Kingdom of Ash Page 4

  She’d tested it again, then. As much as the irons would allow. Pushing with her feet, her elbows, her hands against the unforgiving metal. She didn’t have enough room to turn over. To ease the pain of the chains digging into her. Chafing her.

  The lash wounds etched deep into her back had vanished. The ones that had cleaved her skin to the bone. Or had that been a dream, too?

  She had drifted into memory, into years of training in an assassin’s keep. Into lessons where she’d been left in chains, in her own waste, until she figured out how to remove them.

  But she’d been bound with that training in mind. Nothing she tried in the cramped dark had worked.

  The metal of the glove scraped against the dark stone, barely audible over the hissing braziers, the roaring river beyond them. Wherever they were.

  Her, and the wolf.

  Fenrys.

  No chains bound him. None were needed.

  Maeve had ordered him to stay, to stand down, and so he would.

  For long minutes, they stared at each other.

  Aelin did not reflect on the pain that had sent her into unconsciousness. Even as the memory of cracking bones set her foot twitching. The chains jangled.

  But nothing flickered where agony should have been rampant. Not a whisper of discomfort in her feet. She shut out the image of how that male—Cairn—had taken them apart. How she’d screamed until her voice had failed.

  It might have been a dream. One of the endless horde that hunted her in the blackness. A burning stag, fleeing through the trees. Hours on this altar, her feet shattered beneath ancient tools. A silver-haired prince whose very scent was that of home.

  They blurred and bled, until even this moment, staring at the white wolf lying against the wall across from the altar, might be a fragment of an illusion.

  Aelin’s finger scratched along the curved edge of the altar again.

  The wolf blinked at her—thrice. In the early days, months, years of this, they had crafted a silent code between them. Using the few moments she’d been able to dredge up speech, whispering through the near-invisible holes in the iron coffin.

  One blink for yes. Two for no. Three for Are you all right? Four for I am here, I am with you. Five for This is real, you are awake.

  Fenrys again blinked three times. Are you all right?

  Aelin swallowed against the thickness in her throat, her tongue peeling off the roof of her mouth. She blinked once. Yes.

  She counted his blinks.

  Six.

  He’d made that one up. Liar, or something like it. She refused to acknowledge that particular code.

  She blinked once again. Yes.

  Dark eyes scanned her. He’d seen everything. Every moment of it. If he were permitted to shift, he could tell her what was fabricated and what was real. If any of it had been real.

  No injuries ever remained when she awoke. No pain. Only the memory of it, of Cairn’s smiling face as he carved her up over and over.

  He must have left her on the altar because he meant to return soon.

  Aelin shifted enough to tug on the chains, the mask’s lock digging into the back of her head. The wind had not brushed her cheeks, or most of her skin, in … she did not know.

  What wasn’t covered in iron was clad in a sleeveless white shift that fell to midthigh. Leaving her legs and arms bare for Cairn’s ministrations.

  There were days, memories, of even that shift being gone, of knives scraping over her abdomen. But whenever she awoke, the shift remained intact. Untouched. Unstained.

  Fenrys’s ears perked, twitching. All the alert Aelin needed.

  She hated the trembling that began to coil around her bones as strolling footsteps scuffed beyond the square room and the iron door into it. The only way in. No windows. The stone hall she sometimes glimpsed beyond was equally sealed. Only the sound of water entered this place.

  It surged louder as the iron door unlocked and groaned open.

  She willed herself not to shake as the brown-haired male approached.

  “Awake so soon? I must not have worked you hard enough.”

  That voice. She hated that voice above all others. Crooning and cold.

  He wore a warrior’s garb, but no warrior’s weapons hung from the belt at his slim waist.

  Cairn noted where her eyes fell and patted the heavy hammer dangling from his hip. “So eager for more.”

  There was no flame to rally to her. Not an ember.

  He stalked to the small pile of logs by one brazier and fed a few to the dying fire. It swirled and crackled, leaping upon the wood with hungry fingers.

