Kingdom of Ash

Aelin didn’t reach for it. “I’d rather you keep it.”

“And I’d rather you have it,” Elide challenged, holding the queen’s stare. She asked softly, “Haven’t you given enough, Aelin? Won’t you let one of us do something for you?”

Aelin glanced down to the ring. “I failed. You realize that, don’t you?”

“You put the keys back in the gate. That is not failure. And even if you had failed in that, I would give this ring to you.”

“I owe it to your mother to see that you survive this.”

Elide’s chest tightened. “You owe it to my mother to live, Aelin.” She leaned closer, practically pushing the ring into Aelin’s face. “Take it. If not for me, then for her.”

Aelin stared at the ring again. And then took it.

Elide tried not to sigh as the queen slid it onto her finger.

“Thank you,” Aelin murmured.

Elide was about to answer when the tent flaps opened, icy air howling in—along with Borte. “You didn’t invite me for a bath?” the rukhin asked, frowning dramatically at the queen.

Aelin’s lips curved upward. “I thought rukhin were too tough for baths.”

“Do you see how nice the men keep their hair? You think that doesn’t imply an obsession with cleanliness?” Borte strode across the royal tent and plopped onto the stool beside the queen’s tub. Not at all seeming to care that the queen or Elide were naked.

It took all of Elide’s will not to cover herself up. At least with Aelin in the adjacent tub, the lip of the bath was high enough to offer them privacy. But with Borte sitting above them like this—

“Here are my thoughts,” Borte declared, flicking the end of one of her braids.

Aelin smiled slightly.

“Hasar is cranky and cold. Sartaq is used to these conditions and doesn’t care. Kashin is trying to make the best of it, because he’s so damned nice, but they’re all just a little nervous that we’re marching on a hundred thousand soldiers, potentially more on the way, and that Erawan is not out of commission. Neither is Maeve. So they’re pissed. They like you, but they’re pissed.”

“I’d gathered as much,” Aelin said drily, “when Hasar called me a stupid cow.”

It had taken all of Elide’s restraint not to lunge for the princess. And from the growl that had come from the Fae males, even Lorcan, gods above, she knew it had been just as difficult for them.

Aelin had only inclined her head to the princess and smiled. Just as she was smiling now.

Borte waved off Aelin’s words. “Hasar calls everyone a stupid cow. You’re in good company.” Another smile from Aelin at that. “But I’m not here to talk about that. I want to talk about you and me.”

“My favorite subject,” Aelin said, chuckling slightly.

Borte grinned. “You’re alive. You made it. We all thought you’d be dead.” She drew a line across her neck for emphasis, and Elide cringed. “Sartaq is probably going to have me leading one of the flanks into battle, but I’ve done that. Been good at that.” That grin widened. “I want to lead your flank.”

“I don’t have a flank.”

“Then who shall you ride with into battle?”

“I hadn’t gotten that far,” Aelin said, lifting a brow. “Since I expected to be dead.”

“Well, when you do, expect me to be in the skies above you. I’d hate for the battle to be dull.”

Only the fierce-eyed rukhin would have the nerve to call marching on a hundred thousand soldiers dull.

But before Aelin could say anything, or Elide could ask Borte whether the ruks were ready against the wyverns, the ruk rider was gone.

When Elide looked to Aelin, the queen’s face was somber.

Aelin nodded toward the tent flaps. “It’s snowing.”

“It’s been snowing with little rest for days now.”

Aelin’s swallow was audible. “It’s a northern snow.”

The storm slammed into the camp, so fierce that Nesryn and Sartaq had given the ruks orders to hunker down for the day and night.

As if crossing into Terrasen days earlier had officially put them into brutal winter.

“We keep going north,” Kashin was saying, lounging by the fire in Hasar’s sprawling tent.

“Like there is another option,” Hasar snipped, sipping from her mulled wine. “We’ve come this far. We might as well go all the way to Orynth.”

Nesryn, seated on a low sofa with Sartaq, still wondered what, exactly, she was doing in these meetings. Wondered at the fact that she sat with the royal siblings, the Heir to the khaganate at her side.

Empress. The word seemed to hang over her every breath, every movement.

Sartaq said, “Our people have faced odds like this before. We’ll face them again.”

Indeed, Sartaq had stayed up long into the night these weeks reading the accounts and journals of khaganate warriors and leaders from generations past. They’d brought a trunk of them from the khaganate—for this reason. Most Sartaq had already read, he’d told her. But it never hurt to refresh one’s mind.

If it bought them a shot against a hundred thousand soldiers, she wouldn’t complain.

“We won’t be facing them at all if this storm doesn’t let up,” Hasar said, frowning toward her sealed tent flaps. “When I return to Antica, I am never leaving again.”

“No taste for adventure, sister?” Kashin smiled faintly.

“Not when it’s in a frozen hell,” Hasar grumbled.

Nesryn huffed a soft laugh, and Sartaq slipped his arm around her shoulders. A casual, careless bit of contact.

“We keep going,” Sartaq said. “All the way to the walls of Orynth. We swore as much, and we do not renege on our promises.”

Nesryn would have fallen in love with him for that statement alone. She leaned into him, savoring his warmth, in silent thanks.

“Then let us pray,” Kashin said, “that this storm does not slow us so much that there’s nothing left of Orynth to defend.”

CHAPTER 102

They had cleared a small chamber near the Great Hall for his viewing.

The room lit by whatever candles could be spared, the ancient stones were cast in flickering relief around the table where they’d laid him.

Lysandra lingered in the doorway as she gazed toward the sheet-draped body at the back of the room.

Ren knelt before him, head bowed. As he had done for hours now. Ever since word had come at sundown that Murtaugh had fallen.

Hewn down by Valg foot soldiers as he sought to staunch their flow over the city walls courtesy of one of their siege towers.

They had carried Murtaugh back from the city wall, a throng of soldiers around him.

Even from the skies, flying in with the witches after Morath had given the order to halt once more, Lysandra had heard Ren’s scream. Had seen from high above as Ren ran down the battlements to the body borne through the city streets.

Aedion had been there within seconds. Had kept Ren upright as the young lord had sobbed, and had half carried him here, despite the fresh wounds on the prince.

And so Aedion had stayed. Standing vigil beside Ren all this time, a hand on his shoulder.

Lysandra had come with Evangeline. Had held the stunned girl while she cried, and lingered while Evangeline strode to Murtaugh’s body to press a kiss to his brow. As much as the sheet would allow them to see, after what the Valg had done.

She had escorted her ward from the chamber just as Darrow and the others arrived.

Lysandra hadn’t bothered to look at Darrow, at any of them who hadn’t dared to do what Murtaugh had done. His death, they’d learned, had rallied the men at the wall. Made them topple that siege tower. A lucky, costly victory.

Lysandra had helped Evangeline bathe, made sure she got a hot meal, and tucked her into bed before returning.

Finding Aedion still beside Ren, his hand still on the kneeling lord’s shoulder.

So she’d lingered here, at the doorway. Her own vigil, while the well of her power refilled, while the wounds she’d sustained healed over inch by inch.

Aedion murmured something to Ren, and withdrew his hand. She wondered if they were his first words in hours.