Kingdom of Ash

They reached the sea under cover of darkness, warned of its arrival by the briny scent that crept into the cave, then the rougher waters that pushed past, and then finally the roar of the surf.

Maeve’s eyes might have been everywhere, but they weren’t fixed on the cave mouth that opened onto a cove along Wendlyn’s western shore. Nor were they on that cove when the boat landed on its sandy beach, then vanished back into the caves before anyone could so much as attempt to thank the creatures who had hauled them without rest.

Aelin watched the boat until it disappeared, trying not to stare too long at the clean, unstained sand beneath her boots, while the others debated where they might be along the coastline.

A few hours of hurrying northward, into Wendlyn’s lands, and they got their answer: close enough to the nearest port.

The tide was with them, and with the gold they’d pilfered from the barrow-wights, it was a matter of Rowan and Lorcan simply crossing their arms before a ship was secured. With Wendlyn’s armada sailing for Terrasen’s shores, the rules about border crossings had been revoked. Gone were the several boat transfers to reach the continent across the sea, the security measures. No mere tyrant squatted in Adarlan, but a Valg king with an aerial legion.

It made it easier for the messages she dispatched to go out, too. Whether the letter to Aedion and Lysandra would reach them was up to the gods, she supposed, since they seemed hell-bent on being their puppet masters. Perhaps they might not bother with her now, if Dorian was heading for the third key, if he might take her place.

She did not dwell on it for long.

The ship was a step above ramshackle, all the finer vessels commandeered for the war, but it seemed steady enough to make the weeks-long crossing. For the gold they paid, the captain yielded his own quarters to Aelin and Rowan. If the man knew who they were, what they were, he said nothing.

Aelin didn’t care. Only that they sailed with the midnight tide, Rowan’s magic propelling them swiftly out to the moonlit sea.

Far from Maeve. From her gathered forces.

From the truth that Aelin might have glimpsed that day in Maeve’s throne room, the dark blood that had turned to red.

She hadn’t told the others. Didn’t know if that moment had been real, or a trick of the light. If it had been another dreamscape, or some fragment that had blended into the very real memory of Connall’s death.

She’d deal with it later, Aelin decided as she stood by the prow, the others long since having gone to their own quarters belowdecks. Only Rowan remained, perched on the mainmast as he scanned every horizon for signs of pursuit.

They’d evaded Maeve. For now. Tonight, at least, she wouldn’t know where to find them. Until word spread of the strangers in that port, of the ship they’d paid a king’s fortune to take them into war-torn hell. The messages Aelin had sent.

At least Maeve didn’t know where the Wyrdkeys were. They still had that in their favor.

Though Maeve was likely to bring her army across the sea to hunt them down. Or simply aid in Terrasen’s demise.

Aelin’s power stirred, a thunderhead groaning in her blood. She ground her teeth and paid it no attention.

Everything relied upon them reaching the continent before Maeve and her forces. Or before Erawan could destroy too much of the world.

Aelin leaned into the sea breeze, letting it seep into her skin, her hair, letting it wash away the dark of the caves, if the dark of the prior months could not be eased entirely. Letting it soothe her fire into slumbering embers.

These weeks at sea would be endless, even with Rowan’s magic propelling them.

She’d use each day to train, to work with sword and dagger and bow until her hands were blistered, until new calluses formed. Until the thinness returned to muscle.

She’d rebuild it—what she had been.

Perhaps one last time, perhaps only for a little while, but she’d do it. If only for Terrasen.

Rowan swooped from the mast, shifting as he reached her side at the rail. He surveyed the night-black sea beyond them. “You should rest.”

She slid him a glance. “I’m not tired.” Not a lie, not in some regards. “Want to spar?”

He frowned. “Training can start tomorrow.”

“Or tonight.” She held his piercing stare, matched his dominance with her own.

“It can wait a few hours, Aelin.”

“Every day counts.” Against Erawan, even a day of training would count.

Rowan’s jaw tightened. “True,” he said at last. “But it can still wait. There are … there are things we need to discuss.”

The silent words rose in his animal-bright eyes. About you and me.

Her mouth went dry. But Aelin nodded.

In silence, they strode into their spacious quarters, its only decoration the wall of windows that overlooked the churning sea behind them. A far cry from a queen’s chamber, or any she might have purchased as Adarlan’s assassin.

