Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

There, like the seed of power that Cyrene had stolen, it lay—the little snarl in his magic. Not a snarl, but a knot—a knot in a tapestry. One that he might weave. One he might fashion into something if he dared. Who do you wish to be? he asked the barely woven tapestry within himself. Let the threads and knots take form, crafting the picture within his mind. Starting small. Glennis chuckled. “Your eyes are green now, king.” Dorian started, heart thundering. The others again halted their lunches, gaping, some leaning in to peer at him more closely. But he fed his magic into the loom within himself, adding to the emerging picture. “Och, golden hair does not suit you at all.” Asterin grimaced. “You look sickly.” Who did he wish to be? Anyone but himself. But what he’d become. His silent answer sent that magical loom tumbling from his invisible grip, and he knew if he looked, his dark hair and sapphire eyes would have returned. Asterin sighed in relief. But Manon smiled grimly, as if she’d heard his unspoken answer. And understood.

“Curiosity,” the crone said. “None of us have been, either. We do not dare.” “For fear of us?” Asterin’s golden hair shifted as she leaned closer to the fire. She’d found a strip of leather in the camp to tie across her brow—not the black she’d worn for the past century, but a familiar sight, at least. One thing, it seemed, had not entirely altered. “For fear of what it will do to us, to see what is left of our once-great city, our lands.” “Nothing but rubble, they say,” Manon muttered. “And would you rebuild it, if you could?” Glennis asked. “Rebuild the city for yourselves?” “We never discussed what we’d do,” Asterin said. “If we could ever go home.” “A plan, perhaps,” Glennis mused, “would be wise. A powerful thing to have.” Her blue eyes settled on Manon. “Not just for the Crochans, but your own people.”

She had done that, too. Bronwen said, voice cold and low, “What mortal band could ever hope to survive an attack by one of the Ironteeth legions? Especially when that aerial legion was trained by such a skilled Wing Leader.” “Choose your words carefully,” Asterin warned. But Una, the pretty, brown-haired Crochan and another of Manon’s cousins, gripped her silver-bound broom and said, “You trained them. All of you—you trained the witches who did this.” Una pointed to the decaying bodies, the torn throats, the killing that had not stopped at quick deaths. Not at all. “And you expect us to forget that?” Silence fell. Even from Asterin. Glennis said nothing. Manon’s hands turned frail. Foreign. The iron within them brittle. She had done this. The soldiers in the wide clearing were nothing and no one to her, most were mere mortals, and yet … A woman lay near Manon’s boots, her torso split clean open from navel to sternum. Her brown eyes gazed unseeingly at the shattered canopy overhead, her mouth still gaping in pain. “I can burn them,” Dorian offered no one in particular.

This was what they would be remembered for. What she would be remembered for. Erawan’s crowned rider. His Wing Leader. “Don’t burn them,” Manon said. Silence fell in the clearing. But Manon knelt on the festering earth, unsheathed her iron nails, and began digging. Yanking off her gloves, Asterin lowered herself to the ground nearby. Then Sorrel and Vesta. Then the rest of the Thirteen. The cold, firm earth did not yield easily. It tore at Manon’s fingers, root and rock burning as they scraped at her skin. Across the clearing, Karsyn, the witch whose broom Manon had returned, made to kneel as well. But Manon held up a filthy, already bleeding hand. The witch halted. “Only the Thirteen,” Manon said. “We will bury them.” The Crochans stared at her, and Manon ripped away the ancient soil. “We’ll bury all of them.”

For hours, Manon and the Thirteen knelt in the blood-soaked earth and dug the grave. Dorian assisted Bronwen and Glennis in drafting messages to the King and Queen of Eyllwe and their two sons. Warning them of the danger—and nothing more. No request for aid, for armies.

Dorian gleaned the unwritten words, though: they did not have a single soldier to spare for Terrasen. After what he’d seen, Dorian was now inclined to agree. Eyllwe had given too much, for too long. It was time for the rest of them to shoulder the burden.

Dorian wondered if Manon noted the Crochans who watched her. Not with hatred, but some small degree of respect. Together, the Thirteen dug a massive grave, not even asking their wyverns to haul away the dirt. The sun rose, then began its descent. Slowly, the grave took form. Large enough for every fallen warrior.

Night was full overhead by the time Dorian managed to slip away. By the time he found an empty clearing, drew the marks, and plunged Damaris into earth shining with his own blood. His summons was answered quickly this time. Yet it was not Gavin who emerged, shimmering, from the night air. Dorian’s magic flared, rallying to strike, as the figure took form. As Kaltain Rompier, clad in an onyx gown and dark hair unbound, smiled sadly at him.

