Kingdom of Ash

“Where,” Manon demanded.

The spider named the location—vague and unfamiliar. “I will show you where,” she said. “I will guide you.”

“It could be a trap,” Sorrel said.

“It’s not,” Dorian said, his hand still on the hilt of his sword. Manon studied the clarity of his eyes, the squared shoulders. The pitiless face, yet inquisitive angle to his head. “Let’s see if her information holds true—and decide her fate afterward.”

Manon blurted, “What.” The Thirteen shifted at the denied kill.

Dorian jerked his chin to the shuddering spider. “Don’t kill her. Not yet. There’s more she might know beyond the Crochans’ whereabouts.”

The spider hissed, “I do not need a boy’s mercy—”

“It is a king’s mercy you receive,” Dorian said coldly, “and I’d suggest being quiet long enough to receive it.” Rarely, so rarely did Manon hear that voice from him, the tone that sent a thrill through her blood and bones. A king’s voice.

But he was not her king. He was not the coven leader of the Thirteen. “We let her live and she’ll sell us to the highest bidder.”

Dorian’s sapphire eyes churned, the hand on his sword tightening. Manon tensed at that contemplative, cold stare. The hint of the calculating predator beneath the king’s handsome face. He only said to the spider, “You mastered shape-shifting in a matter of months, it seems.”

A path would find him here, Gavin had said.

A path into Morath. Not a physical road, not a course of travel, but this.

The unholy terror remained quiet for a beat before she said, “Our gifts are strange and hungry things. We feed not just on your life, but your powers, too, if you possess them. Once magic was freed, I learned to wield the abilities the shape-shifter had transferred to me.”

Damaris warmed in his hand. Truth. Every word the spider had spoken had been truth. And this … A way into Morath—as something else entirely. In another’s skin.

Perhaps a human slave, like Elide Lochan. Someone whose presence would go unmarked.

His raw power had lent itself to every other form of magic, able to move between flame and ice and healing. To shape-shift … might he learn it, too?

Dorian only asked the spider, “Do you have a name?”

“A king without his crown asks for a lowly spider’s name,” she murmured, her depthless eyes setting on him. “You cannot pronounce it in your tongue, but you may call me Cyrene.”

Manon ground her teeth. “It doesn’t matter what we call you, as you’ll be dead soon.”

But Dorian cut her a sidelong glance. “The Ruhnns are a part of my kingdom. As such, Cyrene is one of my subjects. I think that gives me the right to decide whether she lives or dies.”

“You are both at the mercy of my coven,” Manon snarled. “Step aside.”

Dorian gave her a slight smile. “Am I?” A wind colder than the mountain air filled the pass.

He could kill them all. Whether by choking the air from them or snapping their necks. He could kill them all, and the wyverns included. The knowledge carved out another hollow within him. Another empty spot. Had it ever troubled his father, or Aelin, to bear such power? “Bring her with us—question her more thoroughly at the next camp.”

Manon snapped, “You plan to bring that with us?”

In answer, the spider shifted, donning the form of a pale-skinned, dark-haired woman. Small and unremarkable, save for those unnerving black eyes. Not pretty, but with a deadly, ancient sort of allure that even a new hide couldn’t conceal. And utterly naked. She shivered, rubbing her hands down her thin arms. “Shall this form suffice to travel lightly?”

Manon ignored the spider. “And when she shifts in the night to rip us apart?”

Dorian only inclined his head, ice dancing at his fingertips. “She won’t.”

Cyrene sucked in a breath. “A rare gift of magic.” Her stare turned ravenous as she took in Dorian. “For a rare king.”

Dorian only frowned with distaste.

Manon glanced to Asterin. Her Second’s eyes were wary, her mouth a tight line. Sorrel, a few feet behind, glowered at the spider, but her hand had dropped from her sword.

The Thirteen, on some unspoken signal, peeled away to their wyverns. Only Cyrene watched them, those horrible, soulless eyes blinking every now and then as her teeth began to clack.

Manon angled her head at him. “You’re … different today.”

He shrugged. “If you want someone to warm your bed who cowers at your every word and obeys every command, look elsewhere.”

Her stare drifted to the pale band around his throat. “I’m still not convinced, princeling,” she hissed, “that I shouldn’t just kill her.”

“And what would it take, witchling, to convince you?” He didn’t bother to hide the sensual promise in his words, nor their edge.

A muscle flickered in Manon’s jaw. Things from legends—that’s who surrounded him. The witches, the spider … He might as well have been a character in one of the books he’d lent Aelin last fall. Though none of them had ever endured such a yawning pit inside them.

Scowling at her bare feet in the snow, Cyrene’s hands twitched at her sides, an echo of the pincers she’d borne moments before.

Dorian tried not to shudder. Suicide to sneak into Morath—once he learned what he needed from this thing.

The weight of Manon’s gaze fell upon him again, and Dorian didn’t balk from it. Didn’t balk from Manon’s words as she said, “If you find so little value in your existence that it compels you to trust this thing, then by all means, bring her along.” A challenge to look not toward Morath or the spider, but inward. She saw exactly what gnawed on his empty chest, if only because a similar beast gnawed on her own. “We’ll find out soon enough whether she spoke true about the Crochans.”

The spider had. Damaris had warmed in his hand when Cyrene had spoken.

And when they found the Crochans, when the Thirteen were distracted, he’d learn what he needed from the spider, too.

Manon turned to the Thirteen, the witches thrumming with impatience. “We fly now. We can reach the Crochans by nightfall.”

“And what then?” Asterin asked. The only one of them who had permission to do so.

Manon stalked for Abraxos, and Dorian followed, tossing Cyrene a spare cloak as his magic tugged her with him. “And then we make our move,” Manon hedged. And for once, she did not meet anyone’s stare. Didn’t do anything but gaze southward.

The witch was keeping secrets, too. But were hers as dire as his?

CHAPTER 8

Blackness greeted Aelin as she rose to consciousness. Tight, contained blackness.

A shift of her elbows had them digging into the sides of the box, chains reverberating through the small space. Her bare feet could graze the end if she wriggled slightly.

She lifted her bound hands to the solid wall of iron mere inches above her face. Traced the whorls and suns embossed onto its surface. Even on the inside, Maeve had ordered them etched. So Aelin might never forget that this box had been made for her, long before she’d been born.

But—those were her own bare fingertips brushing over the cool, rough metal.

He’d taken off the iron gauntlets. Or had forgotten to put them back on after what he’d done. The way he’d held them over the open brazier, until the metal was red-hot around her hands and she was screaming, screaming—

Aelin pressed her palms flat against the metal lid and pushed.

The shattered arm, the splinters of bone jutting from her skin: gone.

Or had never been. But it had felt real.

More so than the other memories that pressed in, demanding she acknowledge them. Accept them.

Aelin shoved her palms against the iron, muscles straining.

It didn’t so much as shift.

She tried again. That she had the strength to do so was thanks to the other services Maeve’s healers provided: keeping her muscles from atrophying while she lay here.

A soft whine echoed into the box. A warning.

Aelin lowered her hands just as the lock grated and the door groaned open.