Kingdom of Ash
Page 56

“Some got away,” Edda announced, the Shadow’s face grim. “But most didn’t.”
“They wanted survivors,” Bronwen said, loud enough for all to hear. “To sow fear.”
Manon studied the shattered trees, the ancient oaks as broken as the bodies on the forest floor. Proof of who, exactly, had been responsible for the massacre.
She had done that, too.
Bronwen said, voice cold and low, “What mortal band could ever hope to survive an attack by one of the Ironteeth legions? Especially when that aerial legion was trained by such a skilled Wing Leader.”
“Choose your words carefully,” Asterin warned.
But Una, the pretty, brown-haired Crochan and another of Manon’s cousins, gripped her silver-bound broom and said, “You trained them. All of you—you trained the witches who did this.” Una pointed to the decaying bodies, the torn throats, the killing that had not stopped at quick deaths. Not at all. “And you expect us to forget that?”
Silence fell. Even from Asterin. Glennis said nothing.
Manon’s hands turned frail. Foreign. The iron within them brittle.
She had done this. The soldiers in the wide clearing were nothing and no one to her, most were mere mortals, and yet … A woman lay near Manon’s boots, her torso split clean open from navel to sternum. Her brown eyes gazed unseeingly at the shattered canopy overhead, her mouth still gaping in pain.
“I can burn them,” Dorian offered no one in particular.
Who had she been, the warrior before her? Who had she fought for? Not kingdoms or rulers, but who in her life had been worth defending?
“We should alert the King and Queen of Eyllwe,” Bronwen was saying. “Warn their princes, too. Tell them to lie low. Erawan is beyond taking prisoners.”
Manon stared and stared at the slaughtered warrior. What she had once delighted in. What she had once flaunted before the world, and done with not a shred of regret. Only with the wish that her grandmother would approve. That the Ironteeth would approve.
This was what they would be remembered for.
What she would be remembered for.
Erawan’s crowned rider. His Wing Leader.
“Don’t burn them,” Manon said.
Silence fell in the clearing.
But Manon knelt on the festering earth, unsheathed her iron nails, and began digging.
Yanking off her gloves, Asterin lowered herself to the ground nearby. Then Sorrel and Vesta. Then the rest of the Thirteen.
The cold, firm earth did not yield easily. It tore at Manon’s fingers, root and rock burning as they scraped at her skin.
Across the clearing, Karsyn, the witch whose broom Manon had returned, made to kneel as well. But Manon held up a filthy, already bleeding hand. The witch halted. “Only the Thirteen,” Manon said. “We will bury them.” The Crochans stared at her, and Manon ripped away the ancient soil. “We’ll bury all of them.”
For hours, Manon and the Thirteen knelt in the blood-soaked earth and dug the grave.
Dorian assisted Bronwen and Glennis in drafting messages to the King and Queen of Eyllwe and their two sons. Warning them of the danger—and nothing more. No request for aid, for armies.
Just before dawn, the Crochan messengers returned. Their southern kin who had summoned them here had arrived right after the massacre, too late to save the human war band or the few witches they’d sent ahead. They had flown right to Banjali, where their four covens now aided the King and Queen of Eyllwe.
Not that the Eyllwe royals seemed to need it. No, the other Crochan messenger had returned with a message from the king himself: the loss of the war band was grave indeed, but Eyllwe was not broken by it. Their rebels and gathered forces, while small, were still resisting Morath, still unbroken. They would continue to hold the line in the South, and would do so until their final breaths.
Dorian gleaned the unwritten words, though: they did not have a single soldier to spare for Terrasen. After what he’d seen, Dorian was now inclined to agree.
Eyllwe had given too much, for too long. It was time for the rest of them to shoulder the burden.
Dorian wondered if Manon noted the Crochans who watched her. Not with hatred, but some small degree of respect. Together, the Thirteen dug a massive grave, not even asking their wyverns to haul away the dirt.
The sun rose, then began its descent. Slowly, the grave took form. Large enough for every fallen warrior.
He had to go to Morath. Soon.
Before this occurred again. Before one more mass grave was dug. He couldn’t endure the thought of it, worse than the thought of another collar going around his neck.
Night was full overhead by the time Dorian managed to slip away. By the time he found an empty clearing, drew the marks, and plunged Damaris into earth shining with his own blood.
His summons was answered quickly this time.
Yet it was not Gavin who emerged, shimmering, from the night air.
Dorian’s magic flared, rallying to strike, as the figure took form.
As Kaltain Rompier, clad in an onyx gown and dark hair unbound, smiled sadly at him.
Every word vanished from Dorian’s tongue.
But his magic remained swirling about him, invisible hands eager to crack bone.
Not that there was any life to steal from Kaltain Rompier.
Yet she still held up a slender hand, her gauzy dress and silken hair floating on a phantom wind. “I mean you no harm.”
“I didn’t summon you.” It was the only thing he could think to say.
Kaltain’s dark eyes slid toward Damaris, jutting from the circle of Wyrdmarks. “Didn’t you?”
He didn’t want to contemplate why or how the sword had somehow called her, not Gavin. Whether the sword had a will of its own, or whether the god who’d blessed it had orchestrated this meeting. For whatever truth it deemed necessary to show him.
“I thought you were destroyed at Morath,” he rasped.
“I was.” Her face was softer than he’d ever seen it in life. “In so many ways, I was.”
Manon and Elide had told him what she’d endured. What she’d done for them. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever for?”
Then the words tumbled out, spilling from where he’d kept them since the Stone Marshes of Eyllwe. “For not seeing as I should have. For not knowing where they took you. For not helping you when I had the chance.”
“Did you have the chance?” The question was calm, yet he could have sworn an edge sharpened in her voice.
He opened his mouth to deny it. But he made himself look back—at who he’d been long before the collar, before Sorscha. “I knew you were in the castle dungeon. I was content to let you rot there. And then Perrington—Erawan, I mean, took you to Morath, and I didn’t bother to wonder about it.” Shame sluiced through him. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
A Crown Prince who had not served his kingdom or his people, not really. Gavin had been right.
Kaltain’s edges shimmered. “I was not wholly blameless, you know.”
“What happened to you in Morath is in no way your fault.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she agreed, a shadow passing over her face. “But I made choices of my own in going to Rifthold last autumn, in pursuing my ambition for you—your crown. I regret some of them.”
His gaze slid to her bare forearm, to the scar that lingered even in death. “You saved my friends,” he said, and knelt before her. “You gave up everything to save them, and get the Wyrdkey away from Erawan.” He would do the same, if he could survive Morath’s horrors. “I am in your debt.”
Kaltain stared down at where he knelt. “I never had friends of my own. Not as you have. I always envied you for it. You, and Aelin.”
He lifted his head. “You know who she is?”
A hint of a smile. “Death has its advantages.”
He couldn’t stop his next question. “Is—is it better there? Are you at peace?”
“I am not allowed to say,” Kaltain replied softly, her eyes shining with understanding. “And I am not allowed to say who dwells here with me.”
He nodded, fighting past the tightness in his chest, the disappointment. But he cocked his head to the side. “Who forbids you from doing so?” If the twelve gods of this land were stranded in Erilea, they certainly didn’t rule over other realms.