“What happened to you in Morath is in no way your fault.” “No, it wasn’t,” she agreed, a shadow passing over her face. “But I made choices of my own in going to Rifthold last autumn, in pursuing my ambition for you—your crown. I regret some of them.” His gaze slid to her bare forearm, to the scar that lingered even in death. “You saved my friends,” he said, and knelt before her. “You gave up everything to save them, and get the Wyrdkey away from Erawan.” He would do the same, if he could survive Morath’s horrors. “I am in your debt.” Kaltain stared down at where he knelt. “I never had friends of my own. Not as you have. I always envied you for it. You, and Aelin.” He lifted his head. “You know who she is?” A hint of a smile. “Death has its advantages.” He couldn’t stop his next question. “Is—is it better there? Are you at peace?” “I am not allowed to say,” Kaltain replied softly, her eyes shining with understanding. “And I am not allowed to say who dwells here with me.” He nodded, fighting past the tightness in his chest, the disappointment. But he cocked his head to the side. “Who forbids you from doing so?” If the twelve gods of this land were stranded in Erilea, they certainly didn’t rule over other realms. Kaltain’s lips curved upward. “I am not allowed to say, either.” When he opened his mouth to ask more, she cut him off. “There are other forces at work. Beyond what is tangible and what is known.” He glanced toward Damaris. “Other gods?” Kaltain’s silence was answer ...

He’d never spoken to her—not really. Had barely given her more than a passing glance, or grimaced his way through polite conversation with her. And yet here she stood, the woman who had taken out a third of Morath, who had devoured a Valg prince from sheer will alone.

“How did you do it?” he whispered. “How did you break free of its control?” He had to know. If he was walking into hell itself, if it was more than likely he’d wind up with a new collar around his throat, he had to know. Kaltain studied his neck before she met his stare. “Because I raged against it. Because I did not feel that I deserved the collar.” The truth of her words slammed into him as surely as if she’d shoved his chest. Kaltain only asked, “You drew the summoning marks for a reason. What is it you wish to know?” Dorian tucked away the truth she’d thrown at him, the mirror she held up to all he’d once been and had become. He had not been a true prince—not in spirit, not in deeds. He’d tried to be, but too late. He had acted too late. He doubted he was doing much better as king. Certainly not when he’d dismissed Adarlan out of his own guilt and anger, questioned whether it should be saved. As if there were ever a possibility that it didn’t deserve to be. He asked at last, “Am I ready to go to Morath?” She alone would know. Had witnessed things far worse than any Manon or Elide had beheld. Kaltain again glanced to Damaris. “You know the answer.” “You won’t try to convince me not to go?” But Kaltain’s mouth tightened as her onyx gown began to blend into the gathered night. “You know what you will face there. It is not for me to tell you if you are ready.” His mouth went dry. Kaltain said, “Everything you have heard about Morath is true. True, and still there is more t...

So Dorian felt for that tangle in his magic, the place where raw power eddied and emerged as whatever he wished. Let go—the shifting magic’s command. Let go of everything. Let go of that wall he’d built around himself the moment the Valg prince had invaded him, and look within. At himself. Perhaps what the sword had asked him to do in summoning Kaltain instead. Who do you wish to be? “Someone worthy of my friends,” he said into the quiet night. “A king worthy of his kingdom.” For a heartbeat, snow-white hair and golden eyes flashed into his mind. “Happy,” he whispered, and wrapped a hand around Damaris’s hilt. Let go of that lingering scrap of terror. The ancient sword warmed in his hand, a friendly and swift heat. It flowed up through his fingers, his wrist. To that place within him where all those truths had dwelled, where it became warmth edged with sharpest pain. And then the world grew and expanded, the trees rising, the ground approaching— He made to touch his face, but found he had no hands. Only soot-black wings. Only an ebony beak that allowed no words past it. A raven. A— A soft inhale of air had him twisting his neck—far more easily in this form—toward the trees. Toward Manon, standing in the shadows of an oak, her bloody, filthy hand braced against the trunk as she stared at him. At the transformation.

But Manon’s lip curled back from her teeth. Her golden eyes glowed like embers. “When, exactly, were you going to inform me that you were about to retrieve the third Wyrdkey?”

When the men had started asking why Aelin of the Wildfire did not burn away their enemies. Did not at least give them light by which to fight. Why she had vanished again. Lysandra had donned her wyvern form to battle the ilken, but she had been forced to yield, to fall behind their lines. Good for killing ilken, yes, but also a large target for Morath’s archers and spear-throwers.

