Kingdom of Ash

The commander in the alley had claimed his latest orders had been dispatched from Doranelle.

None of them knew whether to believe him.

Sitting around a tiny fire in a dusty field on the outskirts of a ramshackle city, the blood long since washed from his hands, Lorcan Salvaterre again mulled over the logic of it.

Had they somehow overlooked the simplest option? For Maeve to have been in Doranelle this entire time, hidden from her subjects?

But that commander had been lying filth. He’d spat in Lorcan’s face before they’d ended it.

The other commander they’d found today, however, after a week of hunting him down at the nearest seaport, had claimed he’d received orders from a distant kingdom they’d searched three weeks ago. In the opposite direction of Doranelle.

Lorcan toed at the dirt.

None of them had felt like speaking since the commander this afternoon had contradicted the first’s claim.

“Doranelle is Maeve’s stronghold,” Elide said at last, her steady voice filling the heavy quiet. “Simple as it is, it would make sense for her to bring Aelin there.”

Whitethorn only stared into the fire. He hadn’t washed the blood from his dark gray jacket.

“It would be impossible, even for Maeve, to keep her hidden in Doranelle,” Lorcan countered. “We would have heard about it by now.”

He wasn’t sure when he’d last spoken to the woman before him.

She hadn’t balked from how he’d broken Maeve’s commanders, though. She’d cringed during the worst of it, yes, but she’d listened to every word Rowan and Lorcan had wrung from them. Lorcan supposed she’d seen worse at Morath—hated that she had. Hated that her monster of an uncle still breathed.

But that hunt would come later. After they found Aelin. Or whatever remained of her.

Elide’s eyes grew cold, so cold, as she said, “Maeve managed to conceal Gavriel and Fenrys from Rowan in Skull’s Bay. And somehow hid and spirited away her entire fleet.”

Lorcan didn’t reply. Elide went on, her gaze unwavering, “Maeve knows Doranelle would be the obvious choice—the choice we’d likely reject because it’s too simple. She anticipated that we’d believe she’d haul Aelin to the farthest reaches of Erilea, rather than right back home.”

“Maeve would have the advantage of an easily summoned army,” Gavriel added, his tattooed throat bobbing. “Which would make rescue difficult.”

Lorcan refrained from telling Gavriel to shut his mouth. He hadn’t failed to notice how often Gavriel went out of his way to help Elide, to talk to her. And yes, some small part of him was grateful for it, since the gods knew she wouldn’t accept any sort of help from him.

Hellas damn him, he’d had to resort to giving his cut-up shirt to Whitethorn and Gavriel to hand to her for her cycle. He’d threatened to skin them alive if they’d said it was his, and Elide, with her human sense of smell, hadn’t scented him on the fabric.

He didn’t know why he bothered. He hadn’t forgotten her words that day on the beach.

I hope you spend the rest of your miserable, immortal life suffering. I hope you spend it alone. I hope you live with regret and guilt in your heart and never find a way to endure it.

Her vow, her curse, whatever it had been, had held true. Every word of it.

He’d broken something. Something precious beyond measure. He’d never cared until now.

Even the severed blood oath, still gaping wide within his soul, didn’t come close to the hole in his chest when he looked at her.

She’d offered him a home in Perranth knowing he’d be a dishonored male. Offered him a home with her.

But it hadn’t been Maeve’s sundering of the oath that had rescinded that offer. It had been a betrayal so great he didn’t know how to fix it.

Where is Aelin? Where is my wife?

Whitethorn’s wife—and his mate. Only this mission of theirs, this endless quest to find her, kept Lorcan from plunging into a pit from which he knew he would not emerge.

Perhaps if they found her, if there was still enough left of Aelin to salvage after Cairn’s ministrations, he’d find a way to live with himself. To endure this … person he’d become. It might take him another five hundred years to do so.

He didn’t let himself consider that Elide would be little more than dust by then. The thought alone was enough to turn the paltry dinner of stale bread and hard cheese in his stomach.

