Kingdom of Ash

Morath’s soldiers clawed and crawled over the fallen wyvern blocking their path. They filled the archway, the passage.

A golden shield held them at bay. But not for long.

Yet the reprieve Gavriel bought them allowed the Bane to drain the last dregs of their waterskins, to pluck up fallen weapons.

Aedion panted, an arm braced against the gate passageway. Behind Gavriel’s shield, the enemy teemed and raged.

“Are you hurt?” his father asked. His first words to him.

Aedion managed to lift his head. “You found Aelin,” was all he said.

Gavriel’s face softened. “Yes. And she sealed the Wyrdgate.”

Aedion closed his eyes. At least there was that. “Erawan?”

“No.”

He didn’t need the specifics on why the bastard wasn’t dead. What had gone wrong.

Aedion pushed off the wall, swaying. His father steadied him with a hand to the elbow. “You need rest.”

Aedion yanked his arm out of Gavriel’s grip. “Tell that to the soldiers who have already fallen.”

“You will fall, too,” his father said, sharper than he’d ever heard, “if you don’t sit down for a minute.”

Aedion stared the male down. Gavriel stared right back.

No bullshit, no room for argument. The face of the Lion.

Aedion just shook his head.

Gavriel’s golden shield buckled under the onslaught of the Valg still teeming beyond it.

“We have to get the gate shut again,” Aedion said, pointing to the two cleaved but intact doors pushed against the walls. Access to them blocked by the Morath grunts still trying to break past Gavriel’s shield. “Or they’ll overrun the city before our forces can regroup.” Getting behind the walls would make no difference if the western gate was wide open.

His father followed his line of sight. Looked upon the soldiers trying to get past his defenses, their flow forced to a trickle by the wyvern he’d so carefully downed before them.

“Then we shall shut them,” Gavriel said, and smiled grimly. “Together.”

The word was more of a question, subtle and sorrowful.

Together. As father and son. As the two warriors they were.

Gavriel—his father. He had come.

And looking at those tawny eyes, Aedion knew it was not for Aelin, or for Terrasen, that his father had done it.

“Together,” Aedion rasped.

Not just this obstacle. Not just this battle. But whatever would come afterward, should they survive. Together.

Aedion could have sworn something like joy and pride filled Gavriel’s eyes. Joy and pride and sorrow, heavy and old.

Aedion strode back to the line of the Bane, motioning the soldier beside him to make room for Gavriel to join their formation. One great push now, and they’d secure the gate. Their army would enter through the southern one, and they’d find some way to rally before the new army reached the city. But the western one, they’d clear it and seal it. Permanently.

Father and son, they would do this. Defeat this.

But when his father did not join his side, Aedion turned.

Gavriel had gone directly to the gate. To the golden line of his shield, now pushing back, back, back. Shoving that wall of enemy soldiers with it, buckling with every heartbeat. Down the passage. Through the archway.

No.

Gavriel smiled at him. “Close the gate, Aedion,” was all his father said.

And then Gavriel stepped beyond the gates. That golden shield spreading thin.

No.

The word built, a rising scream in Aedion’s throat.

But Bane soldiers were rushing to the gate doors. Heaving them closed.

Aedion opened his mouth to roar at them to stop. To stop, stop, stop.

Gavriel lifted his sword and dagger, glowing golden in the dying light of the day. The gate shut behind him. Sealing him out.

Aedion couldn’t move.

He had never halted, never ceased moving. Yet he could not bring himself to help with the soldiers now piling wood and chains and metal against the western gate.

Gavriel could have stayed. Could have stayed and pushed his shield back long enough for them to shut the gates. He could have remained here—

Aedion ran then.

Too slow. His steps were too slow, his body too big and heavy, as he shoved through his men. As he aimed for the stairs up to the walls.

Golden light flashed on the battlefield.

Then went dark.

Aedion ran faster, a sob burning his throat, leaping and scrambling over fallen soldiers, both mortal and Valg.

Then he was atop the walls. Running for their edge.

No. The word was a beat alongside his heart.

Aedion slaughtered the Valg in his way, slaughtered any who came over the siege ladder.

The ladder. He could fight his way down it, get to the battlefield, to his father—

Aedion swung his sword so hard at the Valg soldier before him that the man’s head bounced off his shoulders.

And then he was at the wall. Peering toward that space by the gate.

The battering ram was in splinters.

Valg lay piled several deep around it. Before the gate. Around the wyvern.

So many that access to the western gate was cut off. So many that the gate was secure, a gaping wound now staunched.

How long had he stood there, unable to move? Stood there, unable to do anything while his father did this?

It was the golden hair he spotted first.

Before the mound of Valg he’d piled high. The gate he’d shut for them. The city he’d secured.

A terrible, rushing sort of stillness took over Aedion’s body.

He stopped hearing the battle. Stopped seeing the fighting around him, above him.

Stopped seeing everything but the fallen warrior, who gazed toward the darkening sky with sightless eyes.

His tattooed throat ripped out. His sword still gripped in his hand.

Gavriel.

His father.

Morath’s army pulled back from the secured western gate. Pulled back and retreated to the arms of the advancing army. To the rest of Morath’s host.

Limping from a deep gash in his leg, his shoulder numb from the arrow tip that remained lodged in it, Rowan drove his blade through the face of a fleeing soldier. Black blood sprayed, but Rowan was already moving, aiming for the western gate.

