A few bands of Morath soldiers had managed to get grappling hooks into the walls these past two days, hoisting up siege ladders and droves of soldiers with them. Chaol had cut them down, and though the warriors of Anielle had been unsure what to do with the demon-infested men who came to slay them, they’d obeyed his barked commands. Quickly staunched the flow of soldiers over the walls, severing the ties that held the ladders to them.
But the siege towers that approached … those would not be so easily dislodged. And neither would the soldiers who crossed the metal bridge that would span the tower and the keep walls.
Behind him, levels up, he knew his father watched. Had already signaled through the lantern system Sartaq had demonstrated how to use that they needed ruks to fly back—to knock the towers down.
But the ruks were making a pass at the far rear of Morath’s army, where the commanders had kept the Valg lines in order. It had been Nesryn’s idea last night: to stop going for the endless front lines and instead take out those who ordered them. Try to sow chaos and disarray.
The first siege tower neared, metal groaning as wyverns—chained to the ground and wings clipped—hauled it closer. Soldiers already lined up behind it in twin columns, ready to storm upward.
Today would hurt.
Chaol’s horse shifted beneath him again, and he patted a gauntlet-covered hand on the stallion’s armored neck. The thud of metal on metal was swallowed by the din. “Patience, friend.”
Far out, past the reach of the archers, the catapult was reloading. They’d launched a boulder only thirty minutes ago, and Chaol had ducked beneath an archway, praying the tower base it struck did not collapse.
Praying Yrene wasn’t near it.
He’d barely seen her during these days of bloodshed and exhaustion. Hadn’t had a chance to tell her what he knew. To tell her what was in his heart. He’d settled for a deep but brief kiss, and then rushed to whatever part of the battlements he’d been needed at.
Chaol drew his sword, the freshly polished metal whining as it came free of the sheath. The fingers of his other hand tightened around the handles of his shield. A ruk rider’s shield, light and meant for swift combat. The brace that held him in the saddle remained steady, its buckles secure.
The soldiers lining the battlements stirred at the nearing siege tower. The horrors inside.
“They were once men,” Chaol called, his voice carrying over the clamor of the battle beyond the keep walls, “they can still die like them.”
A few swords stopped quivering.
“You are people of Anielle,” Chaol went on, hefting his shield and angling his sword. “Let’s show them what that means.”
The siege tower slammed into the side of the keep, and the metal bridge at its uppermost level snapped down, crushing the battlement parapets beneath.
Chaol’s focus went cold and calculating.
His wife was in the keep behind him. Pregnant with their child.
He would not fail her.
A siege tower had reached the keep walls, and now unloaded soldier after soldier right into the ancient castle.
Despite the distance, Nesryn could see the chaos on the battlements. Just barely make out Chaol atop his gray horse, fighting in the thick of it.
Soaring over the army hurling arrows and spears at them, Nesryn banked left, the ruks behind her following suit.
Across the battlefield, Borte and Yeran, leading another faction of rukhin, banked right, the two groups of rukhin a mirror image swooping toward each other, then back to plow through the rear lines.
Just as Sartaq, leading a third group, slammed from the other direction.
They’d taken out two commanders, but three more remained. Not princes, thank the gods here and the thirty-six in the khaganate, but Valg all the same. Black blood coated Salkhi’s armored feathers, coated every ruk in the skies.
She’d spent hours cleaning it off Salkhi last night. All the rukhin had, not willing to risk the old blood interfering with how their feathers caught the wind.
Nesryn nocked an arrow and picked her target. Again.
The Valg commander had evaded her shot the last time. But he would not now.
Salkhi swept low, taking arrow after arrow against his breastplate, in his thick feathers and skin. Nesryn had almost vomited the first time an arrow had found its mark days ago. A lifetime ago. She now also spent hours picking them from his body each night—as if they were thorns from a prickly plant.
Sartaq had spent that time going from fire to fire, comforting those whose mounts were not so fortunate. Or soothing the ruks whose riders hadn’t lasted the day. Already, a wagon had been piled high with their sulde—awaiting the final journey home to be planted on Arundin’s barren slopes.