A fool—he was an immortal, stupid fool for starting down this path with her, for forgetting that even if she forgave him, her mortality beckoned.

Lorcan said at last, “It would also make sense for Maeve to go to the Akkadians, as the commander today claimed. Maeve has long maintained ties with that kingdom.” He, Whitethorn, and Gavriel had been to war and back in that sand-blasted territory. He’d never wished to set foot in it again. “Their armies would shield her.”

For it would take an army to keep Whitethorn from reaching his mate.

He turned toward the prince, who gave no indication he’d been listening. Lorcan didn’t want to consider if Whitethorn would soon need to add a tattoo to the other side of his face.

“The commander today was much more forthcoming,” Lorcan went on to the prince he’d fought beside for so many centuries, who had been as cold-hearted a bastard as Lorcan himself until this spring. “You barely threatened him and he sang for us. The one who claimed Maeve was in Doranelle was still sneering by the end.”

“I think she’s in Doranelle,” Elide cut in. “Anneith told me to listen that day. She didn’t the other two times.”

“It’s something to consider, yes,” Lorcan said, and Elide’s eyes sparked with irritation. “I see no reason to believe the gods would be that clear.”

“Says the male who feels the touch of a god, telling him when to run or fight,” Elide snapped.

Lorcan ignored her, that truth. He hadn’t felt Hellas’s touch since the Stone Marshes. As if even the god of death was repulsed by him. “Akkadia’s border is a three-day ride from here. Its capital three days beyond that. Doranelle is over two weeks away, if we travel with little rest.”

And time was not on their side. With the Wyrdkeys, with Erawan, with the war surely unleashing itself back on Elide’s own continent, every delay came at a cost. Not to mention what each day undoubtedly brought upon the Queen of Terrasen.

Elide opened her mouth, but Lorcan cut her off. “And then, to arrive in Maeve’s stronghold exhausted and hungry … We won’t stand a chance. Not to mention that with the veiling she can wield, we might very well walk right past Aelin and never know it.”

Elide’s nostrils flared, but she turned to Rowan. “The call is yours, Prince.”

Not just a prince, not anymore. Consort to the Queen of Terrasen.

At last, Whitethorn lifted his head. As those green eyes settled on him, Lorcan withstood the weight in his gaze, the innate dominance. He’d been waiting for Rowan to claim the vengeance he deserved, waiting for that blow. Hoping for it. It had never come.

“We’ve come this far south,” Rowan said at last, his voice low. “Better to go to Akkadia than risk venturing all the way to Doranelle to find we were wrong.”

And that was that.

Elide only threw a seething glare toward Lorcan and rose, murmuring about seeing to her needs before she went to sleep. Her gait held steady as she crunched through the grass—thanks to the brace Gavriel kept around her ankle.

It should have been his magic helping her. Touching her skin.

Her steps turned distant, near-silent. She usually went farther than necessary to avoid having them hear anything. Lorcan gave her a few minutes before he stalked into the dark after her.

He found Elide already heading back, and she paused atop a little hill, barely more than a hump of dirt in the field. “What do you want.”

Lorcan kept walking, until he was at the base of the hill, and stopped. “Akkadia is the wiser choice.”

“Rowan decided that, too. You must be so pleased.”

She made to stomp past him, but Lorcan stepped into her path. She craned back her neck to see his face, yet he’d never felt smaller. Shorter. “I didn’t push for Akkadia to spite you,” he managed to say.

“I don’t care.”

She tried to edge around him, Lorcan easily keeping ahead of her. “I didn’t …” The words strangled him. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

Elide let out a soft, vicious laugh. “Of course you didn’t. Why would you have intended for your wondrous queen to sever the blood oath?”

“I don’t care about that.” He didn’t. He’d never spoken truer words. “I only wish to make things right.”

Her lip curled. “I would be inclined to believe that if I hadn’t seen you crawling after Maeve on the beach.”

Lorcan blinked at the words, the hatred in them, stunned enough that he let her walk past this time. Elide didn’t so much as look back.

