Kingdom of Ash

Erawan panted as he approached. “Healer,” he breathed, his unholy power emanating from him like a black aura.

She backed away a step, closer to the balcony rail. The dark king followed her, a predator closing in on long-awaited prey.

“Do you know how long I have looked for you?” The wind tossed his golden hair. “Do you even know what you can do?”

She hesitated, slamming into the balcony rail behind her, the drop so hideously endless.

“How do you think we took the keys in the first place?” A hateful, horrible smile. “In my world, your kind exists, too. Not healers to us, but executioners. Death-maidens. Capable of healing—but also unhealing. Unbinding the very fabric of life. Of worlds.” Erawan smirked. “So we took your kind. Used them to unbind the Wyrdgate. To rip the three pieces of it from its very essence. Maeve never learned it—and never shall.” His jagged breathing deepened as he savored each word, each step closer. “It took all of them to hew the keys from the gate—every one of the healers amongst my kind. But you, with your gifts—it would only take you to do it again. And with the keys now returned to the gate …” Another smile. “Maeve thinks I left to kill you, destroy you. Your little fire-queen thought so, too. She could not conceive that I wanted to find you. Before Maeve. Before any harm could come to you. And now that I have … What fun you and I shall have, Yrene Towers.”

Another step closer. But no more.

Erawan went still. Tried and failed to move.

Looked at the stones of the balcony then. At the bloody mark he’d stridden across, too focused on his prey to notice.

A Wyrdmark. To hold. To trap.

The young healer smiled at him, and the white light around her hands winked out as her eyes shifted from gold to sapphire. “I’m not Yrene.”

Erawan whipped his head to the skies as Lysandra, in ruk form, came sweeping around the tower from where she’d been hiding on its other side, Yrene clutched in her talons.

Erawan’s power swelled, but Yrene was already glowing, bright as the far-off dawn.

Lysandra opened her talons, delicately dropping Yrene to the balcony stones, light streaming off her as she sprinted headfirst to Erawan.

Dorian shifted back into his own body, healing light pouring off him, too, as he encircled his power around the Wyrdmark that held Erawan. The tower door burst open, Elide flying out of it just as Lysandra shifted, landing on a ghost leopard’s silent feet upon the balcony.

Erawan didn’t seem to know where to look. Not as Dorian sent out a punch of his healing light that knocked him off balance. Not as Lysandra leaped upon the dark king, pinning him to the stones. Not as Elide, Damaris in her hands, plunged the blade deep through Erawan’s gut, and between the stones below.

Erawan screamed. But the sound was nothing compared to what came out of him as Yrene reached him, hands like burning stars, and slammed them upon his chest.

The world slowed and warped.

Yet Yrene was not afraid.

Not afraid at all of the blinding white light that erupted from her, searing into Erawan.

He arched, shrieking, but Damaris held him down, that ancient blade unwavering.

His dark power rose, a wave to devour the world.

Yrene did not let it touch her. Touch any of them.

Hope.

It was hope that Chaol had said she carried with her. Hope that now grew in her womb.

For a better future. For a free world.

It was hope that had guided two women at opposite ends of this continent ten years ago. Hope that had guided Yrene’s mother to take up that knife and kill the soldier who would have burned Yrene alive. Hope that had guided Marion Lochan when she chose to buy a young heir time to run with her very life.

Two women, who had never known each other, two women who the world had deemed ordinary. Two women, Josefin and Marion, who had chosen hope in the face of darkness.

Two women, in the end, who had bought them all this moment. This one shot at a future.

For them, Yrene was not afraid. For the child she carried, she was not afraid.

For the world she and Chaol would build for that child, she was not afraid at all.

The gods might have been gone, Silba with them, but Yrene could have sworn she felt those warm, gentle hands guiding her. Pushing upon Erawan’s chest as he thrashed, the force of a thousand dark suns trying to rip her apart.

Her power tore through them all.

Tore and shredded and ripped into him, into the writhing worm that lay inside.

The parasite. The infection that fed on life, on strength, on joy.

Distantly, far away, Yrene knew she was incandescent with light, brighter than a noontime sun. Knew that the dark king beneath her was nothing more than a writhing pit of snakes, biting at her, trying to poison her light.

You have no power over me, Yrene said to him. Into the body that housed that parasite of parasites.

I shall rip you apart, he hissed. Starting with that babe in your—

A thought and Yrene’s power flared brighter.

Erawan screamed.

The power of creation and destruction. That’s what lay within her.

Life-Giver. World-Maker.

Bit by bit, she burned him up. Starting at his limbs, working inward.

And when her magic began to slow, Yrene held out a hand.

She didn’t feel the sting of her palm cutting open. Barely felt the pressure of the callused hand that linked with hers.

But when Dorian Havilliard’s raw magic barreled into her, Yrene gasped.

Gasped and turned into starlight, into warmth and strength and joy.

Yrene’s power was life itself. Pure, undiluted life.

It nearly brought Dorian to his knees as it met with his own. As he handed over his power to her, willingly and gladly, Erawan prostrate before them. Impaled.

The demon king screamed.

Glad. He should be glad of that pain, that scream. The end that was surely to come.

For Adarlan, for Sorscha, for Gavin and Elena. For all of them, Dorian let his power flow through Yrene.

