Page 320 of Kingdom of Ash

But Aelin pointed at Princess Hasar. “How do you vote?”

Hasar held Aelin’s stare. Considered for a moment. “I vote to do it now.”

Aelin just pointed to Dorian. “You?”

Dorian tensed, the unfinished debate still raging in his face. But he said, “Do it now.”

Rowan closed his eyes. Barely heard the other rulers and their allies as they gave their replies. He walked to the edge of the trees, prepared to run if he began to vomit.

Then Aelin said, “You’re last, Rowan.”

“I vote no. Not now, not ever.”

Her eyes were cold, distant. The way they’d been in Mistward.

“It’s decided, then,” Chaol said quietly. Sadly.

“At dawn, the Lock will be forged and the keys go back into the gate,” Dorian finished.

Rowan just stared and stared at his mate. His reason for breathing.

Elide asked softly, “What is your vote, Aelin?”

Aelin tore her eyes from Rowan, and he felt the absence of that stare like a frozen wind as she said, “It doesn’t matter.”

CHAPTER 92

Aelin didn’t say that asking them to vote hadn’t just been about letting them decide, as free peoples of the world, how to seal its fate. She didn’t say that it had also been a coward’s thing to do. To let someone else decide for her. To choose the road ahead.

They camped that night at Endovier, the salt mines a mere three miles down the road.

Rowan made them set up their royal tent. Their royal bed.

She didn’t eat with the others. Could barely touch the food Rowan laid on the desk. She was still sitting in front of it, roast rabbit now cold, poring over those useless books on Wyrdmarks when Rowan said from across the table, “I do not accept this.”

“I do.” The words were flat, dead.

As she would be, before the sun had fully risen. Aelin shut the ancient tome before her.

Only a few days separated them from Terrasen’s border. Perhaps sheshould have agreed to do this now, but on the condition that it was on Terrasen soil. Terrasen soil, rather than by Endovier.

But every passing day was a risk. A terrible risk.

“You have never accepted anything in your life,” Rowan snarled, shooting to his feet and bracing his hands on the table. “And now you are suddenly willing to do so?”

She swallowed against the ache in her throat. Surveyed the books she’d combed through thrice now to no avail. “What am I supposed to do, Rowan?”

“You damn it all to hell!” He slammed his fist on the table, rattling the dishes. “You say to hell with their plans, their prophecies and fates, and you make your own! You doanythingbut accept this!”

“The people of Erilea have spoken.”

“To hell with that, too,” he growled. “You can start your free worldafterthis war. Let them vote for their own damned kings and queens, if they want to.”

She let out a growl of her own. “I do not want this burden for one second longer. I do not want to choose and learn I made the wrong choice in delaying it.”

“So you would have voted against it, then. You would have gone to Terrasen.”

“Does it matter?” She shot to her feet. “The votes weren’t in my favor anyway. Hearing that I wanted to go to Orynth, to fight one last time, would have only swayed them.”

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