Kingdom of Ash

Someone had set fire to her thigh.

Not Aelin, because Aelin was gone, sealed in an iron sarcophagus and taken across the sea.

But someone had burned her down to the bone, so thoroughly that the slightest of movements on wherever she lay—a bed? A cot?—sent agony searing through her.

Lysandra cracked open her eyes, a low groan working its way up her parched throat.

“Easy,” a deep voice rumbled.

She knew that voice. Knew the scent—like a clear brook and new grass. Aedion.

She dragged her eyes, heavy and burning, toward the sound.

His shining hair hung limp, matted with blood. And those turquoise eyes were smudged with purple beneath—and utterly bleak. Empty.

A rough tent stood around them, the sole light provided by a lantern swinging in the bitter wind that crept in through the flaps. She’d been piled high with blankets, though he sat on an overturned bucket, still in his armor, with nothing to warm him.

Lysandra peeled her tongue off the roof of her mouth and listened to the world beyond the dim tent.

Chaos. Shouting. Some men screaming.

“We yielded Perranth,” Aedion said hoarsely. “We’ve been on the run for two days now. Another three days, and we’ll reach Orynth.”

Her brows narrowed slightly. She’d been unconscious for that long?

“We had to put you in a wagon with the other wounded. Tonight’s the first we’ve dared to stop.” The strong column of his throat bobbed. “A storm struck to the south. It’s slowed Morath down—just enough.”

She tried to swallow against the dryness in her throat. The last she remembered, she’d been facing those ilken, never so aware of the limitations of a mortal body, of how even Aelin, who seemed so tall as she swaggered through the world, was dwarfed by the creatures. Then those claws had ripped into her leg. And she’d managed to make a perfect swing. To take one of them down.

“You rallied our army,” he said. “We lost the battle, but they didn’t run in shame.”

Lysandra managed to pull a hand from beneath the blankets, and strained for the jug of water set beside the bed. Aedion was instantly in motion, filling a cup.

But as her fingers closed around it, she noted their color, their shape.

Her own hands. Her own arm.

“You … shifted,” Aedion said, noting her widened eyes. “While the healer was sewing up your leg. I think the pain … You shifted back into this body.”

Horror, roaring and nauseating, roiled through her. “How many saw?” Her first words, each as rough and dry as sandpaper.

“Don’t worry about it.”

She gulped down the water. “They all know?”

A solemn nod.

“What did you tell them—about Aelin?”

“That she has been off on a vital quest with Rowan and the others. And that it is so secret we do not dare speak of it.”

“Are the soldiers—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he repeated. But she could see it in his face. The strain.

They had rallied to their queen, only to realize it had been an illusion. That the might of the Fire-Bringer was not with them. Would not shield them against the army at their heels.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed.

Aedion took the empty cup of water before he gripped her hand, squeezing gently. “I am sorry, Lysandra. For all of it.” His throat bobbed again. “When I saw the ilken, when I saw you against them …”

Useless. Lying bitch. The words he’d thrown at her, raged at her, dragged her further from the haze of pain. Sharpened her focus.

“You did this,” he said, voice lowering, “for Terrasen. For Aelin. You were willing to die for it, gods above.”

“I was.” Her words came out cold as steel.

Aedion blinked as she withdrew her hand from his. Her leg ached and throbbed, but she managed to sit up. To meet his stare. “I have been degraded and humiliated in so many ways, for so many years,” she said, voice shaking. Not from fear, but from the tidal wave that swept up everything inside her, burning alongside the wound in her leg. “But I have never felt as humiliated as I did when you threw me into the snow. When you called me a lying bitch in front of our friends and allies. Never.” She hated the angry tears that stung her eyes. “I was once forced to crawl before men. And gods above, I nearly crawled for you these months. And yet it takes me nearly dying for you to realize that you’ve been an ass? It takes me nearly dying for you to see me as human again?”

He didn’t hide the regret in his eyes. She had spent years reading men and knew that every agonized emotion in his face was genuine. But it didn’t erase what had been said, and done.

Lysandra put a hand on her chest, right over her own shredded heart. “I wanted it to be you,” she said. “After Wesley, after all of it, I wanted it to be you. What Aelin asked me to do had no bearing on that. What she asked me to do never felt like a burden, because I wanted it to be you in the end anyway.” She didn’t wipe away the tears that slipped down her cheeks. “And you threw me into the snow.”

Aedion slid to his knees. Reached for her hand. “I will never stop regretting it. Lysandra, I will never forget a second of it, never stop hating myself for it. And I am so—”

“Don’t.” She snatched back her hand. “Don’t kneel. Don’t bother.” She pointed to the tent flaps. “There’s nothing I have left to say to you. Or you to me.”

Agony again rippled across his face, but she shut out what it did to her. What it did to her to see Aedion rise to his feet, groaning softly at some unspecified ache in his powerful body. For a few breaths, he just stared down at her.