  Her magic didn’t so much as flicker in answer. Everything she ate and drank through the small slot in the mask’s mouth was laced with iron.

  She’d refused it at first. Had tasted the iron and spat it out.

  She’d gone to the brink of dying from lack of water when they forced it down her throat. Then they’d let her starve—starve until she broke and devoured whatever they put in front of her, iron or no.

  She did not often think about that time. That weakness. How excited Cairn had grown to see her eating, and how much he raged when it still did not yield what he wanted.

  Cairn loaded the other brazier before snapping his fingers at Fenrys. “You may see to your needs in the hall and return here immediately.”

  As if a ghost hoisted him up, the enormous wolf padded out.

  Maeve had considered even that, granting Cairn power to order when Fenrys ate and drank, when he pissed. She knew Cairn deliberately forgot sometimes. The canine whines of pain had reached her, even in the box.

  Real. That had been real.

  The male before her, a trained warrior in everything but honor and spirit, surveyed her body. “How shall we play tonight, Aelin?”

  She hated the sound of her name on his tongue.

  Her lip curled back from her teeth.

  Fast as an asp, Cairn gripped her throat hard enough to bruise. “Such rage, even now.”

  She would never let go of it—the rage. Even when she sank into that burning sea within her, even when she sang to the darkness and flame, the rage guided her.

  Cairn’s fingers dug into her throat, and she couldn’t stop the choking noise that gasped from her. “This can all be over with a few little words, Princess,” he purred, dropping low enough that his breath brushed her mouth. “A few little words, and you and I will part ways forever.”

  She’d never say them. Never swear the blood oath to Maeve.

  Swear it, and hand over everything she knew, everything she was. Become slave eternal. And usher in the doom of the world.

  Cairn’s grip on her neck loosened, and she inhaled deeply. But his fingers lingered at the right side of her throat.

  She knew precisely what spot, what scar, he brushed his fingers over. The twin small markings in the space between her neck and shoulder.

  “Interesting,” Cairn murmured.

  Aelin jerked her head away, baring her teeth again.

  Cairn struck her.

  Not her face, clad in iron that would rip open his knuckles. But her unprotected stomach.

  The breath slammed from her, and iron clanked as she tried and failed to curl onto her side.

  On silent paws, Fenrys loped back in and took up his place against the wall. Concern and fury flared in the wolf’s dark eyes as she gasped for air, as her chained limbs still attempted to curl around her abdomen. But Fenrys could only lower himself onto the floor once more.

  Four blinks. I am here, I am with you.

  Cairn didn’t see it. Didn’t remark on her one blink in reply as he smirked at the tiny bites on her neck, sealed with the salt from the warm waters of Skull’s Bay.

  Rowan’s marking. A mate’s marking.

  She didn’t let herself think of him too long. Not as Cairn thumbed free that heavy-headed hammer and weighed it in his broad hands.

  “If it wasn’t for Maeve’s gag order,” the male mused, surveying her body like
a painter assessing an empty canvas, “I’d put my own teeth in you. See if Whitethorn’s marking holds up then.”

  Dread coiled in her gut. She’d seen the evidence of what their long hours here summoned from him. Her fingers curled, scraping the stone as if it were Cairn’s face.

  Cairn shifted the hammer to one hand. “This will have to do, I suppose.” He ran his other hand down the length of her torso, and she jerked against the chains at the proprietary touch. He smiled. “So responsive.” He gripped her bare knee, squeezing gently. “We started at the feet earlier. Let’s go higher this time.”

  Aelin braced herself. Took plunging breaths that would bring her far away from here. From her body.

  She’d never let them break her. Never swear that blood oath.

  For Terrasen, for her people, whom she had left to endure their own torment for ten long years. She owed them this much.

  Deep, deep, deep she went, as if she could outrun what was to come, as if she could hide from it.

  The hammer glinted in the firelight as it rose over her knee, Cairn’s breath sucking in, anticipation and delight mingling on his face.

  Fenrys blinked, over and over and over. I am here, I am with you.