When Salkhi came close enough to rip several Valg off their horses and shred them apart in his talons, Nesryn fired at the commander.
She didn’t see if the shot landed.
Not as a horn cut through the din.
A cry rose from the rukhin, all glancing eastward. Toward the sea.
To where the Darghan cavalry and foot soldiers charged for the unprotected eastern flank of Morath’s army, Hasar atop her Muniqi horse, leading the khagan’s host herself.
Two armies clashed on the plain outside an ancient city, one dark and one golden.
They fought, brutal and bloody, for the long hours of the gray day.
Morath’s armies didn’t break, though. And no matter how Nesryn and the rukhin, led by Sartaq and Hasar’s orders, rallied behind their fresh troops, the Valg kept fighting.
And still Morath’s host lay between the khagan’s army and the besieged city, an ocean of darkness.
When night fell, too black for even the Valg to fight, the khagan’s army pulled back to assess. To ready for the attack at dawn.
Nesryn flew Yrene and Chaol, bloodied and exhausted, down from the again-secured keep walls, so they might join in the war council between the khagan’s royal children. All around, soldiers groaned and screamed in agony, healers led by Hafiza herself rushing to tend them before the night gave way to more fighting.
But when they reached Princess Hasar’s battle tent, when they had all gathered around a map of Anielle, they had only a few minutes of discussion before they were interrupted.
By the person Chaol least expected to walk through the flaps.
CHAPTER 46
Perranth appeared on the horizon, the dark-stoned city nestled between a cobalt lake and a small mountain range that also bore its name.
The castle had been built along a towering mountain bordering the city, its narrow towers tall enough to rival those in Orynth. The great city walls had been torn down by Adarlan’s army and never restored, the buildings along its edges now spilling onto the fields beyond the iced-over Lanis River that flowed between the lake and the distant sea.
It was on those fields that Aedion deemed they’d make their stand.
The ice held as they crossed the river and organized their reduced lines once more.
The Whitethorn royals and their warriors were nearly burnt out, their magic a mere breeze. But they’d kept Morath a day behind with their shields.
A day the army used to rest, hewing wood from whatever trees, barns, or abandoned farmsteads they could find to fuel their fires. A day when Aedion had ordered Nox Owen to go as his emissary into Perranth, the thief’s home city, and see if men and women from the city might come to fill their depleted ranks.
Not many. Nox returned with a few hundred even-less-trained warriors. No magic-wielders.
But they did have some weapons, most old and rusted. Fresh arrows, at least. Vernon Lochan had seen to it that his people had remained unarmed, fearing their uprising should they learn the true Heir to Perranth had been held captive in the highest tower of the castle.
But the people of Perranth already had enough of their puppet lord, it seemed.
And at least they had blankets and food to spare. Wagons hauled them in hourly, along with healers—none magically gifted—to patch up the wounded. Those who were too injured to fight were sent on the supply wagons to the city, some piled atop one another.
But a warm blanket and hot meal would not add to their numbers. Or keep Morath at bay.
So Aedion planned, keeping his Bane commanders close. They would make this count. Every inch of terrain, every weapon and soldier.
He didn’t see Lysandra. Aelin made no appearances, either.
The queen had abandoned them, the soldiers muttered.
Aedion made sure to shut down the talk. Had snarled that the queen had her own mission to save their asses, and if she wanted Erawan to know about it, she would have announced it to them all, since they were so inclined to gossip.
It eased the discontent—barely.
Aelin had not defended them with her fire, had left them to be butchered.
Some part of him agreed. Wondered if it would have been better to ignore the keys, to use the two they possessed and obliterate these armies, rather than destroy their greatest weapon to forge the Lock.
Hell, he would have wept to see Dorian Havilliard and his considerable power at that moment. The king had blasted ilken from the sky, had snapped their necks without touching them. He’d bow before the man if it saved them.
It was midday when Morath’s army reached them once more, their mass spilling over the horizon. A storm sweeping across the fields.
