Kingdom of Ash
Page 153

Blank. Unseeing. Frozen.
Gone.
Here, but gone. As if their bodies were shells.
“What happened?” Chaol breathed.
Aelin’s hand fell from where it had been clapped onto her arm and dangled limply at her side. Revealing that open wound. The black slivers of rock shoved inside it.
Something in Rowan’s chest, intricate and essential, began to strain. Began to go taut.
The mating bond.
Rowan lurched forward a step, a hand on his chest.
No. The mating bond writhed, as if in agony, as if in terror. He halted, Aelin’s name on his lips.
Rowan fell to his knees as the three Wyrdkeys within Aelin’s arm dissolved into her blood.
Like dew in the sun.
CHAPTER 94
As it had been once before, so it was again.
The beginning and end and eternity, a torrent of light, of life that flowed between them, two halves of a cleaved bloodline.
Mist swirled, veiling the solid ground beneath. An illusion, perhaps—for their minds to bear where they now stood. A place that was not a place, in a chamber of many doors. More doors than they could ever hope to count. Some made of air, some of glass, some of flame and gold and light.
A new world beyond each; a new world beckoning.
But they remained there, in the crossroads of all things.
In bodies that were not their bodies, they stood amid all those doorways, their power pouring out, pooling before them. Blending and merging, a ball of light, of creation, hovering in midair.
Every ember that flowed from them into the growing sphere before them, into the Lock taking form, would not return. It would not replenish.
A well running dry. Forever.
More and more and more, ripping from them with each breath. Creation and destruction.
The sphere swirled, its edges warping, shrinking. Forming into the shape they’d chosen, a thing of gold and silver. The Lock that would seal all these infinite doors forever.
Still they gave over their power, still the forming of the Lock demanded more.
And it began to hurt.
She was Aelin and yet she was not.
She was Aelin and yet she was infinite; she was all worlds, she was—
She was Aelin.
She was Aelin.
And by letting the keys into her, they had entered the true Wyrdgate. A step, or a thought, or a wish would allow them to access any world they desired. Any possibility.
An archway lingered behind them. An archway that would smell of pine and snow.
Slowly, the Lock formed, light turning to metal—to gold and silver.
Dorian was panting, his jaw stretched tight, as they gave and gave and gave their power toward it. Never to see it again.
It was agony. Agony like nothing she had known.
She was Aelin. She was Aelin and not the things that she’d set in her arm, not this place that existed beyond reason. She was Aelin; she was Aelin; and she had come here to do something, had come here promising to do something—
She fought her rising scream as her power rippled away, like peeling skin from her bones. Precisely how Cairn had done it, delighted in it. She had outlasted him, though. Had escaped Maeve’s clutches. She had outlasted them both. To do this. To come here.
But she had been wrong.
She couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t stomach it, this loss and pain and growing madness as a new truth became clear:
They would not leave this place. Would have nothing left anyway. They would dissolve, mist to float into the fog around them.
It was agony like Dorian had never known. His very self, unraveled thread by thread.
The shape of the Lock, Elena had told Aelin, did not matter. It could have been a bird or a sword or a flower for all this place, this gate, cared. But their minds, what was left of them as they frayed, chose the shape they knew, the one that made the most sense. The Eye of Elena, born again—the Lock once more.
Aelin began screaming. Screaming and screaming.
His magic ripped away from that sacred, perfect place inside him.
It would kill them to forge it. It’d kill them both. They had come here out of the desperate hope they’d both leave.
And if they did not halt, if they did not stop this, neither would.
He tried to move his head. Tried to tell her. Stop.
His magic tore out of him, the Lock drinking it down, a force not to be leashed. An insatiable hunger that devoured them.
Stop. He tried to speak. Tried to pull back.
Aelin was sobbing now—sobbing through her teeth.
Soon. Soon now, the Lock would take everything. And that final destruction would be the most brutal and painful of all.
Would the gods make them watch as they claimed Elena’s soul? Would he even have the chance, the ability, to try to help her, as he had promised Gavin? He knew the answer.
Stop.
Stop.
“Stop.”
Dorian heard the words and for a heartbeat did not recognize the speaker.
Until a man appeared from one of those impossible-yet-possible doorways. A man who looked of flesh and blood, as they were, and yet shimmered at his edges.
His father.
CHAPTER 95
His father stood there. The man he had last seen on a bridge in a glass castle, and yet not.
There was kindness on his face. Humanity.
And sorrow. Such terrible, pained sorrow.
Dorian’s magic faltered.
Even Aelin’s magic slowed in surprise, the torrent thinning to a trickle, a steady and agonizing drain.
“Stop,” the man breathed, staggering toward them, glancing at the ribbon of power, blinding and pure, feeding the Lock’s formation.
Aelin said, “This cannot be stopped.”
His father shook his head. “I know. What has begun can’t be halted.”
His father.
“No,” Dorian said. “No, you cannot be here.”
The man only looked down—to Dorian’s side. To where a sword might be. “Did you not summon me?”
Damaris. He had been wearing Damaris within that ring of Wyrdmarks. In their world, their existence, he still did.
The sword, the unnamed god it served, apparently thought he had one truth left to face. One more truth, before his end.
“No,” Dorian repeated. It was all he could think to say as he looked upon him, the man who had done such terrible things to all of them.
His father lifted his hands in supplication. “My boy,” he only breathed.
Dorian had nothing to say to him. Hated that this man was here, at the end and beginning.
Yet his father looked to Aelin. “Let me do this. Let me finish this.”
“What?” The word snapped from Dorian.
“You were not chosen,” Aelin said, though the coldness in her voice faltered.
“Nameless is my price,” the king said.
Aelin went still.
“Nameless is my price,” his father repeated. The warning of an ancient witch, the damning words written on the back of the Amulet of Orynth. “For the bastard-born mark you bear, you are Nameless, yet am I not so as well?” He glanced between them, his eyes wide. “What is my name?”
“This is ridiculous,” Dorian said through his teeth. “Your name is—”
But where there should have been a name, only an empty hole existed.
“You …,” Aelin breathed. “Your name is … How is it that you don’t have one, that we don’t know it?”
Dorian’s rage slipped. And the agony of having his magic, his soul, shredded from him became secondary as his father said, “Erawan took it. Wiped it from history, from memory. An ancient, terrible spell, so powerful it could only be used once. All so I might be his most faithful servant. Even I do not know my name, not anymore. I lost it.”
“Nameless is my price,” Aelin murmured.
Dorian looked then. At the man who had been his father. Truly looked at him.
“My boy,” his father whispered again. And it was love—love and pride and sorrow that shone in his face.
His father who had been possessed as he had, who had tried to save them in his own way and failed. His father, who had everything taken from him, but had never bowed to Erawan—not entirely.
“I want to hate you,” Dorian said, his voice breaking.
“I know,” his father said.
“You destroyed everything.” He couldn’t stop his tears. Aelin’s hand only tightened in his.