Сара Маас - Kingdom of Ash

Then Lorcan ran for the gate—to the dark queen who threatened all he’d come to want, to hope for. He’d come to hope . Had found there was something better out there. Someone better.

And he’d go down swinging to defend all of it.

It was a dance, and one that Aelin had spent her entire life practicing.

Not just the movements of her sword, her shield. But the smirk she kept on her face as she met each blast of darkness, as she realized over and over and over who her dance partners were.

Where they advanced a step, Aelin sent out a plume of fire. Didn’t let her own doubt show, didn’t dare wonder if they could tell that the fire was mostly color and light.

They still dodged it. Avoided it.

Waiting for her to plunge down deep, to make that killing blow they anticipated.

And though her fire deflected the darkness, though Goldryn was a burning song in her hand, she knew their power would break through soon.

The keys were gone. And so was the Fire-Bringer.

They would have no use for her. No need to enslave her, save to torment her.

It could go either way. Death or enslavement.

But there would be no keys, no ability for Erawan to craft more Wyrdstone, or bring in his Valg to possess others.

Aelin lunged with Goldryn, spearing for Erawan as she raised her shield against Maeve. She sent a wave of flame searing for their sides, herding them closer together.

Erawan blasted it back, but Maeve halted. Halted while Aelin leaped away a step, panting.

The coppery tang of blood coated her mouth. A herald of the looming burnout.

Maeve watched Aelin’s flame sizzle through the snow, melting it down to the dried grasses of Theralis. An undulating sea of green in the warmer months. Now a muddy, blood-soaked ruin.

“For a god,” Maeve said, their first words since this dance had begun minutes or hours or an eternity ago, “you do not seem so willing to smite us.”

“Symbols have power,” Aelin panted, smiling as she flipped Goldryn in her hand, the flame hissing through the air. “Strike you down too quickly and it will ruin the impact.” Aelin drew up every shred of swaggering arrogance and winked at Erawan. “She wants me to wear you down, you see. Wants me to tire you, so those healers up in the castle can finish you off with little trouble.”

“ Enough .” Maeve slammed out her power, and Aelin lifted her shield, flame deflecting the onslaught.

But barely. The impact rippled into her bones, her blood.

Aelin didn’t let herself so much as wince as she hurled a whip of flame toward Maeve, and the dark queen danced back. “Just wait—she’ll spring the trap shut on you soon enough.”

“She is a liar and a fool,” Maeve spat. “She seeks to drive us apart because she knows we can defeat her together.” Again, that dark power rallied around Maeve.

The dark king only stared at Aelin with those golden, burning eyes, and smiled. “Indeed. You—”

He paused. Those golden eyes lifted above Aelin. Above the gates and wall behind her. To something high above.

Aelin didn’t dare to look. To take her attention away for that long. To hope.

But the gold in Erawan’s eyes glowed. Glowed—with rage and perhaps a kernel of fear.

He twisted his head toward Maeve. “There are healers in that castle.”

“Of course there are,” Maeve snapped.

Yet Erawan stilled. “There are skilled healers there. Ripe with power.”

“Straight from the Torre Cesme,” Aelin said, nodding solemnly. “As I told you.”

Erawan only looked at Maeve. And that doubt flickered again.

He glanced to Aelin. To her fire, her sword. She bowed her head.

Erawan hissed at Maeve, “If she spoke true, you are carrion.”

And before Aelin could muster an ember to strike, a dark, sinewy form swept from the blackness behind Erawan and snatched him up. An ilken.

Aelin didn’t waste her power trying to down them, not with the ilken’s defenses against magic. Not with Maeve tracking Erawan as he was carried into the skies. Over the city.

Against two Valg rulers, she should have already been dead. Against the female before her, Aelin knew it was still just a matter of time. But if Yrene, if her friends, could take down Erawan …

“Just us, then,” Maeve said, lips curving into that spider’s smile. The smile of the horrendous creatures that launched themselves at Orynth.

Aelin lifted Goldryn again. “That’s precisely how I wanted it,” she said. Truth.

“But I know your secret, Heir of Fire,” Maeve crooned, and struck again.

CHAPTER 112

Atop the highest tower of the castle of Orynth, on the broad balcony that overlooked the world far below, the healer sent out another flare of power.

The white glow seared the night, casting the tower stones in stark relief.

A beacon, a challenge to the dark king who battled Aelin Galathynius below.

Here I am , the power sang through the night. Here I am .

Erawan answered.

His rage, his fear, his hatred filled the wind as he swept in, carried in an ilken’s gangly limbs. He smiled at the young healer whose hands glowed with pure light, as if already tasting her blood. Savoring the destruction of what she offered, the gift she’d been given.

His sheer presence set people in the castle below screaming as they fled.

Not death incarnate, but something far worse. Something nearly as ancient, and almost as powerful.

The ilken swept over the tower, dropping him onto the balcony stones. Erawan landed with the grace of a cat, barely winded as he straightened.

As he smiled at her.

“I never thought you’d do it, you know,” Maeve said, her dark power coiling around her as Aelin panted. A cramp had begun low in her back and now lashed its way up her spine, down her legs. “That you’d be foolish enough to put the keys back into the gate. What happened to that glorious vision you once showed me, Aelin? Of you in this very city, your worshipping masses crying your name. Was it simply too dull for you, to be revered?”

Aelin rallied herself with every breath, Goldryn still burning bright.

Let her talk—let her gloat and ramble. Every second she had to recover, to regain a fraction of her strength, was a blessing.

Erawan had taken the bait, had let the doubt she’d planted take root in his mind. She had known it was only a matter of time until he sensed Yrene’s power. She only prayed Yrene Towers was ready to meet him.

“I had always hoped that you and I were true equals, in a way,” Maeve went on. “That you, more than Erawan, understood the true nature of power. Of what it means to wield it. What a disappointment that deep down, you wished to be so ordinary.”

The shield had become unbearably heavy. Aelin didn’t dare look behind her to see where Erawan had gone. What he was doing. She’d felt Yrene’s flare of power, had dared hope it might even be a signal, a lure, but nothing since then. It had drawn Erawan away, though. It was enough.

The darkness around Maeve writhed. “The Queen Who Was Promised is no more,” she said, clicking her tongue. “Now you’re nothing but an assassin with a crown. And a commoner’s gift of magic.”

Twin whips of brutal power speared for Aelin’s either side.

Throwing up her shield, swinging Goldryn with her other arm, Aelin deflected, flame flashing.

The shield buckled, but Goldryn burned steady.

But she felt it. The familiar, unending pain. The shadows that could devour.