He’d warned the people of Perranth to flee into Oakwald, if they could. Locking themselves in the castle would be of little use. It had no supplies to outlast a siege. He’d debated using it for this battle, but their advantage lay in the frozen river, not in letting themselves be cornered to endure a slow death.
No one was coming to save them. There had been no word from Rolfe, Galan’s forces were depleted, his ships spread thin on the coast, and no whisper of the remainder of Ansel of Briarcliff’s soldiers.
Aedion kept that knowledge from his face as he rode his stallion down the front lines, inspecting the soldiers.
The tang of their fear fogged the frosty air, the weight of their dread a bottomless pit yawning open in their eyes as they tracked him.
The Bane began striking their swords against their shields. A steady heartbeat to override the vibrations of the Morath soldiers marching toward them.
Aedion didn’t look for a shifter in the ranks. Ilken flew low over Morath’s teeming mass. She’d undoubtedly go for them first.
Aedion halted his horse in the center of their host, the iced-over Lanis almost buried beneath the snow that had fallen the night before. Morath knew it existed, though. Those Valg princes had likely studied the terrain thoroughly. Had likely studied him thoroughly, too, his technique and skill. He knew he’d face one of them before it was done, perhaps all of them. It wouldn’t end well.
Yet as long as they risked the crossing, he didn’t care. Endymion and Sellene, the only Fae still left with a whisper of power, were stationed just behind the first of the Bane.
The eyes of his own soldiers were a phantom touch between his shoulder blades, on his helmeted head. He had not prepared a speech to rally them.
A speech would not keep these men from dying today.
So Aedion drew the Sword of Orynth, hefted his shield, and joined the Bane’s steady beat.
Conveying all the defiance and rage in his heart, he clashed the ancient sword against the dented, round metal.
Rhoe’s shield.
Aedion had never told Aelin. Had wanted to wait until they returned to Orynth to reveal that the shield he’d carried, had never lost, had belonged to her father. And so many others before that.
It had no name. Even Rhoe had not known its age. And when Aedion had spirited it away from Rhoe’s room, the only thing he grabbed when the news came that his family had been butchered, he had let the others forget about it, too.
Even Darrow had not recognized it. Worn and simple, the shield had gone unnoticed at Aedion’s side, a reminder of what he’d lost. What he’d defend to his final breath.
The soldiers from their allies’ armies picked up the beat as Morath reached the edge of the river. A barked command from the two Valg princes on horseback had the first of the foot soldiers crossing the ice, the ilken holding back near the center. To strike when they’d been worn down.
Ren Allsbrook and their remaining archers kept hidden behind the lines, picking targets amongst those winged terrors.
On and on, Aedion and their army banged their swords against their shields.
Closer and closer, Morath’s army spilled onto the frozen river.
Aedion held the beat, their enemy not realizing the sound served another purpose.
To mask the cracking of the ice deep below.
Morath advanced until they were nearly across the river.
Enda and Sellene needed no shouted order. A wind swept over the ice, then slammed into it, between the cracks they’d been creating. Then they shoved the ice apart. Tore it to shreds.
One heartbeat, Morath was marching toward them.
The next, they plunged down, water splashing, shouts and screams filling the air. The ilken shot forward to grab soldiers drowning under the weight of their armor.
But Ren Allsbrook was waiting, and at his bellowed order, the archers fired upon the exposed ilken. Blows to the wings sent them tumbling to the ice, into the water. Going under, some ilken dragged by their own thrashing soldiers.
The Valg princes each lifted a hand, as if they were of one mind. The army halted at the shore. Watching as their brethren drowned. Watching as Endymion and Sellene kept ripping the ice apart, forbidding it to freeze over again.
Aedion dared to smile at the sight of the drowning soldiers.
He found the two Valg princes smiling back at him from across the river. One ran a hand over the black collar at his throat. A promise and reminder of precisely what they’d do to him.
Aedion inclined his head in mocking invitation. They could certainly try.
The Fae royals’ power broke at last, heralded by the ice that formed over the drowning soldiers, sealing them beneath the dark water.
