Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

But she’d seen beyond them, for an instant. Had seen canvas fabric draped overhead, rushes covered with woven rugs beneath their sandaled feet. Braziers smoldered all around. A tent. She was in a tent. Murmuring sounded outside—not nearby, but close enough for her Fae hearing to pick up. People speaking in both her tongue and the Old Language, someone muttering about the cramped camp conditions. An army camp, full of Fae.

“We’ve played with your hands before,” Cairn said, straightening. Aelin began shaking, began tugging on the chains anchoring her arms above her head. His smile grew. “Let’s see how your entire body reacts to flame without your special little gift. Perhaps you’ll burn like the rest of us.” Aelin yanked uselessly, her feet sliding against the still-cool metal. Not like this— Cairn reached into his pocket and withdrew some flint. This wasn’t just a breaking of her body. But a breaking of her—of the fire she’d come to love. To destroy the part of her that sang. He’d melt her skin and bones until she feared the flame, until she hated it, as she hated those healers who had come again and again to repair her body, to hide what was real from what had been a dream. Fenrys’s snarl rolled on, endless. Cairn said mildly, “You can scream all you like, if it pleases you.”

The hand she’d been dealt. It was the hand she had been dealt, and she would endure it. Even as a word took form on her tongue. Please. She tried to swallow it. Tried to keep it locked in as Cairn crouched beside the table, flint raised. You do not yield. You do not yield. You do not yield. “Wait.” The word was a rasp. Cairn paused. Rose from his crouch. “Wait?” Aelin shook, her breathing ragged. “Wait.” Cairn crossed his arms. “Do you have something you’d like to say at last?” He’d let her promise anything to him, to Maeve. And then would still light those fires. Maeve would not hear of her yielding for days. Aelin made herself meet his stare, her gauntlet-covered fingers pressing into the iron slab beneath her. One last chance. She’d seen the stars overhead. It was as great a gift as any she’d received, greater than the jewels and gowns and art she’d once coveted and amassed in Rifthold. The last gift she would receive, if she played the hand she’d been dealt. If she played him right. To end this, end her. Before Maeve could put the Wyrdstone collar around her neck.

Rowan freed the hatchet from his side, a long knife already glinting in the other. A killing calm had settled over him hours ago. Days ago. Months ago. Only a few more minutes.

Go, a quiet voice urged. Go now. Essar’s sister had advised to wait until dawn. When the shift was weakest. When she’d make sure certain guards didn’t arrive on time. Go now. That voice, warm and yet insistent, tugged. Pushed him toward the camp. Rowan bared his teeth, his breathing roughening. Lorcan and Gavriel would be waiting for the signal, a flare of his magic, when he got far enough into the camp. Now, Prince. He knew that voice, had felt its warmth. And if the Lady of Light herself whispered at his ear …

And then she said, her voice cracking, “When you finish breaking me apart for the day, how does it feel to know that you are still nothing?” Cairn grinned. “Some fire left in you, it seems. Good.” She smiled back through the mask. “You were only given the oath for this. For me. Without me, you’re nothing. You’ll go back to being nothing. Less than nothing, from what I’ve heard.” Cairn’s fingers tightened around the flint. “Keep talking, bitch. Let’s see where it gets you.” A rasping laugh broke from her. “The guards talk when you’re gone, you know. They forget I’m Fae, too. Can hear like you.”

He knocked back, and she lunged toward the tent flaps. He had more restraint than she’d estimated. He wouldn’t kill her, and what she’d done just now, provoking him— She’d barely made it out of her crouch when Cairn’s hands gripped her hair again. When he hurled her with all his strength against the chest of drawers. Aelin hit it with a crack that echoed through her body. Something in her side snapped and she cried out, the sound small and broken, as she collided with the floor.

He’d sat in a stone room for two months, witness to what they’d done to a young queen’s body, her spirit. Had been unable to help her as she’d screamed and screamed. He’d never stop hearing those screams. But it was the sound that came out of her as Cairn hurled her into the chest of drawers where Fenrys had watched him arranging his tools, the sound she made as she hit the floor, that shattered him entirely. A small sound. Quiet. Hopeless.

