Kingdom of Ash

Rowan followed Aelin as she meandered across the battlefield, to the edge of the Silver Lake. She stopped only now and then to pick up any worthwhile enemy weapons. There were few.

The others had dispersed, Gavriel lingering to learn how Yrene healed the Valg, Fenrys heading off with Chaol to meet with emissaries from the wild men, and the khaganate royals seeing to their troops.

They would leave in two days, if the weather held. Two days, and then they’d begin the push north.

Thank the gods. Even though they were the last beings Rowan wished to thank.

Aelin halted at the rocky shore, peering across the mirror-flat expanse now choked with debris. She rested a hand atop Goldryn’s hilt, flame dancing at her fingers, seemingly into the red stone itself.

“It would take years,” she observed, “to heal everyone infected by the Valg.”

“Each of those soldiers has a family, friends who would want us to try.”

“I know.” The chill wind whipped her hair across her face, blowing northward.

“Then why the walk out here?” She’d gone contemplative during their meeting in the tent, her brow furrowing.

“Could Yrene heal them? Erawan and Maeve? I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”

“Is Erawan’s body made by him, or stolen? Is Maeve’s?” Rowan shook his head. “They might be wholly different.”

“I don’t see how I can ask Yrene to do it. Ask it of Chaol.” Aelin swallowed. “To even put Yrene near Erawan or Maeve … I can’t do it.”

Rowan wouldn’t be able to, either. Not for a thousand different reasons.

“But is it a mistake to put Yrene’s safety above that of this entire world?” Aelin mused, examining one of the enemy daggers she’d pilfered. An unusually fine blade, likely stolen in the first place. “She’s the greatest weapon we have, if the keys are not in play. Are we fools not to push to use it?”

It wasn’t his choice, his call. But he could offer her a sounding board. “Will you be able to live with yourself if something happens to Yrene, to her unborn child?”

“No. But the rest of the world will live, at least. My guilt would be secondary to that.”

“And if you don’t push Yrene to try to destroy them, and Erawan or Maeve wins—what then?”

“There is still the Lock. There’s still me.”

Rowan swallowed. Saw the reason she’d needed to be away from the others, needed to walk. “Yrene is a ray of hope for you. For us. That you might not need to forge the Lock at all. You, or Dorian.”

“The gods demand it.”

“The gods can go to hell.”

Aelin chucked away the dagger. “I hate this. I really do.”

He slid an arm around her shoulders. It was all he could offer her.

Over—she’d said she wanted it to be over. He’d do all he could to make it so.

Aelin leaned her head against his chest, and they stared across the cold lake in silence. “Would you let me do it, if I were Yrene? If I were carrying our child?”

He failed to block out the image of that dream—of Aelin, heavily pregnant, their children around her. “I don’t let you do anything.”

She waved a hand. “You know what I mean.”

He took a moment to answer. “No. Even if the world ended because of it, I couldn’t bear it.”

And with that Lock, he might very well have to make that decision, too.

Rowan ran his fingers over the claiming marks on her neck. “I told you that love was a weakness. It would be far easier if we all hated each other.”

She snorted. “Give it a few weeks on the road with this army, in those mountains, and we might not be such pleasant allies anymore.”

Rowan kissed the top of her head. “Gods help us.”

But Aelin pulled away at the words, the phrase that dropped off his tongue. She frowned toward the camped army.

“What?” he asked.

“I want to see those Wyrdmark books Chaol and Yrene brought with them.”

“What does this say?” Aelin asked Borte, tapping a finger on a scribbled line of text in Halha, the tongue of the southern continent.

Seated beside her at the desk in Prince Sartaq’s war tent, the ruk rider craned her neck to study the handwritten note beside a long column of Wyrdmarks. “A good spell for encouraging your herb beds to grow.”

Across the desk, Rowan snorted. A book lay open before him, his progress through it far slower than Aelin’s.

Most of the tomes were wholly written in Wyrdmarks, but annotations scribbled in the margins had driven her to seek out the young rukhin. Borte, thoroughly bored with helping Yrene, had leaped at the chance to assist them, passing Valg duty onto her scowling betrothed.

But for the two hours that Aelin and Rowan had perused the collection Chaol and Yrene had brought from Hafiza’s forbidden library atop the Torre, nothing had proved useful.