A gust of black wind from the Valg princes and their soldiers didn’t so much as look down as they began marching over the ice, ignoring the banging fists beneath their feet.
Aedion guided his horse behind the front line, to where Kyllian and Elgan were mounted on their own steeds. Two thousand of the enemy had gone into the river at most. None would emerge.
Barely a dent in the force now advancing.
Aedion didn’t have words for his commanders, who had known him for most of his life, perhaps better than anyone. They had no words for him, either.
When Morath reached their shore at last, swords bright in the gray day, Aedion let out a roar and charged.
The ilken had learned that a shape-shifter was amongst them, and wore a wyvern’s skin. Lysandra realized it after she’d swept for them, leaping from the army’s ranks to slam into a cluster of three.
Three others had been waiting, hiding in the horde below. An ambush.
She’d barely taken out two, snapping off their heads with her spiked tail, before their poisoned claws had forced her to flee. So she’d drawn the ilken back toward her own lines, right into the range of Ren’s archers.
They’d gotten the ilken down—barely. Shots to the wings that allowed Lysandra to rip their heads from their bodies.
As they’d fallen, she’d dove for the ground, shifting as she went. She landed as a ghost leopard, and unleashed herself upon the foot soldiers already pushing against Terrasen’s joined shields.
The skilled unity of the Bane was nothing against the sheer numbers forcing them back. The Fae warriors, the Silent Assassins—Ansel and Galan’s few remaining soldiers spread between them—neither of those lethal units could halt them, either.
So she clawed and tore and sundered, black bile burning her throat. Snow turned to mud beneath her paws. Corpses piled, men both human and Valg screamed.
Aedion’s voice shattered down the lines, “Hold that right flank!”
She dared a glance toward it. The ilken had concentrated their forces there, slamming into the men in a phalanx of death and poison.
Then another order from the prince, “Hold fast on the left!”
He’d repositioned the Bane amongst the right and left flanks to account for their wobbling on the southern plains, yet it was not enough.
Ilken tore into the cavalry, horses shrieking as poisoned talons ripped out their innards, riders crushed beneath falling bodies.
Aedion galloped toward the left flank, some of his Bane following.
Lysandra sliced through soldier after soldier, arrows flying from both armies.
Still Morath advanced. Onward and harder, driving the Bane back as if they were little more than a branch blocking their path.
Her breath burned in her lungs, her legs ached, yet she kept fighting.
There would be nothing left of them by sundown if they kept at it like this.
The other men seemed to realize it, too. Looked beyond the demons they fought to the tens of thousands still behind in orderly rows, waiting to kill and kill and kill.
Some of their soldiers began to turn. Fleeing the front lines.
Some outright hurled away their shields and sprinted out of the path of Morath.
Morath seized on it. A wave crashing to shore, they slammed into their front line. Right into the center, which had never broken, even when the others had wobbled.
They punched a hole right through it.
Chaos reigned.
Aedion roared from somewhere, from the heart of hell, “Re-form the lines!”
The order went ignored.
The Bane tried and failed to hold the line. Ansel of Briarcliff bellowed to her fleeing men to get back to the front, Galan Ashryver echoing her commands to his own soldiers. Ren shouted to his archers to remain, but they too abandoned their posts.
Lysandra slashed through the shins of one Morath soldier, then ripped the throat from another. None of Terrasen’s warriors remained a step behind her to decapitate the fallen bodies.
No one at all.
Over. It was over.
Useless, Aedion had called her.
Lysandra gazed toward the ilken feasting on the right flank and knew what she had to do.
CHAPTER 47
Aedion had imagined they’d all be killed where they stood, battling together until the end. Not picked off one by one as they fled.
He’d been forced far behind the lines when Morath plunged through, even the Bane having to peel away from the front. Soon, the rout would be complete.
Arrows still flew from deep behind their ranks, Ren having seized some order, if only to cover their retreat.
Not an orderly march to the north. No, soldiers ran, shoving past one another.
A disgraceful end, unworthy of a mention, unworthy of his kingdom.
