Kingdom of Ash Page 5

  Most days, if he was being honest, he felt little. Had felt little for months, save for those stolen, wild moments with Manon. And save for the moments when he trained with the Thirteen, and a blunt sort of rage drove him to keep swinging his sword, keep getting back up when they knocked him down.

  Swordplay, archery, knife-work, tracking—they taught him everything he asked. Along with the solid weight of Damaris, a witch-knife now hung from his sword belt. It had been gifted to him by Sorrel when he’d first managed to pin the stone-faced Third. Two weeks ago.

  But when the lessons were done, when they sat around the small fire they dared to risk each night, he wondered if the witches could sniff out the restlessness that nipped at his heels.

  If they could now sniff out that he had no intention of taking a piss in the frigid night as he wended his way between their bedrolls, then through the slight gap between Narene, Asterin’s sky-blue mare, and Abraxos. He nodded toward where Vesta stood on watch, and the red-haired witch, despite the brutal cold, threw a wicked smile his way before he rounded the corner of the rocky overhang and disappeared beyond view.

  He’d picked her watch for a reason. There were some amongst the Thirteen who never smiled at all. Lin, who still seemed like she was debating carving him up to examine his insides; and Imogen, who kept to herself and didn’t smile at anyone. Thea and Kaya usually reserved their smiles for each other, and when Faline and Fallon—the green-eyed demon twins, as the others called them—smiled, it meant hell was about to break loose.

  All of them might have been suspicious if he vanished for too long. But Vesta, who shamelessly flirted with him—she’d let him linger outside the camp. Likely from fear of what Manon might do to her if she was spotted trailing after him into the dark.

  A bastard—he was a bastard for using them like this. For assessing and monitoring them when they currently risked everything to find the Crochans.

  But it made no difference if he cared. About them. About himself, he supposed. Caring hadn’t done him any favors. Hadn’t done Sorscha any favors.

  And it wouldn’t matter, once he gave up everything to seal the Wyrdgate.

  Damaris was a weight at his side—but nothing compared to the two objects tucked into the pocket of his heavy jacket. Mercifully, he’d swiftly learned to drown out their whispering, their otherworldly beckoning. Most of the time.

  None of the witches had questioned why he’d been so easily persuaded to give up the hunt for the third Wyrdkey. He’d known better than to waste his time arguing. So he’d planned, and let them, let Manon, believe him to be content in his role to guard them with his magic.

  Reaching the boulder-shrouded clearing that he’d scouted earlier under the guise of aimlessly wandering the site, Dorian made quick work of his preparations.

  He had not forgotten a single movement of Aelin’s hands in Skull’s Bay when she’d smeared her blood on the floor of her room at the Ocean Rose.

  But it was not Elena whom he planned to summon with his blood.

  When the snow was red with it, when he’d made sure the wind was still blowing its scent away from the witch camp, Dorian unsheathed Damaris and plunged it into the circle of Wyrdmarks.

  And then waited.

  His magic was a steady thrum through him, the small flame he dared to conjure enough to heat his body. To keep him from shivering to death while the minutes passed.

  Ice had been the first manifestation of his magic. He supposed that should give him some sort of preference for it. Or at least some immunity. He had neither. And he’d decided that if they survived long enough to endure the scorching heat of summer, he’d never complain about it again.

  He’d been honing his magic as best he could during these weeks of relentless, useless hunting. None of the witches possessed power, not beyond the Yielding, which they’d told him could only be summoned once—to terrible and devastating effect. But the Thirteen watched with some degree of interest while Dorian kept up the lessons Rowan had started. Ice. Fire. Water. Healing. Wind. With the snows, attempting to coax life from the frozen earth had proved impossible, but he still tried.

  The only magic that always leapt at his summons remained that invisible force, capable of snapping bone. That, the witches liked best. Especially since it made him their greatest line of defense against their enemies. Death—that was his gift. All he seemed able to offer those around him. He was little better than his father in that regard.

  The flame flowed over him, invisible and steadying.

  They hadn’t heard a whisper of Aelin. Or Rowan and their companions. Not one whisper of whether the queen was still Maeve’s captive.

