Kingdom of Ash

They had taken her scars.

Maeve had taken them all away.

It told Rowan enough about what had been done. When he’d seen her back, the smooth skin where the scars of Endovier and the scars from Cairn’s whipping should have been, he’d suspected.

But kneeling, burning in nothing but her skin … There were no scars where there should have been. The almost-necklace of them from Baba Yellowlegs: gone. The shackle marks from Endovier: gone. The scar where she’d been forced by Arobynn Hamel to break her own arm: gone. And on her palms …

It was upon her exposed palms that Aelin now gazed. As if realizing what was missing.

The scars across her palms, one from the moment they had become carranam, the other from her oath to Nehemia, had disappeared entirely.

Like they had never been.

Her flames burned brighter.

Healers could remove scars, yes, but the most likely reason for the lack of them on Aelin, on all the places where he’d once traced them with his hands, his mouth …

It was new skin. All of it. Save for her face, since he doubted they would be stupid enough to take off the mask.

Nearly every inch of her was covered in new skin, unvarnished as fresh snow. The blood coating her had burned away to reveal it.

New skin, because they’d needed to replace what had been destroyed. To heal her so they could begin again and again.

Gavriel and Elide had moved to where Fenrys lay, the battlefield healing the former had done on the warrior likely not enough to keep death at bay.

Gavriel said to no one in particular, “He doesn’t have much longer.”

He’d broken the blood oath. Through sheer will, Fenrys had broken it. And would soon pay the price when his life force bled out entirely.

Aelin’s gaze shifted then. From her hands, her horrifically pristine skin, to the wolf across the clearing.

She blinked twice. And then slowly rose.

Unaware or uncaring of her nakedness, she took an unsteady step. Rowan was instantly there—or as close as the flames would allow.

He could push through, shielding himself in ice or simply by cutting off the air that fed her flames. But to cross that line, to shove into her flames when so much, too much, had been stolen from her … He didn’t let himself think about the distant, wary recognition on her face when she’d seen him—seen all of them. As if she wasn’t entirely certain to trust them. Trust this.

Aelin managed another step, teetering.

He glimpsed her neck as she passed. Even the twin bite marks, his mark of claiming, had vanished.

Encased in flame, Aelin walked to Fenrys. The white wolf did not stir.

Sorrow softened her face, even with that quiet distance. Sorrow, and gratitude.

Gavriel and Elide remained on Fenrys’s other side as she approached. Backed away a step. Not from fear, but to give her space in this moment of farewell.

They had to go. Lingering here, despite the miles between them and the camp, was folly. They could carry Fenrys until it was over, but … Rowan couldn’t bring himself to say it. To tell Aelin that it might not be wise to draw out this good-bye the way she needed. They had minutes, at best, to spare before they had to be on the move.

But if scouts or sentries found them, he’d make sure they didn’t get close enough to disturb her.

Gavriel and Lorcan seemed to be having the same thought, their eyes meeting from across the clearing. Rowan jerked his chin toward the western tree line in silent order. They stalked for it.

Aelin knelt beside Fenrys, and her flame enveloped them both. The fire gave way to a reddish-gold aura, a shield that he knew would melt the flesh of anyone who tried to cross. It flowed and rippled around them, a bubble of coppery air, and through it, Rowan watched as she ran a hand down the wolf’s battered side.

Gavriel had healed most of the wounds, but the blood remained.

Aelin made long, gentle strokes over his fur, her head angled as she spoke too softly for Rowan to hear.

Slowly, painfully, Fenrys cracked open an eye. Agony filled it—agony and yet something like relief, and joy, at the sight of her bare face. And exhaustion. Such exhaustion that Rowan knew death would be a welcome embrace, a kiss from Silba herself, goddess of gentle ends.

Aelin spoke again, the sound either contained or swallowed by her shield. No tears. Only that sorrow—and clarity.

A queen’s face, he realized as Lorcan and Gavriel took up spots along the glen’s border. It was a queen’s face that looked upon Fenrys. A queen who took his massive paw in her hands, pushing back folds of fur and skin to unsheathe a curved claw.

She slid it over her bare forearm, splitting skin. Leaving blood in its wake.

Rowan’s breath caught. Gavriel and Lorcan whirled toward them.

Aelin spoke again, and Fenrys blinked once in answer.

She deemed that answer enough.

“Holy gods,” Lorcan breathed as Aelin extended her bleeding forearm to Fenrys’s mouth. “Holy rutting gods.”

For Fenrys’s loyalty, for his sacrifice, there was no greater reward she could offer. To keep him from death, there was no other way to save him.

Only this. Only the blood oath.

And as Fenrys managed to lap the blood from her wound, as he swore a silent vow to their queen, blinking a few more times, Rowan’s chest became unbearably tight.

