Kingdom of Ash

Everything. She had given everything for this, and had been glad to do it.

Aelin lay in darkness, the slab of iron like a starless night overhead.

She’d awoken in here. Had been in here for … a long time.

Long enough she’d relieved herself. Hadn’t cared.

Perhaps it had all been for nothing. The Queen Who Was Promised.

Promised to die, to surrender herself to fulfill an ancient princess’s debt. To save this world.

She wouldn’t be able to do it. She would fail in that, even if she outlasted Maeve.

Outlasted what she might have glimpsed lay beneath the queen’s skin. If that had been real at all.

Against Erawan, there had been little hope. But against Maeve as well …

Silent tears pooled in her mask.

It didn’t matter. She wasn’t leaving this place. This box.

She would never again feel the buttery warmth of the sun on her hair, or a sea-kissed breeze on her cheeks.

She couldn’t stop crying, ceaseless and relentless. As if some dam had cracked open inside her the moment she’d seen the blood dribble down Maeve’s face.

She didn’t care if Cairn saw the tears, smelled them.

Let him break her until she was bloody smithereens on the floor. Let him do it over and over again.

She wouldn’t fight. Couldn’t bear to fight.

A door groaned open and closed. Stalking footsteps neared.

Then a thump on the lid of the coffin. “How does a few more days in there sound to you?”

She wished she could fold herself into the blackness around her.

Cairn told Fenrys to relieve himself and return. Silence filled the room.

Then a thin scraping. Along the top of the box. As if Cairn were running a dagger over it.

“I’ve been thinking how to repay you when I let you out.”

Aelin blocked out his words. Did nothing but gaze into the dark.

She was so tired. So, so tired.

For Terrasen, she had gladly done this. All of it. For Terrasen, she deserved to pay this price.

She had tried to make it right. Had tried, and failed.

And she was so, so tired.

Fireheart.

The whispered word floated through the eternal night, a glimmer of sound, of light.

Fireheart.

The woman’s voice was soft, loving. Her mother’s voice.

Aelin turned her face away. Even that movement was more than she could bear.

Fireheart, why do you cry?

Aelin could not answer.

Fireheart.

The words were a gentle brush down her cheek. Fireheart, why do you cry?

And from far away, deep within her, Aelin whispered toward that ray of memory, Because I am lost. And I do not know the way.

Cairn was still talking. Still scraping his knife over the coffin’s lid.

But Aelin did not hear him as she found a woman lying beside her. A mirror—or a reflection of the face she’d bear in a few years’ time. Should she live that long.

Borrowed time. Every moment of it had been borrowed time.

Evalin Ashryver ran gentle fingers down Aelin’s cheek. Over the mask.

Aelin could have sworn she felt them against her skin.

You have been very brave, her mother said. You have been very brave, for so very long.

Aelin couldn’t stop the silent sob that worked its way up her throat.

But you must be brave a little while longer, my Fireheart.

She leaned into her mother’s touch.

You must be brave a little while longer, and remember …

Her mother placed a phantom hand over Aelin’s heart.

It is the strength of this that matters. No matter where you are, no matter how far, this will lead you home.

Aelin managed to slide a hand up to her chest, to cover her mother’s fingers. Only thin fabric and iron met her skin.

But Evalin Ashryver held Aelin’s gaze, the softness turning hard and gleaming as fresh steel. It is the strength of this that matters, Aelin.

Aelin’s fingers dug into her chest as she mouthed, The strength of this.

Evalin nodded.

Cairn’s hissed threats danced through the coffin, his knife scraping and scraping.

Evalin’s face didn’t falter. You are my daughter. You were born of two mighty bloodlines. That strength flows through you. Lives in you.

Evalin’s face blazed with the fierceness of the women who had come before them, all the way back to the Faerie Queen whose eyes they both bore.

You do not yield.

Then she was gone, like dew under the morning sun.

But the words lingered.

Blossomed within Aelin, bright as a kindled ember.

You do not yield.

Cairn scraped his dagger over the metal, right above her head. “When I cut you up this time, bitch, I’m going to—”

Aelin slammed her hand into the lid.

Cairn paused.

Aelin pounded her fist into the iron again. Again.

You do not yield.

Again.

You do not yield.

Again. Again.

Until she was alive with it, until her blood was raining onto her face, washing away the tears, until every pound of her fist into the iron was a battle cry.

You do not yield.

You do not yield.

You do not yield.

It rose in her, burning and roaring, and she gave herself wholly to it. Distantly, close by, wood crashed. Like someone had staggered into something. Then shouting.

Aelin hammered her fist into the metal, the song within her pulsing and cresting, a tidal wave racing for the shore.

“Get me that gloriella!”

The words meant nothing. He was nothing. Would always be nothing.

Over and over, she pounded against the lid. Over and over, that song of fire and darkness flared through her, out of her, into the world.

You do not yield.

Something hissed and crackled nearby, and smoke poured through the lid.

But Aelin kept striking. Kept striking until the smoke choked her, until its sweet scent dragged her under and away.

And when she awoke chained on the altar, she beheld what she had done to the iron coffin.

The top of the lid had been warped. A great hump now protruded, the metal stretched thin.

As if it had come so very close to breaking entirely.

On a dark hilltop overlooking a sleeping kingdom, Rowan froze.

The others were already halfway down the hill, leading the horses along the dried slope that would take them over Akkadia’s border and onto the arid plains below.

His hand dropped from the stallion’s reins.

He had to have imagined it.

He scanned the starry sky, the slumbering lands beyond, the Lord of the North above.

It hit him a heartbeat later. Erupted around him and roared.

Over and over and over, as if it were a hammer against an anvil.

The others whirled to him.

That raging, fiery song charged closer. Through him.

Down the mating bond. Down into his very soul.

A bellow of fury and defiance.

From down the hill, Lorcan rasped, “Rowan.”

It was impossible, utterly impossible, and yet—

“North,” Gavriel said, turning his bay gelding. “The surge came from the North.”

From Doranelle.

A beacon in the night. Power rippling into the world, as it had done in Skull’s Bay.

It filled him with sound, with fire and light. As if it screamed, again and again, I am alive, I am alive, I am alive.

And then silence. Like it had been cut off.

Extinguished.

He refused to think of why. The mating bond remained. Stretched taut, but it remained.

So he sent the words along it, with as much hope and fury and unrelenting love as he had felt from her. I will find you.

There was no answer. Nothing but humming darkness and the Lord of the North glistening above, pointing the way north. To her.

He found his companions waiting for his orders.

He opened his mouth to voice them, but halted. Considered. “We need to draw Maeve out—away from Aelin.” His voice rumbled over the drowsy buzzing of insects in the grasses. “Just long enough for us to infiltrate Doranelle.” For even with the three of them together, they might not be enough to take on Maeve.

“If she hears we’re coming,” Lorcan countered, “Maeve will spirit Aelin away again, not come to meet us. She’s not that foolish.”

But Rowan looked to Elide, the Lady of Perranth’s eyes wide. “I know,” he said, his plan forming, as cold and ruthless as the power in his veins. “We’ll draw out Maeve with a different sort of lure, then.”