“Lorcan!” She screamed it, so loud it was a wonder her throat didn’t bleed. “Lorcan!”
The dam remained intact. Which of her breaths would be her last?
“LORCAN!”
A pained groan answered from behind.
Elide twisted in the saddle and scanned the path of Valg dead behind her.
A broad, tanned hand rose from beneath a thick pile of them, and fought for purchase on a soldier’s breastplate. Not twenty feet away.
A sob cracked from her, and Farasha cantered toward that straining, bloodied hand. The horse skidded to a halt, gore flying from her hooves. Elide threw herself from the saddle before scrambling toward him.
Armor and blades sliced into her, dead flesh slapping against her skin as she shoved away demon corpses, grunting at their weight. Lorcan met her halfway, that hand becoming an arm, then two—pushing off the bodies piled atop him.
Elide reached him just as he’d managed to dislodge a soldier sprawled over him.
Elide took one look at the injury to Lorcan’s middle and tried not to fall to her knees.
His blood leaked everywhere, the wound not closed—not in the way that Fae should be able to heal themselves. The injury that had felled him would have been catastrophic, if it had taken all his power to heal him this little.
But she did not say that. Did not say anything other than, “The dam is about to break.”
Black blood splattered Lorcan’s ashen face, his dark eyes fogged with pain. Elide braced her feet, swallowing her scream of pain, and gripped him under the shoulders. “We need to get you out of here.”
His breathing was a wet rasp as she tried to lift him. He might as well have been a boulder, might as well have been as immovable as the keep itself.
“Lorcan,” she begged, voice breaking. “We have to get you out of here.”
His legs shifted, drawing an agonized groan. She had never heard him so much as whimper. Had never seen him unable to rise.
“Get up,” she said. “Get up.”
Lorcan’s hands gripped her waist, and Elide couldn’t stop her cry of pain at the weight he placed on her, the bones in her foot and ankle grinding together. His legs not even kneeling beneath him, he paused.
“Do it,” she begged him. “Get up.”
But his dark eyes shifted to the horse.
Farasha approached, steps unsteady over the corpses. She did not so much as flinch as Lorcan grasped the bottom straps of the saddle, his other hand on Elide’s shoulder, and moved his legs under him again.
His breathing turned jagged. Fresh blood dribbled from his stomach, flowing over the crusted remains on his jacket and pants.
As he began to rise, Elide beheld the wound slicing up the left side of his back.
Flesh lay open—bone peeking through.
Oh gods. Oh gods.
Elide ducked further under him, until his arm was slung across her shoulders. Thighs burning, ankle shrieking, Elide pushed up.
Lorcan pulled at the same time, Farasha holding steady. He groaned again, his body teetering—
“Don’t stop,” Elide hissed. “Don’t you dare stop.”
His breath came in shallow gasps, but Lorcan got his feet under him, inch by inch. Slipping his arm from Elide’s shoulder, he lurched to grip the saddle. To cling to it.
He panted and panted, fresh blood sliding from his back, too.
This ride would be agony. But they had no choice. None at all.
“Now up.” She didn’t let him hear her terror and despair. “Get into that saddle.”
He leaned his brow against Farasha’s dark side. Swaying enough that Elide wrapped a careful arm around his waist.
“You didn’t rutting die,” she snapped. “And you’re not dead yet. We’re not dead yet. So get in that saddle.”
When Lorcan did nothing other than breathe and breathe and breathe, Elide spoke again.
“I promised to always find you. I promised you, and you promised me. I came for you because of it; I am here because of it. I am here for you, do you understand? And if we don’t get onto that horse now, we won’t stand a chance against that dam. We will die.”
Lorcan panted for another heartbeat. Then another. And then, gritting his teeth, his hands white-knuckled on the saddle, he lifted his leg enough to slide one foot into the stirrup.
Now would be the true test: that mighty push upward, the swinging of his leg over Farasha’s body, to the other side of the saddle.