Not until Lorcan said, “I didn’t crawl after Maeve.”

She halted, hair swaying. Slowly, she glanced over her shoulder. Imperious and cold as the stars overhead.

“I crawled …” His throat bobbed. “I crawled after Aelin.”

He shut out the bloody sand, the queen’s screams, her final, pleading requests to Elide. Shut them out and said, “When Maeve severed the oath, I couldn’t move, could barely breathe.”

Such agony that Lorcan couldn’t imagine what it would be like to sever the oath on his own, without bidding. It was not the sort of pain one walked away from.

The oath could be stretched, drawn thin. That Vaughan, the last of their cadre, still undoubtedly roamed the wilds of the North in his “hunt” for Lorcan was proof enough that the blood oath’s restraints might be worked around. But to break it outright of his own will, to find some way to snap the tether, would be to embrace death.

He’d wondered during these months if he should have done just that.

Lorcan swallowed. “I tried to get to her. To Aelin. I tried to get to that box.” He added so quietly only Elide could hear it, “I promise.”

His word was his bond, the only currency he cared to trade in. He’d told her that once, during those weeks on the road. Nothing flickered in her eyes to tell him she remembered.

Elide merely strode back for the camp. Lorcan remained where he was.

He had done this. Brought this upon her, upon them.

Elide reached the campfire, and Lorcan followed at last, nearing its ring of light in time to see her plop down beside Gavriel, her mouth tight.

The Lion murmured to her, “He wasn’t lying, you know.”

Lorcan clenched his jaw, making no attempt to disguise his footsteps. If Gavriel’s ears were sharp enough to have heard every word of their conversation, the Lion certainly knew he was approaching. And certainly knew better than to shove his nose in their business.

Yet Lorcan still found himself scanning Elide’s face, waiting for her answer.

And when she ignored both the Lion and Lorcan, he found himself wishing he hadn’t spoken at all.

Prince Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius, consort, husband, and mate of the Queen of Terrasen, knew he was dreaming.

He knew it, because he could see her.

There was only darkness here. And wind. And a great, yawning chasm between them.

No bottom existed in that abyss, that crack in the world. But he could hear whispers snaking through it, down far below.

She stood with her back to him, hair blowing in a sheet of gold. Longer than he’d seen it the last time.

He tried to shift, to fly over the chasm. His body’s innate magic ignored him. Locked in his Fae body, the jump too far, he could only stare toward her, breathe in her scent—jasmine, lemon verbena, and crackling embers—as it floated to him on the wind. This wind told him no secrets, had no song to sing.

It was a wind of death, of cold, of nothing.

Aelin.

He had no voice here, but he spoke her name. Threw it across the gulf between them.

Slowly, she turned to him.

It was her face—or it would be in a few years. When she Settled.

But it wasn’t the slightly older features that knocked the breath from him.

It was the hand on her rounded belly.

She stared toward him, hair still flowing. Behind her, four small figures emerged.

Rowan fell to his knees.

The tallest: a girl with golden hair and pine-green eyes, solemn-faced and as proud as her mother. The boy beside her, nearly her height, smiled at him, warm and bright, his Ashryver eyes near-glowing beneath his cap of silver hair. The boy next to him, silver-haired and green-eyed, might as well have been Rowan’s twin. And the smallest girl, clinging to her mother’s legs … A fine-boned, silver-haired child, little more than a babe, her blue eyes harking back to a lineage he did not know.

Children. His children. Their children.

With another mere weeks from being born.

His family.

The family he might have, the future he might have. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Aelin.

Their children pressed closer to her, the eldest girl peering up to Aelin in warning.

Rowan felt it then. A lethal, mighty black wind sweeping for them.

He tried to scream. Tried to get off his knees, to find some way to them.

But the black wind roared in, ripping and tearing everything in its path.

They were still staring at him as it swept them away, too.

Until only dust and shadow remained.

Rowan jerked awake, his heart a frantic beat as his body bellowed to move, to fight.