  She had been willing to yield everything to save Terrasen, to save all of them. He could do nothing less. Aelin certainly had more to lose. A mate and husband who loved her. A court who’d follow her into hell. A kingdom long awaiting her return.

  All he had was an unmarked grave for a healer no one would remember, a broken empire, and a shattered castle.

  Dorian closed his eyes for a moment, blocking out the sight of the glass castle exploding, the sight of his father reaching for him, begging for forgiveness. A monster—the man had been a monster in every possible way. Had sired Dorian while possessed by a Valg demon.

  What did it make him? His blood ran red, and the Valg prince who’d infested Dorian himself had delighted on feasting on him, on making him enjoy all he’d done while collared. But did it still make him fully human?

  Blowing out a long breath, Dorian opened his eyes.

  A man stood across the snowy clearing.

  Dorian bowed low. “Gavin.”

  The first King of Adarlan had his eyes.

  Or rather Dorian had Gavin’s eyes, passed down through the thousand years between them.

  The rest of the ancient king’s face was foreign: the long, dark brown hair, the harsh features, the grave cast of his mouth. “You learned the marks.”

  Dorian rose from his bow. “I’m a quick study.”

  Gavin didn’t smile. “The summoning is not a gift to be used lightly. You risk much, young king, in calling me here. Considering what you carry.”

  Dorian patted the jacket pocket where the two Wyrdkeys lay, ignoring the strange, terrible power that pulsed against his hand in answer. “Everything is a risk these days.” He straightened. “I need your help.”

  Gavin didn’t reply. His stare slid to Damaris, still plunged in the snow amid the marks. A personal effect of the king, as Aelin had used the Eye of Elena to summon the ancient queen. “At least you have taken good care of my sword.” His eyes lifted to Dorian’s, sharp as the blade itself. “Though I cannot say the same of my kingdom.”

  Dorian clenched his jaw. “I inherited a bit of a mess from my father, I’m afraid.”

  “You were a Prince of Adarlan long before you became its king.”

  Dorian’s magic churned to ice, colder than the night around him. “Then consider me trying to atone for years of bad behavior.”

  Gavin held his gaze for a moment that stretched into eternity. A true king, that’s what the man before him was. A king not only in title, but in spirit. As few had been since Gavin was laid to rest beneath the foundations of the castle he’d built along the Avery.

  Dorian withstood the weight of Gavin’s stare. Let the king see what remained of him, mark the pale band around his throat.

  Then Gavin blinked once, the only sign of his permission to continue.

  Dorian swallowed. “Where is the third key?”

  Gavin stiffened. “I am forbidden to say.”

  “Forbidden, or won’t?” He supposed he should be kneeling, should keep his tone respectful. How many legends about Gavin had he read as a child? How many times had he run through the castle, pretending to be the king before him?

  Dorian pulled the Amulet of Orynth from his jacket, letting it sway in the bitter wind. A silent, ghostly song leaked from the gold-and-blue medallion—speaking in languages that did not exist. “Brannon Ga
lathynius defied the gods by putting the key in here with a warning to Aelin. The least you could do is give me a direction.”

  Gavin’s edges blurred, but held. Not much time. For either of them. “Brannon Galathynius was an arrogant bastard. I have seen what interfering with the gods’ plans brings about. It will not end well.”

  “Your wife, not the gods, brought this about.”

  Gavin bared his teeth. And though the man was long dead, Dorian’s magic flared again, readying to strike.

  “My mate,” Gavin snarled, “is the cost of this. My mate, should the keys be retrieved, will vanish forever. Do you know what that is like, young king? To have eternity—and then have it ripped away?”

  Dorian didn’t bother to reply. “You don’t wish me to find the third key because it will mean the end of Elena.”

  Gavin said nothing.

  Dorian let out a growl. “Countless people will die if the keys aren’t put back in the gate.” He shoved the Amulet of Orynth back into his jacket, and once again ignored the otherworldly hum pulsing against his bones. “You can’t be that selfish.”

  Gavin remained silent, the wind shifting his dark hair. But his eyes flickered—just barely.