Elide positioned herself at his back, so careful of the terrible slash down his body. Her feet sank ankle-deep into freezing mud. She didn’t dare look toward the dam. Not yet.
“Get up.” Her command barked over the panicked cries of the fleeing soldiers. “Get in that saddle now.”
Lorcan didn’t move, his body trembling.
Elide screamed, “Get up now!” And shoved him upward.
Lorcan let out a bellow that rang in her ears. The saddle groaned at his weight, and blood gushed from his wounds, but then he was rising into the air, toward the horse’s back.
Elide threw her weight into him, and something cracked in her ankle, so violently that pain burst through her, blinding and breathless. She stumbled, losing her grip. But Lorcan was up, his leg over the other side of the horse. He slouched over it, an arm cradling his abdomen, dark hair hanging low enough to brush Farasha’s back.
Clenching her jaw against the pain in her ankle, Elide straightened, and eyed the distance.
A long, bloodied arm dropped into her line of sight. An offer up.
She ignored it. She’d gotten him into the saddle. She wasn’t about to send him flying off it again.
Elide backed a step, limping.
Not allowing herself to register the pain, Elide ran the few steps to Farasha and leaped.
Lorcan’s hand gripped the back of her jacket, the breath going from her as her stomach hit the unforgiving lip of the saddle, and Elide clawed for purchase.
The strength in Lorcan’s arm didn’t waver as he pulled her almost across his lap. As he grunted in pain while she righted herself.
But she made it. Got her legs on either side of the horse, and took up the reins. Lorcan looped his arm around her waist, his brutalized body a solid mass at her back.
Elide at last dared to look at the dam. A ruk soared from it, frantically waving a golden banner.
Soon. It would break soon.
Elide gathered Farasha’s reins. “To the keep, friend,” she said, digging her heels into the horse’s side. “Faster than the wind.”
Farasha obeyed. Elide rocked back into Lorcan as the mare launched into a gallop, earning another groan of pain. But he remained in the saddle, despite the pounding steps that drew agonized breaths from him.
“Faster, Farasha!” Elide called to the horse as she steered her toward the keep, the mountain it had been built into.
Nothing had ever seemed so distant.
Far enough that she could not see if the keep’s lower gate was still open. If anyone held it, waited for them.
Hold the gate.
Hold the gate.
Every thunderous beat of Farasha’s hooves, over the corpses of the fallen, echoed Elide’s silent prayer as they raced across the endless plain.
Hold the gate.
CHAPTER 61
Agony was a song in Lorcan’s blood, his bones, his breath.
Every step of the horse, every leap she made over body and debris, sent it ringing afresh. There was no end, no mercy from it. It was all he could do to keep in the saddle, to cling to consciousness.
To keep his arm around Elide.
She had come for him. Had found him, somehow, on this endless battlefield.
His name on her lips had been a summons he could never deny, even when death had held him so gently, nestled beneath all those he’d felled, and waited for his last breaths.
And now, charging toward that too-distant keep, so far behind the droves of soldiers and riders racing for the gates, he wondered if these minutes would be his last. Her last.
She had come for him.
Lorcan managed to glance toward the dam on their right. Toward the ruk rider signaling that it was only a matter of minutes until it unleashed hell over the plain.
He didn’t know how it had become weakened. Didn’t care.
Farasha leaped over a pile of Valg bodies, and Lorcan couldn’t stop his moan as warm blood dribbled down his front and back.
Still Elide kept urging the horse onward, kept them on as straight a path toward the distant keep as possible.
No ruk would come to sweep them up. No, his luck had been spent in surviving this long, in her finding him. His power would do nothing against that water.
The farthest lines of panicked soldiers appeared, and Farasha charged past them.
Elide let out a sob, and he followed the line of her sight.
To the keep gate, still open.
“Faster, Farasha!” She didn’t hide the raw terror in her voice, the desperation.
Once the dam broke, it would take less than a minute for the tidal wave to reach them.
She had come for him. She had found him.
The world went quiet. The pain in his body faded into nothing. Into something secondary.