She blinked at him. Four times. I am here, I am with you. Fenrys knew it for what it was. The final message. Not before death, but before the sort of breaking that no one would walk away from. Before Maeve returned with the Wyrdstone collar. Cairn rotated the poker in his hands, heat rippling off its point. And Fenrys couldn’t allow it. He couldn’t allow it. In his shredded soul, in what was left of him after all he’d been forced to see and do, he couldn’t allow it. The blood oath kept his limbs planted. A dark chain that ran into his soul. He would not allow it. That final breaking. He pushed upward against the bond’s dark chain, screaming, though no sound came from his open maw. He pushed and pushed and pushed against those invisible chains, against that blood-sworn order to obey, to stay down, to watch. He defied it. All that the blood oath was. Pain lanced through him, into his very core. He blocked it out as Cairn pointed the smoldering poker at the young queen with a heart of wildfire. He would not allow it. Snarling, the male inside him thrashing, Fenrys bellowed at the dark chain binding him. He shredded into it, biting and tearing with every scrap of defiance he possessed. Let it kill him, wreck him. He would not serve. Not another heartbeat. He would not obey. He would not obey. And slowly, Fenrys got to his feet.

Pain shuddered Aelin as she lay sprawled, panting, arms straining to hold her head and chest off the ground.

stared at. But Fenrys, rising upward, his body rippling with tremors of pain, snout wrinkled in rage. Even Cairn halted. Looked toward the white wolf. “Stand down.” Fenrys snarled, deep and vicious. And still he struggled to his feet. Cairn pointed the poker at the rug. “Lie down. That is an order from your queen.” Fenrys spasmed, his hackles lifting. But he was standing. Standing. Despite the order, despite the blood oath’s commands. Get up. From far away, the words sounded. Cairn roared, “Lie down!” Fenrys’s head thrashed from side to side, his body bucking against invisible chains. Against an invisible oath. His dark eyes met Cairn’s. Blood began running from the wolf’s nostril. It’d kill him—to sever the oath. It would break his soul. His body would go soon after that. But Fenrys put one paw forward. His claws dug into the ground. Cairn’s face paled at that step. That impossible step. Fenrys’s eyes slid toward hers. Neither needed the silent code between them for the word she beheld in his gaze. The order and plea. Run. Cairn read the word, too. And he hissed, “Not with a shattered spine, she can’t,” before he brought the poker slamming down for Aelin’s back. With a roar, Fenrys leaped. And with it, he snapped the blood oath completely.

Wolf and Fae went tumbling to the carpet, roaring and tearing. Fenrys lunged for Cairn’s throat, his enormous body pinning the male, but Cairn got his feet between them and kicked. Aelin lurched upright, willing strength to her legs as she came into a kneel beside the chest of drawers. Fenrys slammed into the side of the metal table, but was instantly moving, throwing his body against Cairn.

She twisted her feet toward it. Placed the center of the chains binding her ankles atop the red-hot tip. Slowly, the links in the center heated.

Aelin grabbed the poker, planted her heels, and drove the rod upward. It strained against the heated links in the chain, and she shoved and shoved her feet downward, her arms buckling. Cairn and Fenrys rolled, and Aelin gritted her teeth, bellowing. The chain between her legs snapped. It was all she needed. She scrambled to her feet, but halted. Fenrys, pinned by Cairn, met her gaze. Snarled in warning and command. Run. Cairn whipped his head toward her. Toward the chain hanging free between her ankles. “You—” But Fenrys surged up, his jaws clamping around Cairn’s shoulder. Cairn shouted, arching, grabbing for Fenrys’s back. Fenrys met her stare again, ripping into Cairn’s shoulder even as the male shoved them into the edge of the table. Hammered Fenrys’s spine into the metal, hard enough that bone cracked. Run. Aelin did not hesitate. She sprinted for the tent flaps. And into the morning beyond.

Half a mile to the center of the camp. To the tent. The soldiers had responded as Rowan anticipated, and he’d killed them accordingly. Birds

Rowan ripped through their shields, ripped the air from their lungs. Some found his hatchet swinging for their necks. Close. So close to that tent. He would signal Lorcan and Gavriel in a moment. When he was close enough to need the diversion for the way out. Another onslaught of soldiers barreled for him, and Rowan angled his long knife. His power blasted away their fired arrows, then blasted away the archers. Turning them all to bloodied splinters.

