Kingdom of Ash

The clash of conflict echoed across the land, even from miles away. Deep in the rough hills of an ancient forest, Elide had waited for hours. First shivering in the dark, then watching the sky bleed to gray, then at last blue. And with that final transition, the clamor had started.

She’d alternated between pacing through the mossy glen, weaving amongst the gray boulders strewn between the trees, and sitting in the thrumming silence against one of the towering, wide-trunked trees, making herself as small and quiet as possible. Gavriel had sworn none of the strange or fell beasts in these lands would prowl so close to Doranelle, but she didn’t want to risk it. So she remained in the glen, where she’d been told to wait.

Wait for them. Or wait for things to go badly enough that she had to find her own way. Perhaps she’d seek out Essar if it should come to that—

It wouldn’t come to that. She swore it over and over. It couldn’t come to that.

The morning sun was beginning to warm the chilled shade when she saw them.

Saw them, before she heard them, because their feet were silent on the forest floor, thanks to their immortal grace and training. The breath shuddered out of her as Lorcan emerged between two moss-crusted trees, eyes already fixed on her. And a step behind him, staggering along …

Elide didn’t know what to do. With her body, her hands. Didn’t know what to say as Aelin stumbled over root and rock, the mask and the chains clanking, blood soaking her. Not just blood from her own wounds, but those of others.

She was thin, her golden hair so much longer. Too long, even with the time apart. It fell nearly to her navel, most of it dark with caked blood. As if she’d run through a rain of it.

No sign of Rowan or Gavriel. But no grief on Lorcan’s face, nothing beyond urgency, given how he monitored the sky, the trees. Searching for any pursuit.

Aelin halted at the edge of the clearing. Her feet were bare, and the thin, short shift she wore revealed no major injuries.

But there was little recognition in Aelin’s eyes, shadowed with the mask.

Lorcan said to the queen, “We’ll wait here for them.”

Aelin, as if her body didn’t quite belong to her, lifted her shackled, metal-encased hands. The chain linking them had been severed, and hung in pieces off either manacle. The same with those at her ankles.

She tugged at one of the metal gauntlets. It didn’t budge.

She tugged again. The gauntlet didn’t so much as shift.

“Take it off.”

Her voice was low, gravelly.

Elide didn’t know which one of them she’d ordered, but before she could cross the clearing, Lorcan gripped the queen’s wrist to examine the locks.

One corner of his mouth tightened. There was no easy way to free them, then.

Elide approached, her limp deep once more with Gavriel’s magic occupied.

The gauntlets had been locked at her wrist, overlapping slightly with the shackle. Both had small keyholes. Both were made from iron.

Elide shifted slightly, bracing her weight on her uninjured leg, to get a view of where the mask was bound to the back of Aelin’s head.

That lock was more complicated than the others, the chains thick and ancient.

Lorcan had fitted the tip of a slender dagger into the lock of the gauntlet, and was now angling it, trying to pick the mechanism.

“Take it off.” The queen’s guttural words were swallowed by the moss-crusted trees.

“I’m trying,” Lorcan said—not gently, though certainly without his usual coldness.

The dagger scraped in the lock, but to no avail.

“Take it off.” The queen began trembling.

“I’m—”

Aelin snatched the dagger from him, metal clicking on metal as she fitted the blade’s tip into the lock. The dagger shook in her ironclad hand. “Take it off,” she breathed, lips curling back from her teeth. “Take it off. ”

Lorcan made to grab the dagger, but she angled away. He snapped, “These locks are too clever. We need a proper locksmith.”

Panting through her clenched teeth, Aelin dug and twisted the dagger into the gauntlet’s lock. A snap cracked through the clearing.

But not the lock. Aelin withdrew the dagger to reveal the broken, chipped point. A shard of metal tumbled from the lock and into the moss.

Aelin stared at the broken blade, at the shard in the greenery cushioning her bare, bloodied feet, her breaths coming faster and faster.

Then she dropped the dagger into the moss. Began clawing at the shackles on her arms, the gauntlets on her hands, the mask on her face. “Take it off,” she begged as she scratched and tugged and yanked. “Take it off!”

Elide reached a hand for her, to stop her before she ripped the skin clean off her bones, but Aelin dodged away, staggering deeper into the clearing.

The queen dropped to her knees, bowing over them, and clawed at the mask.

It didn’t so much as move.

Elide glanced to Lorcan. He was frozen, eyes wide as Aelin knelt in the moss, as her breathing became edged with sobs.