Then he said, “I meant every promise I made to you on that beach in Skull’s Bay.”

And then he was gone.

Aedion had spent a good portion of his life hating himself for the various things he’d done.

But seeing the tears on Lysandra’s face because of him … He’d never felt like more of a bastard.

He barely heard the soldiers around him, tense and skittish in the snow that blew between their quickly erected tents. How many more wounded would die tonight?

He’d already pulled rank to get Lysandra care from the best healers they had left. And still it was not good enough, the healers not gifted magically. And despite Lysandra’s quicker healing abilities, they’d still had to stitch up her leg. And now changed the bandages every few hours. The wound had sealed, mercifully, likely fast enough to avoid infection.

Many of the injured amongst them could not say the same. The rotting wounds, the festering blood within their veins … Every morning, more and more bodies had been left behind in the snow, the ground too frozen and with no time to burn them.

Food for Erawan’s beasts, the soldiers murmured when they’d moved out. They might as well offer the enemy a free meal.

Aedion shut down that talk, along with any sort of hissing about their flight and defeat. By the time they’d camped tonight, a good third of the soldiers, members of the Bane included, had been assigned various tasks to keep them busy. To make them so tired after a day’s fleeing that they didn’t have the energy to grumble.

Aedion aimed for his own tent, set just outside the healers’ ring of tents where Lysandra lay. Giving her a private tent had been another privilege he’d used his rank to acquire.

He’d almost reached the small tent—no use in building his full war tent when they’d be running again in a few hours—when he spotted the figures huddled by the fire outside.

He slowed his steps to a stalking gait.

Ren rose to his feet, his face tight beneath his heavy hood.

Yet it was the man beside Ren who made Aedion’s temper hone itself into a dangerous thing.

“Darrow,” he said. “I would have thought you’d be in Orynth by now.”

The lord bundled in furs did not smile. “I came to deliver the message myself. Since my most trusted courier seems inclined to select another allegiance.”

The old bastard knew, then. About Lysandra’s masquerading as Aelin. And Nox Owen’s role in moving their army out of his grasp.

“Let’s get it over with, then,” Aedion said.

Ren tensed, but said nothing.

Darrow’s thin lips curved in a cruel smile. “For your acts of reckless rebellion, for your failure to heed our command and take your troops where they were ordered, for your utter defeat at the border and the loss of Perranth, you are stripped of your rank.”

Aedion barely heard the words.

“Consider yourself now a soldier in the Bane, if they’ll have you. And as for the imposter you’ve paraded around …” A sneer toward the healers’ tents.

Aedion snarled.

Darrow’s eyes narrowed. “If she is again caught pretending to be Princess Aelin”—Aedion almost ripped out his throat at that word, Princess—“then we will have little choice but to sign her execution order.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

“I’d like to see you stop us.”

Aedion smirked. “Oh, it’s not me who you’d be dealing with. Good luck to any man who tries to harm a shifter that powerful.”

Darrow ignored the promise and held out a hand. “The Sword of Orynth, if you will.”

Ren started. “You’re out of your mind, Darrow.”

Aedion just stared. The ancient lord said, “That sword belongs to a true general of Terrasen, to its prince-commander. As you are no longer the bearer of that title, the sword shall return to Orynth. Until a new, appropriate bearer can be determined.”

Ren growled, “That sword is in our possession, Darrow, because of Aedion. Had he not won it back, it would still be rusting in Adarlan’s trove.”

“He will always have our gratitude for it. If only in that regard, at least.”

A dull roar filled Aedion’s head. Darrow’s hand remained extended.

He deserved this, he supposed. For his failure on these battlefields, his failure to defend the land he’d promised Aelin he’d save. For what he’d done to the shifter who had held his heart from the moment she’d shredded into those Valg soldiers in the sewers of Rifthold.

Aedion unbuckled the ancient sword from his belt. Ren let out a sound of protest.

But he ignored the lord and tossed the Sword of Orynth to Darrow.

The lightness where that sword had been threw off his balance.

The old man stared at the sword in his hands. Even went so far as to run a finger over the bone pommel, the hateful bastard unable to contain his awe.

Aedion just said, “The Sword of Orynth is only a piece of metal and bone. It always has been. It’s what the sword inspires in the bearer that matters. The true heart of Terrasen.”

“Poetic of you, Aedion,” was Darrow’s reply before he turned on his heel, aiming for wherever his escort waited beyond the camp’s edge. “Your commander, Kyllian, is now general of the Bane. Report to him for orders.”

The swirling snows devoured the old lord within a few steps.

Ren snarled, “Like hell you aren’t general.”

“The Lords of Terrasen decree it, and so it shall be.”