Aelin ran. Her weakened legs stumbled on the grass, her still-bound hands restricting the full range of motion, but she ran. Picked a direction, any direction but the river mists to her left, and ran. The sun was rising, and the army camp … There was motion behind her. Shouting. She blocked it out and aimed right. Toward the rising sun, as if it were Mala’s own welcoming embrace. She couldn’t get down enough air through the mask’s thin slit, but she kept moving, racing past tents, past soldiers who whipped their heads toward her, as if puzzled. She clenched the poker in her ironclad hands, refusing to see what the commotion was, if Cairn raged behind her. But then she heard them. Bellowed orders. Rushing steps in the grass behind, closing in. People ahead alerted by their cries. Bare feet flying over the ground, her exhausted legs screamed to stop. Still Aelin aimed for the eastern horizon. Toward the trees and mountains, toward the sun cresting over them. And when the first of the soldiers blocked her path, shouting to stop, she angled the iron poker and did not falter.

Lorcan and Gavriel steadied their breathing, readying their power. It thrummed through them, twin waves cresting. But death began beckoning elsewhere in the camp. Closer to them. Moving fast.

“Someone’s making a move this way,” Lorcan murmured to Gavriel. “But Whitethorn’s still over there.” Fenrys. Or Connall, perhaps. Maybe Essar’s sister, who he’d never liked. But he wouldn’t give a shit about that if she hadn’t betrayed them.

Gavriel sped off, a predator ready to pounce unseen when Lorcan attacked head-on. Death glimmered. Whitethorn was nearly at the camp’s center. And that force approaching their eastern entrance

To hell with waiting. Lorcan broke from the cover of trees, dark power swirling, primed to meet whatever broke through the line of tents. Freeing the sword at his side, he searched the sky, the camp, the world as death flickered, as the rising sun gilded the rolling grasses and set the dew steaming. Nothing. No indication of what, of who— He’d reached the first of the hollows that flowed to the camp edge, the dips narrow and steep, when Aelin Galathynius appeared. Lorcan didn’t expect the sob in his throat as she raced between the tents, as he beheld the iron mask and the chains on her, hands still bound. As he beheld the blood soaking her skin, the short white shift, her hair, longer than he’d last seen and plastered to her head with gore. His knees stopped working, and even his magic faltered at the sight of her wild, desperate race for the camp’s edge. Soldiers ran toward her. Lorcan surged into motion, flaring his magic up and wide. Not to her, but to Whitethorn, still charging for the center of the camp. She’s here, she’s here, she’s here, he signaled.

as ten soldiers converged on Aelin, blocking her path toward the open field. One swung his sword, a strike that would cleave her skull in two. The fool didn’t realize who he faced. What he faced. That it wasn’t a fire-breathing queen bound in iron who charged at him, but an assassin. With a twist, arms lifting, Aelin met that sword head-on. Just as she’d planned. The male’s sword fell short of his intended target, but hit precisely where she wished. In the center of the chains that bound her hands. Iron snapped. Then the male’s sword was in her freed hands. Then his throat was spraying blood. Aelin whirled, slamming into the other soldiers who stood between her and freedom. Even as he ran for her, Lorcan could only gape at what unfolded. She struck before they knew where to turn. Slash, duck, lunge. She got her other hand on one of their daggers. Then it was over. Then there was nothing between her and the camp entrance but the six guards drawing their weapons—

A rolling field of steep bumps and hollows lay between them. Lorcan swore. She wouldn’t make it, not over that terrain, not drained like that— But she did. Aelin vanished into the first dip, and Lorcan’s magic flared over and over. To her, to Whitethorn. And then she was up, cresting the hill, and he could see the slowness taking over, the sheer exhaustion from a body at its limit. Arrows twanged from bows, and a wall of them shot into the sky. Aiming for her on those exposed hills. Lorcan sent a wave of his power snapping them away. Still more fired. Single shots this time, from so many directions he couldn’t trace their sources. Trained archers, some of Maeve’s best. Aelin had to— She already was. Aelin began zagging, depriving them of an easy target. Left to right, she darted over the hills, slower with each bump she cleared, each step toward Lorcan as he raced to her, a hundred yards remaining between them. An arrow speared for her back, but Aelin lunged to the side, skidding in grass and dirt. She was up again in a heartbeat, weapons still in hand, charging for the hills and hollows between them. Another arrow aimed for her, and Lorcan made to snap it away. A wall of glittering gold got there first. From the north, leaping over the hollows, charged Gavriel. Aelin disappeared into a dip in the earth, and when she emerged, the Lion ran at her side, a golden shield around her. Not close to her—but in the air around them. Unable to fully touch her with the iron mask, the ...

