Kingdom of Ash

Screaming filled the halls. He’d marked where the human servants worked, where they dwelled. They would find, as they fled, that their passageways remained stable. Until every last one of them was out.

Please, Maeve begged, staggering to her knees as the tower swayed again. Please.

He should let Erawan find her. Doom her to the life she’d intended for him. For Aelin.

Maeve curled over her knees, her mind and power contained. Waiting in despair for the dark king whom she’d tried so hard to escape. Or for the shuddering fortress to collapse around her.

He knew he would regret it. Knew he should kill her. But to condemn her to what he’d endured …

He would not wish it upon anyone. Even if it cost them this war.

He did not think it made him weak. Not at all.

Beyond the window, Ironteeth shot to the skies, wyverns shrieking as Morath’s stones began to give way. In the valley below, the army halted to peer at the mountain looming high above them. The shaking tower built atop it.

Please, Maeve said again. Levels beneath them, another bellow of rage thundered from Erawan—closer now.

So Dorian soared into the chaotic night.

Maeve’s silent cry of despair followed on his heels. All the way to the peaks overlooking Morath and that rocky outcropping—to the two Wyrdkeys buried under the shale.

He could barely remember his own name as he slid them into his other pocket. As all three of the Wyrdkeys now lay upon him.

Then he reached back into the mind still tethered to his.

It was simple as an incision. To sever the link between their minds—and to sever another part of her.

To tie off the gift that allowed her to jump between places. To open those portals.

World-walker no longer, he said as his raw magic shifted her own. Changed its very essence. I suggest you invest in a good pair of shoes.

Then he let go of Maeve’s mind.

A hateful, unending scream was the only response.

Dorian shifted again, becoming large and vicious, no more than a pack wyvern flying northward to bring supplies to the aerial legion.

A king—he could be a king to Adarlan in these last days that remained for him. Wipe away the stain and rot of what it had become. So it might start anew. Become who it wished to be.

Dorian caught a swift wind, sailing hard and fast.

And when he looked behind him, at the mountain and valley that reeked of death, at the place where so many terrible things had begun, Dorian smiled and brought Morath’s towers crashing down.

CHAPTER 79

Yrene hated the Ferian Gap. Hated the tight air between the two gargantuan peaks, hated the bones and wyvern refuse littering the rocky floor, hated the reek that slithered from whatever openings had been carved into the mountains.

At least it was empty. Though they had not yet decided if that was a blessing.

The two armies now filled the Gap, Hasar’s soldiers already preparing to make the crossing back over the Avery into the tangle of Oakwald. That trek would take an age, even with the rukhin carrying the wagons and heavier supplies. And then the push northward through the forest, taking the ancient road that lay along the Avery’s northern branch.

“Pass me that knife there,” Yrene said to Lady Elide, pointing with her chin to her supply kit. Spread on a blanket on the bottom of the covered wagon, a Darghan soldier lay unconscious, cold sweat beading his brow. He hadn’t seen a healer after getting a slice to the thigh at the battle for Anielle, and when he’d fallen clean off his horse this morning, he’d been hauled in here.

Elide’s hands remained steady as she plucked up the thin knife and passed it to Yrene.

“Will it wake him?” she asked while Yrene bent over the unconscious warrior and examined the infected wound that was gruesome enough to turn most stomachs.

“My magic has him in a deep sleep.” Yrene angled the knife. “He’ll stay out until I wake him.”

Elide, to her credit, didn’t retch as Yrene began to clean out the wound, scraping away the dead, infected bits.

“No sign of blood poisoning, thank the gods,” Yrene announced as the cloth beside the man became covered in the discarded rot. “But we’ll need to put him on a special brew to make sure.”

“Your magic can’t just do a sweep through him?” Elide tossed the soiled cloth into the nearby waste bucket, and laid down another.

“It can, and I will,” Yrene said, fighting her gag as the reek from the wound stuffed itself up her nostrils, “but that might not be enough, if the infection truly wishes to make an appearance.”

“You talk about illnesses as if they were living creatures.”

“They are, to some degree,” Yrene said. “With their own secrets and temperaments. You sometimes have to outsmart them, just as you would any foe.”

Yrene took the mirrored lantern from beside the bed and adjusted the plates within to shine a beam of light on the infected slice. When the brightness revealed no further signs of rotting skin, she set down both lantern and knife. “That wasn’t as bad as I’d feared,” she admitted, and held out her hands over the bloody wound.

Warmth and light rose within her, like a memory of the summer in this frigid mountain pass, and as her hands glowed, Yrene’s magic guided her within the man’s body. It flowed along blood and sinew and bone, knitting and mending, listening to the aches and fever now running rampant. Soothing them, calming them. Wiping them away.

She was panting when she finished, but the man’s breathing had eased. The sweat on his brow had dried.

“Remarkable,” Elide whispered, gaping at the now-smooth leg of the warrior.

Yrene just turned her head to the side and vomited into the waste bucket.

Elide leapt to her feet.

But Yrene held up a hand, wiping her mouth with the other. “As joyful as it is to know I shall soon be a mother, the realities of the first few months are … not so joyous.”

Elide limped to the ewer of drinking water and poured a cup. “Here. Is there anything I can get you? Can—can you heal your own sickness, or do you need someone else to?”

Yrene sipped at the water, letting it wash away the bitter bile. “The vomiting is a sign that things are progressing with the babe.” A hand drifted to her middle. “It’s not something that can really be cured, not unless I had a healer at my side day and night, easing the nausea.”

“It’s become that bad?” Elide frowned.

“Terrible timing, I know.” Yrene sighed. “The best options are ginger—anything ginger. Which I would rather save for the upset stomachs of our soldiers. Peppermint can help, too.” She gestured toward her satchel. “I have some dried leaves in there. Just put some in a cup with the hot water and I’ll be fine.” Behind them, a small brazier held a steaming kettle, used for disinfecting supplies rather than making tea.

Elide was instantly moving, and Yrene watched in silence while the lady prepared the tea.

“I could heal your leg, you know.”

Elide stilled, a hand reaching for the kettle. “Really?”

Yrene waited until the lady had pressed a cup of the peppermint tea into her hands before she nodded to the lady’s boots. “Can I see the injury?”

Elide hesitated, but took her seat on the stool beside Yrene and tugged off her boot, then the sock beneath.

Yrene surveyed the scarring, the twisted bone. Elide had told her days ago why she had the injury.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get an infection yourself.” Yrene sipped from her tea, deemed it still too hot, and set it aside before patting her lap. Elide obeyed, putting her foot on Yrene’s thigh. Carefully, Yrene touched the scars and mangled bones, her magic doing the same.

The brutality of the injury was enough to take Yrene’s breath away. And to make her grind her teeth, knowing how young Elide had been, how unbearably painful it was—knowing that her very uncle had done this to her.

“What’s wrong?” Elide breathed.

“Nothing—I mean, beyond what you already know.”

Such cruelty. Such terrible, unforgivable cruelty.

Yrene coiled her magic back into herself, but kept her hands on Elide’s ankle. “This injury would require weeks of work to repair, and with our current circumstances, I don’t think either of us can undergo it.” Elide nodded. “But if we survive this war, I can help you, if you wish.”