Aelin sighed at the canvas ceiling of the prince’s large tent. Fortunate that Sartaq had brought these trunks with him, rather than leaving them with their armada, but … exhaustion nipped at her, fogging the intricate lattice of symbols on the yellowed pages.

Rowan straightened. “This one opens something,” he said, flipping the book to face her. “I don’t know the other symbols, but that one says ‘open.’ ” Even with the hours of instruction on the journey back to this continent, Rowan and the others had not wholly mastered the language of the half-forgotten marks. But her mate remembered most—as if they’d been planted in his mind.

Aelin carefully studied the line of symbols across the page. Read through them a second time. “It’s not what we’re looking for.” She pulled on her bottom lip. “It’s a spell for opening a portal between locations—just in this world.”

“Like what Maeve can do?” Borte asked.

Aelin shrugged. “Yes, but this is for close traveling. More like what Fenrys can do.” Or had once been able to do, before Maeve had broken it from him.

Borte’s mouth quirked to the side. “What’s the point of it, then?”

“Entertaining people at parties?” Aelin handed the book back to Rowan.

Borte chuckled, and leaned back in her seat, toying with the end of a long braid. “Do you think the spell exists—to find an alternate way to seal the Wyrdgate?” The question was barely more than a whisper, and yet Rowan shot the girl a warning look. Borte just waved him off.

No. Elena would have told her, or Brannon, if such a thing had existed.

Aelin ran a hand over the dry, ancient page, the symbols blurring. “It’s worth a look, isn’t it?”

Rowan indeed resumed his careful browsing and decoding. He’d sit here for hours, she knew. And if they found nothing, she knew he’d sit here and reread them all just to be sure.

A way out—an alternate path. For her, for Dorian. For whichever of them would pay the price to forge the Lock and seal the gate. A desperate, foolish hope.

The hours passed, the stacks of books dwindling. Fenrys joined them after a time, unusually solemn as they searched and searched. And found nothing.

When there were no books left in the trunk, when Borte was nodding off and Rowan was pacing through the tent, Aelin did them all a favor and ordered them to return to the keep.

It had been worth a look, she told herself. Even if the leaden weight in her gut said otherwise.

Chaol found his father where he’d left him, seething in his study.

“You cannot give a single acre of this territory to the wild men,” his father hissed as Chaol wheeled into the room and shut the door.

Chaol crossed his arms, not bothering to look placating. “I can, and I will.”

His father shot to his feet and braced his hands on his desk. “You would spit on the lives of all the men of Anielle who fought and died to keep this territory from their filthy hands?”

“If offering them a small piece of land will mean that future generations of Anielle men and women won’t have to fight or die, then I’d think our ancestors would be pleased.”

“They are beasts, barely fit to be their own masters.”

Chaol sighed, slumping back in his chair. A lifetime of this—that’s what Dorian had laid upon him. As Hand, he’d have to deal with lords and rulers just like his father. If they survived. If Dorian survived, too. The thought was enough for Chaol to say, “Everyone in this war is making sacrifices. Most far, far greater than a few miles of land. Be grateful that’s all we’re asking of you.”

The man sneered. “And what if I was to bargain with you?”

Chaol rolled his eyes, reaching to turn his chair back toward the door.

His father lifted a piece of paper. “Don’t you wish to know what your brother wrote to me?”

“Not enough to stop this alliance,” Chaol said, pivoting his chair away.

His father unfolded the letter anyway, and read, “I hope Anielle burns to the ground. And you with it.” A small, hateful smile. “That’s all your brother said. My heir—that’s how he feels about this place. If he will not protect Anielle, then what shall become of it without you?”

Another approach, to guilt him into relenting. Chaol said, “I’d wager that Terrin’s regard for Anielle is tied to his feelings for you.”

The aging lord lowered himself into his seat once more. “I wish you to know what Anielle will face, should you fail to protect it. I am willing to bargain, boy.” He chuckled. “Though I know how well you hold up your end of things.”

Chaol took the blow. “I am a rich man, and need nothing you could offer me.”

“Nothing?” His father pointed to a trunk by the window. “What about something more priceless than gold?”

