Kingdom of Ash

CHAPTER 33

They had been too late.

Not just by an hour, or a day. No, judging by the state of the bodies in the leaf-strewn clearing twenty miles south, the week they had been delayed had cost the Eyllwe war band everything.

Morath had left the warriors where they lay, a few red-caped Crochans—the ones who had summoned their northern sisters here—amongst the fallen. The smell of decay was enough to make Manon’s eyes water as they surveyed what had been left.

She had done this.

Brought this about, in delaying the Crochans through that skirmish. One look at Dorian, the king lingering at the edge of the clearing with an arm over his nose to ward against the reek, and she knew he thought it, too. The sharpness in his eyes spoke enough.

“Some got away,” Edda announced, the Shadow’s face grim. “But most didn’t.”

“They wanted survivors,” Bronwen said, loud enough for all to hear. “To sow fear.”

Manon studied the shattered trees, the ancient oaks as broken as the bodies on the forest floor. Proof of who, exactly, had been responsible for the massacre.

She had done that, too.

Bronwen said, voice cold and low, “What mortal band could ever hope to survive an attack by one of the Ironteeth legions? Especially when that aerial legion was trained by such a skilled Wing Leader.”

“Choose your words carefully,” Asterin warned.

But Una, the pretty, brown-haired Crochan and another of Manon’s cousins, gripped her silver-bound broom and said, “You trained them. All of you—you trained the witches who did this.” Una pointed to the decaying bodies, the torn throats, the killing that had not stopped at quick deaths. Not at all. “And you expect us to forget that?”

Silence fell. Even from Asterin. Glennis said nothing.

Manon’s hands turned frail. Foreign. The iron within them brittle.

She had done this. The soldiers in the wide clearing were nothing and no one to her, most were mere mortals, and yet … A woman lay near Manon’s boots, her torso split clean open from navel to sternum. Her brown eyes gazed unseeingly at the shattered canopy overhead, her mouth still gaping in pain.

“I can burn them,” Dorian offered no one in particular.

Who had she been, the warrior before her? Who had she fought for? Not kingdoms or rulers, but who in her life had been worth defending?

“We should alert the King and Queen of Eyllwe,” Bronwen was saying. “Warn their princes, too. Tell them to lie low. Erawan is beyond taking prisoners.”

Manon stared and stared at the slaughtered warrior. What she had once delighted in. What she had once flaunted before the world, and done with not a shred of regret. Only with the wish that her grandmother would approve. That the Ironteeth would approve.

This was what they would be remembered for.

What she would be remembered for.

Erawan’s crowned rider. His Wing Leader.

“Don’t burn them,” Manon said.

Silence fell in the clearing.

But Manon knelt on the festering earth, unsheathed her iron nails, and began digging.

Yanking off her gloves, Asterin lowered herself to the ground nearby. Then Sorrel and Vesta. Then the rest of the Thirteen.

The cold, firm earth did not yield easily. It tore at Manon’s fingers, root and rock burning as they scraped at her skin.

Across the clearing, Karsyn, the witch whose broom Manon had returned, made to kneel as well. But Manon held up a filthy, already bleeding hand. The witch halted. “Only the Thirteen,” Manon said. “We will bury them.” The Crochans stared at her, and Manon ripped away the ancient soil. “We’ll bury all of them.”

For hours, Manon and the Thirteen knelt in the blood-soaked earth and dug the grave.

Dorian assisted Bronwen and Glennis in drafting messages to the King and Queen of Eyllwe and their two sons. Warning them of the danger—and nothing more. No request for aid, for armies.

Just before dawn, the Crochan messengers returned. Their southern kin who had summoned them here had arrived right after the massacre, too late to save the human war band or the few witches they’d sent ahead. They had flown right to Banjali, where their four covens now aided the King and Queen of Eyllwe.

Not that the Eyllwe royals seemed to need it. No, the other Crochan messenger had returned with a message from the king himself: the loss of the war band was grave indeed, but Eyllwe was not broken by it. Their rebels and gathered forces, while small, were still resisting Morath, still unbroken. They would continue to hold the line in the South, and would do so until their final breaths.

Dorian gleaned the unwritten words, though: they did not have a single soldier to spare for Terrasen. After what he’d seen, Dorian was now inclined to agree.

Eyllwe had given too much, for too long. It was time for the rest of them to shoulder the burden.

