Page 258 of Kingdom of Ash

Erawan’s golden eyes guttered. “They would keep me from my brothers,” he said. “I will let nothing stand in the way of my reunion with them.”

“Surely there might be another way to reunite you. Without such a great war.”

Erawan’s stare swept over him, and Dorian held still, willing his scent to remain unremarkable, the shift to keep its form. “Where would the fun be in that?” the Valg king asked, and turned back toward the hall.

“Did the former King of Adarlan ask such questions?” The words broke from him.

Erawan again paused. “He was not so faithful a servant as you might believe. And look what it cost him.”

“He fought you.” Not quite a question.

“He never bowed. Not completely.” Dorian was stunned enough thathe opened his mouth. But Erawan began walking again and said without looking back, “You ask many questions, Vernon. A great many questions. I find them tiresome.”

Dorian bowed, even with Erawan’s back to him. But the Valg king continued on, opening the tower door to reveal a lightless interior, and shut it behind him.

A clock chimed midnight, off-kilter and odious, and Dorian strode back down the hall, finding another route to Maeve’s chambers. A quick shift in a shadowed alcove had him scuttling along the floor again, his mouse’s eyes seeing well enough in the dark.

Only embers remained in the fireplace when he slid beneath the door.

In the dark, Maeve said from the bed, “You are a fool.”

Dorian shifted again, back into his own body. “For what?”

“I know where you went. Who you sought.” Her voice slithered through the darkness. “You are a fool.” When he didn’t reply, she asked, “Did you plan to kill him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You couldn’t face him and live.” Casual, stark words. Dorian didn’t need to touch Damaris to know they were true. “He would have put another collar around your throat.”

“I know.” Perhaps he should have learned where the Valg king kept them and destroyed the cache.

“This alliance shall not work if you are sneaking off and acting like a reckless boy,” Maeve hissed.

“I know,” he repeated, the words hollow.

Maeve sighed when he didn’t say more. “Did you at least find what you were seeking?”

Dorian lay down before the fire, curling an arm beneath his head. “No.”

CHAPTER 72

From a distance, the Ferian Gap did not look like the outpost for a good number of Morath’s aerial legion.

Nor did it look, Nesryn decided, like it had been breeding wyverns for years.

She supposed that the lack of any obvious signs of a Valg king’s presence was part of why it had remained secret for so long.

Sailing closer to the towering twin peaks that flanked either side—the Northern Fang on one, the Omega on the other—and separated the White Fangs from the Ruhnn Mountains, Nesryn could barely make out the structures built into either one. Like the Eridun aerie, and yet not at all. The Eridun’s mountain home was full of motion and life. What had been built in the Gap, connected by a stone bridge near its top, was silent. Cold and bleak.

Snow half blinded Nesryn, but Salkhi swept toward the peaks, staying high. Borte and Arcas came in from the north, little more than dark shadows amid the whipping white.

Far behind them, out in the valley plain beyond the Gap, one half of their army waited, the ruks with them. Waited for Nesryn and Borte, along with the other scouts who had gone out, to report back that the time was ripe to attack. They’d made the river crossing under cover of darkness last night, and those the ruks could not carry had been brought over on boats.

A precarious position to be in, on that plain before the Gap. The Avery forked at their backs, effectively hemming them in. Much of it had been frozen, but not nearly thick enough to risk crossing on foot. Should this battle go poorly, there would be nowhere to run.

Nesryn nudged Salkhi, coming around the Northern Fang from the southern side. Far below, the whirling snows cleared enough to reveal what seemed to be a back gate into the mountain. No sign of sentries or any wyverns.

Perhaps the weather had driven them all inside.

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