A blast of wind and ice answered—Sellene or Endymion. Maybe one of their many cousins. “No bridge big enough. But the river’s frozen solid—we might cross it, then melt it.” “With Aelin.” A doubtful, careful question. Aedion gestured toward the source of that answering blast of magic, now warring with the Valg princes’ power. “If the Fae royals can make ice, then they can unfreeze it. Right beneath Morath’s feet.” Galan’s turquoise eyes flickered, either at the plan or the fact that Aelin would not be the one enacting it. “Morath might see through us.” “There’s little other option.” From Perranth, they’d have access to more supplies, perhaps fresh troops rallying to them from the city itself. To retreat, though … Aedion surveyed the lines being picked off one by one, the soldiers on their last legs. Retreat and live. Fight and die. For this resistance would founder, if they kept at this. Here, on the southern plains, they’d be ended. There was no guarantee Rowan and the others would find Aelin. That Dorian and Manon might retrieve the third Wyrdkey and then give them to his queen, should she get free, should she find them in this mess of a world. No guarantee how many Crochans Manon might rally, if any.

Lysandra had no speech left in her. Could only kneel, clutching the cloak. “We move an hour before dawn,” Aedion said, the order a clear dismissal. Ansel and Galan nodded, peeling out of the tent. Ren only murmured, “I’ll find you some food, Lady,” before he exited the tent. Boots crunched in hay, and then he was knee to knee before her. Aedion. There was nothing kind on his face. No pity or warmth. For a long minute, they only stared at each other. Then the prince growled softly, “Your plan was bullshit.” She said nothing, and couldn’t stop her shoulders from curving inward. “Your plan was bullshit,” he breathed, his eyes sparking. “How could you ever be her, wear her skin, and think to get away with it? How could you ever think you’d get around the fact that our armies are counting on you to burn the enemy to ashes, and all you can do is run away and emerge as some beast instead?” “You don’t get to pin this retreat on me,” she rasped. The first words she’d spoken in days and days. “You agreed to let Aelin go to her death, and leave us here to be slashed to bloody ribbons. You two told no one of this plan, told none of us who might have explained the realities of this war, and that we would need a gods-damned Fire-Bringer and not an untrained, useless shape-shifter against Morath.” Blow after blow, the words landed upon her weary heart. “We—” “If you were so willing to let Aelin die, then you should have let her do it after she incinerated Erawan’s hordes!” “It would not ...

She had not trusted this world, this dream. The companions who had walked with her, led her here. The warrior-prince with pine-green eyes and who smelled of Terrasen. Him, she had not dared to believe at all. Not the words he spoke, but the mere fact that he was there. She did not trust that he’d removed the mask, the irons. They had vanished in other dreams, too—dreams that had proved false. But the Little Folk had told her it was true. All of this. They had said it was safe, and she was to rest, and they would look after her. And that terrible, relentless pressure writhing in her veins—it had eased. Just enough to think, to breathe and act beyond pure instinct. She’d siphoned off as much as she dared, but not all. Certainly not all. So she had slept. She’d done that, too, in those other dreams. Had lived through days and weeks of stories that then washed away like footprints in the sand.

Aelin swallowed, tasting ash. Her magic opened an eye in response. Aelin sucked in a breath. Not here—not yet. She whispered it to the flame. Not yet. But the flame around her and the wolf flared and thickened, blotting out the cave. She clenched her jaw. Not yet, she promised it. Not until it could be done safely. Away from them. Her magic pushed against her bones, but she ignored it. Leashed it. The bubble of flame shrunk, protesting, and grew transparent once more. Through it she could make out a water-carved basin, the slumbering forms of her other companions.

A sword hung from his belt, its ruby smoldering in the light of her fire. She knew that sword. An ancient sword, forged in these lands for a deadly war. It had been her sword, too. Those erased calluses had fit its hilt so perfectly. And the warrior-prince now bearing it had found the sword for her. In a cave like this one, full of the relics of heroes long since sent to the Afterworld. She studied the tattoo snaking down the side of his face and neck, vanishing into his dark clothes. I am your mate. She had wanted to believe him, but this dream, this illusion she’d been spun … Not an illusion. He had come for her. Rowan. Rowan Whitethorn. Now Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius, her husband and king-consort. Her mate. She mouthed his name. He had come for her. Rowan. Silently, so smoothly that not even the white wolf awoke, she sat up, a hand clutching the cloak that smelled of pine and snow. His cloak, his scent woven through the fibers. She rose to her feet, legs sturdier than they’d been. A thought had the bubble of flame expanding as she crossed the few feet toward the sleeping prince. She peered down at his face, handsome and yet unyielding. His eyes opened, meeting hers as if he’d known where to find her even in sleep. An unspoken question arose in those green eyes. Aelin? She ignored the silent inquiry, unable to bear opening that silent channel between them again, and surveyed the powerful lines of his body, the sheer size of him. A gentle wind kissed with ice and lightn...

