Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

Even as his magic located that glowing, beautiful bit of magic. Stolen magic. As t...

The seed of shape-shifting power flickered in his hands, as if grateful for a kind touch. A human touch.

He smiled at the spider. She smiled back. And then he struck. Invisible hands wrapped around her neck and twisted. Right as his magic plunged into her navel, into where the stolen seed of human magic resided, and wrapped around it.

Studied the magic, every facet of it, before it seemed to sigh in relief and fade into the wind, free at last.

He’d find his way into Morath. Once he mastered the shifting. The spider and all her kind could burn in hell.

She sniffed him again. “You killed the spider.” No judgment in her face, just raw curiosity. “She was a threat,” he admitted. And a Valg piece of shit. Wariness now flooded her eyes. “She could have killed you.” He gave her a half smile. “No, she couldn’t have.” Manon assessed him again, and he withstood it. “You have nothing to say about my own … choices?” “My friends are fighting and likely being killed in the North,” Dorian said. “We don’t have the time to spend weeks winning the Crochans over.”

If crossing line after line would spare any others from harm, he’d do it. He didn’t know what manner of king that made him.

You need them far more than they need you.

The only card you have to play is your heritage—and that they seem to have rejected, even with the skirmish. So how do we make it vital for them? How

“You can’t use that magic of yours to simply … compel them, can you?” Dorian huffed a laugh. “Not that I know of.”

“Maeve wormed her way into Prince Rowan’s mind to convince him to take a false mate.” “I don’t even know what Maeve’s power is,” Dorian said, cringing.

“Find the thing they need, and use it to your advantage.

He wondered if the Thirteen could ever see it—that hint of self-loathing that sometimes flickered across her face.

“Her mother willingly abandoned her city, her people, her queen in their last hours so she might preserve the royal bloodline. Your bloodline. I think she told you that story tonight so you might realize she will do the same as well.”

Glennis knows how to play the game. You just need to catch up with her.

Only with her did he not need to explain. Only with her did he not need to be a king, or anything but what he was. Only with her would there be no judgment for what he’d done, who he’d failed, what he might still have to do. Just this—pleasure and utter oblivion.

she hadn’t allowed him to hold her. She’d simply turned onto her side, putting her back to him, and closed her eyes.

Tristan was always rushing into my tent with his various pressing matters. I could barely convince him to sit still long enough to eat.” Manon discarded the kernel of information. Ironteeth didn’t have fathers. Only their mothers and mothers’ mothers. It had always been that way. Even if it was an effort to keep her questions about him at bay.

How he’d met Lothian Blackbeak, what had prompted them to set aside their ancient hatred. “What would it take—to win the Crochans over? To join us in war?”

with them to each camp or home we make; the fires never extinguish. The flame in my hearth dates back to the Crochan city itself, when Brannon Galathynius gave Rhiannon a spark of eternally burning fire. My mother carried it with her in a glass globe, hidden in her cloak, when she smuggled out your ancestor, and it has continued to burn at every royal Crochan hearth since then.”

“Our seers had a vision that it would vanish, and the flame would die. So we ignited several ordinary fires from that magic flame, and kept them burning. When magic disappeared, the flame indeed winked out. And when magic returned this spring, the flame again kindled, right in the hearth where we had last seen it.”

“When a Crochan Queen summons her people to war, a flame is taken from the royal hearth, and passed to each hearth, one camp and village to the other. The arrival of the flame is a summons that only a true Crochan Queen may make.”

“So I only need to use the flame in that pit out there and the army will come to me?” A caw of laughter. “No. You must first be accepted as queen to do that.” Manon ground her teeth. “And how might I a...

“Why are you here—why this camp?” Glennis’s brows rose. “Didn’t I tell you yesterday?”

The witch noted the impatience and chuckled. “We were on our way to Eyllwe.”

In her endless meetings with Erawan, he’d been particularly focused on ensuring the kingdom stayed fractured.

Glennis nodded. “We know. But we received word from our southern hearths that a threat had arisen. We journey to meet with some of the Eyllwe war bands who have managed to survive this long—to take on whatever horror Morath might have sent.”

To go south, not north to Terrasen. “Erawan might be unleashing his horrors in Eyllwe just to divide you,” Manon said. “To keep you from aiding Terrasen. He’ll have guessed I’m trying to gather the Croch...

“That may be. But we have given our word. So to Ey...

