Kingdom of Ash

Aelin didn’t say that asking them to vote hadn’t just been about letting them decide, as free peoples of the world, how to seal its fate. She didn’t say that it had also been a coward’s thing to do. To let someone else decide for her. To choose the road ahead.

They camped that night at Endovier, the salt mines a mere three miles down the road.

Rowan made them set up their royal tent. Their royal bed.

She didn’t eat with the others. Could barely touch the food Rowan laid on the desk. She was still sitting in front of it, roast rabbit now cold, poring over those useless books on Wyrdmarks when Rowan said from across the table, “I do not accept this.”

“I do.” The words were flat, dead.

As she would be, before the sun had fully risen. Aelin shut the ancient tome before her.

Only a few days separated them from Terrasen’s border. Perhaps she should have agreed to do this now, but on the condition that it was on Terrasen soil. Terrasen soil, rather than by Endovier.

But every passing day was a risk. A terrible risk.

“You have never accepted anything in your life,” Rowan snarled, shooting to his feet and bracing his hands on the table. “And now you are suddenly willing to do so?”

She swallowed against the ache in her throat. Surveyed the books she’d combed through thrice now to no avail. “What am I supposed to do, Rowan?”

“You damn it all to hell!” He slammed his fist on the table, rattling the dishes. “You say to hell with their plans, their prophecies and fates, and you make your own! You do anything but accept this!”

“The people of Erilea have spoken.”

“To hell with that, too,” he growled. “You can start your free world after this war. Let them vote for their own damned kings and queens, if they want to.”

She let out a growl of her own. “I do not want this burden for one second longer. I do not want to choose and learn I made the wrong choice in delaying it.”

“So you would have voted against it, then. You would have gone to Terrasen.”

“Does it matter?” She shot to her feet. “The votes weren’t in my favor anyway. Hearing that I wanted to go to Orynth, to fight one last time, would have only swayed them.”

“You’re the one who’s about to die. I’d say you get to have a voice in it.”

She bared her teeth. “This is my fate. Elena tried to get me out of it. And look where it landed her—with a cabal of vengeful gods swearing to end her eternal soul. When the Lock is forged, when I close the gate, I will be destroying another life alongside my own.”

“Elena has had a thousand years of existence, either living or as a spirit. Forgive me if I don’t give a shit that her time has now come to an end, when you only received twenty years.”

“I got to twenty years because of her.”

Not even twenty. Her birthday was still months away. In a spring she would not see.

Rowan began pacing, his stalking steps eating up the carpet. “This mess is because of her, too. Why should you bear its weight alone?”

“Because it was always mine to begin with.”

“Bullshit. It could have as easily been Dorian. He’s willing to do it.”

Aelin blinked. “Elena and Nehemia said Dorian wasn’t ready.”

“Dorian walked into and out of Morath, went toe to toe with Maeve, and brought the whole damn place crashing down. I’d say he’s as ready as you are.”

“I won’t allow him to sacrifice himself in my stead.”

“Why?”

“Because he is my friend. Because I won’t be able to live with myself if I let him go.”

“He said he would do it, Aelin.”

“He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s barely emerging from the horrors he endured.”

“And you aren’t?” Rowan challenged, wholly unfazed. “He’s a grown man. He can make his own choices—we can make choices without you lording over them.”

She bared her teeth. “It’s been decided.”

He crossed his arms. “Then you and I will do it. Together.”

Her heart stopped in her chest.

He went on, “You are not forging the Lock alone.”

“No.” Her hands began shaking. “That is not an option.”

“According to whom?”

“According to me.” She couldn’t breathe around the thought—of him being erased from existence. “If it was possible, Elena would have told me. Someone with my bloodline has to pay.”

He opened his mouth, but beheld the truth in her face, her words. He shook his head. “I promised you we’d find a way to pay this debt—together.”

Aelin surveyed the scattered books. Nothing—the books, that scrap of hope they’d offered had amounted to nothing. “There isn’t an alternative.” She dragged her hands through her hair. “I don’t have an alternative,” she amended. No card up her sleeve, no grand reveal. Not for this.

“We don’t do it tomorrow, then,” he pushed. “We wait. Tell the others we want to reach Orynth first. Maybe the Royal Library has some texts—”

“What is the point in a vote if we ignore its outcome? They decided, Rowan. Tomorrow, it will be over.”

The words rang hollow and sickly within her.

