Kingdom of Ash

Aedion could barely draw breath, could barely keep his legs under him.

A warning horn rang out. Morath had sent a second army. Darkness shrouded the full extent of their ranks.

Valg princes—lots of them. Morath had been waiting.

Ren shouted down to him over the fray, “They cleared the southern gate! They’re getting as many of our forces as they can behind the walls!”

To regroup and rally before meeting the second army. But with the western gate still open, Morath teeming through, they’d never stand a chance.

He had to get the gate shut. Aedion and the Bane stabbed and slashed, a wall for Morath to break against. But it would not be enough.

A wyvern came crashing toward the gate, flipping across the ground as it rolled toward them. Aedion braced for the impact, for that huge body to shatter through the last of the gate.

Yet the felled beast halted, squashing soldiers beneath its bulk, right at the archway.

Blocking the way. A barricade before the western gate.

Intentionally so, Aedion realized as a golden-haired warrior leaped from the wyvern’s saddle, the dead Ironteeth witch still dangling there, throat gushing blue blood down the leathery sides.

The warrior ran toward them, a sword in one hand, the other drawing a dagger. Ran toward Aedion, his tawny eyes scanning him from head to toe.

His father.

CHAPTER 108

Morath’s soldiers clawed and crawled over the fallen wyvern blocking their path. They filled the archway, the passage.

A golden shield held them at bay. But not for long.

Yet the reprieve Gavriel bought them allowed the Bane to drain the last dregs of their waterskins, to pluck up fallen weapons.

Aedion panted, an arm braced against the gate passageway. Behind Gavriel’s shield, the enemy teemed and raged.

“Are you hurt?” his father asked. His first words to him.

Aedion managed to lift his head. “You found Aelin,” was all he said.

Gavriel’s face softened. “Yes. And she sealed the Wyrdgate.”

Aedion closed his eyes. At least there was that. “Erawan?”

“No.”

He didn’t need the specifics on why the bastard wasn’t dead. What had gone wrong.

Aedion pushed off the wall, swaying. His father steadied him with a hand to the elbow. “You need rest.”

Aedion yanked his arm out of Gavriel’s grip. “Tell that to the soldiers who have already fallen.”

“You will fall, too,” his father said, sharper than he’d ever heard, “if you don’t sit down for a minute.”

Aedion stared the male down. Gavriel stared right back.

No bullshit, no room for argument. The face of the Lion.

Aedion just shook his head.

Gavriel’s golden shield buckled under the onslaught of the Valg still teeming beyond it.

“We have to get the gate shut again,” Aedion said, pointing to the two cleaved but intact doors pushed against the walls. Access to them blocked by the Morath grunts still trying to break past Gavriel’s shield. “Or they’ll overrun the city before our forces can regroup.” Getting behind the walls would make no difference if the western gate was wide open.

His father followed his line of sight. Looked upon the soldiers trying to get past his defenses, their flow forced to a trickle by the wyvern he’d so carefully downed before them.

“Then we shall shut them,” Gavriel said, and smiled grimly. “Together.”

The word was more of a question, subtle and sorrowful.

Together. As father and son. As the two warriors they were.

Gavriel—his father. He had come.

And looking at those tawny eyes, Aedion knew it was not for Aelin, or for Terrasen, that his father had done it.

“Together,” Aedion rasped.

Not just this obstacle. Not just this battle. But whatever would come afterward, should they survive. Together.

Aedion could have sworn something like joy and pride filled Gavriel’s eyes. Joy and pride and sorrow, heavy and old.

Aedion strode back to the line of the Bane, motioning the soldier beside him to make room for Gavriel to join their formation. One great push now, and they’d secure the gate. Their army would enter through the southern one, and they’d find some way to rally before the new army reached the city. But the western one, they’d clear it and seal it. Permanently.

Father and son, they would do this. Defeat this.

But when his father did not join his side, Aedion turned.

Gavriel had gone directly to the gate. To the golden line of his shield, now pushing back, back, back. Shoving that wall of enemy soldiers with it, buckling with every heartbeat. Down the passage. Through the archway.

No.

Gavriel smiled at him. “Close the gate, Aedion,” was all his father said.

And then Gavriel stepped beyond the gates. That golden shield spreading thin.

No.

The word built, a rising scream in Aedion’s throat.

But Bane soldiers were rushing to the gate doors. Heaving them closed.

Aedion opened his mouth to roar at them to stop. To stop, stop, stop.

Gavriel lifted his sword and dagger, glowing golden in the dying light of the day. The gate shut behind him. Sealing him out.

Aedion couldn’t move.

He had never halted, never ceased moving. Yet he could not bring himself to help with the soldiers now piling wood and chains and metal against the western gate.

Gavriel could have stayed. Could have stayed and pushed his shield back long enough for them to shut the gates. He could have remained here—

Aedion ran then.

Too slow. His steps were too slow, his body too big and heavy, as he shoved through his men. As he aimed for the stairs up to the walls.

Golden light flashed on the battlefield.

Then went dark.

Aedion ran faster, a sob burning his throat, leaping and scrambling over fallen soldiers, both mortal and Valg.

Then he was atop the walls. Running for their edge.

No. The word was a beat alongside his heart.

Aedion slaughtered the Valg in his way, slaughtered any who came over the siege ladder.

The ladder. He could fight his way down it, get to the battlefield, to his father—

Aedion swung his sword so hard at the Valg soldier before him that the man’s head bounced off his shoulders.

And then he was at the wall. Peering toward that space by the gate.

The battering ram was in splinters.

Valg lay piled several deep around it. Before the gate. Around the wyvern.

So many that access to the western gate was cut off. So many that the gate was secure, a gaping wound now staunched.

How long had he stood there, unable to move? Stood there, unable to do anything while his father did this?

It was the golden hair he spotted first.

Before the mound of Valg he’d piled high. The gate he’d shut for them. The city he’d secured.

A terrible, rushing sort of stillness took over Aedion’s body.

He stopped hearing the battle. Stopped seeing the fighting around him, above him.

Stopped seeing everything but the fallen warrior, who gazed toward the darkening sky with sightless eyes.

His tattooed throat ripped out. His sword still gripped in his hand.

Gavriel.

His father.

Morath’s army pulled back from the secured western gate. Pulled back and retreated to the arms of the advancing army. To the rest of Morath’s host.

Limping from a deep gash in his leg, his shoulder numb from the arrow tip that remained lodged in it, Rowan drove his blade through the face of a fleeing soldier. Black blood sprayed, but Rowan was already moving, aiming for the western gate.

Where things had gone so, so still.

He’d only aimed for it when he’d spied Aelin battling her way toward the distant southern gate, Ansel with her, after they’d brought the siege towers down around it. It was through the secured gate that the bulk of their army now hurried, the khagan’s forces racing to get behind the city walls before they were sealed.

They had an hour at most before Morath was again upon them—before they were forced to shut the southern gate as well, locking out any left behind to be driven right against the walls.

The western gate would remain sealed. The downed wyvern and heaps of bodies around it would ensure that, along with any inner defenses.