He had done this. Led them to this.

Elide stepped toward Aelin.

The queen’s gauntlets drew blood where they scraped into her neck, her jaw, as she heaved against the mask. “Take it off!” The plea turned into a scream. “Take it off!”

Over and over, the queen screamed it. “Take it off, take it off, take it off!”

She was sobbing amid her screaming, the sounds shattering through the ancient forest. She said no other words. Pleaded to no gods, no ancestors.

Only those words, again and again and again.

Take it off, take it off, take it off.

Movement broke through the trees behind them, and the fact that Lorcan did not go for his weapons told Elide who it was. But any relief was short-lived as Rowan and Gavriel emerged, a massive white wolf hauled between them. The wolf whose jaws had clamped around Elide’s arm, tearing flesh to the bone. Fenrys.

He was unconscious, tongue lagging from his bloodied maw. Rowan had barely entered the clearing before he set down the wolf and stalked for Aelin.

The prince was covered in blood. From his unhindered steps, Elide knew it wasn’t his.

From the blood coating his chin, his neck … She didn’t want to know.

Aelin ripped at the immovable mask, either unaware or uncaring of the prince before her. Her consort, husband, and mate.

“Aelin.”

Take it off, take it off, take it off.

Her screams were unbearable. Worse than those that day on the beach in Eyllwe.

Gavriel came to stand beside Elide, his golden skin pale as he took in the frantic queen.

Slowly, Rowan knelt before her. “Aelin.”

She only tipped her head up to the forest canopy and sobbed.

Blood ran down her neck from the scratches she’d dug into her skin, mingling with what already coated her.

Rowan reached out a trembling hand, the only sign of the agony Elide had little doubt was coursing through him. Gently, he laid his hands on her wrists; gently, he closed his fingers around them. Halting the brutal clawing and digging.

Aelin sobbed, her body shuddering with the force of it. “Take it off. ”

Rowan’s eyes flickered, panic and heartbreak and longing shining there. “I will. But you have to be still, Fireheart. Just for a few moments.”

“Take it off. ” The sobs ebbed, tricking into something broken and raw. Rowan ran his thumbs over her wrists, over those iron shackles. As if it were nothing but her skin. Slowly, her shaking eased.

No, not eased, Elide realized as Rowan rose to his feet and stalked behind the queen. But contained, turned inward. Tremors rippled through Aelin’s tense body, but she kept still as Rowan examined the lock.

Yet something like shock, then horror and sorrow, flashed over his face, as he surveyed her back. It was gone as soon as it appeared.

A glance, and Gavriel and Lorcan drifted to his side, their steps slow. Unthreatening.

Across the small clearing, Fenrys remained out, his white coat soaked with blood.

Elide only walked to Aelin and took up the spot where Rowan had been.

The queen’s eyes were closed, as if it took all her concentration to remain still for another heartbeat, to allow them to look, to not claw at the irons.

So Elide said nothing, demanded nothing from her, save for a companion if she needed one.

Behind Aelin, Rowan’s blood-splattered face was grim while he studied the lock fastening the mask’s chains to the back of her head. His nostrils flared slightly. Rage—frustration.

“I’ve never seen a lock like this,” Gavriel murmured.

Aelin began shaking again.

Elide put a hand on her knee. Aelin had scraped it raw, mud and grass stuck in her blood-crusted skin.

She waited for the queen to shove her hand away, but Aelin didn’t move. Kept her eyes shut, her ragged breathing holding steady.

Rowan gripped one of the chains binding the mask and nodded to Lorcan. “The other one.”

Silently, Lorcan grasped the opposite end. They’d sever the iron if they had to.

Elide held her breath as both males strained, arms shaking.

Nothing.

They tried again. Aelin’s breathing hitched. Elide tightened her hand on the queen’s knee.

“She managed to snap the chains on her ankles and hands,” Gavriel observed. “They’re not indestructible.”

But with the chains on the mask so close to her head, a swipe of a sword was impossible. Or perhaps the mask had been made from far stronger iron.

Rowan and Lorcan grunted as they heaved against the chains. It was of little use.

Panting softly, they paused. Red welts shone on their hands.

They’d tried to use their magic to break the iron.

Silence fell through the clearing. They couldn’t linger here—not for much longer. But to take Aelin in the chains, when she was so frantic to be free of them …

Aelin’s eyes opened.

They were empty. Wholly drained. A warrior accepting defeat.