She just dropped the cloak onto the black stones and stepped into the water. Steam hissed, wafting around her in billowing clouds. She kept going, embracing the water’s bite with each step, even if it failed to pierce the heat of her. The water was clear, though the gloom veiled the bottom that sloped away as she dove under the frigid surface. The water was silent. Cool, and welcome, and calm. So Aelin loosened the leash—only a fraction. Flame leapt out, devoured by the frigid water. Consumed by it. It pulled away that pressure, that endless fog of heat. Soothed and chilled until thoughts took form. With each stroke beneath the surface, out into the darkness, she could feel it again. Herself. Or whatever was left of it. Aelin. She was Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius, and she was Queen of Terrasen. More magic rippled out, but she held her grip. Not all—not yet. She had been captured by Maeve, tortured by her. Tortured by Cairn, her sentinel. But she had escaped, and her mate had come for her. Had found her, just as they had found each other despite centuries of bloodshed and loss and war. Aelin. She was Aelin, and this was not some illusion, but the real world. Aelin. She swam out into the lake, and Rowan followed the jutting lip of stone along the shore’s edge. She dropped beneath the surface, letting herself sink and sink and sink, toes grasping only open, cool water, straining for a bottom that did not arrive. Down into the dark, the cold. The ancient, icy water pu...

He hadn’t realized that she was burning so hotly until she’d stepped into the frigid lake and steam had risen. Silently, she’d dove in, swimming beneath the surface, the water so clear he could see every stroke of her faintly glowing body. As if the water had peeled away the skin of the woman and revealed the blazing soul beneath. But that glow faded with each passing breath she emerged to take, dimming further each time she plunged beneath the surface. Had she wished for him not to touch her because of that internal inferno, or simply because she first wanted to wash away the stain of Cairn? Perhaps both. At least she’d begun speaking, her eyes clearing a bit. They remained clear as she treaded water, the glow still barely clinging, and peered up at where he stood on a sliver of black rock jutting into the lake. “You could join me,” she said at last. No heat in her words, yet he felt the invitation. Not to taste her body the way he yearned to, needed to in order to know she was here with him, but rather to be with her. “Unlike you,” he said, trying to steady his voice as the recognition on her face threatened to buckle his knees, “I don’t think my magic would warm me so well if I got in.” He wanted to, though. Gods, he wanted to leap in. But he made himself add, “This lake is ancient. You should get out.” Before something came creeping along. She did no such thing, her arms continuing their sweeping circles in the water. Aelin only stared at him again in that grave, cauti...

So Rowan found himself saying, “I told you once that even if death separated us, I would rip apart every world until I found you.” He gave her a slash of a smile. “Did you really believe this would stop me?” She pursed her mouth, and at last, those agonizing emotions began to surface in her eyes. “You were supposed to save Terrasen.” “Considering that the sun shines, I’d say Erawan hasn’t won yet. So we’ll save it together.” He didn’t let himself think of the final cost of destroying Erawan. And Aelin seemed in no hurry to discuss it, either, as she said, “You should have gone to Terrasen. It needs you.” “I need you more.” He didn’t balk from the stark honesty roughening his voice. “And Terrasen will need you, too. Not Lysandra masquerading as you, but you.” A shallow nod. “Maeve raised her army. I doubt it was only to guard me while she was away.” He’d put the thought aside, to consider later. “It might just be to shore up her defenses, should Erawan win across the sea.” “Do you truly think that’s what she plans to do with it?” “No,” he admitted. “I don’t.” And if Maeve meant to bring that army to Terrasen, to either unite with Erawan or simply be another force battering their kingdom, to strike when they were weakest, they had to hurry. Had to get back. Immediately. His mate’s eyes shone with the same understanding and dread. Aelin’s throat bobbed as she whispered, “I’m so tired, Rowan.” His heart strained again. “I know, Fireheart.”