But there was nothing and no one to fight here, in this dusty field beneath the stars.

A dream. That same dream.

He rubbed at his face, sitting up on his bedroll. The horses dozed, no sign of distress. Gavriel kept watch in mountain-lion form just beyond the light of the fire, his eyes gleaming in the dark. Elide and Lorcan didn’t stir from their heavy slumber.

Rowan scanned the position of the stars. Only a few hours until dawn.

And then to Akkadia—to that land of scrub and sand.

While Elide and Lorcan had debated where to go, he’d weighed it himself. Whether to fly to Doranelle alone and risk losing precious days in what might be a fool’s search.

Had Vaughan been with them, had Vaughan been freed, he might have dispatched the warrior in his osprey form to Doranelle while they continued on to Akkadia.

Rowan again considered it. If he pushed his magic, harnessed the winds to him, the two weeks it would take to reach Doranelle could be done in days. But if he somehow did find Aelin … He’d waged enough battles to know he’d need Lorcan and Gavriel’s strength before things were over. That he might jeopardize Aelin in trying to free her without their help. Which would mean flying back to them, then making the agonizingly slow trip northward.

And with Akkadia so close, the wiser choice was to search there first. In case the commander today had spoken true. And if what they learned in Akkadia led them to Doranelle, then to Doranelle they would go. Together.

Even if it went against every instinct as her mate. Her husband. Even if every day, every hour, that Aelin spent in Maeve’s clutches was likely bringing her more suffering than he could stand to consider.

So they’d travel to Akkadia. Within a few days, they’d enter the flat plains, and then the distant dried hills beyond. Once the winter rains began, the plain would be green, lush—but after the scorching summer, the lands were still brown and wheat-colored, water scarce.

He’d ensure they stocked up at the next river. Enough for the horses, too. Food might be in short supply, but there was game to be found on the plains. Scrawny rabbits and small, furred things that burrowed in the cracked earth. Precisely the sort of food Aelin would cringe to eat.

Gavriel noticed the movement at their camp and padded over, massive paws silent even on the bone-dry grass. Tawny, inquisitive eyes blinked at him.

Rowan shook his head at the unspoken question. “Get some sleep. I’ll take over.”

Gavriel angled his head in a gesture Rowan knew meant, Are you all right?

Strange—it was still strange to work with the Lion, with Lorcan, without the bonds of Maeve’s oath binding them to do so. To know that they were here by choice.

What it now made them, Rowan wasn’t entirely certain.

Rowan ignored Gavriel’s silent inquiry and stared into the dwindling fire. “Get some rest while you can.”

Gavriel didn’t object as he prowled to his bedroll, and plopped onto it with a feline sigh.

Rowan suppressed the twinge of guilt. He’d been pushing them hard. They hadn’t complained, hadn’t asked him to slow the grueling pace he’d set.

He’d felt nothing in the bond since that day on the beach. Nothing.

She wasn’t dead, because the bond still existed, yet … it was silent.

He’d puzzled over it during the long hours they’d traveled, during his hours on watch. Even the hours when he should have been sleeping.

He hadn’t felt pain in the bond that day in Eyllwe. He’d felt it when Dorian Havilliard had stabbed her in the glass castle, had felt the bond—what he’d so stupidly thought was the carranam bond between them—stretching to the breaking point as she’d come so, so close to death.

Yet that day on the beach, when Maeve had attacked her, then had Cairn whip her—

Rowan clenched his jaw hard enough to hurt, even as his stomach roiled. He glanced to Goldryn, lying beside him on the bedroll.

Gently, he set the blade before him, staring into the ruby in the center of its hilt, the stone smoldering in the firelight.

Aelin had felt the arrow he’d received during the fight with Manon at Temis’s temple. Or enough of a jolt that she’d known, in that moment, that they were mates.

Yet he hadn’t felt anything at all that day on the beach.