Lorcan slid his other arm around Elide, bringing his mouth close to her ear as he said, “You have to let me go.”
Each word was gravelly, his voice strained nearly to the point of uselessness.
Elide didn’t shift her focus from the keep ahead. “No.”
That gentle quiet flowed around him, clearing the fog of pain and battle. “You have to. You have to, Elide. I’m too heavy—and without my weight, you might make it to the keep in time.”
“No.” The salt of her tears filled his nose.
Lorcan brushed his mouth over her damp cheek, ignoring the roaring pain in his body. The horse galloped and galloped, as if she might outrace death itself.
“I love you,” he whispered in Elide’s ear. “I have loved you from the moment you picked up that axe to slay the ilken.” Her tears flowed past him in the wind. “And I will be with you …” His voice broke, but he made himself say the words, the truth in his heart. “I will be with you always.”
He was not frightened of what would come for him once he tumbled off the horse. He was not frightened at all, if it meant her reaching the keep.
So Lorcan kissed Elide’s cheek again, allowed himself to breathe in her scent one last time. “I love you,” he repeated, and began to withdraw his arms from around her waist.
Elide slapped a hand onto his forearm. Dug in her nails, right into his skin, fierce as any ruk.
“No.”
There were no tears in her voice. Nothing but solid, unwavering steel.
“No,” she said again. The voice of the Lady of Perranth.
Lorcan tried to move his arm, but her grip would not be dislodged.
If he tumbled off the horse, she would go with him.
Together. They would either outrun this or die together.
“Elide—”
But Elide slammed her heels into the horse’s sides.
Slammed her heels into the dark flank and screamed, “FLY, FARASHA.” She cracked the reins. “FLY, FLY, FLY!”
And gods help her, that horse did.
As if the god that had crafted her filled the mare’s lungs with his own breath, Farasha gave a surge of speed.
Faster than the wind. Faster than death.
Farasha cleared the first of the fleeing Darghan cavalry. Passed desperate horses and riders at an all-out gallop for the gates.
Her mighty heart did not falter, even when Lorcan knew it was raging to the point of bursting.
Less than a mile stood between them and the keep.
But a thunderous, groaning crack cleaved the world, echoing off the lake, the mountains.
There was nothing he could do, nothing that brave, unfaltering horse could do, as the dam ruptured.
Rowan began praying for those on the plain, for the army about to be wiped away, as the dam broke.
Standing a few feet away, Yrene was whispering her prayers, too. To Silba, the goddess of gentle deaths. May it be quick, may it be painless.
A wall of water, large as a mountain, broke free. And rushed toward the city, the plain, with the wrath of a thousand years of confinement.
“They’re not going to make it,” Fenrys hissed, eyes on Lorcan and Elide, galloping toward them. So close—so close, and yet that wave would arrive in a matter of seconds.
Rowan made himself stand there, to watch the last moments of the Lady of Perranth and his former commander. It was all he could offer: witnessing their deaths, so he might tell the story to those he encountered. So they would not be forgotten.
The roaring of the oncoming wave became deafening, even from miles away.
Still Elide and Lorcan raced, Farasha passing horse after horse after horse.
Even up here, would they escape the wave’s reach? Rowan dared to survey the battlements, to assess if he needed to get the others, needed to get Aelin, to higher ground.
But Aelin was not at his side.
She was not on the battlement at all.
Rowan’s heart halted. Simply stopped beating as a ruddy-brown ruk dropped from the skies, spearing for the center of the plain.
Arcas, Borte’s ruk. A golden-haired woman dangling from his talons.
Aelin. Aelin was—
Arcas neared the earth, talons splaying. Aelin hit the ground, rolling, rolling, until she uncoiled to her feet.
Right in the path of that wave.
“Oh gods,” Fenrys breathed, seeing her, too.
They all saw her.
The queen on the plain.
The endless wall of water surging for her.
The keep stones began shuddering. Rowan threw out a hand to brace himself, fear like nothing he had known ripping through him as Aelin lifted her arms above her head.