Clearing the way. Right to the tent he’d been so close to reaching when Lorcan’s power had flared. A signal. That they’d found her. Or she had found them, it seemed. And when Rowan had seen her, first from the skies and then beside her, when he smelled the blood, both her own and others’, when he beheld the chains and the iron mask clamped over her face, when she was sobbing at the sight of him, terror and despair coating her scent— The rage that roiled through him had no space for mercy. No room for compassion.

Chunks of flesh had been torn from Cairn’s body. A lump on his temple told Rowan it had been the blow that had rendered him unconscious. As if Fenrys had slammed Cairn’s skull into the side of that metal table. And then collapsed himself mere feet away. Collapsed, perhaps not from the wounds themselves, but … Rowan started. What had happened here, what had been so terrible that the wolf had been able to do the impossible to spare Aelin from enduring it? Gavriel’s tawny eyes flashed with wariness. Rowan pointed at Cairn again. “Heal him.”

Rowan surveyed the tools Cairn had laid out, the ones in the drawer. Carefully, thoughtfully, he selected one. A thin, razor-sharp knife. A healer’s tool, meant for sleek incisions and scraping out rot. Cairn groaned as unconsciousness gave way. By the time Cairn awoke, chained to that metal table, Rowan was ready. Cairn beheld who stood over him, the tool in Rowan’s tattooed hand, the others he had also laid out on that piece of velvet, and began thrashing. The iron chains held firm. Then Cairn beheld the frozen rage in Rowan’s eyes. Understood what he intended to do with that sharp, sharp knife. A dark stain spread across the front of Cairn’s pants. Rowan wrapped an ice-kissed wind around the tent, blocking out all sound, and began.

Saw them, before she heard them, because their feet were silent on the forest floor, thanks to their immortal grace and training. The breath shuddered out of her as Lorcan emerged between two moss-crusted trees, eyes already fixed on her. And a step behind him, staggering along … Elide didn’t know what to do. With her body, her hands. Didn’t know what to say as Aelin stumbled over root and rock, the mask and the chains clanking, blood soaking her. Not just blood from her own wounds, but those of others. She was thin, her golden hair so much longer. Too long, even with the time apart. It fell nearly to her navel, most of it dark with caked blood. As if she’d run through a rain of it. No sign of Rowan or Gavriel. But no grief on Lorcan’s face, nothing beyond urgency, given how he monitored the sky, the trees. Searching for any pursuit.

Aelin, as if her body didn’t quite belong to her, lifted her shackled, metal-encased hands. The chain linking them had been severed, and hung in pieces off either manacle. The same with those at her ankles. She tugged at one of the metal gauntlets. It didn’t budge. She tugged again. The gauntlet didn’t so much as shift. “Take it off.” Her voice was low, gravelly. Elide didn’t know which one of them she’d ordered, but before she could cross the clearing, Lorcan gripped the queen’s wrist to examine the locks. One corner of his mouth tightened. There was no easy way to free them, then. Elide approached, her limp deep once more with Gavriel’s magic occupied. The gauntlets had been locked at her wrist, overlapping slightly with the shackle. Both had small keyholes. Both were made from iron. Elide shifted slightly, bracing her weight on her uninjured leg, to get a view of where the mask was bound to the back of Aelin’s head. That lock was more complicated than the others, the chains thick and ancient. Lorcan had fitted the tip of a slender dagger into the lock of the gauntlet, and was now angling it, trying to pick the mechanism. “Take it off.” The queen’s guttural words were swallowed by the moss-crusted trees. “I’m trying,” Lorcan said—not gently, though certainly without his usual coldness. The dagger scraped in the lock, but to no avail. “Take it off.” The queen began trembling. “I’m—” Aelin snatched the dagger from him, metal clicking on metal as she fitted the blade’s tip ...