He’d stand—he’d stay here until they cut him down.
Thousands of men charged past him, eyes wide with terror. Morath gave chase, their Valg princes smiling as they awaited the feasting sure to come.
Done. It was done, here on this unnamed field before Perranth.
Then a call went across the breaking lines.
The fleeing men began to pause. To turn toward the direction of the news.
Aedion skewered a Morath soldier on his sword before he fully understood the words.
The queen has come. The queen is at the front line.
For a foolish heartbeat, he scanned the sky for a blast of flame.
None came.
Dread settled into his heart, fear deeper than any he’d known.
The queen is at the front line—at the right flank.
Lysandra.
Lysandra had taken on Aelin’s skin.
He whirled toward the nonexistent right flank.
Just as the golden-haired queen in borrowed armor faced two ilken, a sword and shield in her hands.
No.
The word was a punch through his body, greater than any blow he’d felt.
Aedion began running, shoving through his own men. Toward the too-distant right flank. Toward the shape-shifter facing those ilken, no claws or fangs or anything to defend her beyond that sword and shield.
No.
He pushed men out of the way, the snow and mud hindering each step as the two ilken pressed closer to the shifter-queen.
Savoring the kill.
But the soldiers slowed their fleeing. Some even re-formed the lines when the call went out again. The queen is here. The queen fights at the front line.
Exactly why she had done it. Why she had donned the defenseless, human form.
No.
The ilken towered over her, grinning with their horrible, mangled faces.
Too far. He was still too damn far to do anything—
One of the ilken slashed with a long, clawed arm.
Her scream as poisoned talons ripped through her thigh sounded above the din of battle.
She went down, shield rising to cover herself.
He took it back.
He took back everything he had said to her, every moment of anger in his heart.
Aedion shoved through his own men, unable to breathe, to think.
He took it back; he hadn’t meant a word of it, not really.
Lysandra tried to rise on her injured leg. The ilken laughed.
“Please,” Aedion bellowed. The word was devoured by the screams of the dying. “Please!”
He’d make any bargain, he’d sell his soul to the dark god, if they spared her.
He hadn’t meant it. He took it back, all those words.
Useless. He’d called her useless. Had thrown her into the snow naked.
He took it back.
Aedion sobbed, flinging himself toward her as Lysandra tried again to rise, using her shield to balance her weight.
Men rallied behind her, waiting to see what the Fire-Bringer would do. How she’d burn the ilken.
There was nothing to see, nothing to witness. Nothing at all, but her death.
Yet Lysandra rose, Aelin’s golden hair falling in her face as she hefted her shield and pointed the sword between her and the ilken.
The queen has come; the queen fights alone.
Men ran back to the front line. Turned on their heels and raced for her.
Lysandra held her sword steady, kept it pointed at the ilken in defiance and rage.
Ready for the death soon to come.
She had been willing to give it up from the start. Had agreed to Aelin’s plans, knowing it might come to this.
One shift, one change into a wyvern’s form, and she’d destroy the ilken. But she remained in Aelin’s body. Held that sword, her only weapon, upraised.
Terrasen was her home. And Aelin her queen.
She’d die to keep this army together. To keep the lines from breaking. To rally their soldiers one last time.
Her leg leaked blood onto the snow, and the two ilken sniffed, laughing again. They knew—what lurked under her skin. That it was not the queen they faced.
She held her ground. Did not yield one inch to the ilken, who advanced another step.
For Terrasen, she would do this. For Aelin.
He took it back. He took it all back.
Aedion was barely a hundred feet away when the ilken struck.
He screamed as the one on the left swept with its claws, the other on the right lunging for her, as if it would tackle her to the snow.
Lysandra deflected the blow to the left with her shield, sending the ilken sprawling, and with a roar, slashed upward with her sword on the right.
Ripping open the lunging ilken from navel to sternum.
Black blood gushed, and the ilken shrieked, loud enough to set Aedion’s ears ringing. But it stumbled, falling into the snow, scrambling back as it clutched its opened belly.
Aedion ran harder, now thirty feet away, the space between them clear.
