeve’s, she didn’t care.

Fenrys blinked again, the same message over and over. I am here, I am with you.

Aelin closed her eyes, praying for oblivion.

“Get up.”

A mockery of words she’d once heard.

Cairn stood above her, a smile twisting his hateful face. And the wild light in his eyes …

Aelin went still as he began unfastening her chains.

Guards stomped in. Fenrys snarled.

The pressure writhed against her skin, pounding in her head like a brutal hammer. Worse than the tools of breaking dangling at Cairn’s side.

“Maeve wants you moved,” he said, that feverish light growing as he hoisted her up and carried her to the box. Let her drop into it so hard the chains clanked against her bones, her skull. Her eyes watered, and she lunged up, but the lid slammed shut.

Darkness, hot and tight, pressed in. The twin to what grew under her skin.

“With Morath creeping onto these shores again, she wants you moved somewhere more secure until she returns,” Cairn crooned through the lid. Guards grunted, and the box lifted, Aelin shifting, biting her lip against the movement. “I don’t give a shit what she does to you once she puts that demon collar around your throat. But until then … I’ll get you all to myself, won’t I? A last little bout of fun for you and me, until you find yourself with a new friend inside you.”

Dread coiled in her stomach, smothering the pressure.

Moving her to another location—she had once warned a young healer about that. Had told her if an attacker tried to move her, they would most definitely kill her, and she was to make a final stand before they could.

And that was without the threat of a Wyrdstone collar traveling closer with each passing day.

But Cairn wouldn’t kill her, not when Maeve needed her alive.

Aelin focused on her breathing. In and out, out and in.

It didn’t keep the oily, sharp fear from taking hold. From making her start shaking.

“You are to join us, Fenrys,” Cairn said, laughter in his voice as Aelin slid against the metal of the box while they walked up the stairs. “I wouldn’t want you to miss a heartbeat of this.”