At least the bed built into the wall looked clean enough, the sheets crisp and stainless. But Aelin headed for the oak desk anchored to the floor, and leaned against it while Rowan shut the door.

In the dim lantern light, they stared at each other.

She’d endured Maeve and Cairn; she’d endured Endovier and countless other horrors and losses. She could have this conversation with him. The first step toward rebuilding herself.

Aelin knew Rowan could hear her thundering heart as the space between them went taut. She swallowed once. “Elide and Lorcan told you … told you everything that was said on that beach.”

A curt nod, wariness flooding his eyes.

“Everything that Maeve said.”

Another nod.

She braced herself. “That I’m—we’re mates.”

Understanding and something like relief replaced that wariness. “Yes.”

“I’m your mate,” she said, needing to voice it. “And you are mine.”

Rowan crossed the room, but halted a few feet from the desk on which she leaned. “What of it, Aelin?” His question was low, rough.

“Don’t you …” She scrubbed at her face. “You know what she did to you, to …” She couldn’t say her name. Lyria. “Because of it.”

“I do know.”

“And?”

“And what do you wish me to say?”

She pushed off the desk. “I wish you to tell me how you feel about it. If …”

“If what?”

“If you wish it wasn’t so.”

His brows narrowed. “Why would I ever wish that?”

She shook her head, unable to answer, and stared over her shoulder toward the sea.

It seemed like he would close the distance between them, but he remained where he was. “Aelin.” His voice turned hoarse. “Aelin.”

She looked at him then, at the pain in his words.

“Do you know what I wish?” He exposed his palms, one tattooed, the other unmarked. “I wish that you had told me. When you realized it. I wish you had told me then.”

She swallowed against the ache in her throat. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Why would it ever hurt me to know the truth that was already in my heart? The truth I hoped for?”

“I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand how it was possible. I thought maybe … maybe you might be able to have two mates within a lifetime, but even then, I just …” She blew out a breath. “I didn’t want you to be distressed.”

His eyes softened. “Do I regret that Lyria was dragged into this, that the cost of Maeve’s game was her life, and the life of the child we might have had? Yes. I regret that, and I wish it had never happened.” He would bear the tattoo to remember it for the rest of his days. “But none of that was your fault. I will always carry some of the burden of it, always know I chose to leave her for war and glory, and that I played right into Maeve’s hands.”

“Maeve wanted to ensnare you to get to me, though.”

“Then it is her choice, not yours.”

Aelin ran a hand over the worn wood of the desk. “In those illusions she spun for me, she showed me variations on one more than all the others.” The words were strained, but she forced them out. Forced herself to look at him. “She spun me one dreamscape that felt so real I could smell the wind off the Staghorns.”

“What did she show you?” A breathless question.

Aelin had to swallow before she could answer. “She showed me what might have been—if there had been no Erawan, if Elena had dealt with him properly and banished him. If there had been no Lyria, none of that pain or despair you endured. She showed me Terrasen as it would have been today, with my father as king, and my childhood happy, and …” Her lips wobbled. “When I turned twenty, you came with a delegation of Fae to Terrasen, to make amends for the rift between my mother and Maeve. And you and I took one look at each other in my father’s throne room, and we knew.”

She didn’t fight the stinging in her eyes. “I wanted to believe that was the true world. That this was the nightmare from which I’d awaken. I wanted to believe that there was a place where you and I had never known this suffering and loss, where we’d take one look at each other and know we were mates. Maeve told me she could make it so. If I gave her the keys, she’d make it all possible.” She wiped at her cheek, at the tear that escaped down it. “She spun me realities where you were dead, where you’d been killed by Erawan and only in handing over the keys to her would I be able to avenge you. But those realities made me … I stopped being useful to her when she told me you were gone. She couldn’t get me to talk, to think. Yet in the ones where you and I met, where things were as they should have been … that was when I came the closest.”

His swallow was audible. “What stopped you?”

She wiped at her face again. “The male I fell in love with was you. It was you, who knew pain as I did, and who walked with me through it, back to the light. Maeve didn’t understand that. That even if she could create that perfect world, it wouldn’t be you with me. And I’d never trade that, trade this. Not for anything.”

He extended his hand. An offer and invitation.