  It didn’t stop the hammer from falling.

  Or the scream that shattered from her throat.

  CHAPTER 4

  “This camp has been abandoned for months.”

  Manon turned from the snow-crusted cliff where she’d been monitoring the western edge of the White Fang Mountains. Toward the Wastes.

  Asterin remained crouched over the half-buried remnants of a fire pit, the shaggy goat pelt slung over her shoulders ruffling in the frigid wind. Her Second went on, “No one’s been here since early autumn.”

  Manon had suspected as much. The Shadows had spotted the site an hour earlier on their patrol of the terrain ahead, somehow noticing the irregularities cleverly hidden in the leeward side of the rocky peak. The Mother knew Manon herself might have flown right over it.

  Asterin stood, brushing snow from the knees of her leathers. Even the thick material wasn’t enough to ward against the brutal cold. Hence the mountain-goat pelts they’d resorted to wearing.

  Good for blending into the snow, Edda had claimed, the Shadow even letting the dark hair dye she favored wash away these weeks to reveal the moon white of her natural shade. Manon’s shade. Briar had kept the dye. One of them was needed to scout at night, the other Shadow had claimed.

  Manon surveyed the two Shadows carefully stalking through the camp. Perhaps no longer Shadows, but rather the two faces of the moon. One dark, one light.

  One of many changes to the Thirteen.

  Manon blew out a breath, the wind tearing away the hot puff.

  “They’re out there,” Asterin murmured so the others might not hear from where they gathered by the overhanging boulder that shielded them from the wind.

  “Three camps,” Manon said with equal quiet. “All long abandoned. We’re hunting ghosts.”

  Asterin’s gold hair ripped free of its braid, blowing westward. Toward the homeland they might very well never see. “The camps are proof they’re flesh and blood. Ghislaine thinks they might be from the late-summer hunts.”

  “They could also be from the wild men of these mountains.” Though Manon knew they weren’t. She’d hunted enough Crochans during the past hundred years to spot their style of making fires, their neat little camps. All the Thirteen had. And they’d all tracked and killed so many of the wild men of the White Fangs earlier this year on Erawan’s behalf that they knew their habits, too.

  Asterin’s gold-flecked black eyes fell on that blurred horizon. “We’ll find them.”

  Soon. They had to find at least some of the Crochans soon. Manon knew they had methods of communicating, scattered as they were. Ways to get out a call for help. A call for aid.

  Time was not on their side. It had been nearly two months since that day on the beach in Eyllwe. Since she’d learned the terrible cost the Queen of Terrasen must pay to put an end to this madness. The cost that another with Mala’s bloodline might also pay, if need be.

  Manon resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder to where the King of Adarlan stood amongst the rest of her Thirteen, entertaining Vesta by summoning flame, water, and ice to his cupped palm. A small display of a terrible, wondrous magic. He set three whorls of the elements lazily dancing around each other, and Vesta arched an impressed brow. Manon had seen the way the red-haired sentinel looked at him, had noted that Vesta wisely refrained from acting on that desire.

  Manon had given her no such orders, though. Hadn’t said anything to the Thirteen about what, exactly, the human king was to her.

  Nothing, she wanted to say. Someone as unmoored as she. As quietly angry. And as pressed for time. Finding the third and final Wyrdkey had proved futile. The two the king carried in his pocket offered no guidance, only their unearthly reek. Where Erawan kept it, they had not the faintest inkling. To search Morath or any of his other outposts would be suicide.

  So they’d set aside their hunt, after weeks of fruitless searching, in favor of finding the Crochans. The king had protested initially, but yielded. His allies and friends in the North needed as many warriors as they could muster. Finding the Crochans … Manon wouldn’t break her promise.

  She might be the disowned Heir of the Blackbeak Clan, might now command only a dozen witches, but she could still hold true to her word.

  So she’d find the Crochans. Convince them to fly into battle with the Thirteen. With her. Their last living Crochan Queen.

  Even if it led them all straight into the Darkness’s embrace.

