Kingdom of Ash
Page 20

Her breath was still jagged from the training they’d done. Only the two of them—as he’d promised. The hour once a week that he set aside for her.
Her father placed the shield on the stone step below them, its thunk reverberating through her sandaled feet. It weighed nearly as much as she did, yet he carried it as if it were merely an extension of his arm.
“And you,” her father went on, “like the many great women and men of this House, shall use it to defend our kingdom.” Her eyes rose to his face, handsome and unlined. Solemn and kingly. “That is your charge, your sole duty.” He braced a hand on the rim of the shield, tapping it for emphasis. “To defend, Aelin. To protect.”
She had nodded, not understanding. And her father had kissed her brow, as if he half hoped she’d never need to.
Cairn ground her into the glass again.
No sound remained in her for screaming.
“I am growing bored of this,” Maeve said, her silver tray of food forgotten. She leaned forward on her throne, the owl behind her rustling its wings. “Do you believe, Aelin Galathynius, that I will not make the sacrifices necessary to obtain what I seek?”
She had forgotten how to speak. Had not uttered a word here, anyway.
“Allow me to demonstrate,” Maeve said, straightening. Fenrys’s eyes flared with warning.
Maeve waved an ivory hand at Connall, frozen beside her throne. Where he’d remained since he’d brought the queen’s food. “Do it.”
Connall drew one of the knives from his belt. Stepped toward Fenrys.
No.
The word was a cold clang through her. Her lips even formed it as she jerked against the chains, lines of liquid fire shooting along her legs.
Connall advanced another step.
Glass crunched and cracked beneath her. No, no—
Connall stopped above Fenrys, his hand shaking. Fenrys only snarled up at him.
Connall raised his knife into the air between them.
She could not surge to her feet. Could not rise against the chains and glass. Could do nothing, nothing—
Cairn gripped her by the neck, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and ground her again into the blood-drenched shards. A rasping, broken scream cracked from her lips.
Fenrys. Her only tether to life, to this reality—
Connall’s blade glinted. He’d come to help at Mistward. He had defied Maeve then; perhaps he’d do it now, perhaps his hateful words had been a deception—
The blade plunged down.
Not into Fenrys.
But Connall’s own heart.
Fenrys moved—or tried to. Maw gaping in what might have been a scream, he tried and tried to lunge for his brother as Connall crashed to the tiled veranda. As blood began to pool.
The owl on Maeve’s throne flapped its wings once, as if in horror. But Cairn let out a low laugh, the sound rumbling past Aelin’s head.
Real. This was real. It had to be.
Something cold and oily lurched through her. Her hands slackened at her sides. The light left Connall’s dark eyes, his black hair spilled on the floor around him in a dark mirror to the blood leaking away.
Fenrys was shaking. Aelin might have been, too.
“You tainted something that belonged to me, Aelin Galathynius,” Maeve said. “And now it must be purged.”
Fenrys was whining, still attempting to crawl to the brother dead on the ground. Fae could heal; perhaps Connall’s heart could mend—
Connall’s chest rose in a rattling, shallow breath.
It didn’t move again.
Fenrys’s howl cleaved the night.
Cairn let go, and Aelin slumped onto the glass, hands and wrists stinging.
She let herself lie there, half sprawled. Let the crown tumble off her head and skitter across the floor, dragon-glass spraying where it bounced. Bounced, then rolled, curving across the veranda. All the way to the stone railing.
And into the roaring, hateful river below.
“There is no one here to help you.” Maeve’s voice was as empty as the gaps between stars. “And there is no one coming for you.”
Aelin’s fingers curled in the ancient glass.
“Think on it. Think on this night, Aelin.” Maeve snapped her fingers. “We’re done here.”
Cairn’s hands wrapped around the chains.
Her legs buckled, feet splitting open anew. She barely felt it, barely felt it through the rage and the sea of fire down deep, deep below.
But as Cairn hauled her up, his savage hands roving, she struck.
Two blows.
A shard of glass plunged into the side of his neck. He staggered back, cursing as blood sprayed.
Aelin whirled, glass ripping her soles apart, and hurled the shard in her other hand. Right at Maeve.
It missed by a hairsbreadth. Scraping Maeve’s pale cheek before clattering off the throne behind her. The owl perched just above it screeched.
Rough hands gripped her, Cairn shouting, raging shrieks of You little bitch, but she didn’t hear them. Not as a trickle of blood snaked down Maeve’s cheek.
Black blood. As dark as night.
As dark as the eyes that the queen fixed on her, a hand rising to her cheek.
Aelin’s legs slackened, and she didn’t fight the guards heaving her away.
A blink, and the blood flowed red. Its scent as coppery as her own.
A trick of the light. A hallucination, another dream—
Maeve peered at the crimson stain coating her pale fingers.
An onyx wind snapped for Aelin, wrapping around her neck.
It squeezed, and she knew no more.
CHAPTER 9
Cairn tied her to the altar and left her.
Fenrys didn’t enter until long after she’d awoken.
The blood was still leaking from where Cairn had also left the glass in her legs, her feet.
It was not a wolf who slipped into the stone chamber, but a male.
Each of Fenrys’s steps told her enough before she beheld the deadness of his eyes, the pallor of his usually golden skin. He stared at nothing, even as he stopped before where she lay chained.
Beyond words, unsure her throat would even work, Aelin blinked three times. Are you all right?
Two blinks answered. No.
Lingering salt tracks streaked his cheeks.
Her chains rustled as she stretched a shaking finger toward him.
Silently, he slid his hand into hers.
She mouthed the words, even though he likely couldn’t make them out with the slit of the mask’s mouth. I’m sorry.
His grip only tightened.
His gray jacket was unbuttoned at the top. It gaped open wide enough to reveal a hint of the muscled chest beneath. As if he hadn’t bothered to seal it back up in his hurry to leave.
Her stomach turned over. What he’d undoubtedly had to do afterward, with his twin’s body still lying on the veranda tiles behind him …
“I didn’t know he hated me so much,” Fenrys rasped.
Aelin squeezed his hand.
Fenrys closed his eyes, drawing in a shaking breath. “She gave me leave only to take out the glass. When it’s out, I—I go back over there.” He pointed with his chin toward the wall where he usually sat. He made to examine her legs, but she squeezed his hand again, and blinked twice. No.
Let him stay in this form for a while longer, let him mourn as a male and not a wolf. Let him stay in this form so she could hear a friendly voice, feel a gentle touch—
She began to cry.
She couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop it once it started. Hated every tear and shuddering breath, every jerk of her body that sent lightning through her legs and feet.
“I’ll get them out,” he said, and she couldn’t tell him, couldn’t start to explain that it wasn’t the glass, the shredded skin down to the bone.
He wasn’t coming. He wasn’t coming to get her.
She should be glad. Should be relieved. She was relieved. And yet … and yet …
Fenrys drew out a pair of pincers from the tool kit that Cairn had left on a table nearby. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, Aelin turned her head away while the first piece of glass slid from her knee. Flesh and sinew sundered anew.
Salt overpowered the tang of her blood, and she knew he was crying. The scent of their tears filled the tiny room as he worked.