Where things had gone so, so still.

He’d only aimed for it when he’d spied Aelin battling her way toward the distant southern gate, Ansel with her, after they’d brought the siege towers down around it. It was through the secured gate that the bulk of their army now hurried, the khagan’s forces racing to get behind the city walls before they were sealed.

They had an hour at most before Morath was again upon them—before they were forced to shut the southern gate as well, locking out any left behind to be driven right against the walls.

The western gate would remain sealed. The downed wyvern and heaps of bodies around it would ensure that, along with any inner defenses.

Rowan had seen the golden light flaring minutes ago. Had battled his way here, cursing the iron shard in his arm that kept him from shifting. Fenrys and Lorcan had peeled away to pick off any Morath grunts trying to attack those fleeing for the southern gate, and overhead, ruks bearing the healers, Elide and Yrene with them, soared into the panicking city.

He had to find Aelin. Get their plans in motion before it was too late.

He knew who likely marched with that advancing host. He had no intention of letting her face it alone.

But this task—he knew what lay ahead. Knew, and still went.

Rowan found Gavriel before the western gate, dozens of the dead piled high around him.

A veritable wall between the gate and looming enemy host.

The light faded with each minute. Lingering Morath soldiers and Ironteeth fled toward their oncoming reinforcements.

The khagan’s army tried to kill as many as they could as they hurtled for the southern gate.

They had to get inside the city. By any means possible.

Hoisting up siege ladders that had been knocked to the earth only minutes or hours earlier, the khagan’s army climbed the walls, some bearing the injured on their backs.

His magic little more than a breeze, Rowan gritted his teeth against his throbbing leg and shoulder and hauled away the Morath grunt half-sprawled over Gavriel.

Centuries of existence, years spent waging war and journeying through the world—gone. Rendered into nothing but this still body, this discarded shell.

Rowan’s knees threatened to buckle. More and more of their forces scaled the city walls, an orderly but swift flight into a temporary haven.

Keep going. They had to keep going. Gavriel would wish him to. Had given his life for it.

Yet Rowan lowered his head. “I hope you found peace, my brother. And in the Afterworld, I hope you find her again.”

Rowan stooped, grunting at the pain in his thigh, and hauled Gavriel over his good shoulder. And then he climbed.

Up the siege ladder still anchored beside the western gate. Onto the walls. Each step heavier than the last. Each step a memory of his friend, an image of the kingdoms they had seen, the enemies they had fought, the quiet moments that no song would ever mention.

Yet the songs would mention this—that the Lion fell before the western gate of Orynth, defending the city and his son. If they survived today, if they somehow lived, the bards would sing of it.

Even with the chaos of the khaganate soldiers and Darghan cavalry streaming for the city, silence fell where Rowan strode down the battlement stairs, bearing Gavriel.

He barely managed a grateful, relieved nod to a battered and bloody Enda and Sellene, catching their breath with a cluster of their cousins by the remnants of their catapults. His blood and kin, yet the warrior over his shoulder—Gavriel had also been family. Even when he had not realized it.

The impossible, hideous weight at his shoulder grew worse with every step to where Aedion stood at the foot of the stairs, the Sword of Orynth dangling from his hand.

“He could have stayed,” was all Aedion said as Rowan gently set Gavriel down on the first of the steps. “He could have stayed.”

Rowan looked at his fallen friend. His closest friend. Who had gone with him into so many wars and dangers. Who had deserved this new home as much as any of them.

Rowan closed Gavriel’s unseeing eyes. “I will see you in the Afterworld.”

Aedion’s golden hair hung limp with blood and sweat, the ancient sword in his hands caked with black blood. Soldiers streamed past him, down the battlement stairs, yet Aedion only stared at his father. A bloodied rock in the stream of war.

Then Aedion walked into the streets. Tears and screaming would come later. Rowan followed him.

“We need to prepare for the second part of this battle,” Aedion said hoarsely. “Or we won’t last the night.” Already, Enda and Sellene were using their magic to haul fallen blocks of debris against the western gate. The stones wobbled, but moved. It was more power than Rowan could claim.

Rowan turned to climb back up the walls, and didn’t dare let himself look behind them—to where he knew soldiers were moving Gavriel deeper into the city. Somewhere safe.

Gone. His friend, his brother was gone.

“Your Highness.” A panting, blood-splattered ruk rider stood on the battlement wall. He pointed to the horizon. “Darkness veils much of it, but we have an estimate for the oncoming army.” Rowan braced himself. “Twenty thousand at a minimum.” The rider’s throat bobbed. “Their ranks are filled with Valg—and six kharankui.”

Not kharankui. But the six Valg princesses who had infested them.

Rowan willed himself to shift. His body refused.

Gritting his teeth, he peeled back the armor on his shoulder and reached for the wound. But it had sealed. Trapping the iron shard within. Keeping him from shifting—from flying to Aelin. Wherever she was.

He had to get to her. Had to find Fenrys and Lorcan and find her. Before it was too late.

But as the night fell, as he freed a dagger and lifted it to the sealed wound in his shoulder, Rowan knew it might already be.

Even though the gods were now gone, Rowan still found himself praying. Through the agony as he ripped open his shoulder, he prayed. That he might reach Aelin in time.

They had survived this long, against all odds and in defiance of ancient prophecies. Rowan dug his knife in deeper, seeking the iron shard wedged within.

Hurry—he had to hurry.