  The sun arched higher, its light off the snows near-blinding.

  Lingering was unwise. They’d survived these months with strength and wits. For while they’d hunted for the Crochans, they’d been hunted themselves. Yellowlegs and Bluebloods, mostly. All scouting patrols.

  Manon had given the order not to engage, not to kill. A missing Ironteeth patrol would only pinpoint their location. Though Dorian could have snapped their necks without lifting a finger.

  It was a pity he hadn’t been born a witch. But she’d gladly accept such a lethal ally. So would the Thirteen.

  “What will you say,” Asterin mused, “when we find the Crochans?”

  Manon had considered it over and over. If the Crochans would know who Lothian Blackbeak was, that she had loved Manon’s father—a rare-born Crochan Prince. That her parents had dreamed, had believed they’d created a child to break the curse on the Ironteeth and unite their peoples.

  A child not of war, but of peace.

  But those were foreign words on her tongue. Love. Peace.

  Manon ran a gloved finger over the scrap of red fabric binding the end of her braid. A shred from her half sister’s cloak. Rhiannon. Named for the last Witch-Queen. Whose face Manon somehow bore. Manon said, “I’ll ask the Crochans not to shoot, I suppose.”

  Asterin’s mouth twitched toward a smile. “I meant about who you are.”

  She’d rarely balked from anything. Rarely feared anything. But saying the words, those words … “I don’t know,” Manon admitted. “We’ll see if we get that far.”

  The White Demon. That’s what the Crochans called her. She was at the top of their to-kill list. A witch every Crochan was to slay on sight. That fact alone said they didn’t know what she was to them.

  Yet her half sister had figured it out. And then Manon had slit her throat.

  Manon Kin Slayer, her grandmother had taunted. The Matron had likely relished every Crochan heart that Manon had brought to her at Blackbeak Keep over the past hundred years.

  Manon closed her eyes, listening to the hollow song of the wind.

  Behind them, Abraxos let out an impatient, hungry whine. Yes, they were all hungry these days.

  “We will follow you, Manon,” Asterin said softly.

  Manon turned to her cousin. “Do I deserve that honor?”

  Asterin
’s mouth pressed into a tight line. The slight bump on her nose—Manon had given her that. She’d broken it in the Omega’s mess hall for brawling with mouthy Yellowlegs. Asterin had never once complained about it. Had seemed to wear the reminder of the beating Manon bestowed like a badge of pride.

  “Only you can decide if you deserve it, Manon.”

  Manon let the words settle as she shifted her gaze to the western horizon. Perhaps she’d deserve that honor if she succeeded in bringing them back to a home they’d never set eyes on.

  If they survived this war and all the terrible things they must do before it was over.

  It was no easy thing, to slip away from thirteen sleeping witches and their wyverns.

  But Dorian Havilliard had been studying them—their watches, who slept deepest, who might report seeing him walk away from their small fire and who would keep their mouths shut. Weeks and weeks, since he’d settled on this idea. This plan.

  They’d camped on the small outcropping where they’d found long-cold traces of the Crochans, taking shelter under the overhanging rock, the wyverns a wall of leathery warmth around them.

  He had minutes to do this. He’d been practicing for weeks now—making no bones of rising in the middle of the night, no more than a drowsy man displeased to have to brave the frigid elements to see to his needs. Letting the witches grow accustomed to his nightly movements.

  Letting Manon become accustomed to it, too.

  Though nothing had been declared between them, their bedrolls still wound up beside each other every night. Not that a camp full of witches offered any sort of opportunity to tangle with her. No, for that, they’d resorted to winter-bare forests and snow-blasted passes, their hands roving for any bit of bare skin they dared expose to the chill air.

  Their couplings were brief, savage. Teeth and nails and snarling. And not just from Manon.

  But after a day of fruitless searching, little more than a glorified guard against the enemies hunting them while his friends bled to save their lands, he needed the release as much as she did. They never discussed it—what hounded them. Which was fine by him.

  Dorian had no idea what sort of man that made him.