A pillar of fire shot up around her, lifting her hair with it.
The wave roared and roared for her, for the army behind her.
The shaking in the keep was not from the wave.
It was not from that wall of water at all.
Cracks formed in the earth, splintering across it. Spiderwebbing from Aelin.
“The hot springs,” Chaol breathed. “The valley floor is full of veins into the earth itself.”
Into the burning heart of the world.
The keep shook, more violently this time.
The pillar of fire sucked back into Aelin. She held out a hand before her, her fist closed.
As if it would halt the wave in its tracks.
He knew then. Either as her mate or carranam, he knew.
“Three months,” Rowan breathed.
The others stilled.
“Three months,” he said again, his knees wobbling. “She’s been making the descent into her power for three months.”
Every day she had been with Maeve, bound in iron, she had gone deeper. And she had not tapped too far into that power since they’d freed her because she had kept making the plunge.
To gather up the full might of her magic. Not for the Lock, not for Erawan.
But for Maeve’s death blow.
A few weeks of descent had taken her powers to devastating levels. Three months of it …
Holy gods. Holy rutting gods.
And when her fire hit the wall of water now towering over her, when they collided—
“GET DOWN!” Rowan bellowed, over the screaming waters. “GET DOWN NOW!”
His companions dropped to the stones, any within earshot doing the same.
Rowan plummeted into his power. Plummeted into it fast and hard, ripping out any remaining shred of magic.
Elide and Lorcan were still too far from the gates. Thousands of soldiers were still too far from the gates as the wave crested above them.
As Aelin opened her hand toward it.
Fire erupted.
Cobalt fire. The raging soul of a flame.
A tidal wave of it.
Taller than the raging waters, it blasted from her, flaring wide.
The wave slammed into it. And where water met a wall of fire, where a thousand years of confinement met three months of it, the world exploded.
Blistering steam, capable of melting flesh from bone, shot across the plain.
With a roar, Rowan threw all that remained of his magic toward the onslaught of steam, a wall of wind that shoved it toward the lake, the mountains.
Still the waters came, breaking against the flames that did not so much as yield an inch.
Maeve’s death blow. Spent here, to save the army that might mean Terrasen’s salvation. To spare the lives on the plain.
Rowan gritted his teeth, panting against his fraying power. A burnout lurked, deadly close.
The raging wave threw itself over and over and over into the wall of flame.
Rowan didn’t see if Elide and Lorcan made it into the keep. If the other soldiers and riders on the plain stopped to gape.
Princess Hasar said, rising beside him, “That power is no blessing.”
“Tell that to your soldiers,” Fenrys snarled, standing, too.
“I did not mean it that way,” Hasar snipped, and awe was indeed stark on her face.
Rowan leaned against the battlements, panting hard as he fought to keep the lethal steam from flowing toward the army. As he cooled and sent it whisking away.
Solid hands slid under his arms, and then Fenrys and Gavriel were there, propping him up between them.
A minute passed. Then another.
The wave began to lower. Still the fire burned.
Rowan’s head pounded, his mouth going dry.
Time slipped from him. A coppery tang filled his mouth.
The wave lowered farther, raging waters quieting.
Then roaring turned to lapping, rapids into eddies.
Until the wall of flame began to lower, too. Tracking the waters down and down and down. Letting them seep into the cracks of the earth.
Rowan’s knees buckled, but he held on to his magic long enough for the steam to lessen. For it, too, to be calmed.
It filled the plain, turning the world into drifting mist. Blocking the view of the queen in its center.
Then silence. Utter silence.
Fire flickered through the mist, blue turning to gold and red. A muted, throbbing glow.
Rowan spat blood onto the battlement stones, his breath like shards of glass in his throat.
The glowing flames shrank, steam rippling past. Until there was only a slim pillar of fire, veiled in the mist-shrouded plain.
Not a pillar of fire.
But Aelin.
Glowing white-hot. As if she had given herself so wholly to the flame that she had become fire herself.