Severing the blood oath to one queen had snapped his life force, his soul. Swearing the blood oath to another might very well repair that cleaving, the ancient magic binding Fenrys’s fading life to Aelin’s.

Three mouthfuls. That’s all Fenrys took before he laid his head back on the moss and closed his eyes.

Aelin curled on her side next to him, flames encompassing them both.

Rowan couldn’t move. None of them moved.

Aelin mouthed a short, curt word.

Fenrys did not respond.

She spoke again, that queen’s face unfaltering.

Live.

She’d use the blood oath to force him to remain on this side of life. Still Fenrys didn’t stir.

Across the bubble of flame and heat, Elide put a hand over her mouth, eyes shining bright. She’d read the word on Aelin’s lips, too.

Aelin spoke a third time, teeth flashing as she gave Fenrys her first order. Live.

Rowan didn’t breathe as they waited. Long minutes passed.

Then Fenrys’s eyes cracked open.

Aelin held the wolf’s gaze, nothing in her face save that grave, unyielding command.

Slowly, Fenrys stirred. His paws shifted beneath him, legs straining. And he rose.

“I don’t believe it,” Lorcan whispered. “I don’t …”

But there was Fenrys, standing before their now-kneeling queen. And there was Fenrys, inclining his head, shoulders dipping with him, one paw sweeping before the other. Bowing.

A ghost of a smile graced her mouth, gone before it ever took form.

Aelin remained kneeling, though. Even as Fenrys surveyed them, surprise and relief lighting his dark eyes. His gaze met Rowan’s, and Rowan smiled, bowing his head.

“Welcome to the court, pup,” he said, his voice thick.

Raw emotion rippled across that lupine face, and then Fenrys turned back to Aelin.

She was staring at nothing. Fenrys nudged her shoulder with his furry head.

She ran an idle hand through the wolf’s white coat. Rowan’s heart clenched.

Maeve had cleaved into Rowan’s own mind to trick his very instincts.

What had she done to her? What had she done these months?

“We need to go,” Gavriel said, his own voice thick as he took in Fenrys, standing proud and watchful beside Aelin. “We need to put distance between us and the camp, and find somewhere to halt for the night.” Where they’d reassess how and where to leave this kingdom. Heading into the forest, toward the mountains, would be their best bet. These trees offered plenty of coverage, and plenty of caves in which to hide.

“Can you walk?” Lorcan asked Fenrys.

Fenrys slid dark, baleful eyes to Lorcan.

Oh, that fight would come. That vengeance.

The wolf gave him a curt nod.

Elide reached for one of the packs stashed near the base of a tree. “Which way?”

But Rowan didn’t get to answer.

Silent as wraiths, they appeared across the glen. As if they’d simply sparked into existence in the shade of the foliage.

Little bodies, some pale, some black as night, some scaled. Mostly concealed, save for spindly fingers and wide, unblinking eyes.

Elide gasped. “The Little Folk.”

Elide hadn’t seen a whisper of the Little Folk since the days before Terrasen fell. Then, it had been flashes and rustling within Oakwald’s ancient shade. Never so many, never so openly.

Or as open as they would ever allow themselves to be.

The half dozen or so who had gathered across the clearing kept mostly hidden behind root and rock and cluster of leaves. None of the males moved, though Fenrys’s ears cocked toward them.

A miracle—that’s what had happened with the queen and the wolf.

Though Fenrys seemed drained, his eyes were clear as the Little Folk gathered.

Aelin barely looked toward them.

A pale, spindly hand rose over a moss-speckled boulder and curled. Come.

Rowan asked, voice like granite, “You wish us to follow you?”

Again, the hand made the motion. Come.

Gavriel murmured, “They know this forest better than even we do.”

“And you trust them?” Lorcan demanded.

Rowan’s eyes settled on Aelin. “They saved her life once.” That night Erawan’s assassin had returned for Aelin. “They will do so again now.”

Silent and unseen, they passed through the trees and rocks and streams of the ancient forest.

Rowan kept a step behind Aelin and Fenrys, Gavriel and Elide at the head of their party, Lorcan at the rear, as they followed the Little Folk.

Aelin had said nothing, done nothing except rise when they told her it was time to go. Rowan had offered her his cloak, and she’d allowed it to pass through her bubble of golden, clear flame to wrap around her naked body.

She clutched it at her chest as they walked, mile after mile, her feet bare. If the stones and roots of the forest hurt her, she didn’t so much as flinch. She only walked on, Fenrys at her side within that sphere of fire, as if they were two ghosts of memory.

A vision of old, striding through the trees, the queen and the wolf.

The others spoke rarely as the hours and miles passed. As the forested hills gave way to steeper inclines, the boulders larger, the rocks and trees broken in spots.