When Chaol didn’t speak, his father strode for the trunk, unlocked it with a key from his pocket, and flipped back the heavy lid. Wheeling closer, Chaol peered at its contents.

Letters. The entire trunk was filled with letters bearing his name in an elegant script.

“She discovered the trunk. Right before we got word of Morath marching on us,” his father said, his smile mocking and cold. “I should have burned them, of course, but something prompted me to save them instead. For this exact moment, I think.”

The trunk was piled thick with letters. All written by his mother. To him. “How long,” he said too quietly.

“From the day you left.” His father’s sneer lingered.

Years. Years of letters, from a mother he had not heard from, had believed hadn’t wanted to speak to him, had yielded to his father’s wishes.

“You let her believe I didn’t write back,” Chaol said, surprised to find his voice still calm. “You never sent them, and let her believe I didn’t write back.”

His father shut the trunk and locked it again. “It would appear so.”

“Why.” It was the only question that mattered.

His father frowned. “I couldn’t allow you to walk away from your birthright, from Anielle, without consequences, could I?”

Chaol clamped onto the arms of his chair to keep from wrapping his hands around the man’s throat. “You think showing me this trunk of her letters will make me want to bargain with you?”

His father snorted. “You’re a sentimental man. Watching you with that wife of yours only proves it. I’d think you’d bargain quite a bit to be able to read these letters.”

Chaol only stared at him. Blinked once, as if it would quell the roaring in his head, his heart.

His mother had never forgotten him. Never stopped writing to him.

Chaol smiled slightly.

“Keep the letters,” he said, steering his chair back to the doors. “Now that she’s left you, it might be your only way to remember her.” He opened the study door and looked over his shoulder.

His father remained beside the trunk, stiff as a sword.

“I don’t make bargains with bastards,” Chaol said, smiling again as he entered the hall beyond. “I’m certainly not going to start with you.”

Chaol gave the wild men of the Fangs a small chunk of territory in South Anielle. His father had raged, refusing to acknowledge the trade, but no one had heeded him, to Aelin’s eternal amusement.

Two days later, a small unit of those men arrived at the city’s westernmost edge, near the gaping hole where the dam had been, and beckoned the way.

Each of the bearded men rode a shaggy mountain pony, and though their heavy furs hid much of their bulky bodies, their weapons were on sharp display: axes, swords, knives all gleamed in the gray light.

Cain’s people—or they had been. Aelin decided not to mention him during their brief introduction. And Chaol, wisely, refrained from admitting that he’d killed the man.

Another lifetime. Another world.

Seated atop a fine Muniqi horse Hasar had lent her, Aelin rode at the front of the company, as it marched from Anielle, Chaol on Farasha to her left, Rowan on his own Muniqi horse to her right. Their companions were scattered behind, Lorcan healed enough to be riding, Elide beside him.

And behind them, snaking into the distance, the army of the khagan moved.

Part of it, at least. Half the ruks and Darghan riders would march under Kashin’s banner on the eastern side of the mountains, to draw out the forces from the Ferian Gap into open battle in the valley. While they snuck behind, right through their back door.

Snow lay heavy on the Fangs, the gray sky threatening more, but the rukhin scouts and wild men had assessed that no bad weather would hit them for a while yet—not until they reached the Gap, at least.

Five days’ trek, with the army and mountains. It would be three for the army that marched along the lake’s edge and river.

Aelin tipped her face toward that cold sky as they began the endless series of switchbacks up the mountainsides. The rukhin could carry much of the heavier equipment, thank the gods, but the climb into the mountains would be the first test.

The khagan’s armies had crossed every terrain, though. Mountains and deserts and seas. They did not balk now.

So Aelin supposed she would not, either. For whatever time she had left, until it was over.

This final push north, homeward … She smiled grimly at the looming mountains, at the army stretching away behind them.

And just because she could, just because they were headed to Terrasen at last, Aelin unleashed a flicker of her power. Some of the standard-bearers behind them murmured in surprise, but Rowan only smiled. Smiled with that fierce hope, that brutal determination that flared in her own heart, as she began to burn.

She let the flame encompass her, a golden glow that she knew could be spied even from the farthest lines of the army, from the city and keep they left behind.

A beacon glowing bright in the shadows of the mountains, in the shadows of the forces that awaited them, Aelin lit the way north.