Page 303 of Kingdom of Ash

And when Lorcan laid her out on the cot, his breathing as uneven as her own, when he paused, letting her decide what to do, where to take this, Elide kissed him again and whispered, “Show me everything.”

So Lorcan did.

There was a gate, and a coffin.

She had chosen neither.

She stood in a place that was not a place, mist wreathing her, and stared at them. Her choices.

A thumping pounded from within the coffin, muffled female screams and pleading rising.

And the gate, the black arch into eternity—blood ran down its sides, seeping into the dark stone. When the gate had finished with the young king, this blood was all that remained.

“You’re no better than me,” Cairn said.

She turned to him, but it was not the warrior who had tormented her standing in the mists.

Twelve of them lurked there, formless and yet present, ancient and cold. As one they spoke. “Liar. Traitor. Coward.”

The blood on the gate soaked into the stone, as if the gate itself devoured even this last piece of him. The one who had gone in her place. The one she’d let go in her place.

The thumping from within the coffin didn’t cease.

“That box will never open,” they said.

She blinked, and she was inside that box—the stone so cold, the air stifling. Blinked, and she was pounding on the lid, screaming and screaming. Blinked, and there were chains on her, a mask clamped over her face—

Aelin awoke to dim braziers and the pine-and-snow scent of her mate wrapped around her. Outside their tent, the wind howled, setting the canvas walls swaying and swelling.

Tired. She was so, so tired.

Aelin stared into the dark for long hours and did not sleep again.

Even with the cover of Oakwald, despite the wider path that Aelin incinerated on either side of the ancient road running up through the continent like a withered vein, she could feel Endovier looming. Could feel the Ruhnn Mountains jutting toward them, a wall against the horizon.

She rode near the front of the company, not saying much as the morning, then the afternoon passed. Rowan stayed by her side, always remaining on her left—as if he might be a shield between her and Endovier—while she sent out plumes of flame that melted ancient trees ahead. Rowan’s wind stifled any smoke from alerting the enemy of their approach.

He’d finished the tattoos the night before. Had taken a small hand mirror to show her what he’d done. The tattoo he’d made for them.

She’d taken one look at the spread wings—a hawk’s wings—across her back and kissed him. Kissed him until his own clothes were gone, and she was astride him, neither bothering with words, or capable of finding them.

Her back had healed by morning, though it remained tender in a few spots along her spine, and in the hours that they’d ridden closer to Endovier, she’d found the invisible weight of the ink to be steadying.

She’d gotten out. She’d survived.

From Endovier—and Maeve.

And now it was upon her to ride like hell for the North, to try to save her people before Morath wiped them away forever. Before Erawan and Maeve arrived to do just that.

But it did not stop the heaviness, that tug toward the west. To look to the place that she had taken so long to escape, even after she’d been physically freed.

After lunch, she found Elide on her right, riding in silence under the trees. Riding taller than she’d seen the girl before. A blush on her cheeks.

Aelin had a feeling she knew precisely why that blush bloomed there, that if she looked behind to where Lorcan rode, she’d find him with a satisfied, purely male smile.

But Elide’s words were anything but those of a lovesick maiden.

“I didn’t think I’d really get to see Terrasen again, once Vernon took me out of Perranth.”

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