Dorian wondered if Manon noted the Crochans who watched her. Not with hatred, but some small degree of respect. Together, the Thirteen dug a massive grave, not even asking their wyverns to haul away the dirt.

The sun rose, then began its descent. Slowly, the grave took form. Large enough for every fallen warrior.

He had to go to Morath. Soon.

Before this occurred again. Before one more mass grave was dug. He couldn’t endure the thought of it, worse than the thought of another collar going around his neck.

Night was full overhead by the time Dorian managed to slip away. By the time he found an empty clearing, drew the marks, and plunged Damaris into earth shining with his own blood.

His summons was answered quickly this time.

Yet it was not Gavin who emerged, shimmering, from the night air.

Dorian’s magic flared, rallying to strike, as the figure took form.

As Kaltain Rompier, clad in an onyx gown and dark hair unbound, smiled sadly at him.

Every word vanished from Dorian’s tongue.

But his magic remained swirling about him, invisible hands eager to crack bone.

Not that there was any life to steal from Kaltain Rompier.

Yet she still held up a slender hand, her gauzy dress and silken hair floating on a phantom wind. “I mean you no harm.”

“I didn’t summon you.” It was the only thing he could think to say.

Kaltain’s dark eyes slid toward Damaris, jutting from the circle of Wyrdmarks. “Didn’t you?”

He didn’t want to contemplate why or how the sword had somehow called her, not Gavin. Whether the sword had a will of its own, or whether the god who’d blessed it had orchestrated this meeting. For whatever truth it deemed necessary to show him.

“I thought you were destroyed at Morath,” he rasped.

“I was.” Her face was softer than he’d ever seen it in life. “In so many ways, I was.”

Manon and Elide had told him what she’d endured. What she’d done for them. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for?”

Then the words tumbled out, spilling from where he’d kept them since the Stone Marshes of Eyllwe. “For not seeing as I should have. For not knowing where they took you. For not helping you when I had the chance.”

“Did you have the chance?” The question was calm, yet he could have sworn an edge sharpened in her voice.

He opened his mouth to deny it. But he made himself look back—at who he’d been long before the collar, before Sorscha. “I knew you were in the castle dungeon. I was content to let you rot there. And then Perrington—Erawan, I mean, took you to Morath, and I didn’t bother to wonder about it.” Shame sluiced through him. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

A Crown Prince who had not served his kingdom or his people, not really. Gavin had been right.

Kaltain’s edges shimmered. “I was not wholly blameless, you know.”

“What happened to you in Morath is in no way your fault.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she agreed, a shadow passing over her face. “But I made choices of my own in going to Rifthold last autumn, in pursuing my ambition for you—your crown. I regret some of them.”

His gaze slid to her bare forearm, to the scar that lingered even in death. “You saved my friends,” he said, and knelt before her. “You gave up everything to save them, and get the Wyrdkey away from Erawan.” He would do the same, if he could survive Morath’s horrors. “I am in your debt.”

Kaltain stared down at where he knelt. “I never had friends of my own. Not as you have. I always envied you for it. You, and Aelin.”

He lifted his head. “You know who she is?”

A hint of a smile. “Death has its advantages.”

He couldn’t stop his next question. “Is—is it better there? Are you at peace?”

“I am not allowed to say,” Kaltain replied softly, her eyes shining with understanding. “And I am not allowed to say who dwells here with me.”

He nodded, fighting past the tightness in his chest, the disappointment. But he cocked his head to the side. “Who forbids you from doing so?” If the twelve gods of this land were stranded in Erilea, they certainly didn’t rule over other realms.

Kaltain’s lips curved upward. “I am not allowed to say, either.” When he opened his mouth to ask more, she cut him off. “There are other forces at work. Beyond what is tangible and what is known.”

He glanced toward Damaris. “Other gods?”

Kaltain’s silence was answer enough. But—another time. He’d contemplate it another time.

“I never thought to summon you,” he admitted. “You, who knew Morath’s true horrors. I didn’t realize …” He let the words trail off as he rose to his feet.

“That there’d be anything left of me to summon?” she finished. He winced. “The key ate away much—but not everything.”

“Is the third one indeed at Morath, then?”

She nodded gravely. Her body shimmered, fading swiftly. “Though I do not know where he kept it. I wasn’t … ready to receive the second one before I took matters into my own hands.” She ran her slender fingers over the black scar snaking down her arm.