He had a feeling he knew the answer. Knew that Maeve was likely the cause of it, the damper on what was between them. She’d gone into his head to trick him into thinking Lyria was his mate, had fooled the very instincts that made him a Fae male. It wouldn’t be beyond her powers to find a way to stifle what was between him and Aelin, to keep him from knowing that she’d been in such danger, and now to keep him from finding her.

But he should have known. About Aelin. Shouldn’t have waited to get the wyverns and the others. Should have flown right to the beach, and not wasted those precious minutes.

Mate. His mate.

He should have known about that, too. Even if rage and grief had turned him into a miserable bastard, he should have known who she was, what she was, from the moment he’d bitten her at Mistward, unable to stop the urge to claim her. The moment her blood had landed on his tongue and it had sung to him, and then refused to leave him alone, its taste lingering for months.

Instead, they’d brawled. He’d let them brawl, so lost in his anger and ice. She’d been just as raging as he, and had spat such a hateful, unspeakable thing that he’d treated her like any of the males and females who had been under his command and mouthed off, but those early days still haunted him. Though Rowan knew that if he ever mentioned the brawling they’d done with a lick of shame, Aelin would curse him for a fool.

He didn’t know what to do about the tattoo down his face, his neck and arm. The lie it told of his loss, and the truth it revealed of his blindness.

He’d come to love Lyria—that had been true. And the guilt of it ate him alive whenever he thought of it, but he could understand now. Why Lyria had been so frightened of him for those initial months, why it had been so damn hard to court her, even with that mating bond, its truth unknown to Lyria as well. She had been gentle, and quiet, and kind. A different sort of strength, yes, but not what he might have chosen for himself.

He hated himself for thinking it.

Even as the rage consumed him at the thought, at what had been stolen from him. From Lyria, too. Aelin had been his, and he had been hers, from the start. Longer than that. And Maeve had thought to break them, break her to get what she wanted.

He wouldn’t let that go unpunished. Just as he could not forget that Lyria, regardless of what truly existed between them, had been carrying their child when Maeve had sent those enemy forces to his mountain home. He would never forgive that.

I will kill you, Aelin had said when she’d heard what Maeve had done. How badly Maeve had manipulated him, shattered him—and destroyed Lyria. Elide had told him every word of the encounter, over and over. I will kill you.

Rowan stared into the burning heart of Goldryn’s ruby.

He prayed that fire, that rage, had not broken. He knew how many days it had been, knew who Maeve had promised would oversee the torture. Knew the odds were stacked against her. He’d spent two weeks strapped on an enemy’s table. Still bore the scar on his arm from one of their more creative devices.

Hurry. They had to hurry.

Rowan leaned forward, resting his brow against Goldryn’s hilt. The metal was warm, as if it still held a whisper of its bearer’s flame.

He had not set foot in Akkadia since that last, horrible war. Though he’d led Fae and mortal soldiers alike to victory, he’d never had any desire to see it again.

But to Akkadia they would go.

And if he found her, if he freed her … Rowan did not let himself think beyond that.

To the other truth that they would face, the other burden. Tell Rowan that I’m sorry I lied. But tell him it was all borrowed time anyway. Even before today, I knew it was all just borrowed time, but I still wish we’d had more of it.

He refused to accept that. Would never accept that she would be the ultimate cost to end this, to save their world.

Rowan scanned the blanket of stars overhead.

While all other constellations had wheeled past, the Lord of the North remained, the immortal star between his antlers pointing the way home. To Terrasen.

Tell him he has to fight. He must save Terrasen, and remember the vows he made to me.

Time was not on their side, not with Maeve, not with the war unleashing itself back on their own continent. But he had no intention of returning without her, parting request or no, regardless of the oaths he’d sworn upon marrying her to guard and rule Terrasen.

And tell him thank you—for walking that dark path with me back to the light.

It had been his honor. From the very beginning, it had been his honor, the greatest of his immortal life.

An immortal life they would share together—somehow. He’d allow no other alternative.

Rowan silently swore it to the stars.

He could have sworn the Lord of the North flickered in response.