Page 394 of Kingdom of Ash

Waiting to strike from the other side of that dark doorway, Rowan hauled Aelin to her feet as their powers, their souls, fused.

The force of Rowan’s magic hit her, ancient and raging. Ice and wind turned to searing flame.

Her heart sang, roaring, at the power that flowed from Rowan and into her. At her side, her mate held fast. Unbreakable.

Rowan smiled—fierce and feral and wicked. A crown of flame, twin to her own, appeared atop his head.

As one, they looked to Maeve.

Maeve hissed, her dark power massing again. “Rowan Whitethorn does not have the brute power that you once did.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t,” Lorcan said from a step behind them, his eyes clear and free, “but together, we do.” He glanced to Aelin, a hand rising to the angry red burn marring his chest.

“And beyond us,” Aelin said, sketching a mark through the snow with the blood she’d spilled—her blood, and Rowan’s—“I think they have plenty, too.”

Light flared at their feet, and Maeve’s power surged—but too late.

The portal opened. Exactly as the Wyrdmarks in the books Chaol and Yrene had brought from the southern continent had promised.

Precisely to where Aelin had intended. Where she had glimpsed as she’d tumbled back through the Wyrdgate. Where she and Rowan had ventured days ago, testing this very portal.

The forest glen was silvered in the moonlight, the snows thick. Strange, old trees—older than even those in Oakwald. Trees that could only be found north of Terrasen, in the hinterlands beyond.

But it was not the trees that made Maeve halt. No, it was the teeming mass of people, their armor and weapons glinting beneath their heavy furs. Amongst them, large as horses, wolves growled. Wolves with riders.

Down the battlefield, portal after portal opened. Right where Rowan and the cadre had drawn them in their own blood as they fought. All to be opened upon this spell. This command. And beyond each portal, that teeming mass of people could be seen. The army.

“I heard you planned to come here, you see,” Aelin said to Maeve, Rowan’s power a symphony in her blood. “Heard you planned to bring thekharankui-princesses with you.” She smiled. “So I thought to bring some friends of my own.”

The first of the figures beyond the portal emerged, riding a great silver wolf. And even with the furs over her heavy armor, the female’s arched ears could be seen.

“The Fae who dwelled in Terrasen were not wiped out so thoroughly,” Aelin said. Lorcan began grinning. “They found a new home—with the Wolf Tribe.” For those were humans also riding those wolves. As all the myths had claimed. “And did you know that while many of them came here with Brannon, there was an entire clan of Fae who arrived from the southern continent? Fleeing you, I think. All of them, actually, don’t really like you, I’m sorry to say.”

More and more Fae and wolf-riders stepped toward the portal, weapons out. Beyond them, stretching into the distance, their host flowed.

Maeve backed away a step. Just one.

“But you know who they hate even more?” Aelin pointed with Goldryn toward the battlefield. “Those spiders. Nesryn Faliq told me all about how their ancestors battled them in the southern continent. How they fledyouwhen you tried to keep their healers chained, and then wound up having to battle your little friends. And when they came to Terrasen, they still remembered. Some of the truth was lost, grew muddled, but they remembered. They taught their offspring. Trained them.”

The Fae and their wolves beyond the portals now fixed their sights on thekharankuihybrids at last emerging onto the plain.

“I told them I’d deal with you myself,” Aelin said, and Rowan chuckled, “but the spiders … Oh, the spiders are all theirs. I think they’ve been waiting a while for it, actually. The Ironteeth witches, too. Apparently, the Yellowlegs weren’t very kind to those trapped in their animal forms these ten years.”

Aelin let out a flare of light. The only signal she needed to give.

For a people who had asked for only one thing when Aelin had begged them to fight, to join this last battle: to return home. To return to Orynth after a decade of hiding.

Her flame danced over the battlefield. And the lost Fae of Terrasen, the fabled Wolf Tribe who had welcomed and protected them at their sides, charged through the portals. Right into Morath’s unsuspecting ranks.

Maeve had gone deathly pale. Paled further as magic sparked and surged and those spider-hybrids went down, their shrieks of surprise silenced under Asterion blades.

Yet Rowan’s hand tightened on Aelin’s, and she peered up at her mate. But his eyes were on Fenrys. On the dark power Maeve still had wrapped around him.

The male remained sprawled in the snow, his tears silent and unending. His face a bloodied ruin.

Through the roar of Rowan’s power, Aelin felt for the threads leading from her heart, her soul.

Look at me. Her silent command echoed down the blood oath—to Fenrys.

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