Page 38 of Kingdom of Ash

She could not surge to her feet. Could not rise against the chains and glass. Could do nothing,nothing—

Cairn gripped her by the neck, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and ground her again into the blood-drenched shards. A rasping, broken scream cracked from her lips.

Fenrys. Her only tether to life, to this reality—

Connall’s blade glinted. He’d come to help at Mistward. He had defied Maeve then; perhaps he’d do it now, perhaps his hateful words had been a deception—

The blade plunged down.

Not into Fenrys.

But Connall’s own heart.

Fenrys moved—or tried to. Maw gaping in what might have been a scream, he tried and tried to lunge for his brother as Connall crashed to the tiled veranda. As blood began to pool.

The owl on Maeve’s throne flapped its wings once, as if in horror. But Cairn let out a low laugh, the sound rumbling past Aelin’s head.

Real. This was real. It had to be.

Something cold and oily lurched through her. Her hands slackened at her sides. The light left Connall’s dark eyes, his black hair spilled on the floor around him in a dark mirror to the blood leaking away.

Fenrys was shaking. Aelin might have been, too.

“You tainted something that belonged to me, Aelin Galathynius,” Maeve said. “And now it must be purged.”

Fenrys was whining, still attempting to crawl to the brother dead on the ground. Fae could heal; perhaps Connall’s heart could mend—

Connall’s chest rose in a rattling, shallow breath.

It didn’t move again.

Fenrys’s howl cleaved the night.

Cairn let go, and Aelin slumped onto the glass, hands and wrists stinging.

She let herself lie there, half sprawled. Let the crown tumble off her head and skitter across the floor, dragon-glass spraying where it bounced. Bounced, then rolled, curving across the veranda. All the way to the stone railing.

And into the roaring, hateful river below.

“There is no one here to help you.” Maeve’s voice was as empty as the gaps between stars. “And there is no one coming for you.”

Aelin’s fingers curled in the ancient glass.

“Think on it. Think on this night, Aelin.” Maeve snapped her fingers. “We’re done here.”

Cairn’s hands wrapped around the chains.

Her legs buckled, feet splitting open anew. She barely felt it, barely felt it through the rage and the sea of fire down deep, deep below.

But as Cairn hauled her up, his savage hands roving, she struck.

Two blows.

A shard of glass plunged into the side of his neck. He staggered back, cursing as blood sprayed.

Aelin whirled, glass ripping her soles apart, and hurled the shard in her other hand. Right at Maeve.

It missed by a hairsbreadth. Scraping Maeve’s pale cheek before clattering off the throne behind her. The owl perched just above it screeched.

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