The Fire-Bringer someone whispered down the battlements.
The mist rippled and billowed, casting her into nothing but a glowing effigy.
The silence turned reverent.
A gentle wind from the north swept down. The veil of mist pulled back, and there she was.
She glowed from within. Glowed golden, tendrils of her hair floating on a phantom wind.
“Mala’s Heir,” Yrene breathed.
Down on the plain, Elide and Lorcan had halted.
The wind pushed away more of the drifting mist, clearing the land beyond Aelin.
And where that mighty, lethal wave had loomed, where death had charged toward them, nothing remained at all.
For three months, she had sung to the darkness and the flame, and they had sung back.
For three months, she had burrowed so deep inside her power that she had plundered undiscovered depths. While Maeve and Cairn had worked on her, she had delved. Never letting them know what she mined, what she gathered to her, day by day by day.
A death blow. One to wipe a dark queen from the earth forever.
She’d kept that power coiled in herself even after she’d been freed from the irons. Had struggled to keep it down these weeks, the strain enormous. Some days, it had been easier to barely speak. Some days, swaggering arrogance had been her key to ignoring it.
Yet when she had seen that wave, when she had seen Elide and Lorcan choosing death together, when she had seen the army that might save Terrasen, she’d known. She’d felt the fire sleeping under this city, and knew they had come here for a reason.
She had come here for this reason.
A river still flowed from the dam, harmless and small, wending toward the lake.
Nothing more.
Aelin lifted a glowing hand before her as blessed, cooling emptiness filled her at last.
Slowly, starting from her fingertips, the glow faded.
As if she were forged anew, forged back into her body.
Back into Aelin.
Clarity, sharp and crystal clear, filled its wake. As if she could see again, breathe again.
Inch by inch, the golden glow faded into skin and bone. Into a woman once more.
Already, a white-tailed hawk launched skyward.
But as the last of the glow faded, disappearing out through her toes, Aelin fell to her knees.
Fell to her knees in the utter silence of the world, and curled onto her side.
She had the vague sense of strong, familiar arms scooping her up. Of being carried onto a broad feathery back, still in those arms.
Of soaring through the skies, the last of the mist rippling away into the afternoon sun.
And then sweet darkness.
CHAPTER 62
The Crochans did not scatter to the winds.
As one, the Thirteen and the Crochans flew to the southwest, toward the outer reaches of the Fangs. To another secret camp, since the location of the other was well and truly compromised. Farther from Terrasen, but closer to Morath, at least.
A small comfort, Dorian thought, when they found a secure place to camp for the night. The wyverns might have been able to keep going, but the Crochans on their brooms could not fly for so long. They’d flown until darkness had nearly blinded them all, landing only after the Shadows and Crochans had agreed on a secure place to stay.
Watches were set, both on the ground and in the sky. If the two surviving Matrons were to retaliate for their humiliating defeat, it would be now. The Crochans and Asterin had spent much of their time today laying misleading tracks, but only time would tell if they’d escaped.
The night was frigid enough that they took the time to erect tents, the wyverns huddling together against one of the rocky overhangs. And though no fires would have been wiser, the cold threatened to be so lethal that Glennis had taken the sacred flame from the glass orb where it was held while traveling and ignited her fire. Others had followed suit, and while glamours would be in place to hide the camp, the fires, from enemy eyes, Dorian couldn’t entirely forget that the Ironteeth Matrons had found them regardless.
They hadn’t spoken of where they were going next. What they would do. If they would part ways at last, or remain as one united group.
Manon had not asked or pushed them for an alliance, to go to war. Hadn’t demanded to know where they flew, such was their dire need to get far from their camp this morning.
But tomorrow, Dorian thought as he slid under the blankets of his bedroll, a lick of flame of his own making warming the space, tomorrow would force them to confront a few things.
Bone-tired, chilled despite the magic that warmed him, Dorian slumped his head against the roll of supplies he used for a pillow.
