Page 276 of Kingdom of Ash

“It’s up to you whether you want the healing at all. I only want you to have a better idea of the road ahead.” She smiled at the lady. “It’s up to you to decide how you wish to face it.”

Yrene tapped Elide’s foot, and the lady lowered it back to the floor before putting her sock back on, then her boot. Efficient, easy motions.

Yrene sipped from her tea, cool enough now to drink. The fresh verve of the peppermint zapped through her, clearing her mind and calming her stomach.

Elide said, “I don’t know if I can face that pain again.”

Yrene nodded. “With that sort of injury, it would require facing a great many things inside yourself.” She smiled toward the wagon entrance. “My husband and I just went through one such journey together.”

“Was it hard?”

“Incredibly. But he did it. We did it.”

Elide considered, then shrugged. “We’d have to survive this war first, I suppose. If we live … then we can talk about it.”

“Fair enough.”

Elide frowned at the wagon’s ceiling. “I wonder what they’ve learned up there.”

Up in the Omega and Northern Fang, where Chaol and the others were now meeting with the breeders and wranglers who had been left behind.

Yrene didn’t want to know more than that, and Chaol had not offered any other insight into how they’d be extracting information from the men.

“Hopefully something worth our visit to this awful place,” Yrene muttered, then drained the rest of her tea. The sooner they left, the better.

It was as if the gods were laughing at her—at them both. A knock on the wagon doors had Elide limping toward them, just before Borte appeared. Her face uncharacteristically solemn.

Yrene braced herself, but it was Elide whom the ruk rider addressed.

“You’re to come with me,” Borte said breathlessly. Behind the girl, Arcas waited, a sparrow perched on the saddle. Falkan Ennar. Not a companion, Yrene realized, but an additional guard.

Elide asked, “What’s wrong?”

Borte shifted, with impatience or nerves, Yrene couldn’t tell. “They found someone in the mountain. They want you up there—to decide what to do with him.”

Elide had gone still. Utterly still.

Yrene asked, “Who?”

Borte’s mouth tightened. “Her uncle.”

Elide wondered if the rukhin would shun her forever if she vomited all over Arcas. Indeed, during the swift, steep flight up to the bridge spanning the Omega and Northern Fang, it was all she could do not to hurl the contents of her stomach all over the bird’s feathers.

“They found him hiding in the Northern Fang,” Borte had said before she’d hauled Elide into the saddle, Falkan already flying up the sheer face of the pass. “Trying to pretend to be a wyvern trainer. But one of the other trainers sold him out. Queen Aelin called for you as soon as they had him secure. Your uncle, not the trainer, I mean.”

Elide hadn’t been able to respond. Had only nodded.

Vernon was here. At the Gap. Not in Morath with his master, buthere.

Gavriel and Fenrys were waiting when Arcas landed in the cavernous opening into the Northern Fang. The rough-hewn rock loomed like a gaping maw, the reek of what lay within making her stomach turn again. Like rotting meat and worse. Valg, undoubtedly, but also a smell of hate and cruelty and tight, airless corridors.

The two Fae males silently fell into step beside her as they entered. No sign of Lorcan, or Aelin. Or her uncle.

Men lay dead in some of the dim hallways that Fenrys and Gavriel led her through, killed by the rukhin when they’d swept in. None of them leaked black blood, but they still had that reek to them. Like this place had infected their very souls.

“They’re just up here,” Gavriel said quietly—gently.

Elide’s hands began shaking, and Fenrys placed one of his own on her shoulder. “He’s well restrained.”

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