A boat, ancient and every inch of it carved, drifted out of the gloom. “Get back to shore.” The boat wasn’t drifting—it was being tugged. He could just barely make out two dark forms slithering beneath the surface. Aelin didn’t hesitate, yet her strokes remained steady as she swam for him. She didn’t balk at the hand he extended, and he wrapped his cloak around her while the boat ambled past. Black, eel-like creatures about the size of a mortal man pulled it. Their fins drifted behind them like ebony veils, and with each propelling sweep of their long tails, he glimpsed milky-white eyes. Blind. They led the flat-bottomed vessel large enough for fifteen Fae males right to the edge of the lake. A flash of short, spindly bodies through the dimness and the Little Folk had it moored to a nearby stalagmite. The others must have heard his order to Aelin, because they emerged, swords out. A foot behind them, Elide lingered with Fenrys, the male still in wolf form. “They can’t mean for us to take that into the caves,” Lorcan murmured. But Aelin turned toward them, hair dripping onto the stone at her bare feet. Half a thought from her could have had her dry, yet she made no move to do so. “We’re being hunted.” “We know that,” Lorcan shot back, and were it not for the fact that Aelin was currently allowing him to rest a hand upon her shoulder, Rowan would have thrown the male into the lake.

Aelin leveled unfazed eyes upon him. “Then you’ll have to find a way out, I suppose.” A hint—just a spark—of temper belied those calm words. There was nothing else to debate after that. And they had little to pack. The others gave Aelin privacy to dress by the fire while they inspected the boat, and when his mate emerged again, clad in boots, pants, and various layers beneath her gray surcoat, the sight of her in clothes from Mistward was enough to make his gut clench. No longer a naked, escaped captive. Yet none of that wickedness, that joy and unchecked wildness illuminated her face. The rest of their party waited on the boat, seated on the benches built into its high-lipped sides. Fenrys and Elide both sat as seemingly far from Lorcan as they could get, Gavriel a golden, long-suffering buffer between them. Rowan lingered at the shore’s edge, a hand extended for Aelin while she approached. Each of her steps seemed considered—as if she still marveled at being able to move freely. As if still adjusting to her legs without the burden of chains. “Why?” Lorcan mused aloud, more to himself. “Why go to these lengths for us?”

He got his answer—they all did—a heartbeat later. Aelin halted a few feet away from the boat and Rowan’s outstretched hand. She turned back toward the cave itself. The Little Folk peeked from those birch branches, from the rocks, from behind stalagmites. Slowly, deeply, Aelin bowed to them. Rowan could have sworn all those tiny heads lowered in answer. A pair of bony grayish hands rose above a nearby rock, something glittering held between them, and set the object on the stone. Rowan went still. A crown of silver and pearl and diamond gleamed there, fashioned into upswept swan’s wings.

“The Crown of Mab,” Gavriel breathed. But Fenrys looked away, toward the looming dark, his tail curling around him. Aelin staggered a step closer to the crown. “It—it fell into the river.” Rowan didn’t want to know how she’d encountered it, why she’d seen it fall into a river. Maeve had kept her sisters’ two crowns under constant guard, only bringing them out to be displayed in her throne room on state occasions. In memory of her siblings, she’d intoned. Rowan had sometimes wondered if it was a reminder that she had outlasted them, had kept the throne for herself in the end. The grayish hand slipped over the rock’s edge again and nudged the crown in silent gesture. Take it. “You want to know why?” Gavriel softly asked Lorcan as Aelin strode for the rock. Nothing but solemn reverence on her face. “Because she is not only Brannon’s Heir, but Mab’s, too.” A throwback to her great-great-grandmother, Maeve had taunted her. Who had inherited her strength, her immortal lifespan. Aelin’s fingers closed around the crown, lifting it gently. It sparkled like living moonlight between her hands. My sister Mab’s line ran true, Elide claimed Maeve had said on the beach. In every way, it seemed...

But the Little Folk, it seemed, had come prepared. And within heartbeats of entering the pitch-black river passage, blue light had kindled on a lantern dangling over the curved prow. Not light, not even magic. But small worms that glowed pale blue, as if they’d each swallowed the heart of a star. They’d been gathered into the lantern, and their soft light rippled over the water-smooth walls. A gentle, soothing light. At least, for her it was so. The Fae males sat alert, eyes gleaming with animalistic brightness, using the illumination to mark the caverns they were tugged down by those strange, serpentine beasts. “We’re not traveling swiftly,” Rowan answered from where he sat beside Aelin near the back of the boat, Fenrys dozing at the queen’s feet. It was large enough for each of them to lie down amongst the benches, or gather near the prow to eat the stockpile of fruits and cheeses. “And we don’t know how directly these passageways flow. Several days might be a conservative guess.” “It would take three weeks on foot if we were above,” Gavriel explained, his golden hair silvered by the lantern’s light. “Perhaps longer.”