Kingdom of Ash

Dorian didn’t know what he had expected from a Valg king’s chamber, but the four-poster bed of carved black wood, the washstand and desk, would have been low on his list of guesses.

Nothing extraordinary. No trove of stolen, ancient weapons or heirlooms, no bubbling potions or spellbooks, no snarling beasts in the corner. No additional of Wyrdstone collars.

A bedroom and nothing more.

He scanned the circular room, even going so far as to peer down the stairwell. A straight shot to the iron door and guards posted outside. No closets. No trapdoors.

He opened the armoire to find row after row of clean clothes. None of the drawers contained anything—and there were no hidden compartments.

But he felt it. That otherworldly, terrible presence. Could feel it all around him—

A small noise had him whirling.

Dorian looked at the bed then. At what he had missed, left lying between obsidian sheets, which nearly swallowed her frail, small body.

The young woman. Her face was hollow, vacant. Yet she stared at him. As if she’d awoken.

A pretty, dark-haired girl. No older than twenty. A near-twin to Kaltain.

Bile burned his throat. And as the girl sat up farther, the sheets falling away to reveal a wasted, naked body, to reveal a too-thin arm and the hideous purplish scar near the wrist … He knew why he had felt the key’s presence throughout the keep. Moving about. Vanishing.

It had been walking. Trailing its master. Her enslaver.

A collar of black stone had been clamped around her throat.

And yet she sat there in that rumpled bed. Staring at him.

Hollow and vacant—and in pain.

He had no words. There was only ringing silence.

Kaltain had destroyed the Valg prince inside her, but the Wyrdkey had driven her mad. Had given her terrible power, but ripped apart her mind.

Dorian slowly, carefully, took one step closer to the bed. “You’re awake,” he said, willing his voice to the drawl of the Valg king. Knowing it was her captor she saw.

A blink.

Dorian had witnessed Erawan’s experiments, the horrors of his dungeons. Yet this young woman, so starved, the bruises on her skin, the unholy thing in her arm, the unholy thing he’d known had shared this bed with her …

He dared to unspool a thread of his power. It neared her arm and recoiled.

Yes, the key was there.

He prowled closer, willing her not to look toward the portal in the wall.

The young woman trembled—just slightly.

He willed himself not to vomit. Not to do anything but look at her with cool command as he said, “Give me your arm.”

Her brown eyes scanned his face, but she held out her arm.

He nearly staggered back at the festering wound, the black veins running up from it. Leaking its poison into her. What Kaltain’s wound had no doubt looked like, and why the scar remained, even in death.

But he sheathed Damaris and took her arm in his hands.

Ice. Her skin was like ice. “Lie down,” he told her.

She shook, but obeyed. Bracing herself. For him.

Kaltain. Oh gods, Kaltain. What she’d endured—

Dorian freed the knife at his side—the one Sorrel had gifted him—and angled it over her arm. Kaltain had done the same to free it, Manon had said.

But Dorian sent a flicker of his healing magic to her arm. To numb and soothe. She thrashed, but he held firm. Let his magic flare through her. She gasped, arching, and Dorian took advantage of her sudden stillness to plunge in the knife, fast and deft.

Three movements, his healing magic still working through her, soothing her as best he could, and the bloodied shard was in his fingers. Pulsing its hollow, sickening power through him.

The final Wyrdkey.

He dropped her arm, sliding the Wyrdkey into his pocket, and turned for the portal.

But a hand wrapped around his, feeble and shaking.

He whirled, a hand going to Damaris, and found her staring up at him. Tears slid down her face.

“Kill me,” she breathed. Dorian blinked. “You—you pushed it back.” Not the key, but the demon inside her, he realized. Somehow, with that healing magic— “Kill me,” she said, and began sobbing. “Kill me, please.”

Damaris warmed in his hand. Truth. He gaped at her in horror. “I—I can’t.”

She began clawing at the collar around her throat. As if she’d rip it free. “Please,” she sobbed. “Please.”

He did not have time. To find a way to get that collar off. Wasn’t even certain it could come off, without that golden ring Aelin had used on him. “I can’t.”

Despair and agony flooded her eyes. “Please,” was all she said. “Please.”

Damaris remained warm. Truth. The pleading was nothing but truth.

But he had to go—had to go now. He could not take her with him. Knew that thing inside her, however his magic had pushed it back, would emerge again. And scream to Erawan where he was. What he’d stolen.

She wept, hands ripping at her brutalized body. “Please.”

Would it be a mercy—to kill her? Would it be a worse crime to leave her here, with Erawan? Enslaved to him and the Valg demon inside her?

Damaris did not answer his silent questions.

And he let his hand fall away from the blade entirely as he stared down at the weeping girl.

Manon would have ended it. Freed her in the only way left. Chaol would have taken her with him and damned the consequences. Aelin … He didn’t know what she would have done.

Who do you wish to be?

He was not any of them. He was—he was nothing but himself.

A man who had known loss and pain, yes. But a man who had known friendship and joy.

The loss and pain—they had not broken him wholly. Without them, would the moments of happiness be as bright? Without them, would he fight so hard to ensure it did not happen again?

Who do you wish to be?

A king worthy of his crown. A king who would rebuild what had been shattered, both within himself and in his lands.

The girl sobbed and sobbed, and Dorian’s hand drifted toward Damaris’s hilt.

Then a crack sounded. Bone snapping.

One moment, the girl was weeping. The next, her head twisted to the side, eyes unseeing.

Dorian whirled, a cry on his lips as Maeve stepped into the room. “Consider it a wedding gift, Majesty,” she said, her lips curling. “To spare you from that decision.”

And it was the smile on her face, the predatory gait of her steps that had his magic rallying.

Maeve nodded toward his pocket. “Well done.”

Her dark power leapt upon his mind.

He didn’t have the chance to grab for Damaris before he was snared in her dark web.