At dawn, he’d go to Darrow’s meeting. With the other lords. And Aelin in tow.

Endymion had never scented Aelin, wouldn’t know that the strange shifter’s scent was all wrong. Thank the gods for that.

So many, too many, clustered in the South. Blocking off aid from any allies beyond Morath’s lines.

“I invited her,” Aedion said, stepping to the edge of the group. “Since she’s technically fighting in the Bane, I made her my second-in-command.” And thus worthy of being here.

“We have yet to see evidence of those witch towers,” Darrow countered. “Beyond the word of an enemy.” “An enemy turned ally,” Aelin—Lysandra—said. Darrow cut her a distasteful stare. “Manon Blackbeak did not lie. Nor were her Thirteen aligned with Morath when they fought alongside us.”

“That battle was against Maeve, not Erawan. Would they have done the same against their own kind? Witches are loyal unto death, and craftier than foxes. Manon Blackbeak and her cabal might very well have played you for desperate fools and fed you the wrong information.”

“Manon Blackbeak turned on her own grandmother, the High Witch of the Blackbeak Clan,” Aedion said, his voice dropping to a dangerous growl. “I do not think the iron splinters we found in her gut wound were a lie.”

“The witch towers are real,” Lysandra said, letting Aelin’s cool, unfazed voice fill the tent. “I’m not going to waste my breath proving their existence. Nor will I risk Orynth to their power.”

She felt Aedion’s stare, the well-hidden agony and worry. But the general said, “Eldrys was to thin our numbers, make us doubt Morath’s wisdom by sending his grunts here. He wants us to underestimate him. If we move to the border, we’ll have the foothills to slow his advance. We know that terrain; he doesn’t. We can wield it to our advantage.” “And if he cuts through Oakwald?” Lord Gunnar pointed to the road past Endovier. “What then?” Ren Allsbrook replied this time. “Then we know that terrain as well. Oakwald has no love for Erawan or his forces.

Its allegiance is to Brannon. And his heirs.” A glance at her, cold and yet—warming. Slightly. She offered the young lord a hint of a smile. Ren ignored it, facing the map again.

said, “we risk being wiped out, thus leaving Perranth, Orynth, and every town and city in this...

Prince Endymion said, stepping forward. The oldest among them, though he looked not a day past twenty-eight. “Your army remains too small to risk dividing in hal...

Sellene, Endymion’s cousin. Rowan’s cousin. She’d been curious about Aelin, Lysandra could tell, but had stayed away. As if hesitant to forge a bond when war might destroy them all. Lysandra had wondered more than once what in th...

Two of them, Sol and Ren, voted for the border. Four of them, Darrow, Sloane, Gunnar, and Ironwood, voted to move to Orynth.

Prince Galan, who had kept silent and watchful, a listener despite his frequent smiles and bold fighting on both sea and land, stepped forward. Looked right at Aelin, his eyes—their eyes—glowing bright. “Poor allies we would indeed make,” he said, his Wendlynian accent rich and rolling, “if we abandoned our friends when their choices veered from ours. We promised our assistance in this war. Wendlyn will not back from it.”

Darrow tensed. Not at the words, but at the fact that they were directed at her. At Aelin. Lysandra bowed her head, putting a hand on her heart.

“Since I doubt we will be welcome in Doranelle again, I would like to think that this may perhaps be our new home, should all go well.”

“You are not authorized to make such invitations,” Lord Gunnar snapped. None of them bothered to answer.

Ilias of the Silent Assassins gave a solemn nod that voiced his agreement to stay, and Ansel of Briarcliff merely winked again at Aelin and said, “I came this far to help you beat that bastard into dust. I don’t see why I’d go home now.”

Lysandra didn’t fake the gratitude that tightened her throat as she bowed to the allies her queen had gathered. A tall, dark-haired young man entered the tent, his gray eyes darting around the gathered company. They widened when they beheld her—Aelin. Widened, then glanced to Aedion as if to confirm. He marked the golden hair, the Ashryver eyes, and paled. “What is it, Nox,” Darrow growled. The messenger straightened, and hurried to the lord’s side, murmuring something in his ear. “Send him in,” was Darrow’s only answer. Nox stalked out, graceful despite his height, and a shorter, pale-skinned man entered. Darrow extended a hand for the letter. “You had a message from Eldrys?” Lysandr...