Kingdom of Ash

“Focus on the ladder,” Aedion snarled to the soldiers shrinking from the handsome demon prince who stepped onto the city walls as if he were merely entering a room.

He wore no armor. Nothing but a black tunic cut to his lithe body.

The Valg prince smiled. “Prince Aedion,” purred the thing inside it, drawing a sword from a dark sheath at his side. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Aedion struck.

He did not have magic, did not have anything to combat the dark power in the prince’s veins, but he had speed. He had strength.

Aedion feinted with his sword, that ordinary, nameless sword, and the prince swung with his own blade—just as Aedion slammed his shield into the man’s side.

Driving him back. Not toward the ladder, but to the Mycenian who wielded the firelance—

The Mycenian was dead.

The prince chuckled, and a whip of dark power lashed for Aedion.

Aedion ducked, shield rising. As if it would do anything against that power.

Darkness struck metal, and Aedion’s arm sang with the reverberations.

But the pain, the life-draining agony, did not occur.

Aedion instantly parried, a slash upward that the Valg prince dodged with a hop to the side.

The demon’s eyes were wide as he took in the shield. Then Aedion.

Then the Valg prince hissed, “Fae bastard.”

Aedion didn’t know what it meant, didn’t care as he took another blast upon his shield, the battlements already slick with blood both black and red. If the Mycenian nearby was dead, then there was another down by Ren’s ladder—

The Valg prince unleashed blast after blast of power.

Aedion took each one upon his shield, the prince’s power bouncing off as if it were a spray of water upon stone. And for every burst of power sent his way, Aedion swung his sword.

Steel met steel; darkness clashed with ancient metal. Aedion had the vague sense of soldiers Valg and human alike halting as he and the demon prince battled their way across the city wall.

He kept his feet beneath him, as Rhoe had taught him. As Quinn had taught him, and Cal Lochan. As all his mentors and the warriors he’d admired above all others had taught him. For this moment, when he would be called to defend Orynth’s very walls.

It was for them he swung his sword, for them he took blow after blow.

The Valg prince hissed with every blast, as if enraged that his power could not break that shield.

Rhoe’s shield.

There was no magic in it. Brannon had never borne it. But one of them had forged it, one of the unbroken line of kings and queens who had come after him, who had loved their kingdom more than their own lives. Who had carried this shield into battle, into war, to defend Terrasen.

And as Aedion and the Valg prince fought along the walls, as that ancient shield refused to yield, he wondered if there was a different sort of power in the metal. One that the Valg could never and would never understand. Not true magic, not as Brannon and Aelin had. But something just as strong—stronger.

That the Valg might never break, no matter how they tried.

Aedion’s sword sang, and the Valg prince roared as Aedion connected with his arm, slashing deep.

Black blood sprayed. Aedion leaped upon the advantage, shoving with the shield and stabbing with his blade.

But the prince had been waiting.

Had set a trap, his own body as the bait.

And as Aedion slammed into the Valg prince, the demon drew a dagger from his sword belt and struck. Right where Aedion’s armor exposed just a sliver near his armpit, vulnerable with the outstretched position of his arm.

The knife plunged in, rending flesh and muscle and bone.

Pain, white-hot and blinding, threatened to make him splay his hand, to drop his sword. Only Aedion’s training, only those years of work, kept his feet under him as he leaped back, wrenching free of the knife.

The Valg prince chuckled, and Aedion was dimly aware of the fighting along the walls, the shouting and dying and flares of fire, as the prince smiled down at the bloodied dagger.

Bringing it to his sensual mouth, the prince dragged his tongue along the blade. Licked Aedion’s blood clean off. “Exquisite,” the demon breathed, shuddering with pleasure.

Aedion backed away another step, his arm burning and burning and burning, blood pooling inside his armor.

The prince stalked after him.

A whip of dark power launched for Aedion, and he again took it on his shield. Let it send him tumbling to the ground, landing atop the ironclad body of one of the Bane.

His breath turned sharp as the knife that had stabbed him.

The prince paused before Aedion. “Feasting on you will be a delight.”

Aedion hefted his shield over himself, bracing for the blow.

The prince made to lift the bloodied dagger to his mouth again, eyes rolling back in his head.

Those eyes went wide as an arrow broke the skin of his throat. Right above the collar.

The prince gagged, whirling toward the arrow that had come not from Aedion, but from behind. Right into the path of Ren Allsbrook and the firelance he bore in his arms.

Ren slammed his hand into the release hatch, and flame erupted.

Aedion ducked, coiling his body beneath his shield as the flame threatened to melt his own bones.

The world was heat and light. Then nothing. Only the shouts of battle and dying men.

Aedion managed to lower his shield.

Where the Valg prince had been, a pile of ashes and a black Wyrdstone collar remained.

Aedion panted, a hand going to his bleeding side. “I had him.”

Ren only shook his head, and pivoted on a boot, unleashing the firelance upon the nearest Valg soldiers.

The Lord of Allsbrook turned back to him, mouth open to say something. But Aedion’s head swam, his body plunging into a coldness he’d never known. Then there was nothing.

The battle was so much worse than Evangeline had imagined.

The sound alone made her quake in her bones, and only delivering messages to Lord Darrow where he stood on one of the higher castle balconies saved her from curling into a ball.

Her breath was a ragged, dry thing as she raced back onto the balcony, to where Darrow stood by the stone railing, two other Terrasen lords beside him. “From Kyllian,” Evangeline managed to say, bobbing a curtsy, as she had each time she’d delivered a message.

Battles were no place for manners, she knew—Aelin certainly would have said that. But she kept doing it, the curtsying, even when her legs trembled. Couldn’t stop herself.

Kyllian’s messenger had met her at the castle stairs, and now waited for Darrow’s reply. It was as close to the fighting as she’d gotten. Not that being up here was any better.

Pressing herself against the stones of the tower wall, Evangeline let Darrow read the letter. The Crochans and wyverns were so much closer up here. This high, she stood on their level, the world a blur below. Evangeline laid her palms flat against the icy stones, as if she could draw some strength from them.

Even with the roar of battle, she heard Darrow declare to the other lords, “Aedion has been wounded.”

Evangeline’s stomach dropped, nausea—oily and thick—surging. “Is he all right?”

The two other lords ignored her, but Darrow looked her way. “He has lost consciousness, and they have moved him into a building near the wall. Healers are working on him as we speak. They will move him here as soon as he is capable of withstanding it.”

Evangeline staggered to the balcony rail, as if she might see that building amid the sea of chaos by the city walls.

She had never had a brother, or a father. She hadn’t yet decided which one she would like Aedion to be. And if he was so injured that it warranted a message to Darrow—

She pressed a hand to her stomach, trying to contain the bile that burned her throat.

Murmuring sounded, and then there was a hand on her shoulder. “Lord Gunnar will see to delivering my reply,” Darrow said. “You will remain here with me. I might have need of you.”

The words were stern, but the hand on her shoulder was kind.

Evangeline only nodded, sick and miserable, and clung to the balcony rail, as if her grip might somehow keep Aedion on this side of life.

“Hot refreshments, Sloane,” Darrow ordered, his voice brooking no room for argument.

The other lord peeled away. Evangeline didn’t know how long passed after that. How long it took until the lord arrived, and Darrow pressed a scalding mug into her fingers. “Drink.”

Evangeline obeyed, finding it to be broth of some sort. Beef, maybe. She didn’t care.

Her friends were down there. Her family, the one she’d made.

Far out, near the river, a blur of motion was her only indication that Lysandra still lived.

No word arrived about Aedion’s fate.

So Evangeline lingered on the tower, Darrow silent beside her, and prayed.