Aelin laid hers atop his, and his callused fingers squeezed gently. “I wanted it to be you,” he breathed, closing his eyes. “For months and months, even in Wendlyn, I wondered why you weren’t my mate instead. It tore me up, wondering it, but I still did.” He opened his eyes, and they burned like green fire. “All this time, I wanted it to be you.”

She lowered her gaze, but he hooked a thumb and forefinger around her chin and lifted her face.

“I know you are tired, Fireheart. I know that the burden on your shoulders is more than anyone should endure.” He took their joined hands and laid them on his heart. “But we’ll face this together. Erawan, the Lock, all of it. We’ll face it together. And when we are done, when you Settle, we will have a thousand years together. Longer.”

A small sound came out of her. “Elena said the Lock requires—”

“We’ll face it together,” he swore again. “And if the cost of it truly is you, then we’ll pay it together. As one soul in two bodies.”

Her heart strained to the point of cleaving. “Terrasen needs a king.”

“I have no intention of ruling Terrasen without you. Aedion can have the job.”

She scanned his face. He meant every word.

He brushed the hair from her face, his other hand still clasping hers to his chest, where his heart pounded a steady, unfaltering rhythm. “Even if I had my choice of any dream-realities, any perfect illusions, I would still choose you, too.”

She felt the truth of his words echo into the unbreakable thing that bound their very souls, and tilted her face up toward his. But he made no move beyond it.

She frowned. “Why aren’t you kissing me?”

“I thought you might want to be asked first.”

“That never stopped you before.”

“This first time, I wanted to make sure you were … ready.” After Cairn and Maeve. After months of having no choices whatsoever.

She smiled despite that truth. “I’m ready to be kissed again, Prince.”

He let out a dark chuckle and muttered, “Thank the gods,” before he lowered his mouth to hers.

The kiss was gentle—light. Letting her decide how to guide it. So she did.

Sliding her arms around Rowan’s neck, Aelin pressed herself against him, arching into his touch as his hands roamed along her back. Yet his mouth remained featherlight on hers. Sweet, exploratory kisses. He’d do it all night, if that was what she wished.

Mate. He was her mate, and she was finally allowed to call him such, to let him be such—

The thought snapped something. Aelin nipped at his bottom lip, scraping a canine against it.

The gesture snapped something in him, too.

With a growl, Rowan swept her into his arms, never tearing his mouth from hers as he carried her to the bed and set her down gently. Off came their boots, their jackets and shirts and pants. And then he was with her, the strength and heat of him pouring into her bare skin.

She couldn’t touch him fast enough, feel enough of him against her. Even when his mouth roved down her neck, licking over that spot where his claiming marks had been. Even when he roamed farther, worshipping her breasts as she arched up into each lick and suckle. Even when he knelt between her legs, his shoulders spreading her thighs wide, and tasted her, over and over, until she was writhing beneath him.

But something primal in her went quiet and still as Rowan rose over her again, and their eyes locked.

“You’re my mate,” he said, the words near-guttural. He nudged at her entrance, and she shifted her hips to draw him in, but he remained where he was. Withholding what she ached for until he heard what he needed.

Aelin tipped back her head, baring her neck to him. “You’re my mate.” Her words were a breathless rush. “And I am yours.”

Rowan thrust into her in a mighty stroke as he plunged his teeth into the side of her neck.

She cried out at the claiming, release already barreling along her spine, but he began moving. Moving, while his teeth remained in her, and she moaned with each drive of his hips, the sheer size of him a decadence she would never be able to get enough of. She dragged her nails down his muscled back, then lower, feeling every powerful stroke of him into her.

Rowan withdrew his teeth from her neck, and Aelin claimed his mouth in a savage kiss, her blood a coppery tang on his tongue.

He went wild at that, hoisting her hips to angle himself deeper, harder. The world might have been burning around them for all she cared, all he cared, too.

“Together, Aelin,” he promised, and she heard the rest of the words in every place their bodies joined. Together they would face this, together they would find a way.

Release crested within her once more, a shimmering brightness.

And just when it broke, Aelin sank her teeth into Rowan’s neck, claiming him as he’d claimed her.

His blood, powerful and wind-kissed, filled her mouth, her soul, and Rowan roared as release shattered through him, too.

For long minutes, they lay tangled in each other.

Together we’ll find a way, their mingling breaths, the crashing sea, seemed to echo. Together.