“Why aren’t you fighting this?” Ren’s eyes blazed. “You just handed over that sword—”

“I don’t give a shit.” Aedion didn’t bother to keep his exhaustion, his disappointment and anger, from his voice. “Let him have the sword, and the army. I don’t give a shit.”

Ren didn’t stop him as Aedion ducked into his tent and didn’t emerge until dawn.

The Lords of Terrasen had stripped General Ashryver of his sword.

The word spread from campfire to campfire, rippling through the ranks.

The soldier was new to the Bane, had been accepted into their ranks only this summer. An honor, even with war upon them. An honor, though the soldier’s family had wept to see him depart.

To fight for Prince Aedion, to fight for Terrasen—it had been worth it, the weight of leaving his farmstead home behind. Leaving behind that sweet-faced farmer’s daughter whom he’d never gotten the chance to so much as kiss.

It had been worth it then. But not now.

The friends he’d made in the months of training and fighting were dead.

Huddled around the too-small campfire, the soldier was the last of them, the fresh-faced recruits who’d been so eager to test themselves against the Valg at the start of summer.

In the dead heart of winter, he now called himself a fool. If he bothered to speak at all.

Words had become unnecessary, foreign. As foreign as his half-frozen body, which never warmed, though he slept as close to the fire as he dared. If sleep found him, with the screaming of the wounded and dying. The knowledge of what hunted them northward.

There was no one left to help them. Save them. The queen they’d thought amongst them had been a lie. A shape-shifter’s deception. Where Aelin Galathynius now fought, what she had deemed more important than them, he didn’t know.

The frigid night pressed in, threatening to devour the small fire before him. The soldier inched closer to the flame, shuddering beneath his worn cloak, every ache and scrape from the day throbbing.

He wouldn’t abandon this army, though. Not as some of the others were murmuring. Even with Prince Aedion stripped of his title, even with their queen gone, he wouldn’t abandon this army.

He had sworn an oath to protect Terrasen. To protect his family. He’d hold to it.

Even if he now knew he’d never see them again.

Snow was still falling when they renewed their flight.

It fell for the next two days, chasing them northward for each long mile.

Darrow’s decree had little bearing. Kyllian outright refused to make any calls without Aedion’s approval. Refused to don armor fitting of his rank. Refused to take the war tent.

Aedion knew he’d earned that loyalty long ago. Just as the Bane had earned his. But it didn’t stop him from hating it, just a bit. From wishing Kyllian would take over in full.

Lysandra’s leg was healed enough to ride, but he saw little of her. She kept to Ren’s side, the two of them traveling near the healers, should her stitches pull. When Aedion did glimpse her, she often stared him down until he wanted to vomit.

By the third day, the scouts were rushing to them. Reporting that Morath had gained, and was closing in behind—fast.

Aedion knew how this would go. Saw every trudging step and hunger-tight face around him.

Orynth was half a day off. Were it over easy terrain, they might stand a chance of getting behind its ancient walls. But between them and the city lay the Florine River. Too wide to cross without boats. The nearest bridge too far south to risk.

At this time of the year, it still might not yet have frozen. And even so, with the river so wide and deep, the layer of ice that often coated it only went so far. For their army to cross, they’d have to risk the ice collapsing.

There were other ways to Orynth. To go straight north into the Staghorns, and cut back south to the city nestled at their foot. But each hour delayed allowed Morath’s host to gain ground.

Aedion was riding beside Kyllian when Elgan galloped up beside them, horse puffing curls of hot air into the snow-thick day. “The river is ten miles straight ahead,” Elgan said. “We have to make our decision now.”

To risk the bridge to the south, or the time it’d take to go to the long route northward. Ren, spotting their gathering, urged his horse closer.

Kyllian waited for the order. Aedion arched a brow. “You’re the general.”

“Horseshit,” Kyllian spat.

Aedion only turned to Elgan. “Any word on the status of the ice?”

Elgan shook his head. “No word on it, or the bridge.”

Endless, whirling snow lay ahead. Aedion didn’t dare glance behind at the trudging, stooping lines of soldiers.

Ren, as silently as he’d come, pulled back to where he rode at Lysandra’s side.

Wings fluttered through the wind and snow, and then a falcon was shooting skyward, one leg awkwardly straight beneath it.

“Keep riding,” was all Aedion said to his companions.

Lysandra returned within an hour. She addressed Ren and Ren alone, and then the young lord was galloping to Aedion’s side, where Kyllian and Elgan still rode.

Ren’s face had gone ashen. “There’s no ice on the Florine. And Morath scouts snuck ahead and razed the southern bridge.”

“They’re herding us northward,” Elgan murmured.

Ren nodded. “They’ll be upon us by tomorrow morning.”

They would not have time to consider making a run for the northern entrance to Orynth. And with the Florine mere miles ahead, too wide and deep to cross, too frigid to dare swim, and Morath closing in from behind, they were utterly trapped.