Elide blurted, scrambling for anything to banish that emptiness, “Was there ever a key? Did you see them using a key?”

Two blinks. As if that meant something.

Rowan and Lorcan yanked again, straining.

But Aelin’s stare fell to the moss, the stones. Narrowed slightly, as if the question had settled. Through the small hole in her mask, Elide could barely see her mouth the words. A key.

“I don’t have it—we don’t have them,” Elide said, sensing the direction of Aelin’s thoughts. “Manon and Dorian do.”

“Quiet,” Lorcan hissed. Not at the level of her voice, but the deadly information Elide revealed.

Aelin again blinked twice with that strange intentionality.

Rowan snarled at the chains, heaving again.

But Aelin stretched out a hand to the moss and traced a shape.

“What is that?” Elide leaned forward as the queen did it again, her hollow face unreadable.

The Fae males paused at her question, and watched Aelin’s finger move through the green.

“A Wyrdmark,” Rowan said softly. “To open.”

Aelin traced it again, mute and still. As if none of them stood there.

“They work on iron?” Gavriel asked, tracking Aelin’s finger.

“She unlocked iron doors in Adarlan’s royal library with that symbol,” Rowan murmured. “But she needed …”

He let his words hang unfinished as he picked up the broken knife Aelin had discarded in the moss nearby and sliced it across his palm.

Kneeling before her, he extended his bloodied hand. “Show me, Fireheart. Show me again.” He tapped her ankle—the shackle there.

Silently, her movements stiff, Aelin leaned forward. She sniffed at the blood pooling in his hand, her nostrils flaring. Her eyes lifted to his, like the scent of his blood posed some question.

“I am your mate,” Rowan whispered, as if it was the answer she sought. And the love in his eyes, in the way his voice broke, his bloodied hand trembling … Elide’s throat tightened.

Aelin only looked at the blood pooling in his cupped palm. Her fingers curled, the gauntlet clicking. As if it were another answer, too.

“She can’t do it with the iron,” Elide said. “If it’s on her hands. It interferes with the magic in the blood.”

A blink from her, in that silent language.

“It’s why she put them on you, isn’t it,” Elide said, her chest straining. “To be sure you couldn’t use your own blood with the Wyrdmarks to free yourself.” As if all the other iron wasn’t already enough.

Another blink, her face still so hollow and cold. Tired.

Rowan’s jaw clenched. But he just dipped his finger into the blood in his palm and offered his hand to her. “Show me, Fireheart,” he said again.

Elide could have sworn he shuddered, and not from fear, as Aelin’s metal-crusted hand closed around his.

In halting, small movements, she guided his finger to trace the symbol onto the shackle around her ankle.

A soft flare of greenish light, then—

The hiss and sigh of the lock filled the clearing. The shackle tumbled to the moss.

Lorcan swore.

Rowan offered his hand, his blood, again. The shackle around her other ankle yielded to the Wyrdmark.

Then the manacles around her wrists. Then the beautiful, horrible gauntlets thudded to the moss.

Aelin lifted her bare hands to her face, reaching for the lock behind the mask, but halted.

“I’ll do it,” Rowan said, his voice still soft, still full of that love. He moved behind her, and Elide stared at the horrible mask, the suns and flames carved and embossed along its ancient surface.

A flare of light, a click of metal, and then it slid free.

Her face was pale—so pale, all traces of the sun-kissed coloring gone.

And empty. Aware, and yet not.

Wary.

Elide kept still, letting the queen survey her. The males moved to face her, and Aelin looked upon them in turn. Gavriel, who bowed his head. Lorcan, who stared right back at her, his dark gaze unreadable.

And Rowan. Rowan, whose breathing became jagged, his swallow audible. “Aelin?”

The name, it seemed, was an unlocking, too.

Not of the queen she’d so briefly known, but the power inside her.

Elide flinched as flame, golden and blazing, erupted around the queen. The shift burned away into ashes.

Lorcan dragged Elide back, and she allowed it, even as the heat vanished. Even as the flare of power contracted into an aura around the queen, a shimmering second skin.

Aelin knelt there, burning, and did not speak.

The flames flickered around her, though the moss, the roots, did not burn. Didn’t so much as steam. And through the fire, Aelin’s now-long hair half hiding her nakedness, Elide got a good look at what had been done to her.

Aside from a bruise along her ribs, there was nothing.

Not a mark. Not a callus.

Not a single scar. The ones Elide had marked in those days before Aelin had been taken were gone.

As if someone had wiped them away.