He’d never spoken to her—not really. Had barely given her more than a passing glance, or grimaced his way through polite conversation with her.

And yet here she stood, the woman who had taken out a third of Morath, who had devoured a Valg prince from sheer will alone.

“How did you do it?” he whispered. “How did you break free of its control?” He had to know. If he was walking into hell itself, if it was more than likely he’d wind up with a new collar around his throat, he had to know.

Kaltain studied his neck before she met his stare. “Because I raged against it. Because I did not feel that I deserved the collar.”

The truth of her words slammed into him as surely as if she’d shoved his chest.

Kaltain only asked, “You drew the summoning marks for a reason. What is it you wish to know?”

Dorian tucked away the truth she’d thrown at him, the mirror she held up to all he’d once been and had become. He had not been a true prince—not in spirit, not in deeds. He’d tried to be, but too late. He had acted too late. He doubted he was doing much better as king. Certainly not when he’d dismissed Adarlan out of his own guilt and anger, questioned whether it should be saved.

As if there were ever a possibility that it didn’t deserve to be.

He asked at last, “Am I ready to go to Morath?”

She alone would know. Had witnessed things far worse than any Manon or Elide had beheld.

Kaltain again glanced to Damaris. “You know the answer.”

“You won’t try to convince me not to go?”

But Kaltain’s mouth tightened as her onyx gown began to blend into the gathered night. “You know what you will face there. It is not for me to tell you if you are ready.”

His mouth went dry.

Kaltain said, “Everything you have heard about Morath is true. True, and still there is more that is worse than you can imagine. Stay to the keep. It is Erawan’s stronghold, and likely the only place he would trust to store the key.”

Dorian nodded, his heart beginning to hammer. “I will.”

She took a step toward him, but halted as her edges rippled further. “Don’t linger too long, and don’t attract his attention. He is arrogant, and wholly self-absorbed, and will not bother to look too closely at what might creep through his halls. Be quick, Dorian.”

A tremor went through his hands, but he balled them into fists. “If I can kill him, should I take the chance?”

“No.” She shook her head. “You would not walk away from it. He has a chamber deep in the keep—it is where he stores the collars. He will bring you there if he catches you.”

He straightened. “I—”

“Go to Morath, as you have planned. Retrieve the key, and nothing more. Or you will find yourself with a collar around your neck again.”

He swallowed. “I can barely shift.”

Kaltain gave him a half smile as she dissolved into the moonlight. “Can’t you?”

And then she was gone.

Dorian stared at the place she’d stood, the Wyrdmarks already vanished. Only Damaris remained standing there, witness to the truth it had somehow sensed he needed to hear.

So Dorian felt for that tangle in his magic, the place where raw power eddied and emerged as whatever he wished.

Let go—the shifting magic’s command. Let go of everything. Let go of that wall he’d built around himself the moment the Valg prince had invaded him, and look within. At himself. Perhaps what the sword had asked him to do in summoning Kaltain instead.

Who do you wish to be?

“Someone worthy of my friends,” he said into the quiet night. “A king worthy of his kingdom.” For a heartbeat, snow-white hair and golden eyes flashed into his mind. “Happy,” he whispered, and wrapped a hand around Damaris’s hilt. Let go of that lingering scrap of terror.

The ancient sword warmed in his hand, a friendly and swift heat.

It flowed up through his fingers, his wrist. To that place within him where all those truths had dwelled, where it became warmth edged with sharpest pain.

And then the world grew and expanded, the trees rising, the ground approaching—

He made to touch his face, but found he had no hands.

Only soot-black wings. Only an ebony beak that allowed no words past it.

A raven. A—

A soft inhale of air had him twisting his neck—far more easily in this form—toward the trees. Toward Manon, standing in the shadows of an oak, her bloody, filthy hand braced against the trunk as she stared at him. At the transformation.

Dorian fumbled for the thread of power that held him in this strange, light form. Instantly, the world swaying, he grew and grew, back into his human body, Damaris cold and still at his feet. His clothes somehow intact. Perhaps through whatever differences existed between his raw magic and a true shifter’s gift.

But Manon’s lip curled back from her teeth. Her golden eyes glowed like embers. “When, exactly, were you going to inform me that you were about to retrieve the third Wyrdkey?”