Page 343 of Kingdom of Ash

They passed the first of the ruks, the birds eyeing them, and found Lorcan, Fenrys, Gavriel, and Elide waiting by the edge of the tents.

Chaol and Dorian murmured something about gathering the other royals, and peeled away.

Aelin remained close to Rowan as they approached their court. Fenrys scanned her from head to toe, nostrils flaring as he scented her. He staggered a step closer, horror creeping across his face. Gavriel only paled.

Elide gasped. “You did it, didn’t you?”

But it was Lorcan who answered, stiffening, as if sensing the change that had come over her, “You—you’re not human.”

Rowan snarled in warning. Aelin just looked at them, the people who’d given so much and chosen to follow her here, their doom still remaining. To succeed, and yet to utterly fail.

Erawan remained. His army remained.

And there would be no Fire-Bringer, no Wyrdkeys, no gods to assist them.

“They’re gone?” Elide asked softly.

Aelin nodded. She’d explain later. Explain it to all of them.

God-killer. That’s what she was. A god-killer. She didn’t regret it. Not one bit.

Elide asked Lorcan, “Do you—do you feel any different?” The lack of the gods who’d watched over them.

Lorcan peered up at the trees overhead, as if reading the answer in their entangled branches. As if searching for Hellas there. “No,” he admitted.

“What does it mean,” Gavriel mused, the first rays of sun beginning to gild his golden hair, “for them to be gone? Is there a hell-realm whose throne now sits vacant?”

“It’s too early for that sort of philosophical bullshit,” Fenrys said, and offered Aelin a half smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes. Reproach lay there—not for her choice, but in not telling them. Yet he still tried to make light of it.

Doomed—that lovely, wolfish grin might be in its final days of existence.

They might all be in their last days of existence now. Because of her.

Rowan read it in her eyes, her face. His hand tightened on her waist. “Let’s find the others.”

Standing inside one of the khagan’s fine war tents, Dorian held his hands out before a fire of his own making and winced. “That meeting could have gone better.”

Chaol, seated across the fire, Yrene in his lap, toyed with the end of his wife’s braid. “It really could have.”

Yrene frowned. “I don’t know how she didn’t walk out and leave everyone to rot. I would have.”

“Never underestimate the power of guilt when it comes to Aelin Galathynius,” Dorian said, and sighed. The fire he’d summoned fluttered.

“She sealed the Wyrdgate.” Yrene scowled. “The least they could do is be grateful for it.”

“Oh, I have no doubt they are,” Chaol said, frowning now as well. “But the fact remains that Aelin promised one thing, and did the opposite.”

Indeed. Dorian didn’t quite know what to think of Aelin’s choice. Or that she’d even told them about it—about trading Erawan for Elena. The gods betraying her in turn.

And then Aelin destroying them for it.

“Typical,” Dorian said, trying for humor and failing. Some part of him still felt as if he were in that place-of-places.

Especially when some part of him had been given up.

The magic that had felt bottomless only yesterday now had a very real, very solid stopping point. A mighty gift, yes, but he did not think he’d ever again be capable of shattering glass castles or enemy strongholds.

He hadn’t yet decided whether it was a relief.

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