Page 272 of Kingdom of Ash

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. Toshifthis 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.

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