“From the ancient wars between the forest-spirits,” Gavriel whispered to Elide when he noticed her frowning at a hillside full of felled trunks and splintered stone. “Some are still waged by them, wholly unaware and unconcerned with the affairs of any realm but this.”

Rowan had never seen the race of ethereal beings far more ancient and secretive than even the Little Folk. But at his mountain home, set high in the range that they strode toward, he’d sometimes heard the shattering of rocks and trees on dark, moonless nights. When there was not a whisper of wind on the air, nor any storm to cause them.

So close—only twenty or so miles to the mountain house he’d built. He’d planned to take Aelin there one day, though it was nothing but long-vanished ashes. Just to show her where the house had been, where he’d buried Lyria. She was still up there, his mate-who-had-never-been.

And his true mate … She strode unwavering through the trees. No more than a wraith.

Still they followed the Little Folk, who beckoned from a tree, a rock, and shrub ahead, and then vanished. Behind Lorcan, a few others hid their trail with clever hands and small magics.

He prayed they had a place to stay for the night. A place where Aelin might sleep, and might remain protected from Maeve’s eyes once she realized she’d been tricked.

They were headed eastward—far from the coast. Rowan didn’t dare risk telling them they needed to find a port. He’d see where they led them tonight, and then craft their plan for returning to their own continent.

But when the Little Folk appeared before a gargantuan boulder, when they then vanished and reappeared in a sliver cut into the rock itself, bony hands beckoning from within, Rowan found himself balking.

The creature dwelling in the lake beneath Bald Mountain was a mild threat compared to the other things that still hunted in dark and forgotten places.

But the Little Folk beckoned again.

Lorcan appeared at his side. “It could be a trap.”

But Elide and Gavriel walked toward it, unfazed.

And behind them, Aelin continued as well. So Rowan followed her, as he would follow her until his last breath, and beyond it.

The cave mouth was tight, but soon opened into a larger passage. Aelin illuminated the space, bathing the black stone walls in a golden glow bright enough to see by.

But her flame was dwarfed when they entered a massive chamber. The ceiling stretched into gloom, but it was not the height of the chamber that made him halt.

Nooks and alcoves had been built into the side of the rock, some equipped with bedrolls, some with what seemed to be piles of clothes, and some with food. A small fire burned near one, and past it, tucked against the wall, a natural stone trough gleamed with water, courtesy of a small stream.

But farther into the cave, on the other side of the chamber, flowing right up to the black rock itself, a great lake stretched into the darkness.

There were countless subterranean lakes and rivers beneath these mountains—places so deep in the earth that even the Fae had not bothered or dared to explore.

This one, it seemed, the Little Folk had claimed for themselves, going so far as to outfit the space with sprawling birch branches against the walls. They’d hung small garlands and wreaths from the white limbs, and amongst the leaves, little bluish lights twinkled.

Magic—old, strange magic, those lights. Like they’d been plucked from the night sky.

Elide was surveying the space, awe written over her features. Gavriel and Lorcan, however, assessed it with a sharper, warier eye. Rowan did the same. The only exit seemed to be the one they’d entered through, and the lake stretched too far to discern if a shore lay beyond it.

Aelin did not pause as she strode for one of the glittering walls. There was none of her usual caution, no dart of her eyes as she weighed the exits and pitfalls, potential weapons to wield.

A trance—it was almost as if she had slipped into a trance, plunged into some depthless ocean inside herself and drifted so far down that they might as well have been birds soaring over its distant surface.

But she walked toward that wall, the birch branches artfully displayed across it. More of the Little Folk within, Rowan realized. Perched on the branches, clinging to them.

Aelin’s steps were silent on the stone. Fenrys halted nearby, as if to give her privacy.

Rowan had the vague sense of Lorcan, Elide, and Gavriel heading for the alcove across the cave to inspect the goods that had been laid out.

But he lingered in the center of the space as his mate paused before the shining, living wall. There was no expression on her face, no tension in her body.

Yet she inclined her head to the Little Folk half-hidden in the branches and boughs before her. Her jaw moved—speaking. Brief, short words.

He’d never so much as heard of the Little Folk talking. But there was his queen, his wife, his mate, murmuring with them.

At last, she turned away, her face still blank, her wildfire eyes as flat and cold as the lake. Fenrys fell into step beside her, and Rowan remained in place as Aelin aimed for the small fire.

Safe. The Little Folk must have told her this cave was safe, if she now moved for the fire, her own sphere of it still burning bright.

The others halted their assessment of the supplies.

But Aelin paid them no heed, paid the world no heed, as she took up a spot between the fire and the cave wall, lay upon the bare stone, and closed her eyes.