Page 157 of Kingdom of Ash

Yrene paused. “Is there a threat?”

“No, but any pregnancy, especially in the early months, is draining. That’s without the horrors of war, or using your magic to the brink every day.”

For a heartbeat, Yrene let the words settle in. “How long have you known?”

“A few weeks. My magic sensed it on you.”

Yrene swallowed. “I haven’t told Chaol.”

“I’d think if there were ever a time to do so,” the healer said, gesturing to the shuddering keep around them, “it would be now.”

Yrene knew that. She’d been trying to find a way to tell him for a while. But placing that burden on him, that worry for her safety and the safety of the life growing in her … She hadn’t wanted to distract him. To add to the fear she already knew he fought against, just in having her here, fighting beside him.

And for Chaol to know that if he fell, it would not be her life alone that now ended … She couldn’t bring herself to tell him. Not yet.

Perhaps it made her selfish, perhaps stupid, but she couldn’t. Even if the moment she’d realized it in the ship’s bathing chamber, when her cycle still had not come and she had begun counting the days, she had wept with joy. And then realized what, exactly, carrying a child during war would entail. That this war might very well be still raging, or in its final, horrible days, when she gave birth.

Yrene had decided that she’d do everything in her power to make sure it did not end with her child being born into a world of darkness.

“I’ll tell him when the time is right,” Yrene said a shade sharply.

From the open hall doors, shouts rose to “Clear the way! Clear the way for the injured!”

Eretia frowned, but rushed with Yrene to meet the townsfolk bearing an already-bloodied stretcher and the near-dead ruk rider atop it.

The horse beneath Chaol shifted but stayed firm where they stood along the lower battlements of the keep walls. Not as fine a horse as Farasha, but solid enough. A bravehearted beast who had taken well to his brace-equipped saddle, which was all he’d asked for.

Walking, Chaol knew, would not be an option when he dismounted. The strain in his spine told him enough about how hard Yrene was already working, the sun barely risen. But he could fight just as well from horseback—could lead these soldiers all the same.

Ahead, stretching too far for him to count, Erawan’s army launched at the city for another day of all-out assault on the walls.

The ruks soared, dodging arrows and spears, snatching soldiers from the ground and pulling them apart. Atop the birds, the rukhin unleashed their own torrent of fury in careful, clever passes organized by Sartaq and Nesryn.

But after five days, even the mighty ruks were slowing.

And Morath’s siege towers, which they had once easily shattered into scraps of metal and wood, were now making their way to the walls.

“Ready the men for impact,” Chaol ordered the grim-faced captain standing nearby. The captain shouted the command down the lines Chaol had gathered just before dawn.

A few bands of Morath soldiers had managed to get grappling hooks into the walls these past two days, hoisting up siege ladders and droves of soldiers with them. Chaol had cut them down, and though the warriorsof Anielle had been unsure what to do with the demon-infested men who came to slay them, they’d obeyed his barked commands. Quickly staunched the flow of soldiers over the walls, severing the ties that held the ladders to them.

But the siege towers that approached … those would not be so easily dislodged. And neither would the soldiers who crossed the metal bridge that would span the tower and the keep walls.

Behind him, levels up, he knew his father watched. Had already signaled through the lantern system Sartaq had demonstrated how to use that they needed ruks to fly back—to knock the towers down.

But the ruks were making a pass at the far rear of Morath’s army, where the commanders had kept the Valg lines in order. It had been Nesryn’s idea last night: to stop going for the endless front lines and instead take out those who ordered them. Try to sow chaos and disarray.

The first siege tower neared, metal groaning as wyverns—chained to the ground and wings clipped—hauled it closer. Soldiers already lined up behind it in twin columns, ready to storm upward.

Today would hurt.

Chaol’s horse shifted beneath him again, and he patted a gauntlet-covered hand on the stallion’s armored neck. The thud of metal on metal was swallowed by the din. “Patience, friend.”

Far out, past the reach of the archers, the catapult was reloading. They’d launched a boulder only thirty minutes ago, and Chaol had ducked beneath an archway, praying the tower base it struck did not collapse.

Praying Yrene wasn’t near it.

He’d barely seen her during these days of bloodshed and exhaustion. Hadn’t had a chance to tell her what he knew. To tell her what was in his heart. He’d settled for a deep but brief kiss, and then rushed to whatever part of the battlements he’d been needed at.

---