Sleep had almost dragged him under when a burst of cold slithered into the tent, then vanished. He knew who it was before she sat beside his bedroll, and when he opened his eyes, he found Manon with her knees drawn up, arms braced atop them.
She stared into the dimness of his tent, the space illumined with silvery light from the glowing stars on her brow.
“You don’t have to wear it all the time,” he said. “We’re allowed to take them off.”
Golden eyes slid toward him. “I’ve never seen you wear a crown.”
“The past few months haven’t provided much access to the royal collection.” He sat up. “And I hate wearing them anyway. They dig mercilessly into my head.”
A hint of a smile. “This is not so heavy.”
“Since it seems made of light itself, I’d imagine not.” Though that crown would weigh heavily in other ways, he knew.
“So you’re talking to me,” she said, not bothering to segue gracefully.
“I talked to you before.”
“Is it because I am now queen?”
“You were queen prior to today.”
Her golden eyes narrowed, scanning him for the answer she sought. Dorian let her do it, and returned the favor. Her breathing was steady, her posture at ease for once.
“I thought it would be more satisfying. To see her run.” Her grandmother. “When you killed your father, what did you feel?”
“Rage. Hate.” He didn’t balk from the truth in his words, the ugliness.
She chewed on her lower lip, no sign of those iron teeth. A rare, silent admission of doubt. “Do you think I should have killed her?”
“Some might say yes. But humiliating her like that,” he said, considering, “might weaken her and the Ironteeth forces more than her death. Killing her might have rallied the Ironteeth against you.”
“I killed the Yellowlegs Matron.”
“You killed her, spared the Blueblood witch, and your grandmother fled. That’s a demoralizing defeat. Had you killed them all, even killed just your grandmother and the Yellowlegs Matron, it could have turned their deaths into noble sacrifices on behalf of the Ironteeth Clans.”
She nodded, her golden eyes settling on him again with that preternatural clarity and stillness. “I am sorry,” she said. “For how I spoke when I learned of your plans to go to Morath.”
He was stunned enough that he just blinked. Stunned enough that humor was his only shield as he said, “Seems like that Crochan do-gooder behavior is rubbing off on you, Manon.”
A half smile at that. “Mother help me if I ever become so dull.”
But Dorian’s amusement faded away. “I accept your apology.” He held her gaze, letting her see the truth in it.
It seemed answer enough for her. Answer, and somehow the final clue to what she sought.
Her golden eyes guttered. “You’re leaving,” she breathed. “Tomorrow.”
He didn’t bother to lie. “Yes.”
It was time. She had faced her grandmother, had challenged what she’d created. It was time for him to do the same. He didn’t need Damaris’s confirming warmth or the spirits of the dead to tell him that.
“How?”
“You witches have brooms and wyverns. I’ve learned to make my own wings.”
For a few breaths, she said nothing. Then she lowered her knees, twisting to face him fully. “Morath is a death trap.”
“It is.”
“I—we cannot go with you.”
“I know.”
He could have sworn fear entered her eyes. Yet she didn’t rage at him, roar at him—didn’t so much as snarl. She only asked, “You’re not afraid to go alone?”
“Of course I’m afraid. Anyone in their right mind would be. But my task is more important than fear, I think.”
Anger flickered over her face, her shoulders tensing.
Then it faded and was replaced by something he had seen only earlier today—that queen’s face. Steady and wise, edged with sorrow and bright with clarity. Her eyes dipped to the bedroll, then lifted to meet his own. “And if I asked you to stay?”
The question also took him by surprise. He carefully thought through his answer. “I’d need a very convincing reason, I suppose.”
Her fingers went to the buckles and buttons of her leathers, and began to loosen them. “Because I don’t want you to go,” was all she said.
His heart thundered as she revealed inch after inch of bare, silken skin. Not a seductive removal of her clothing, but rather an offer laid bare.
Her fingers began to shake, and Dorian moved at last, helping her to remove her boots, then her sword belt. He left her jacket open, the swells of her breasts just visible between the lapels. They rose and fell in an uneven rhythm that only turned more unsteady as she reached between them and began to remove his own jacket.
