Page 107 of Kingdom of Ash

Elide blurted, scrambling for anything to banish that emptiness, “Was there ever a key? Did you see them using a key?”

Two blinks. As if that meant something.

Rowan and Lorcan yanked again, straining.

But Aelin’s stare fell to the moss, the stones. Narrowed slightly, as if the question had settled. Through the small hole in her mask, Elide could barely see her mouth the words.A key.

“I don’t have it—we don’t have them,” Elide said, sensing the direction of Aelin’s thoughts. “Manon and Dorian do.”

“Quiet,” Lorcan hissed. Not at the level of her voice, but the deadly information Elide revealed.

Aelin again blinked twice with that strange intentionality.

Rowan snarled at the chains, heaving again.

But Aelin stretched out a hand to the moss and traced a shape.

“What is that?” Elide leaned forward as the queen did it again, her hollow face unreadable.

The Fae males paused at her question, and watched Aelin’s finger move through the green.

“A Wyrdmark,” Rowan said softly. “To open.”

Aelin traced it again, mute and still. As if none of them stood there.

“They work on iron?” Gavriel asked, tracking Aelin’s finger.

“She unlocked iron doors in Adarlan’s royal library with that symbol,” Rowan murmured. “But she needed …”

He let his words hang unfinished as he picked up the broken knife Aelin had discarded in the moss nearby and sliced it across his palm.

Kneeling before her, he extended his bloodied hand. “Show me, Fireheart. Show me again.” He tapped her ankle—the shackle there.

Silently, her movements stiff, Aelin leaned forward. She sniffed at the blood pooling in his hand, her nostrils flaring. Her eyes lifted to his, like the scent of his blood posed some question.

“I am your mate,” Rowan whispered, as if it was the answer she sought. And the love in his eyes, in the way his voice broke, his bloodied hand trembling … Elide’s throat tightened.

Aelin only looked at the blood pooling in his cupped palm. Her fingers curled, the gauntlet clicking. As if it were another answer, too.

“She can’t do it with the iron,” Elide said. “If it’s on her hands. It interferes with the magic in the blood.”

A blink from her, in that silent language.

“It’s why she put them on you, isn’t it,” Elide said, her chest straining. “To be sure you couldn’t use your own blood with the Wyrdmarks to free yourself.” As if all the other iron wasn’t already enough.

Another blink, her face still so hollow and cold. Tired.

Rowan’s jaw clenched. But he just dipped his finger into the blood in his palm and offered his hand to her. “Show me, Fireheart,” he said again.

Elide could have sworn he shuddered, and not from fear, as Aelin’s metal-crusted hand closed around his.

In halting, small movements, she guided his finger to trace the symbol onto the shackle around her ankle.

A soft flare of greenish light, then—

The hiss and sigh of the lock filled the clearing. The shackle tumbled to the moss.

Lorcan swore.

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