“Let me find another way.” His voice broke, but his pacing didn’t falter. “I will find another way, Aelin—”

“There is no other way. Don’t you understand? All of this,” she hissed, arms splaying. “All of this has been to keep you alive. All of you.”

“With you as the asking price. To atone for some lingering guilt.”

She slammed a hand atop the stack of ancient books. “Do you think I want to die? Do you think any of this is easy, to look at the sky and wonder if it’s the last I’ll see? To look at you, and wonder about those years we won’t have?”

“I don’t know what you want, Aelin,” Rowan snarled. “You haven’t been entirely forthcoming.”

Her heart thundered. “I want it to be over, one way or another.” Her fingers curled into fists. “I want this to be done.”

He shook his head. “I know. And I know what you went through, that those months in Doranelle were hell, Aelin. But you can’t stop fighting. Not now.”

Her eyes burned. “I held on for this. For this purpose. So I can put the keys back in the gate. When Cairn ripped me apart, when Maeve tore away everything I knew, it was only remembering that this task relied upon my survival that kept me from breaking. Knowing that if I failed, all of you would die.” Her breathing turned uneven, sharp. “And since then, I’ve been so damned stupid in thinking that perhaps I wouldn’t have to pay the debt, that I might see Orynth again. That Dorian might do it instead.” She spat on the ground. “What sort of person does that make me? To have been filled with dread when he arrived today?”

Rowan again opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off, her voice breaking. “I thought I could escape it—just for a moment. And as soon as I did, the gods brought Dorian sweeping right back into my path. Tell me that’s not intentional. Tell me that those gods, or whichever forces might also rule this world, aren’t roaring that I should still be the one to forge the Lock.”

Rowan just stared at her for a long moment, his chest heaving. Then he said, “What if those forces didn’t lead Dorian into our path so you alone might pay the debt?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What if they brought you together. To not pick one or the other, but to share the burden. With each other.”

Even the fire in the braziers seemed to pause.

Rowan’s eyes glowed as he blazed ahead. “That day you destroyed the glass castle—when you joined hands, your power … I’d never seen anything like it. You were able to meld your powers, to become one. If the Lock demands all of you, then why not give half? Half of each of you—when you both bear Mala’s blood?”

Aelin slid slowly into her chair. “I—we don’t know it will work.”

“It’s better than walking into your own execution with your head bowed.”

She snarled. “How could I ever ask him to do it?”

“Because it is not your burden alone, that’s why. Dorian knows this. Has accepted it. Because the alternative is losing you.” The rage in his eyes fractured, right along with his voice. “I would go in your stead, if I could.”

Her own heart cracked. “I know.”

Rowan fell to his knees before her, putting his head in her lap as his arms wrapped around her waist. “I can’t bear it, Aelin. I can’t.”

She threaded her fingers through his hair. “I wanted that thousand years with you,” she said softly. “I wanted to have children with you. I wanted to go into the Afterworld together.” Her tears landed in his hair.

Rowan lifted his head. “Then fight for it. One more time. Fight for that future.”

She gazed at him, at the life she saw in his face. All that he offered.

All that she might have, too.

“I need to ask you to do something.”

Aelin’s voice roused Dorian from a fitful sleep. He sat up on his cot. From the silence of the camp, it had to be the dead of night. “What?”

Rowan was standing guard behind her, watching the army camp beneath the trees. Dorian caught his emerald gaze—saw the answer he already needed.

The prince had come through on his silent promise earlier.

Aelin’s throat bobbed. “Together,” she said, her voice cracking. “What if we forged the Lock together?”

Dorian knew her plan, her desperate hope, before she laid it out. And when she finished, Aelin only said, “I am sorry to even ask you.”

“I am sorry I didn’t think of it,” he replied, and pushed to his feet, tugging on his boots.

Rowan turned toward them now. Waiting for an answer that he knew Dorian would give.

So Dorian said to them both, “Yes.”

Aelin closed her eyes, and he couldn’t tell if it was from relief or regret. He laid a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t want to know what the argument had been like between her and Rowan to get her to agree, to accept this. For Aelin to have even said yes …

Her eyes opened, and only bleak resolve lay within. “We do it now,” she said hoarsely. “Before the others. Before good-byes.”

Dorian nodded. She only asked, “Do you want Chaol to be there?”

He thought about saying no. Thought about sparing his friend from another good-bye, when there was such joy on Chaol’s face, such peace.

But Dorian still said, “Yes.”