Aelin stared at the broken blade, at the shard in the greenery cushioning her bare, bloodied feet, her breaths coming faster and faster. Then she dropped the dagger into the moss. Began clawing at the shackles on her arms, the gauntlets on her hands, the mask on her face. “Take it off,” she begged as she scratched and tugged and yanked. “Take it off!” Elide reached a hand for her, to stop her before she ripped the skin clean off her bones, but Aelin dodged away, staggering deeper into the clearing. The queen dropped to her knees, bowing over them, and clawed at the mask. It didn’t so much as move. Elide glanced to Lorcan. He was frozen, eyes wide as Aelin knelt in the moss, as her breathing became edged with sobs. He had done this. Led them to this. Elide stepped toward Aelin. The queen’s gauntlets drew blood where they scraped into her neck, her jaw, as she heaved against the mask. “Take it off!” The plea turned into a scream. “Take it off!” Over and over, the queen screamed it. “Take it off, take it off, take it off!” She was sobbing amid her screaming, the sounds shattering through the ancient forest. She said no other words. Pleaded to no gods, no ancestors. Only those words, again and again and again. Take it off, take it off, take it off. Movement broke through the trees behind them, and the fact that Lorcan did not go for his weapons told Elide who it was. But any relief was short-lived as Rowan and Gavriel emerged, a massive white wolf hauled between them. The wolf...

He was unconscious, tongue lagging from his bloodied maw. Rowan had barely entered the clearing before he set down the wolf and stalked for Aelin. The prince was covered in blood. From his unhindered steps, Elide knew it wasn’t his. From the blood coating his chin, his neck … She didn’t want to know. Aelin ripped at the immovable mask, either unaware or uncaring of the prince before her. Her consort, husband, and mate. “Aelin.” Take it off, take it off, take it off. Her screams were unbearable. Worse than those that day on the beach in Eyllwe. Gavriel came to stand beside Elide, his golden skin pale as he took in the frantic queen. Slowly, Rowan knelt before her. “Aelin.” She only tipped her head up to the forest canopy and sobbed. Blood ran down her neck from the scratches she’d dug into her skin, mingling with what already coated her. Rowan reached out a trembling hand, the only sign of the agony Elide had little doubt was coursing through him. Gently, he laid his hands on her wrists; gently, he closed his fingers around them. Halting the brutal clawing and digging. Aelin sobbed, her body shuddering with the force of it. “Take it off. ” Rowan’s eyes flickered, panic and heartbreak and longing shining there. “I will. But you have to be still, Fireheart. Just for a few moments.” “Take it off. ” The sobs ebbed, tricking into something broken and raw. Rowan ran his thumbs over her wrists, over those iron shackles. As if it were nothing but her skin. Slowly, her shaking eased...

“I’ve never seen a lock like this,” Gavriel murmured. Aelin began shaking again. Elide put a hand on her knee. Aelin had scraped it raw, mud and grass stuck in her blood-crusted skin. She waited for the queen to shove her hand away, but Aelin didn’t move. Kept her eyes shut, her ragged breathing holding steady. Rowan gripped one of the chains binding the mask and nodded to Lorcan. “The other one.”

Silence fell through the clearing. They couldn’t linger here—not for much longer. But to take Aelin in the chains, when she was so frantic to be free of them … Aelin’s eyes opened. They were empty. Wholly drained. A warrior accepting defeat. Elide blurted, scrambling for anything to banish that emptiness, “Was there ever a key? Did you see them using a key?” Two blinks. As if that meant something. Rowan and Lorcan yanked again, straining.

