Page 7 of Kingdom of Ash

Aedion didn’t hear Lysandra’s answer as she let herself be led from the hall. Not as the shifter’s gaze met his own.

She had tried to speak with him these past two months. Many times. Dozens of times. He’d ignored her. And when they’d at last reached Terrasen’s shores, she’d given up.

She had lied to him. Deceived him so thoroughly that any moment between them, any conversation … he didn’t know what had been real. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to know if she’d meant any of it, when he’d so stupidly left everything laid out before her.

He’d believed this was his last hunt. That he’d be able to take his timewith her, show her everything Terrasen had to offer. Show her everything he had to offer, too.

Lying bitch, he’d called her. Screamed the words at her.

He’d mustered enough clarity to be ashamed of it. But the rage remained.

Lysandra’s eyes were wary, as if asking him,Can we not, in this rare moment of happiness, speak as friends?

Aedion only returned to the fire, blocking out her emerald eyes, her exquisite face.

Ren could have her. Even if the thought made him want to shatter something.

Lysandra and Evangeline vanished from the hall, the girl still chirping away.

The weight of Lysandra’s disappointment lingered like a phantom touch.

Ren cleared his throat. “You want to tell me what’s going on between you two?”

Aedion cut him a flat stare that would have sent lesser men running. “Get a map. I want to go over the passes again.”

Ren, to his credit, went in search of one.

Aedion gazed at the fire, so pale without his queen’s spark of magic.

How long would it be until the wind howling outside the castle was replaced by the baying of Erawan’s beasts?

Aedion got his answer at dawn the next day.

Seated at one end of the long table in the Great Hall, Lysandra and Evangeline having a quiet breakfast at the other, Aedion mastered the shake in his fingers as he opened the letter the messenger had delivered moments before. Ren and Murtaugh, seated around him, had refrained from demanding answers while he read. Once. Twice.

Aedion at last set down the letter. Took a long breath as he frownedtoward the watery gray light leaking through the bank of windows high on the wall.

Down the table, the weight of Lysandra’s stare pressed on him. Yet she remained where she was.

“It’s from Kyllian,” Aedion said hoarsely. “Morath’s troops made landfall at the coast—at Eldrys.”

Ren swore. Murtaugh stayed silent. Aedion kept seated, since his knees seemed unlikely to support him. “He destroyed the city. Turned it to rubble without unleashing a single troop.”

Why the dark king had waited this long, Aedion could only guess.

“The witch towers?” Ren asked. Aedion had told him all Manon Blackbeak had revealed on their trek through the Stone Marshes.

“It doesn’t say.” It was doubtful Erawan had wielded the towers, since they were massive enough to require being transported by land, and Aedion’s scouts surely would have noticed a one-hundred-foot tower hauled through their territory. “But the blasts leveled the city.”

“Aelin?” Murtaugh’s voice was a near-whisper.

“Fine,” Aedion lied. “On her way back to the Orynth encampment the day before it happened.” Of course, there was no mention of her whereabouts in Kyllian’s letter, but his top commander had speculated that since there was no body or celebrating enemy, the queen had gotten out.

Murtaugh went boneless in his seat, and Fleetfoot laid her golden head atop his thigh. “Thank Mala for that mercy.”

“Don’t thank her yet.” Aedion shoved the letter into the pocket of the thick cloak he wore against the draft in the hall.Don’t thank her at all, he almost added. “On their way to Eldrys, Morath took out ten of Wendlyn’s warships near Ilium, and sent the rest fleeing back up the Florine, along with our own.”

Murtaugh rubbed his jaw. “Why not give chase—follow them up the river?”

---