The ilken who’d gone sprawling on the left was not done. Lysandra’s eye on the one retreating, it lashed for her legs again.
Aedion threw the Sword of Orynth with everything left in him as Lysandra twisted toward the attacking ilken.
She began falling back, shield lifting in her only defense, still too slow to escape those reaching claws.
The poison-slick tips brushed her legs just as his sword went through the beast’s skull.
Lysandra hit the snow, shouting in pain, and Aedion was there, heaving her up, yanking his sword from the ilken’s head and bringing it down upon the sinewy neck. Once. Twice.
The ilken’s head tumbled into the snow and mud, the other beast instantly swallowed by the Morath soldiers who had paused to watch.
Who now looked upon the queen and her general and charged.
Only to be met by a surge of Terrasen soldiers racing past Aedion and Lysandra, battle cries shattering from their throats.
Aedion half-dragged the shifter deeper behind the re-formed lines, through the soldiers who had rallied to their queen.
He had to get the poison out, had to find a healer who could extract it immediately. Only a few minutes remained until it reached her heart—
Lysandra stumbled, a moan on her lips.
Aedion swung his shield on his back and hauled her over a shoulder. A glimpse at her leg revealed shredded skin, but no greenish slime.
Perhaps the gods had listened. Perhaps it was their idea of mercy: that the ilken’s poison had worn off on other victims before it’d gotten to her.
But the blood loss alone … Aedion pressed a hand over the shredded, bloody skin to staunch the flow. Lysandra groaned.
Aedion scanned the regrouping army for any hint of the healers’ white banners over their helmets. None. He whirled toward the front lines. Perhaps there was a Fae warrior skilled enough at healing, with enough magic left—
Aedion halted. Beheld what broke over the horizon.
Ironteeth witches.
Several dozen mounted on wyverns.
But not airborne. The wyverns walked on land.
Heaving a mammoth, mobile stone tower behind them. No ordinary siege tower.
A witch tower.
It rose a hundred feet high, the entire structure built into a platform whose make he could not determine with the angle of the ground and the lines of chained wyverns dragging it across the plain. A dozen more witches flew in the air around it, guarding it. Dark stone—Wyrdstone—had been used to craft it, and window slits had been interspersed throughout every level.
Not window slits. Portals through which to angle the power of the mirrors lining the inside, as Manon Blackbeak had described. All capable of being adjusted to any direction, any focus.
All they needed was a source of power for the mirrors to amplify and fire out into the world.
Oh gods.
“Fall back!” Aedion screamed, even while his men continued to rally. “FALL BACK.”
With his Fae sight, he could just make out the uppermost level of the tower, more open to the elements than the others.
Witches in dark robes were gathered around what seemed to be a curved mirror angled into the hollow core of the tower.
Aedion whirled and began running, carrying the shifter with him. “FALL BACK! ”
The army beheld what approached. Whether they realized it was no siege tower, they understood his order clearly enough. Saw him sprinting, Aelin over his shoulder.
Manon had never known the range of the tower, how far it might fire the dark magic rallied within it.
There was nowhere to hide on the field. No dips in the earth where he might throw himself and Lysandra, praying the blast went over them. Nothing but open snow and frantic soldiers.
“RETREAT!” Aedion’s throat strained.
He glanced over a shoulder as the witches atop the tower parted to let through a small figure in onyx robes, her pale hair unbound.
A black light began glowing around the figure—the witch. She lifted her hands above her head, the power rallying.
The Yielding.
Manon Blackbeak had described it to them. Ironteeth witches had no magic but that. The ability to unleash their dark goddess’s power in an incendiary blast that took out everyone around them. Including the witch herself.
That dark power was still building, growing around the witch in an unholy aura, when she simply walked off the lip of the tower landing.
Right into the hole in the tower’s center.
Aedion kept running. Had no choice but to keep moving, as the witch dropped into the mirror-lined core of the tower and unleashed the dark power within her.
The world shuddered.
Aedion threw Lysandra into the mud and snow and hurled himself over her, as if it would somehow spare her from the roaring force that erupted from the tower, right at their army.