“Quiet,” Lorcan hissed. Not at the level of her voice, but the deadly information Elide revealed. Aelin again blinked twice with that strange intentionality. Rowan snarled at the chains, heaving again. But Aelin stretched out a hand to the moss and traced a shape. “What is that?” Elide leaned forward as the queen did it again, her hollow face unreadable. The Fae males paused at her question, and watched Aelin’s finger move through the green. “A Wyrdmark,” Rowan said softly. “To open.” Aelin traced it again, mute and still. As if none of them stood there. “They work on iron?” Gavriel asked, tracking Aelin’s finger. “She unlocked iron doors in Adarlan’s royal library with that symbol,” Rowan murmured. “But she needed …”

Kneeling before her, he extended his bloodied hand. “Show me, Fireheart. Show me again.” He tapped her ankle—the shackle there. Silently, her movements stiff, Aelin leaned forward. She sniffed at the blood pooling in his hand, her nostrils flaring. Her eyes lifted to his, like the scent of his blood posed some question. “I am your mate,” Rowan whispered, as if it was the answer she sought. And the love in his eyes, in the way his voice broke, his bloodied hand trembling … Elide’s throat tightened. Aelin only looked at the blood pooling in his cupped palm. Her fingers curled, the gauntlet clicking. As if it were another answer, too. “She can’t do it with the iron,” Elide said. “If it’s on her hands. It interferes with the magic in the blood.” A blink from her, in that silent language. “It’s why she put them on you, isn’t it,” Elide said, her chest straining. “To be sure you couldn’t use your own blood with the Wyrdmarks to free yourself.” As if all the other iron wasn’t already enough. Another blink, her face still so hollow and cold. Tired. Rowan’s jaw clenched. But he just dipped his finger into the blood in his palm and offered his hand to her. “Show me, Fireheart,” he said again. Elide could have sworn he shuddered, and not from fear, as Aelin’s metal-crusted hand closed around his. In halting, small movements, she guided his finger to trace the symbol onto the shackle around her ankle. A soft flare of greenish light, then— The hiss and sigh of the lock filled the clear...

They had taken her scars. Maeve had taken them all away. It told Rowan enough about what had been done. When he’d seen her back, the smooth skin where the scars of Endovier and the scars from Cairn’s whipping should have been, he’d suspected. But kneeling, burning in nothing but her skin … There were no scars where there should have been. The almost-necklace of them from Baba Yellowlegs: gone. The shackle marks from Endovier: gone. The scar where she’d been forced by Arobynn Hamel to break her own arm: gone. And on her palms … It was upon her exposed palms that Aelin now gazed. As if realizing what was missing. The scars across her palms, one from the moment they had become carranam, the other from her oath to Nehemia, had disappeared entirely. Like they had never been. Her flames burned brighter. Healers could remove scars, yes, but the most likely reason for the lack of them on Aelin, on all the places where he’d once traced them with his hands, his mouth … It was new skin. All of it. Save for her face, since he doubted they would be stupid enough to take off the mask. Nearly every inch of her was covered in new skin, unvarnished as fresh snow. The blood coating her had burned away to reveal it. New skin, because they’d needed to replace what had been destroyed. To heal her so they could begin again and again. Gavriel and Elide had moved to where Fenrys lay, the battlefield healing the former had done on the warrior likely not enough to keep death at bay.

Gavriel said to no one in particular, “He doesn’t have much longer.” He’d broken the blood oath. Through sheer will, Fenrys had broken it. And would soon pay the price when his life force bled out entirely. Aelin’s gaze shifted then. From her hands, her horrifically pristine skin, to the wolf across the clearing. She blinked twice. And then slowly rose. Unaware or uncaring of her nakedness, she took an unsteady step. Rowan was instantly there—or as close as the flames would allow. He could push through, shielding himself in ice or simply by cutting off the air that fed her flames. But to cross that line, to shove into her flames when so much, too much, had been stolen from her … He didn’t let himself think about the distant, wary recognition on her face when she’d seen him—seen all of them. As if she wasn’t entirely certain to trust them. Trust this. Aelin managed another step, teetering. He glimpsed her neck as she passed. Even the twin bite marks, his mark of claiming, had vanished. Encased in flame, Aelin walked to Fenrys. The white wolf did not stir. Sorrow softened her face, even with that quiet distance. Sorrow, and gratitude. Gavriel and Elide remained on Fenrys’s other side as she approached. Backed away a step. Not from fear, but to give her space in this moment of farewell. They had to go. Lingering here, despite the miles between them and the camp, was folly. They could carry Fenrys until it was over, but … Rowan couldn’t bring himself to say it. To tell Aelin t...

