Page 241 of Kingdom of Ash

Rowan laid a hand on her lower back, and Fenrys stepped closer to her side.

Yrene paused, her hands wreathed in white light. Borte, sword out, lingered nearby.

“Is something wrong?” Yrene asked, the glow in her hands fading. The man sagged, going boneless as the healer’s assault on the demon inside him halted.

Chaol steered his chair closer to her, the wheels equipped for rougher terrain. “Aelin and her companions want a demonstration. If you’re up for it.”

Yrene smoothed back the hair that had escaped her braid. “It’s not really anything that you can see. What happens is beneath the skin—mind to mind.”

“You go up against Valg demons directly,” Fenrys said with no small amount of awe.

“They’re hateful, cowardly wretches.” Yrene crossed her arms andscowled at the man tied to the cot. “Utterly pathetic,” she spat toward him—the demon inside him.

The man hissed. Yrene only smiled. The man—the demon—whimpered.

Aelin blinked, unsure whether to laugh or fall to her knees. “Show me. Do whatever it is you do, but show me.”

So the healer did. Hands shining, she laid them atop the man’s chest. He screamed and screamed and screamed.

Yrene panted, brows scrunching. For long minutes, the shrieking continued.

Borte said, “It’s not very exciting with them tied down, is it?”

Sartaq threw her an exasperated glare. As if this were a conversation they’d already had many times. “You can be on mucking duty, if you’d prefer.”

Borte rolled her eyes, but turned to Aelin, looking her over with a frankness that Aelin could only appreciate. “Any other missions for me?”

Aelin grinned. “Not yet. Soon, perhaps.”

Borte grinned right back. “Please.Pleasespare me from the tedium of this.”

Aelin glanced toward the healer radiant with light. “How many does this make today?”

“Ten,” Borte grumbled.

Aelin asked Chaol, “And how many can she do every day?”

“Fifteen, at most. Some require more energy than others to expel, so those days it’s less.”

Aelin tried to do the math on how many infested soldiers were left on the field. “And once they’re cured? What do you do with them then?”

“We interrogate them,” Chaol said, frowning. “See what their stories are, how they wound up captured. Where their allegiances lie.”

“And you believe them?” Fenrys asked.

Hasar patted the hilt of her fine sword. “Our interrogators are skilled at retrieving the truth.”

Aelin ignored the roiling in her stomach.

“So you free them,” Gavriel said, silent for minutes now, “and then torture them?”

“This is war,” Hasar said simply. “We leave them able to function. But we will not risk sparing their lives only to find a new army at our backs.”

“Some willingly joined Erawan,” Chaol said quietly. “Some willingly took the ring. Yrene can tell, when she’s in there, who wanted it or not. She doesn’t bother to save those who gladly knelt. So most of those she does save were either fools or taken forcibly.”

“Some want to fight for us,” Sartaq said. “Those who pass our vetting process are allowed to begin training with the foot soldiers. Not many of them, but a few.”

Fine. Fine, and fine.

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