One heartbeat, their left flank was fighting as they retreated once more.
The next, a wave of black-tinted light slammed into four thousand soldiers.
When it receded, there was only ash and dented metal.
CHAPTER 48
The khagan’s forces had dealt enough of a blow to Morath that the bone drums had ceased.
Not a sign of sure defeat, but enough to make Chaol’s heavily limping steps feel lighter as he entered Princess Hasar’s sprawling war tent. Her sulde had been planted outside, the roan horsehair blowing in the wind off the lake. Sartaq’s own spear had been sunk into the cold mud beside his sister’s. And beside the Heir’s spear …
Leaning on his cane, Chaol paused at the ebony spear that had also been planted, its jet-black horsehair still shining despite its age. Not to signify the royals within, a marker of their Darghan heritage, but to represent the man they served. Ivory horsehair for times of peace; the Ebony for times of war.
He hadn’t realized the khagan had given his Heir the Ebony to bring to these lands.
At Chaol’s side, her dress blood-splattered but eyes clear, Yrene also halted. They’d traveled for weeks with the army, yet seeing the sign of their commitment to this war radiating the centuries of conquest it had overseen … It seemed almost holy, that sulde. It was holy.
Chaol put a hand on Yrene’s back, guiding her through the tent flaps and into the ornately decorated space. For a woman who had arrived at Anielle not a moment too late, only Hasar would somehow have managed to get her royal tent erected during battle.
Bracing his muddy cane on the raised wooden platform, Chaol gritted his teeth as he took the step upward. Even the thick, plush rugs didn’t ease the pain that lashed down his spine, his legs.
He stilled, leaning heavily on the cane while he breathed, letting his balance readjust.
Yrene’s blood-flecked face tightened. “Let’s get you into a chair,” she murmured, and Chaol nodded. To sit down, even for a few minutes, would be a blessed relief.
Nesryn entered behind them, and apparently heard Yrene’s suggestion, for she went immediately to the desk around which Sartaq and Hasar stood, and pulled out a carved wooden chair. With a nod of thanks, Chaol eased into it.
“No gold couch?” Princess Hasar teased, and Yrene blushed, despite the blood on her golden-brown skin, and waved off her friend.
The couch Chaol had brought with him from the southern continent—the couch from which Yrene had healed him, from which he had won her heart—was still safely aboard their ship. Waiting, should they survive, to be the first piece of furniture in the home he’d build for his wife.
For the child she carried.
Yrene paused beside his chair, and Chaol took her slim hand in his, entwining their fingers. Filthy, both of them, but he didn’t care. Neither did she, judging by the squeeze she gave him.
“We outnumber Morath’s legion,” Sartaq said, sparing them from Hasar’s taunting, “but how we choose to cleave them while we cut a path to the city still must be carefully weighed, so we don’t expend too many forces here.”
When the real fighting still lay ahead. As if these terrible days of siege and bloodshed, as if the men hewn down today, were just the start.
Hasar said, “Wise enough.”
Sartaq winced slightly. “It might not have wound up that way.” Chaol lifted a brow, Hasar doing the same, and Sartaq said, “Had you not arrived, sister, I was hours away from unleashing the dam and flooding the plain.”
Chaol started. “You were?”
The prince rubbed his neck. “A desperate last measure.”
Indeed. A wave of that size would have wiped out part of the city, the plain and hot springs, and leagues behind it. Any army in its path would have drowned—been swept away. It might have even reached the khaganate’s army, marching to save them.
“Then let’s be glad we didn’t do it,” Yrene said, face paling as she, too, considered the destruction. How close they had come to a disaster. That Sartaq had admitted to it told enough: he might be Heir, but he wished his sister to know he, too, was not above making mistakes. That they had to think through any plan of action, however easy it might seem.
Hasar, it seemed, got the point, and nodded.
A cleared throat cut through the tent, and they all turned toward the open flaps to find one of the Darghan captains, his sulde clenched in his mud-splattered hand. Someone was here to see them, the man stammered. Neither royal asked who as they waved the man to let them in.