A queen who took his massive paw in her hands, pushing back folds of fur and skin to unsheathe a curved claw. She slid it over her bare forearm, splitting skin. Leaving blood in its wake. Rowan’s breath caught. Gavriel and Lorcan whirled toward them. Aelin spoke again, and Fenrys blinked once in answer. She deemed that answer enough. “Holy gods,” Lorcan breathed as Aelin extended her bleeding forearm to Fenrys’s mouth. “Holy rutting gods.” For Fenrys’s loyalty, for his sacrifice, there was no greater reward she could offer. To keep him from death, there was no other way to save him. Only this. Only the blood oath. And as Fenrys managed to lap the blood from her wound, as he swore a silent vow to their queen, blinking a few more times, Rowan’s chest became unbearably tight. Severing the blood oath to one queen had snapped his life force, his soul. Swearing the blood oath to another might very well repair that cleaving, the ancient magic binding Fenrys’s fading life to Aelin’s. Three mouthfuls. That’s all Fenrys took before he laid his head back on the moss and closed his eyes. Aelin curled on her side next to him, flames encompassing them both. Rowan couldn’t move. None of them m...

The wolf gave him a curt nod. Elide reached for one of the packs stashed near the base of a tree. “Which way?” But Rowan didn’t get to answer. Silent as wraiths, they appeared across the glen. As if they’d simply sparked into existence in the shade of the foliage. Little bodies, some pale, some black as night, some scaled. Mostly concealed, save for spindly fingers and wide, unblinking eyes. Elide gasped. “The Little Folk.” Elide hadn’t seen a whisper of the Little Folk since the days before Terrasen fell. Then, it had been flashes and rustling within Oakwald’s ancient shade. Never so many, never so openly. Or as open as they would ever allow themselves to be. The half dozen or so who had gathered across the clearing kept mostly hidden behind root and rock and cluster of leaves. None of the males moved, though Fenrys’s ears cocked toward them. A miracle—that’s what had happened with the queen and the wolf. Though Fenrys seemed drained, his eyes were clear as the Little Folk gathered. Aelin barely looked toward them. A pale, spindly hand rose over a moss-speckled boulder and curled. Come. Rowan asked, voice like granite, “You wish us to follow you?” Again, the hand made the motion. Come. Gavriel murmured, “They know this forest better than even we do.” “And you trust them?” Lorcan demanded. Rowan’s eyes settled on Aelin. “They saved her life once.” That night Erawan’s assassin had returned for Aelin. “They will do so again now.”

Rowan kept a step behind Aelin and Fenrys, Gavriel and Elide at the head of their party, Lorcan at the rear, as they followed the Little Folk. Aelin had said nothing, done nothing except rise when they told her it was time to go. Rowan had offered her his cloak, and she’d allowed it to pass through her bubble of golden, clear flame to wrap around her naked body. She clutched it at her chest as they walked, mile after mile, her feet bare. If the stones and roots of the forest hurt her, she didn’t so much as flinch. She only walked on, Fenrys at her side within that sphere of fire, as if they were two ghosts of memory. A vision of old, striding through the trees, the queen and the wolf.

“From the ancient wars between the forest-spirits,” Gavriel whispered to Elide when he noticed her frowning at a hillside full of felled trunks and splintered stone. “Some are still waged by them, wholly unaware and unconcerned with the affairs of any realm but this.” Rowan had never seen the race of ethereal beings far more ancient and secretive than even the Little Folk. But at his mountain home, set high in the range that they strode toward, he’d sometimes heard the shattering of rocks and trees on dark, moonless nights. When there was not a whisper of wind on the air, nor any storm to cause them. So close—only twenty or so miles to the mountain house he’d built. He’d planned to take Aelin there one day, though it was nothing but long-vanished ashes. Just to show her where the house had been, where he’d buried Lyria. She was still up there, his mate-who-had-never-been. And his true mate … She strode unwavering through the trees. No more than a wraith. Still they followed the Little Folk, who beckoned from a tree, a rock, and shrub ahead, and then vanished. Behind Lorcan, a few others hid their trail with clever hands and small magics. He prayed they had a place to stay for the night. A place where Aelin might sleep, and might remain protected from Maeve’s eyes once she realized she’d been tricked. They were headed eastward—far from the coast. Rowan didn’t dare risk telling them they needed to find a port. He’d see where they led them tonight, and then craft their plan f...