Dorian let her. Let her peel off his jacket, then the shirt beneath.
Outside, the wind howled.
And when they kneeled before each other, bare from the waist up, that crown of stars still atop her head, Manon said softly, “We could make an alliance. Between Adarlan, and the Crochans. And any Ironteeth who might follow me.”
It was her answer, he realized. To his request for a convincing reason to remain.
She took his hand, and interlaced their fingers.
It was more intimate than anything they’d shared, more vulnerable than she’d ever allowed herself to be. “An alliance,” she said, throat bobbing, “between you and me.”
Her golden eyes lifted to his, the offer gleaming there.
To marry. To unite their peoples in the strongest, most unbreakable of terms.
“You don’t want that,” he said with equal quiet. “You would never want to be shackled to any man like that.”
He could see the truth there, in her beautiful face. That she agreed with him. But she shook her head, the starlight dancing on her hair. “The Crochans have not offered to fly to war. I have not yet dared ask them. But if I had the strength of Adarlan beside me, perhaps they might be convinced at last.”
If they had not been convinced by today’s triumph, then nothing would change their minds. Even their queen offering up the freedom she craved so badly.
That Manon would even consider it, though …
Dorian twined a wave of her silver hair around his finger. For a heartbeat, he allowed himself to drink her in.
She would be his wife, his queen. She was already his equal, his match, his mirror in so many ways. And with their union, the world would know it.
But he could see the bars of the cage that would creep closer, tighter, every day. And either break her wholly, or turn her into something neither of them wished her to ever be.
“You would marry me, all so we could aid Terrasen in this war?”
“Aelin is willing to die to end this conflict. Why should she bear the brunt of sacrifice?”
And there it was, her answer, though he knew she didn’t realize it.
Sacrifice.
Dorian’s other hand went to the buttons of her pants, and freed them with a few, deft maneuvers. Revealing the long, thick scar across her abdomen.
Would he have shown the restraint that Manon did today, had he faced her grandmother?
Absolutely not.
He ran his fingers over the scar. Over it, and then up her stomach. Up and up, her skin pebbling beneath his touch, until he halted just over her heart. Until he laid his palm flat against it, the curve of her breast rising to meet his hand with each unsteady breath she took.
“You were right,” she said quietly. “I am afraid.” Manon laid her hand over his. “I am afraid that you will go into Morath and return as something I do not know. Something I shall have to kill.”
“I know.” Those same fears haunted his steps.
Her fingers tightened on his, pressing harder. As if she were trying to imprint his hand upon the heart racing beneath. “Would you stay here, if we had this alliance between us?”
He heard every word left unspoken.
So Dorian brushed his mouth against hers. Manon let out a small sound.
Dorian kissed her again, and her tongue met his, hungry and searching. Then her hands were plunging into his hair, both of them rising onto their knees to meet halfway.
She moaned, her hands sliding from his hair down his chest, down to his pants. She stroked him through the material, and Dorian groaned into her mouth.
Time spun out, and there was only Manon, a living blade in his arms. Their pants joined their shirts and jackets on the ground, and then he was laying her upon his bedroll.
Manon drew her hands from him to remove the glittering crown atop her head, but he halted her with a phantom touch. “Don’t,” he said, voice near-guttural. “Leave it on.”
Her eyes turned to molten gold, going heavy-lidded as she writhed, tipping her head back.
His mouth went dry at the beauty that threatened to undo him, the temptation that his every instinct roared to claim. Not the body, but what she had offered.
He almost said yes, then.
Was almost selfish enough, greedy enough for her, that he nearly said yes. Yes, he would take her as his queen. So he might never have to say farewell to this, so that this magnificent, fierce witch might remain by his side for all his days.
Manon reached for him, fingers digging into his shoulders, and Dorian rose over her, finding her mouth in a plundering kiss.
A shift of her hips, and he was buried, the heated silk of her enough to make him forget that they had a camp around them, or kingdoms to protect.