A moment later, Chaol was glad he was sitting down.
Nesryn breathed, “Holy gods.”
Chaol was inclined to agree as Aelin Galathynius, Rowan Whitethorn, and several others entered the tent.
They were mud-splattered, the Queen of Terrasen’s braided hair far longer than Chaol had last seen. And her eyes … Not the soft, yet fiery gaze. But something older. Wearier.
Chaol shot to his feet. “I thought you were in Terrasen,” he blurted. All the reports had confirmed it. Yet here she stood, no army in sight.
Three Fae males—towering warriors as broad and muscled as Rowan—had entered, along with a delicate, dark-haired human woman.
But Aelin was only staring at him. Staring and staring at him.
No one spoke as tears began sliding down her face.
Not at his being here, Chaol realized as he took up his cane and limped toward Aelin.
But at him. Standing. Walking.
The young queen let out a broken laugh of joy and flung her arms around his neck. Pain lanced down his spine at the impact, but Chaol held her right back, every question fading from his tongue.
Aelin was shaking as she pulled away. “I knew you would,” she breathed, gazing down his body, to his feet, then up again. “I knew you’d do it.”
“Not alone,” he said thickly. Chaol swallowed, releasing Aelin to extend an arm behind him. To the woman he knew stood there, a hand over the locket at her neck.
Perhaps Aelin would not remember, perhaps their encounter years ago had meant nothing to her at all, but Chaol drew Yrene forward. “Aelin, allow me to introduce—”
“Yrene Towers,” the queen breathed as his wife stepped to his side.
The two women stared at each other.
Yrene’s mouth quivered as she opened the silver locket and pulled out a piece of paper. Hands trembling, she extended it to the queen.
Aelin’s own hands shook as she accepted the scrap.
“Thank you,” Yrene whispered.
Chaol supposed it was all that really needed to be said.
Aelin unfolded the paper, reading the note she’d written, seeing the lines from the hundreds of foldings and rereadings these past few years.
“I went to the Torre,” Yrene said, her voice cracking. “I took the money you gave me, and went to the Torre. And I became the heir apparent to the Healer on High. And now I have come back, to do what I can. I taught every healer I could the lessons you showed me that night, about self-defense. I didn’t waste it—not a coin you gave me, or a moment of the time, the life you bought me.” Tears were rolling and rolling down Yrene’s face. “I didn’t waste any of it.”
Aelin closed her eyes, smiling through her own tears, and when she opened them, she took Yrene’s shaking hands. “Now it is my turn to thank you.” But Aelin’s gaze fell upon the wedding band on Yrene’s finger, and when she glanced to Chaol, he grinned.
“No longer Yrene Towers,” Chaol said softly, “but Yrene Westfall.”
Aelin let out one of those choked, joyous laughs, and Rowan stepped up to her side. Yrene’s head tilted back to take in the warrior’s full height, her eyes widening—not only at Rowan’s size, but at the pointed ears, the slightly elongated canines and tattoo. Aelin said, “Then let me introduce you, Lady Westfall, to my own husband, Prince Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius.”
For that was indeed a wedding band on the queen’s finger, the emerald mud-splattered but bright. On Rowan’s own hand, a gold-and-ruby ring gleamed.
“My mate,” Aelin added, fluttering her lashes at the Fae male. Rowan rolled his eyes, yet couldn’t entirely contain his smile as he inclined his head to Yrene.
Yrene bowed, but Aelin snorted. “None of that, please. It’ll go right to his immortal head.” Her grin softened as Yrene blushed, and Aelin held up the scrap of paper. “May I keep this?” She eyed Yrene’s locket. “Or does it go in there?”
Yrene folded the queen’s fingers around the paper. “It is yours, as it always was. A piece of your bravery that helped me find my own.”
Aelin shook her head, as if to dismiss the claim.
But Yrene squeezed Aelin’s closed hand. “It gave me courage, the words you wrote. Every mile I traveled, every long hour I studied and worked, it gave me courage. I thank you for that, too.”