But when the Little Folk appeared before a gargantuan boulder, when they then vanished and reappeared in a sliver cut into the rock itself, bony hands beckoning from within, Rowan found himself balking. The creature dwelling in the lake beneath Bald Mountain was a mild threat compared to the other things that still hunted in dark and forgotten places. But the Little Folk beckoned again. Lorcan appeared at his side. “It could be a trap.” But Elide and Gavriel walked toward it, unfazed. And behind them, Aelin continued as well. So Rowan followed her, as he would follow her until his last breath, and beyond it. The cave mouth was tight, but soon opened into a larger passage. Aelin illuminated the space, bathing the black stone walls in a golden glow bright enough to see by. But her flame was dwarfed when they entered a massive chamber. The ceiling stretched into gloom, but it was not the height of the chamber that made him halt. Nooks and alcoves had been built into the side of the rock, some equipped with bedrolls, some with what seemed to be piles of clothes, and some with food. A small fire burned near one, and past it, tucked against the wall, a natural stone trough gleamed with water, courtesy of a small stream. But farther into the cave, on the other side of the chamber, flowing right up to the black rock itself, a great lake stretched into the darkness. There were countless subterranean lakes and rivers beneath these mountains—places so deep in the earth that even the ...

Magic—old, strange magic, those lights. Like they’d been plucked...

Aelin did not pause as she strode for one of the glittering walls. There was none of her usual caution, no dart of her eyes as she weighed the exits and pitfalls, potential weapons to wield. A trance—it was almost as if she had slipped into a trance, plunged into some depthless ocean inside herself and drifted so far down that they might as well have been birds soaring over its distant surface. But she walked toward that wall, the birch branches artfully displayed across it. More of the Little Folk within, Rowan realized. Perched on the branches, clinging to them. Aelin’s steps were silent on the stone. Fenrys halted nearby, as if to give her privacy.

But he lingered in the center of the space as his mate paused before the shining, living wall. There was no expression on her face, no tension in her body. Yet she inclined her head to the Little Folk half-hidden in the branches and boughs before her. Her jaw moved—speaking. Brief, short words. He’d never so much as heard of the Little Folk talking. But there was his queen, his wife, his mate, murmuring with them. At last, she turned away, her face still blank, her wildfire eyes as flat and cold as the lake. Fenrys fell into step beside her, and Rowan remained in place as Aelin aimed for the small fire. Safe. The Little Folk must have told her this cave was safe, if she now moved for the fire, her own sphere of it still burning bright.

But Aelin paid them no heed, paid the world no heed, as she took up a spot between the fire and the cave wall, lay upon the bare stone, and closed her eyes.

His magic could leap between one element and another, yet the ability to shift lay within something else entirely. Lay within a part of him that had always yearned for one thing above all others: to let go. To be free. As Temis, Goddess of Wild Things, was free—uncaged. As he had once wished to be, when he had been little more than a reckless, idealistic prince.

It was the magic’s sole command: let go. Let go of who and what he’d become since that collar and emerge into something new, something different. It was easier realized than enacted. Since his eyes had returned to blue, like the unraveling of some thread within him, he’d been unable to do anything else. Even change them to brown again.

“My head pounds on your behalf, just watching you try so hard,” Glennis said from across the clearing. Around them, the Thirteen ate in silence, Manon monitoring all. The Crochans sat amongst them, at least. Quietly, but they sat there. Which meant they all looked at him now. Dorian lowered the strip of tough meat and inclined his head to the crone. “My head is pounding enough for both of us, I think.” “What are you trying to turn into, exactly? Or who?” The opposite of what he was. The opposite of the man who’d overlooked Sorscha’s presence for years. And offered her only death in the end. He’d be glad to let go of it, if only the magic would allow him. “Nothing,” he said.

“I just want to see if it’s possible, for someone with my manner of magic. To even change small features.” Not a lie, not entirely.

“But were you to succeed,” Glennis pressed, “who would you wish to be?” He didn’t know. Couldn’t conjure an image beyond empty darkness. Damaris, at his side, would have no answer, either. Dorian peered inward, feeling the sea of magic that roiled inside him. He traced its shape with careful, invisible hands. Followed a thread within himself not to his gut, but to his still-cracked heart. Who do you wish to be?