  “Tell me where,” Dorian breathed. He had mere minutes until even Vesta came looking for him. “Tell me where the third key is.”

  “Your life will be forfeit, too. If you retrieve the keys and forge the Lock. Your soul will be claimed as well. Not one scrap of you will live on in the Afterworld.”

  “There’s no one who would really care about that anyway.” He certainly didn’t. And he’d certainly deserved that sort of end, when he’d failed so many times. With all he’d done.

  Gavin studied him for a long moment. Dorian held still beneath that fierce stare. A warrior who had survived the second of Erawan’s wars.

  “Elena helped Aelin,” Dorian pressed, his breath curling in the space between them. “She didn’t balk from it, even knowing what it meant for her fate. And neither did Aelin, who will have neither a long life with her own mate, nor eternity with him.” As I will not have, either. His heart began thundering, his magic rising with it. “And yet you would. You would run from it.”

  Gavin’s teeth flashed. “Erawan could be defeated without sealing the gate.”

  “Tell me how, and I will find a way to do it.”

  Yet Gavin fell silent again, his hands clenching at his sides.

  Dorian snorted softly. “If you knew, it would have been done long ago.” Gavin shook his head, but Dorian plunged ahead. “Your friends died battling Erawan’s hordes. Help me avoid the same fate for my own. It might already be too late for some of them.” His stomach churned.

  Had Chaol made it to the southern continent? Perhaps it would be better if his friend never returned, if he stayed safe in Antica. Even if Chaol would never do such a thing.

  Dorian glanced toward the rocky corner he’d rounded. Not much time left.

  “And what of Adarlan?” Gavin demanded. “You would leave it kingless?” The question said enough of Gavin’s opinion regarding Hollin. “This is how you would atone for years spent idling as its Crown Prince?”

  Dorian took the verbal blow. It was nothing but truth, dealt by a man who had served its nameless god. “Does it really matter anymore?”

  “Adarlan was my pride.”

  “It is no longer worthy of it,” Dorian snapped. “It hasn’t been for a long, long time. Perhaps it deserves to fall into ruin.”

  Gavin angled his head. “The words of a reckless, arrogant boy. Do you think you are the only one who has endured loss?”

  “And yet your own fear of loss makes you choose one woman over the fate of the world.”

  “If you had the choice—your woman or Erilea—would you have chosen any differently?”

  Sorscha or the world. The question rang hollow. Some of the fire within him banked. Yet Dorian dared to say, “You’d delude yourself about the path ahead, yet you served the god of truth.” Chaol had told him of their discovery in the catacombs beneath Rifthold’s sewers this spring. The forgotten bone temple where Gavin’s deathbed confession had been written. “What does he have to say about Elena’s role in this?”

  “The All-Seeing One does not claim kinship with those spineless creatures,” Gavin growled.

  Dorian could have sworn a dusty, bone-dry wind rattled through the pass. “Then what is he?”

  “Can there not be many gods, from many places? Some born of this world, some born elsewhere?”

  “That’s a question to debate at another time,” Dorian ground out. “When we’re not at war.” He took a long breath. Another one. “Please,” he breathed. “Please help me save my friends. Help me make it right.”

  It was all he really had left—this task.

  Gavin again watched him, weighed him. Dorian withstood it. Let him read whatever truth was written on his soul.

  Pain clouded the king’s face. Pain, and regret, as Gavin finally said, “The key is at Morath.”

  Dorian’s mouth went dry. “Where in Morath?”

  “I don’t know.” Dorian believed him. The raw dread in Gavin’s eyes confirmed it. The ancient king nodded to Damaris. “That sword is not ornamental. Let it guide you, if you cannot trust yourself.”

  “It really tells the truth?”

  “It was blessed by the All-Seeing One himself, after I swore myself to him.” Gavin shrugged, a half-tamed gesture. As if the man had never really left the wilds of Adarlan where he’d risen from war leader to High King. “You’ll still have to learn for yourself what is truth and what is lie.”