Erawan thrashed, his power rising only to strike against an impenetrable wall of light.

And yet Dorian found himself saying, “His name.”

Yrene, focused upon the task before her, didn’t so much as glance his way.

But Erawan, through his screaming, met Dorian’s stare.

The hatred in the demon king’s eyes was enough to devour the world.

But Dorian said, “My father’s name.” His voice did not waver. “You took it.”

He hadn’t realized that he wanted it. Needed it, so badly.

A pathetic, spineless man, Erawan seethed. As you are—

“Tell me his name. Give it back.”

Erawan laughed through his screaming. No.

“Give it back.”

Yrene looked to him now, doubt in her eyes. Her magic paused—just for a heartbeat.

Erawan leapt, his power erupting.

Dorian blasted it back, and lunged for the demon king. For Damaris.

Erawan’s shriek threatened to crack the castle stones as Dorian shoved the blade deeper. Twisted it. Sent their power funneling down through it.

“Tell me his name,” he panted through his teeth. Yrene, clinging to his other hand, murmured her warning. Dorian barely heard it.

Erawan only laughed again, choking as their power seared him.

“Does it matter?” Yrene asked softly.

Yes. He didn’t know why, but it did.

His father had been wiped from the Afterworld, from every realm of existence, but he could still have his name given back to him.

If only to repay the debt. If only so Dorian might grant the man some shred of peace.

Erawan’s power surged for them again. Dorian and Yrene shoved it back.

Now. It had to be now.

“Tell me his name,” Dorian snarled.

Erawan smiled up at him. No.

“Dorian,” Yrene warned. Sweat slid down her face. She couldn’t hold him for much longer. And to risk her—

Dorian sent their power rippling down the blade. Damaris’s hilt glowed.

“Tell me—”

It is your own.

Erawan’s eyes widened as the words came out of him.

As Damaris drew it from him. But Dorian did not marvel at the sword’s power.

His father’s name …

Dorian.

I took his name, Erawan spat, writhing as the words flowed from his tongue under Damaris’s power. I wiped it away from existence. Yet he only remembered it once. Only once. The first time he beheld you.

Tears slid down Dorian’s face at that unbearable truth.

Perhaps his father had unknowingly hidden his name within him, a final kernel of defiance against Erawan. And had named his son for that defiance, a secret marker that the man within still fought. Had never stopped fighting.

Dorian. His father’s name.

Dorian let go of Damaris’s hilt.

Yrene’s breathing turned ragged. Now—it had to be now.

Even with the Valg king before him, something in Dorian’s chest eased. Healed over.

So Dorian said to Erawan, his tears burning away beneath the warmth of their magic. “I brought down your keep.” He smiled savagely. “And now we’ll bring you down as well.”

Then he nodded to Yrene.

Erawan’s eyes flared like hot coals. And Yrene unleashed their power once more.

Erawan could do nothing. Nothing against that raw magic, joining with Yrene’s, weaving into that world-making power.

The entire city, the plain, became blindingly bright. So bright that Elide and Lysandra shielded their eyes. Even Dorian shut his.

But Yrene saw it then. What lay at Erawan’s core.

The twisted, hateful creature inside. Old and seething, pale as death. Pale, from an eternity in darkness so complete it had never seen sunlight.

Had never seen her light, which now scalded his moon-white, ancient flesh.

Erawan writhed, contorting on the ground of whatever this place was inside him.

Pathetic, Yrene simply said.

Golden eyes flared, full of rage and hate.

But Yrene only smiled, summoning her mother’s lovely face to her heart. Showing it to him.

Wishing she knew what Elide’s mother had looked like so she might show him Marion Lochan, too.

The two women he had killed, directly or indirectly, and never thought twice about it.

Two mothers, whose love for their daughters and hope for a better world was greater than any power Erawan might wield. Greater than any Wyrdkey.

And it was with the image of her mother still shining before him, showing him that mistake he’d never known he made, that Yrene clenched her fingers into a fist.

Erawan screamed.

Yrene’s fingers clenched tighter, and distantly, she felt her physical hand doing the same. Felt the sting of her nails cutting into her palms.

She did not listen to Erawan’s pleas. His threats.

She only tightened her fist. More and more.

Until he was nothing but a dark flame within it.

Until she squeezed her fist, one final time, and that dark flame snuffed out.

Yrene had the feeling of falling, of tumbling back into herself. And she was indeed falling, rocking back into Lysandra’s furry body, her hand slipping from Dorian’s.

Dorian lunged for her hand to renew contact, but there was no need.

No need for his power, or Yrene’s.

Not as Erawan, golden eyes open and unseeing as they gazed at the night sky above, sagged to the stones of the balcony.

Not as his skin turned gray, then began to wither, to decay.

A life rotting away from within.

“Burn it,” Yrene rasped, a hand going to her belly. A pulse of joy, a spark of light, answered back.

Dorian didn’t hesitate. Flames leaped out, devouring the decaying body before them.

They were unnecessary.

Before they’d even begun to turn his clothing to ash, Erawan dissolved. A sagging bit of flesh and brittle bones.

Dorian burned him anyway.

They watched in silence as the Valg king turned to ashes.

As a winter wind swept over the tower balcony, and carried them far, far away.