Page 49 of Kingdom of Ash

The words meant nothing. He was nothing. Would always be nothing.

Over and over, she pounded against the lid. Over and over, that song of fire and darkness flared through her, out of her, into the world.

You do not yield.

Something hissed and crackled nearby, and smoke poured through the lid.

But Aelin kept striking. Kept striking until the smoke choked her, until its sweet scent dragged her under and away.

And when she awoke chained on the altar, she beheld what she had done to the iron coffin.

The top of the lid had been warped. A great hump now protruded, the metal stretched thin.

As if it had come so very close to breaking entirely.

On a dark hilltop overlooking a sleeping kingdom, Rowan froze.

The others were already halfway down the hill, leading the horses along the dried slope that would take them over Akkadia’s border and onto the arid plains below.

His hand dropped from the stallion’s reins.

He had to have imagined it.

He scanned the starry sky, the slumbering lands beyond, the Lord of the North above.

It hit him a heartbeat later. Erupted around him androared.

Over and over and over, as if it were a hammer against an anvil.

The others whirled to him.

That raging, fiery song charged closer. Through him.

Down the mating bond. Down into his very soul.

A bellow of fury and defiance.

From down the hill, Lorcan rasped, “Rowan.”

It was impossible, utterly impossible, and yet—

“North,” Gavriel said, turning his bay gelding. “The surge came from the North.”

From Doranelle.

A beacon in the night. Power rippling into the world, as it had done in Skull’s Bay.

It filled him with sound, with fire and light. As if it screamed, again and again,I am alive, I am alive, I am alive.

And then silence. Like it had been cut off.

Extinguished.

He refused to think of why. The mating bond remained. Stretched taut, but it remained.

So he sent the words along it, with as much hope and fury and unrelenting love as he had felt from her.I will find you.

There was no answer. Nothing but humming darkness and the Lord of the North glistening above, pointing the way north. To her.

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