No ruk would come to sweep them up. No, his luck had been spent in surviving this long, in her finding him. His power would do nothing against that water.
The farthest lines of panicked soldiers appeared, and Farasha charged past them.
Elide let out a sob, and he followed the line of her sight.
To the keep gate, still open.
“Faster, Farasha!” She didn’t hide the raw terror in her voice, the desperation.
Once the dam broke, it would take less than a minute for the tidal wave to reach them.
She had come for him. She had found him.
The world went quiet. The pain in his body faded into nothing. Into something secondary.
Lorcan slid his other arm around Elide, bringing his mouth close to her ear as he said, “You have to let me go.”
Each word was gravelly, his voice strained nearly to the point of uselessness.
Elide didn’t shift her focus from the keep ahead. “No.”
That gentle quiet flowed around him, clearing the fog of pain and battle. “You have to. You have to, Elide. I’m too heavy—and without my weight, you might make it to the keep in time.”
“No.” The salt of her tears filled his nose.
Lorcan brushed his mouth over her damp cheek, ignoring the roaring pain in his body. The horse galloped and galloped, as if she might outrace death itself.
“I love you,” he whispered in Elide’s ear. “I have loved you from the moment you picked up that axe to slay the ilken.” Her tears flowed past him in the wind. “And I will be with you …” His voice broke, but he made himself say the words, the truth in his heart. “I will be with you always.”
He was not frightened of what would come for him once he tumbled off the horse. He was not frightened at all, if it meant her reaching the keep.
So Lorcan kissed Elide’s cheek again, allowed himself to breathe in her scent one last time. “I love you,” he repeated, and began to withdraw his arms from around her waist.
Elide slapped a hand onto his forearm. Dug in her nails, right into his skin, fierce as any ruk.
“No.”
There were no tears in her voice. Nothing but solid, unwavering steel.
“No,” she said again. The voice of the Lady of Perranth.
Lorcan tried to move his arm, but her grip would not be dislodged.
If he tumbled off the horse, she would go with him.
Together. They would either outrun this or die together.
“Elide—”
But Elide slammed her heels into the horse’s sides.
Slammed her heels into the dark flank and screamed, “FLY, FARASHA.” She cracked the reins. “FLY, FLY, FLY!”
And gods help her, that horse did.
As if the god that had crafted her filled the mare’s lungs with his own breath, Farasha gave a surge of speed.
Faster than the wind. Faster than death.
Farasha cleared the first of the fleeing Darghan cavalry. Passed desperate horses and riders at an all-out gallop for the gates.
Her mighty heart did not falter, even when Lorcan knew it was raging to the point of bursting.
Less than a mile stood between them and the keep.
But a thunderous, groaning crack cleaved the world, echoing off the lake, the mountains.
There was nothing he could do, nothing that brave, unfaltering horse could do, as the dam ruptured.
Rowan began praying for those on the plain, for the army about to be wiped away, as the dam broke.
Standing a few feet away, Yrene was whispering her prayers, too. To Silba, the goddess of gentle deaths. May it be quick, may it be painless.
A wall of water, large as a mountain, broke free. And rushed toward the city, the plain, with the wrath of a thousand years of confinement.
“They’re not going to make it,” Fenrys hissed, eyes on Lorcan and Elide, galloping toward them. So close—so close, and yet that wave would arrive in a matter of seconds.
Rowan made himself stand there, to watch the last moments of the Lady of Perranth and his former commander. It was all he could offer: witnessing their deaths, so he might tell the story to those he encountered. So they would not be forgotten.
The roaring of the oncoming wave became deafening, even from miles away.
Still Elide and Lorcan raced, Farasha passing horse after horse after horse.
Even up here, would they escape the wave’s reach? Rowan dared to survey the battlements, to assess if he needed to get the others, needed to get Aelin, to higher ground.
But Aelin was not at his side.
She was not on the battlement at all.
Rowan’s heart halted. Simply stopped beating as a ruddy-brown ruk dropped from the skies, spearing for the center of the plain.
Arcas, Borte’s ruk. A golden-haired woman dangling from his talons.
Aelin. Aelin was—
Arcas neared the earth, talons splaying. Aelin hit the ground, rolling, rolling, until she uncoiled to her feet.
Right in the path of that wave.
“Oh gods,” Fenrys breathed, seeing her, too.
They all saw her.
The queen on the plain.
The endless wall of water surging for her.
The keep stones began shuddering. Rowan threw out a hand to brace himself, fear like nothing he had known ripping through him as Aelin lifted her arms above her head.
A pillar of fire shot up around her, lifting her hair with it.
The wave roared and roared for her, for the army behind her.
The shaking in the keep was not from the wave.
It was not from that wall of water at all.
Cracks formed in the earth, splintering across it. Spiderwebbing from Aelin.
“The hot springs,” Chaol breathed. “The valley floor is full of veins into the earth itself.”
Into the burning heart of the world.
The keep shook, more violently this time.
The pillar of fire sucked back into Aelin. She held out a hand before her, her fist closed.
As if it would halt the wave in its tracks.
He knew then. Either as her mate or carranam, he knew.
“Three months,” Rowan breathed.
The others stilled.
“Three months,” he said again, his knees wobbling. “She’s been making the descent into her power for three months.”
Every day she had been with Maeve, bound in iron, she had gone deeper. And she had not tapped too far into that power since they’d freed her because she had kept making the plunge.
To gather up the full might of her magic. Not for the Lock, not for Erawan.
But for Maeve’s death blow.
A few weeks of descent had taken her powers to devastating levels. Three months of it …
Holy gods. Holy rutting gods.
And when her fire hit the wall of water now towering over her, when they collided—
“GET DOWN!” Rowan bellowed, over the screaming waters. “GET DOWN NOW!”
His companions dropped to the stones, any within earshot doing the same.
Rowan plummeted into his power. Plummeted into it fast and hard, ripping out any remaining shred of magic.
Elide and Lorcan were still too far from the gates. Thousands of soldiers were still too far from the gates as the wave crested above them.
As Aelin opened her hand toward it.
Fire erupted.
Cobalt fire. The raging soul of a flame.
A tidal wave of it.
Taller than the raging waters, it blasted from her, flaring wide.
The wave slammed into it. And where water met a wall of fire, where a thousand years of confinement met three months of it, the world exploded.
Blistering steam, capable of melting flesh from bone, shot across the plain.
With a roar, Rowan threw all that remained of his magic toward the onslaught of steam, a wall of wind that shoved it toward the lake, the mountains.
Still the waters came, breaking against the flames that did not so much as yield an inch.
Maeve’s death blow. Spent here, to save the army that might mean Terrasen’s salvation. To spare the lives on the plain.
Rowan gritted his teeth, panting against his fraying power. A burnout lurked, deadly close.
The raging wave threw itself over and over and over into the wall of flame.
Rowan didn’t see if Elide and Lorcan made it into the keep. If the other soldiers and riders on the plain stopped to gape.
Princess Hasar said, rising beside him, “That power is no blessing.”