Page 393 of Kingdom of Ash

He saw it in Elide’s face. In every line and age mark. In every white hair. A life lived—together. The pain of parting because of how wonderful it had been.

The darkness beyond thinned. Lorcan dug his hand into the burning wound in his shoulder.

Elide let out a hacking cough that wrecked him, yet he took it into his heart, every bit of it. All that the future might offer.

It did not frighten him.

Again and again, Connall died. Over and over.

Connall lay on the floor of the veranda, his blood leaking toward the misty river far below.

His fate—it should have been his fate.

If he walked over the edge of the veranda, into that roaring river, would anyone mark his passing? If he leaped, his brother in his arms, would the river make a quick end for him?

He didn’t deserve a quick end. He deserved a slow, brutal bloodletting.

His punishment, his just reward for what he’d done to his brother. Thelife he’d allowed to be set in his shadow, had always known remained in his shadow and hadn’t tried, not really, to share the light.

A burn, violent and unflinching, tore through him. As if someone had shoved his shoulder into a furnace.

He deserved it. He welcomed it into his heart.

He hoped it would destroy him.

Pain. The thing she had dreaded inflicting upon them most, had fought and fought to keep them from.

The scent of their burned flesh stung her nostrils, and Maeve let out a low laugh. “Was that a shield, Aelin? Or were you trying to put them out of their misery?”

As he kneeled beside her, Rowan’s hand twitched at whatever horror he beheld, right over the edge of his discarded hatchet.

Pine and snow and the coppery tang of blood blended, rising to meet her as his palm sliced open with the force of that twitch.

“We can keep at this, you know,” Maeve went on. “Until Orynth lies in ruin.”

Rowan stared sightlessly ahead, his palm leaking blood onto the snow.

His fingers curled. Slightly.

A beckoning gesture, too small for Maeve to note. For anyone to note—except for her. Except for the silent language between them, the way their bodies had spoken to each other from the moment they’d met in that dusty alley in Varese.

A small act of defiance. As he had once defied Maeve before her throne in Doranelle.

Fenrys sobbed again, and Maeve glanced toward him.

Aelin slid her hand along Rowan’s hatchet, the pain a whisper through her body.

Her mate trembled, fighting the mind that had invaded his once more.

“What a waste,” Maeve said, turning back to them. “For these finemales to leave my service, only to wind up bound to a queen with hardly more than a few drops of power to her name.”

Aelin closed her hand around Rowan’s.

A door flung open between them. A door back to himself, to her.

His fingers locked around hers.

Aelin let out a low laugh. “I may have no magic,” she said, “but my mate does.”

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