Kingdom of Ash

Darrow and the other Terrasen lords had spent their time wisely these past few months, thank the gods, and Orynth was well stocked against the siege marching closer with each passing hour.

Food, weapons, healing supplies, plans for where the citizens might sleep should they flee into the castle, reinforcements at the places along the city and castle walls where the ancient stone had weakened—Aedion had found little at fault.

Yet after a fitful night’s sleep in his old room in the castle—awful and strange and cold—he was prowling one of the lower turrets as dawn broke. Up here, the wind was so much wilder, icier.

Stalking, steady footsteps sounded from the archway behind him. “I spotted you up here on the way down to breakfast,” Ren said by way of greeting. The Allsbrook court’s quarters had always been in the tower adjacent to Aedion’s—when they’d been boys, they’d once spent a summer devising a signaling system to each other’s rooms using a lantern.

It was the last summer they had spent in friendship, once it had started to become clear to Ren’s father that Aedion was favored to take the blood oath. And then the rivalry had begun.

One summer: thick as thieves and as wild. The next: endless pissing contests, everything from footraces through the courtyards to shoving in the stairwells to outright brawling in the Great Hall. Rhoe had tried to defuse it, but Rhoe had never been a comfortable liar. Had refused to deny to Ren’s father that Aedion was the one who’d swear that oath. And by the end of that summer, even the Crown Prince had begun to look the other way when the two boys launched into yet another fight in the dirt. Not that it mattered now.

Would his own father, would Gavriel, have encouraged the rivalry? He supposed it didn’t matter, either. But for a heartbeat, Aedion tried to picture it—Gavriel here, presiding over his training. His father and Rhoe, teaching him together. And he knew that Gavriel would have found some way to calm the competition, much in the way he held the peace in the cadre. What manner of man would he have become, had the Lion been here? Gavriel likely would have been butchered with the rest of the court, but … he would have been here.

A fool’s path, to wander down that road. Aedion was who he was, and most of the time, didn’t mind that one bit. Rhoe had been his father in the ways that counted. Even if there had been times when Aedion had looked at Rhoe and Evalin and Aelin and still felt like a guest.

Aedion shook the thought from his head. Being here, in this castle, had addled him. Dragged him into a realm of ghosts.

“Don’t expect Darrow to put out a breakfast spread like the ones we used to have,” Aedion said. Not that he expected or wanted one. He ate only because his body demanded he do so, ate because it was strength, and he would need it, his people would need it, before long.

Ren surveyed the city, then the Plain of Theralis beyond. The still-empty horizon. “I’ll get the archers sorted today. And ensure the soldiers at the gates know how to wield that boiling oil.”

“Do you know how to wield it?” Aedion arched a brow.

Ren snorted. “What’s to learn? You dump a giant cauldron over the side of the walls. Damage done.”

It certainly required a bit more skill than that, but it was better than nothing. At least Darrow had made sure they had such supplies.

Aedion prayed they’d get the chance to use them. With Morath’s witch towers, the odds were that they’d be blasted into rubble before the enemy host even reached either of the two gates into the city.

“What we could really use is some hellfire,” Ren muttered. “That’d keep them from the gates.”

And potentially melt everyone around them, too.

Aedion opened his mouth to agree when his brows narrowed.

He surveyed the plain, the horizon.

“Out with it,” Ren said.

Aedion steered Ren back toward the tower entrance. “We need to talk to Rolfe.”

Not about hellfire at the southern and western gates. Not at all.

They waited until cover of darkness, when Morath’s spies might not spot the small band of them who crept, mile after mile, across the Plain of Theralis.

Clad in battle-black, they moved over the field that would once more become bathed in blood. When they reached the landmarks that Aedion and Ren had used the daylight hours to plan out, Aedion held up a hand.

The Silent Assassins lived up to their name as Ilias signaled back and they spread out. Amongst them moved Rolfe’s Mycenians, bearing their heavy loads.

But it was the shape-shifter who began to work first. Turning herself into a giant badger, bigger than a horse, who scooped out the frozen earth with skilled, strong paws.

The scent of her blood filled the air, but Lysandra didn’t stop digging.

And when she’d finished the first pit, she moved on to the next, leaving the group of Silent Assassins and Mycenians to lay their trap, then bury it once more.

The brutal wind moaned past them. Yet they worked through the night, used every minute given to them. And when they were done, they vanished back to the city, invisible once more.

