Kingdom of Ash
Page 129

Dorian freed the knife at his side—the one Sorrel had gifted him—and angled it over her arm. Kaltain had done the same to free it, Manon had said.
But Dorian sent a flicker of his healing magic to her arm. To numb and soothe. She thrashed, but he held firm. Let his magic flare through her. She gasped, arching, and Dorian took advantage of her sudden stillness to plunge in the knife, fast and deft.
Three movements, his healing magic still working through her, soothing her as best he could, and the bloodied shard was in his fingers. Pulsing its hollow, sickening power through him.
The final Wyrdkey.
He dropped her arm, sliding the Wyrdkey into his pocket, and turned for the portal.
But a hand wrapped around his, feeble and shaking.
He whirled, a hand going to Damaris, and found her staring up at him. Tears slid down her face.
“Kill me,” she breathed. Dorian blinked. “You—you pushed it back.” Not the key, but the demon inside her, he realized. Somehow, with that healing magic— “Kill me,” she said, and began sobbing. “Kill me, please.”
Damaris warmed in his hand. Truth. He gaped at her in horror. “I—I can’t.”
She began clawing at the collar around her throat. As if she’d rip it free. “Please,” she sobbed. “Please.”
He did not have time. To find a way to get that collar off. Wasn’t even certain it could come off, without that golden ring Aelin had used on him. “I can’t.”
Despair and agony flooded her eyes. “Please,” was all she said. “Please.”
Damaris remained warm. Truth. The pleading was nothing but truth.
But he had to go—had to go now. He could not take her with him. Knew that thing inside her, however his magic had pushed it back, would emerge again. And scream to Erawan where he was. What he’d stolen.
She wept, hands ripping at her brutalized body. “Please.”
Would it be a mercy—to kill her? Would it be a worse crime to leave her here, with Erawan? Enslaved to him and the Valg demon inside her?
Damaris did not answer his silent questions.
And he let his hand fall away from the blade entirely as he stared down at the weeping girl.
Manon would have ended it. Freed her in the only way left. Chaol would have taken her with him and damned the consequences. Aelin … He didn’t know what she would have done.
Who do you wish to be?
He was not any of them. He was—he was nothing but himself.
A man who had known loss and pain, yes. But a man who had known friendship and joy.
The loss and pain—they had not broken him wholly. Without them, would the moments of happiness be as bright? Without them, would he fight so hard to ensure it did not happen again?
Who do you wish to be?
A king worthy of his crown. A king who would rebuild what had been shattered, both within himself and in his lands.
The girl sobbed and sobbed, and Dorian’s hand drifted toward Damaris’s hilt.
Then a crack sounded. Bone snapping.
One moment, the girl was weeping. The next, her head twisted to the side, eyes unseeing.
Dorian whirled, a cry on his lips as Maeve stepped into the room. “Consider it a wedding gift, Majesty,” she said, her lips curling. “To spare you from that decision.”
And it was the smile on her face, the predatory gait of her steps that had his magic rallying.
Maeve nodded toward his pocket. “Well done.”
Her dark power leapt upon his mind.
He didn’t have the chance to grab for Damaris before he was snared in her dark web.
CHAPTER 78
He was in Erawan’s room, and yet not.
Maeve purred to him, “The key, if you will.”
Dorian’s hand slid into his pocket. To the sliver inside.
“And then we shall retrieve the others,” she continued, and beckoned to the portal through which they had both come. He followed her, pulling the shard from his pocket. “Such things I have planned for us, Majesty. For our union. With the keys, I could keep you eternally young. And with your power, second to none, not even Aelin Galathynius, you will shield us from any who might try to return to this world again.”
They emerged into their room, and a swipe of Maeve’s hand had the portal fading. “Quickly now,” she ordered him. “We depart. The wyvern awaits.”
Dorian halted in the middle of the chamber. “Don’t you think it’s rude to leave without a note?”
Maeve twisted toward him, but too late.
Too damn late, as the claws she’d hooked into his mind became mired in it. As flame, white-hot and sizzling, closed upon the piece of her she’d unwittingly laid bare in trying to trap him.
A trap within a trap. One he had formed from the moment he’d seen her. It had been a simple trick. To shift his mind, as if he were shifting his body. To make her see one thing when she glimpsed inside it.
To make her see what she wished to believe: his jealousy and resentment of Aelin; his desperation; his naive foolishness. He had let his mind become such things, let it lure her in. And every time she had come close, falling for those slips in his power, his magic had studied her own. Just as it had studied Cyrene’s stolen kernel of shape-shifting, so had it learned Maeve’s ability to creep into the mind, seize it.
It had only been a matter of waiting for her to make her move, to let her lay the trap she’d close to seal him to her forever.
“You—” A smile from him, and Maeve stopped being able to speak.
Dorian said into the dark chasm of her mind, I was a slave once. You didn’t really think I’d allow myself to be so once again, did you?
She thrashed, but he held her firm. You will free me, she hissed, and the voice was not that of a beautiful queen, but something vicious and cold. Starved and hateful.
You’re old as the earth, and yet you thought I would truly fall for your offer. He chuckled, letting a wisp of his fire burn her. Maeve shrieked, silent and endless in their minds. I’m surprised you fell for my trap.
I will kill you for this.
Not if I kill you first. His fire became a living thing, wrapping around her pale throat. In the real world, in the place where their bodies existed.
You hurt my friend, he said with lethal calm. It will not be so very difficult to end you for it.
Is this the king you wish to be? Torturing a helpless female?
He laughed again. You are not helpless. And if I could, I would seal you in an iron box for eternity. Dorian glanced to the windows. To the night beyond. He had to go—quickly. But he still said, The king I wish to be is the opposite of what you are. He gave Maeve a smile. And there is only one witch who will be my queen.
A groan rumbled through the mountain beneath them. Morath shuddered.
Maeve’s eyes widened further.
A crack louder than thunder echoed through the stones. The tower swayed.
Dorian’s mouth curved upward. You didn’t think I spent all those hours merely searching, did you?
He wouldn’t allow it to exist another day—that chamber with the collars. Not one more day.
So he’d bring down the entire damn keep atop it.
It had not been hard. Little bits of magic, of coldest ice, that wormed through the cracks of Morath’s foundation. That ate away at the ancient stone. Bit by bit, a web of instability growing with each hall and room he searched. Until the entire eastern half of the keep was balanced upon his will alone.
Until now. Until half a thought had his magic expanding through those cracks, bearing down upon them.
And so Morath began to crumble.
Smiling at Maeve, Dorian pulled out. Pulled away, even as he held her mind.
The tower shuddered again. Maeve’s breath hitched. You can’t leave me like this. He’ll find me, he’ll take me—
As you would have taken me? Dorian shifted into a crow, flapping in the air of the chamber.
Morath groaned again, and above it rose a screech of rage, so piercing and unearthly that his bones quailed.
Tell Erawan, Dorian said, halting on the windowsill, that I did it for Adarlan.
For Sorscha and Kaltain and all those destroyed by it. As Adarlan itself had been destroyed.
But from utter ruin, it might be built again. If not by him, then by others.
Perhaps that would be his first and only gift to Adarlan as its king: a clean slate, should they survive this war.