Kingdom of Ash

Snarling rose nearby, cutting through the din of battle. The ghost leopard had not faltered, had barely stopped to rest.

He had to go back out. Had to eat something and go back out. Kyllian could maintain order for a good while, but Aedion was their prince. And with Aelin nowhere in sight … it was upon him to keep the soldiers in line.

Though those lines were buckling, like leaks in a dam.

“The Lanis River by Perranth,” Aedion murmured as Ilias and the Silent Assassins shot ilken out of the sky, their arrows easily finding their marks. Wings first, they’d learned the hard way. To get them out of the air. Then blades to the head, to decapitate fully.

Or else they’d rise again. And remember who had tried to kill them.

“If we retreat northward,” Aedion went on, “get to Perranth and cross the river, we could force them to make the crossing, too. Pick them off that way.”

“Is there a bridge?” Galan’s face tightened as one of the two remaining Valg princes sent a wave of dark power for a cluster of their soldiers. Men wilted like flowers in a frost.

A blast of wind and ice answered—Sellene or Endymion. Maybe one of their many cousins.

“No bridge big enough. But the river’s frozen solid—we might cross it, then melt it.”

“With Aelin.” A doubtful, careful question.

Aedion gestured toward the source of that answering blast of magic, now warring with the Valg princes’ power. “If the Fae royals can make ice, then they can unfreeze it. Right beneath Morath’s feet.”

Galan’s turquoise eyes flickered, either at the plan or the fact that Aelin would not be the one enacting it. “Morath might see through us.”

“There’s little other option.” From Perranth, they’d have access to more supplies, perhaps fresh troops rallying to them from the city itself. To retreat, though …

Aedion surveyed the lines being picked off one by one, the soldiers on their last legs.

Retreat and live. Fight and die.

For this resistance would founder, if they kept at this. Here, on the southern plains, they’d be ended.

There was no guarantee Rowan and the others would find Aelin. That Dorian and Manon might retrieve the third Wyrdkey and then give them to his queen, should she get free, should she find them in this mess of a world. No guarantee how many Crochans Manon might rally, if any.

With the armada spread too thin along Terasen’s coast to be of any use, only Ansel of Briarcliff’s remaining forces could offer some relief. If they weren’t all clean-picked bones by then. There was little choice but to hold out until they arrived. Their last allies.

Because Rolfe and the Mycenians … there was no guarantee that they would come. No word.

“Order the retreat,” Aedion said to the prince. “And get word to Endymion and Sellene that we’ll need their power as soon as we begin to run.”

To throw all their magic into a mighty shield to guard their backs while they tried to put as many miles between them and Morath as possible.

Galan nodded, shoving his bloody helmet over his dark hair, and stalked through the chaotic mass of soldiers.

A retreat. This soon, this fast. For all his training, the brutal years of learning and fighting and leading, this was what it had come to.

Would they even make it to Perranth?

The order with which the army had marched southward utterly collapsed on the flight back north. The Fae troops stayed at their rear, magic shields buckling, yet holding. Keeping Morath’s forces at bay by the foothills while they retreated toward Perranth.

The grumbling amongst the limping, exhausted soldiers trickled past Lysandra as she trudged between them, wearing the form of a horse. She’d allowed a young man onto her back when she’d spied his guts nearly hanging out of his rent armor.

For long miles, his leaking blood had warmed her sides as he lay sprawled over her.

The warm trickle had long stopped. Frozen.

So had he.

She hadn’t the heart to dislodge him, to leave his dead body on the field to be trampled. His blood had frozen him to her anyway.

Each step was an effort of will, her own wounds healing faster than the soldiers’ around her. Many fell during the march toward Perranth. Some were picked up, hauled by their companions or strangers.

Some did not rise again.

The resistance was not supposed to break apart so soon.

The grumbling worsened the closer to Perranth they got, despite a quick few hours of rest that first night. Where is the queen? Where is her fire?

She couldn’t fight as Aelin—not convincingly, and not well enough to stay alive. And when the Fire-Bringer fought with no flame … they might know then.

She has run away. Again.

Two Silent Assassins noticed on the second night that the dead soldier still lay on Lysandra’s back.

They said nothing as they gathered warm water to melt the blood and gore that had bound him to her. Then to wash her.

In her roan mare form, she had no words to offer them, had no way to ask if they knew what she was. They treated her with kindness nonetheless.

No one made to reach for the lone horse roaming through the ramshackle camp. Some soldiers had erected tents. Many just slept beside the fires, under cloaks and jackets.

Her ears were ringing. Had been ringing since the first clashing of the battle.

She didn’t know how she found his tent, but there it was, flaps open to the night to reveal him standing with Galan, Ansel, and Ren.

The Lord of Allsbrook’s brows rose as she entered, her head nearly hitting the ceiling.

A horse. She was still a horse.

Ren staggered toward her, despite the exhaustion surely weighing down every inch of him.

Lysandra fumbled for the thread inside her, the thread back to her human body, the shimmering light that would shrink her into it.

The four of them only stared as she found it, fought for it. The magic ripped the last of the strength from her. By the time she was again in her own skin, she was already falling to the hay-covered floor.

She didn’t feel the cold slam into her bare skin, didn’t care as she collapsed to her knees.

Ansel was already there, slinging her cloak around her. “Where the hell have you been?”

Even the Queen of the Wastes was pale, her wine-red hair plastered to her head beneath the dirt and blood.

Lysandra had no speech left in her. Could only kneel, clutching the cloak.

“We move an hour before dawn,” Aedion said, the order a clear dismissal.

Ansel and Galan nodded, peeling out of the tent. Ren only murmured, “I’ll find you some food, Lady,” before he exited the tent.

Boots crunched in hay, and then he was knee to knee before her. Aedion.

There was nothing kind on his face. No pity or warmth.

For a long minute, they only stared at each other.

Then the prince growled softly, “Your plan was bullshit.”

She said nothing, and couldn’t stop her shoulders from curving inward.

“Your plan was bullshit,” he breathed, his eyes sparking. “How could you ever be her, wear her skin, and think to get away with it? How could you ever think you’d get around the fact that our armies are counting on you to burn the enemy to ashes, and all you can do is run away and emerge as some beast instead?”

“You don’t get to pin this retreat on me,” she rasped. The first words she’d spoken in days and days.

“You agreed to let Aelin go to her death, and leave us here to be slashed to bloody ribbons. You two told no one of this plan, told none of us who might have explained the realities of this war, and that we would need a gods-damned Fire-Bringer and not an untrained, useless shape-shifter against Morath.”

Blow after blow, the words landed upon her weary heart. “We—”

“If you were so willing to let Aelin die, then you should have let her do it after she incinerated Erawan’s hordes!”

“It would not have stopped Maeve from capturing her.”

“If you’d told us, we might have planned differently, acted differently, and we would not be here, damn you!”

She stared at the muddy hay. “Throw me out of your army, then.”

“You ruined everything.” His words were colder than the wind outside. “You, and her.”