Morath appeared on the horizon a day later.

From the castle’s highest towers and walkways, every marching line could be counted. One after another after another.

Her hands still bruised and bandaged from digging through frozen earth, Lysandra stood with an assortment of their allies on one of those walkways, Evangeline clinging to her.

“That’s fifteen thousand,” Ansel of Briarcliff announced as yet another line emerged. No one said anything. “Twenty.”

“Morath must be empty to now have so many here,” Prince Galan murmured.

Evangeline trembled, not entirely from the cold, and Lysandra tightened her arm around the girl. Down the wall of the walkway, Darrow and the other Terrasen lords spoke quietly. As if sensing Lysandra’s attention, Darrow threw a narrow glance her way—that then dipped to the pale-faced, shaking Evangeline. Darrow said nothing, and Lysandra didn’t bother to look pleasant, before he turned back to his companions.

“That’s thirty,” Ansel said.

“We can count,” Rolfe snipped.

Ansel lifted a wine-red brow. “Can you really?”

Despite the army marching on them, Lysandra’s mouth twitched upward.

Rolfe just rolled his eyes and went back to watching the approaching army.

“They won’t arrive until dawn at the earliest,” Aedion observed, his face grim.

She had not yet decided what form to take. Where to fight. If ilken still flew in their ranks, then it would be a wyvern, but if closer quarters were required, then … she hadn’t decided. No one had asked her to be anywhere in particular, though Aedion’s request the other night to assist in their wild plan had been a rare reprieve from these days of waiting and dreading.

She’d gladly take days of pacing instead of what approached them.

“Fifty thousand,” Ansel said, throwing a wry glance to Rolfe.

Lysandra swallowed against the tightness in her throat. Evangeline pressed her face into Lysandra’s side.

And then the witch towers took form.

Like massive lances jutting from the horizon, they appeared through the gray morning light. Three of them, spread out equally amid the army that continued to flow behind them.

Even Ansel stopped counting now.

“I did not think it would be so terrible,” Evangeline whispered, hands digging into Lysandra’s heavy cloak. “I did not think it would be so wretched.”

Lysandra pressed a kiss to the top of her red-gold hair. “No harm shall come to you.”

“I am not afraid for myself,” Evangeline said. “But for my friends.”

Those citrine eyes indeed shone with tears of terror, and Lysandra brushed one away before watching the advancing witch towers creep toward them. She had no words to comfort the girl.

“Any minute now,” Aedion murmured, and Lysandra glanced down to the snowy plain.

To the figures that emerged from beneath the snow, clad in white. Flaming arrows nocked in their bows. Morath’s front lines were nearly upon them, but those soldiers were not their target.

Down the wall, Murtaugh gripped the ancient stones as a figure that had to be Ren gave the order. Flaming arrows arched and flew, Morath soldiers ducking under their shields.

They did not bother to look beneath their feet.

Neither did the witches leading their three towers.

The flaming arrows struck the earth with deadly accuracy, thanks to the Silent Assassins who wielded those bows.

Right atop the fuse lines that flowed directly into the pits they’d dug. Just as the witch towers passed over them.

Blinding flashes broke apart the black sea of the army. Then the mighty boom.

And then a rain of stone, all Morath’s forces whirling to see. Providing the right distraction as Ren, Ilias, and the Silent Assassins raced on foot to the white horses hidden behind a snowdrift.

When the flash cleared, when the smoke was gone, a sigh of relief went down the walkway.

Two of those witch towers had been directly over the pits. Pits that they had filled with the chemical reactors and powders that fueled Rolfe’s firelances, then concealed beneath the earth—waiting for a spark to ignite them.

Those two towers now lay in scattered ruin, their wyverns broken beneath them, soldiers squashed under falling stone.

Yet one still stood, the pit it had been closest to exploding too soon. One of the wyverns who had pulled it had been hit by debris from another tower—and lay either dead or injured.

And that third remaining tower had stopped.

A wicked, low horn sounded from the enemy host, and the army halted, too.

“Thank the rutting gods,” Rolfe said, head bowing.

But Aedion was still staring at the plain—at the figures on horseback galloping to Orynth’s walls. Making sure they all returned.

“How long will that stop them?” Evangeline asked.

Everyone, Darrow included, turned to the girl. No one had an answer. No lie to offer.

So they again faced the army gathered on the plain, its farthest reaches now visible.

“One hundred thousand,” Ansel of Briarcliff announced softly.