Page 327 of Kingdom of Ash

It would kill them to forge it. It’d kill them both. They had come here out of the desperate hope they’dbothleave.

And if they did not halt, if they did not stop this, neither would.

He tried to move his head. Tried to tell her.Stop.

His magic tore out of him, the Lock drinking it down, a force not to be leashed. An insatiable hunger that devoured them.

Stop. He tried to speak. Tried to pull back.

Aelin was sobbing now—sobbing through her teeth.

Soon. Soon now, the Lock would take everything. And that final destruction would be the most brutal and painful of all.

Would the gods make them watch as they claimed Elena’s soul? Would he even have the chance, the ability, to try to help her, as he had promised Gavin? He knew the answer.

Stop.

Stop.

“Stop.”

Dorian heard the words and for a heartbeat did not recognize the speaker.

Until a man appeared from one of those impossible-yet-possible doorways. A man who looked of flesh and blood, as they were, and yet shimmered at his edges.

His father.

CHAPTER 95

His father stood there. The man he had last seen on a bridge in a glass castle, and yet not.

There was kindness on his face. Humanity.

And sorrow. Such terrible, pained sorrow.

Dorian’s magic faltered.

Even Aelin’s magic slowed in surprise, the torrent thinning to a trickle, a steady and agonizing drain.

“Stop,” the man breathed, staggering toward them, glancing at the ribbon of power, blinding and pure, feeding the Lock’s formation.

Aelin said, “This cannot be stopped.”

His father shook his head. “I know. What has begun can’t be halted.”

His father.

“No,” Dorian said. “No, you cannot be here.”

The man only looked down—to Dorian’s side. To where a sword might be. “Did you not summon me?”

Damaris. He had been wearing Damaris within that ring of Wyrdmarks. In their world, their existence, he still did.

The sword, the unnamed god it served, apparently thought he had one truth left to face. One more truth, before his end.

“No,” Dorian repeated. It was all he could think to say as he looked upon him, the man who had done such terrible things to all of them.

His father lifted his hands in supplication. “My boy,” he only breathed.

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