He did not bother with phantom touches. He wanted her all for himself, skin to skin.
Every thrust into her, Manon answered with a rolling, demanding movement of her own. Stay. The word echoed in each breath.
Dorian took one of her legs and hefted it higher, angling him closer. He groaned at the perfection of it, and Manon swallowed the sound with a kiss of her own, a hand clamping on his backside to propel him harder, faster.
Dorian gave Manon what she wanted. Gave himself what he wanted. Over and over and over.
As if this might last forever.
Manon’s breathing was as ragged as Dorian’s when they pulled apart at last.
She could barely move her limbs, barely get down enough air as she gazed at the tent ceiling. Dorian, as spent as she, didn’t bother to try to speak.
What was left to be said anyway?
She’d laid out what she wanted. Had spoken as much of the truth as she dared voice.
In its wake, a sated sort of clarity shone. Such as she had not felt in a long, long time.
His sapphire eyes lingered on her face, and Manon turned toward him. Slowly removed her crown of stars and set it aside.
Then she drew up the blankets around them both.
He didn’t so much as flinch as she scooted closer, into the solid muscle of his body.
No, Dorian only draped an arm over her, and pulled her tightly against him.
Manon was still listening to his breathing when she fell asleep, warm in his arms.
She awoke at dawn to a cold bed.
Manon took one look at the empty place where the king had been, at the lack of supplies and that ancient sword, and knew.
Dorian had gone to Morath. And had taken the two Wyrdkeys with him.
CHAPTER 63
Aedion and Kyllian kept their panicking troops in line as they marched, all the way to the banks of the Florine.
There was no use running northward. Not when the bone drums began pounding. And grew louder with every passing minute that Aedion ordered their legion into formation.
Stalking for the front lines, his armor so heavy it could have been made of stone, the lack of the ancient sword at his side like some phantom limb, Aedion said to Ren, “I need you to do me a favor.”
Ren, buckling on his quiver, didn’t bother to look up. “Don’t tell me to run.”
“Never.” Close—they were so close to Theralis. How fitting it would have been to at last die on the field where Terrasen had fallen a decade ago. To have his blood soak into the earth where so many of the court he’d loved had died, for his bones to join theirs, unmarked on the plain.
“I need you to call for aid.”
Ren looked up then. His scarred face was leaner than it had been weeks ago. When was the last time any of them had a proper meal? Or a full night’s rest? Where Lysandra was, what form she wore, Aedion didn’t know. He had not sought her out last night, and she had stayed away from him entirely.
“I’m no one now,” Aedion said, the lines of soldiers parting for them. Bane and Fae, Silent Assassin and Wendlynian and Wastes-hailing soldier alike. “But you are Lord of Allsbrook. Send out messengers. Send out Nox Owen. Call for aid. Dispatch them to every direction, to anyone they might find. Tell Nox and the others to beg if they have to, but tell them to say that Terrasen calls for aid.”
Only Aelin had the authority to do so, or Darrow and his council, but Aedion didn’t care.
Ren halted, and Aedion paused with him, well aware of the soldiers within earshot. Of the Fae hearing many possessed. Endymion and Sellene already stood by the front line of the left flank, their faces grave and weary. A home—that was what they’d lost, what they now fought to gain. If any should survive this. What would his father make of his son, fighting alongside his people at last?
“Will anyone come?” Ren asked, aware of those listening ears, too. Aware of the grim faces that remained with them, despite the death that marched at their backs.
Aedion fitted his helmet onto his head, the metal bitingly cold. “None came ten years ago. But maybe someone will bother this time.”
Ren gripped his arm, tugging him close. “There might be nothing left to defend, Aedion.”
“Send out the call anyway.” He jerked his chin to the lines they’d passed through. Ilias was polishing his blades amongst a cluster of his father’s assassins, his attention pinned on the enemy ahead. Preparing to make a final stand on this snowy plain so far from his warm desert. “You insist I’m still your general? Then here’s my final order. Call for aid.”