  “But Damaris will help me find the key at Morath?” To break into Erawan’s stronghold, where all those collars were made …

  Gavin’s mouth tightened. “I cannot say. But I will tell you this: do not venture toward Morath just yet. Until you are ready.”

  “I’m ready now.” A fool’s lie. Gavin knew it, too. It was an effort not to touch his neck, the pale band forever marring his skin.

  “Morath is no mere keep,” Gavin said. “It is a hell, and it is not kind to reckless young men.” Dorian stiffened, but Gavin went on, “You will know when you are truly ready. Remain at this camp, if you can convince your companions. The path will find you here.”

  Gavin’s edges warped further, his face turning murky.

  Dorian dared a step forward. “Am I human?”

  Gavin’s sapphire eyes softened—just barely. “I’m not the person who can answer that.”

  And then the king was gone.

  CHAPTER 5

  The commander in the alley had claimed his latest orders had been dispatched from Doranelle.

  None of them knew whether to believe him.

  Sitting around a tiny fire in a dusty field on the outskirts of a ramshackle city, the blood long since washed from his hands, Lorcan Salvaterre again mulled over the logic of it.

  Had they somehow overlooked the simplest option? For Maeve to have been in Doranelle this entire time, hidden from her subjects?

  But that commander had been lying filth. He’d spat in Lorcan’s face before they’d ended it.

  The other commander they’d found today, however, after a week of hunting him down at the nearest seaport, had claimed he’d received orders from a distant kingdom they’d searched three weeks ago. In the opposite direction of Doranelle.

  Lorcan toed at the dirt.

  None of them had felt like speaking since the commander this afternoon had contradicted the first’s claim.

  “Doranelle is Maeve’s stronghold,” Elide said at last, her steady voice filling the heavy quiet. “Simple as it is, it would make sense for her to bring Aelin there.”

  Whitethorn only stared into the fire. He hadn’t washed the blood from his dark gray jacket.

  “It would be impossible, even for Maeve, to keep her hidden in Doranelle,” Lorcan countered. “We would have heard about it by now.”

  He wasn’t sure when he’d last spoken to the woman
before him.

  She hadn’t balked from how he’d broken Maeve’s commanders, though. She’d cringed during the worst of it, yes, but she’d listened to every word Rowan and Lorcan had wrung from them. Lorcan supposed she’d seen worse at Morath—hated that she had. Hated that her monster of an uncle still breathed.

  But that hunt would come later. After they found Aelin. Or whatever remained of her.

  Elide’s eyes grew cold, so cold, as she said, “Maeve managed to conceal Gavriel and Fenrys from Rowan in Skull’s Bay. And somehow hid and spirited away her entire fleet.”

  Lorcan didn’t reply. Elide went on, her gaze unwavering, “Maeve knows Doranelle would be the obvious choice—the choice we’d likely reject because it’s too simple. She anticipated that we’d believe she’d haul Aelin to the farthest reaches of Erilea, rather than right back home.”

  “Maeve would have the advantage of an easily summoned army,” Gavriel added, his tattooed throat bobbing. “Which would make rescue difficult.”

  Lorcan refrained from telling Gavriel to shut his mouth. He hadn’t failed to notice how often Gavriel went out of his way to help Elide, to talk to her. And yes, some small part of him was grateful for it, since the gods knew she wouldn’t accept any sort of help from him.

  Hellas damn him, he’d had to resort to giving his cut-up shirt to Whitethorn and Gavriel to hand to her for her cycle. He’d threatened to skin them alive if they’d said it was his, and Elide, with her human sense of smell, hadn’t scented him on the fabric.

  He didn’t know why he bothered. He hadn’t forgotten her words that day on the beach.

  I hope you spend the rest of your miserable, immortal life suffering. I hope you spend it alone. I hope you live with regret and guilt in your heart and never find a way to endure it.

  Her vow, her curse, whatever it had been, had held true. Every word of it.

  He’d broken something. Something precious beyond measure. He’d never cared until now.

  Even the severed blood oath, still gaping wide within his soul, didn’t come close to the hole in his chest when he looked at her.

  She’d offered him a home in Perranth knowing he’d be a dishonored male. Offered him a home with her.