Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass #7) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,241

unchaining you.”

Vernon went still.

Aelin shrugged. “I said none of us would kill you. It’s not our fault if you can’t get out of those chains, is it?”

The blood drained from Vernon’s face.

Aelin said quietly, “You chained and locked my friend in a tower for ten years. Let’s see how you enjoy the experience.” She let her smile turn vicious. “Though, once the trainers here are dealt with, I don’t think there will be anyone left to feed you. Or bring you water. Or even hear your screaming. So I doubt you’ll make it to ten years before the end claims you, but two days? Three? I can accept that, I think.”

“Please,” Vernon said as Gavriel reached for the door handle—to seal the man inside.

“Marion saved my life,” Aelin said, holding the man’s gaze. “And you gleefully bowed to the man who killed her. Perhaps even told the King of Adarlan where to find us. All of us.”

“Please!” Vernon shrieked.

“You should have conserved that tankard of ale,” was all Aelin said before she nodded to Gavriel.

Vernon began screaming as the door shut. And Aelin turned the key.

Silence filled the hall.

Aelin met Elide’s wide-eyed stare, Lorcan savagely satisfied at her side.

“It won’t be quick this way,” Aelin said, extending the key to Elide. The rest of the question hung there.

Vernon kept screaming, pleading for them to come back, to unchain him.

Elide studied the sealed door. The desperate man behind it.

The Lady of Perranth took the outstretched key. Pocketed it. “We should find a better way to seal that room.”

“Our worst fears have been confirmed,” Aelin said to Rowan, leaning over a railing of one of the Northern Fang’s balconies, peering to the army gathered on the Gap floor. To where their companions now headed, the task of permanently sealing the chamber in which Vernon sat chained completed. Where they should be headed, too. But she had paused here. Taken a moment.

Rowan laid a hand on her shoulder. “We will face them together. Maeve and Erawan.”

“And the hundred thousand soldiers marching on Orynth?”

“Together, Fireheart,” was all he said.

She found only centuries of training and cool calculation within his face. That unbreakable will.

She rested her head against his shoulder, her temple digging into the light armor. “Will we make it? Will there be anything left at all?”

He brushed the hair from her face. “We will try. That is the best we can do.” The words of a commander who had walked on and off killing fields for centuries.

He joined their hands, and together they gazed at the army below. The shred of salvation it offered.

Had she been a fool, to expend those three hard-won months of descent into her power on that army, rather than Maeve? Maeve and Erawan? Even if she began now, it wouldn’t, could never, be the same.

“Don’t burden yourself with the what-ifs,” Rowan said, reading the words on her face.

I don’t know what to do, she said silently.

He kissed the top of her head. Together.

And as the wind howled through the peaks, Aelin realized that her mate, perhaps, did not have a solution, either.

CHAPTER 81

“One hundred thousand,” Ren breathed, warming his hands before the roaring fire in the Great Hall. They had lost two of the Silent Assassins to Morath archers seeking retaliation for the destruction of the witch towers, but no more than that, mercifully.

Still, the evening meal had been somber. No one had really eaten, not when darkness had fallen and the enemy campfires ignited. More than they could count.

Aedion had lingered here after everyone else had trudged to their own beds. Only Ren had remained, Lysandra escorting a still-trembling Evangeline up to their chamber. What the morning would bring, only the gods knew.

Perhaps the gods had abandoned them again, now that their only way to return home had been locked up in an iron box. Or focused their efforts entirely on Dorian Havilliard.

Ren heaved out a long breath. “This is it, isn’t it. There’s no one left to come to our aid.”

“It won’t be a pretty end,” Aedion admitted, leaning against the mantel. “Especially once they get that third tower operational again.”

They wouldn’t have another chance to surprise Morath now.

He jerked his chin at the young lord. “You should get some rest.”

“And you?”

Aedion just stared into the flame.

“It would have been an honor,” Ren said. “To serve in this court. With you.”

Aedion shut his eyes, swallowing hard. “It would have been an honor indeed.”

Ren clapped him on the shoulder. Then his departing footsteps scuffed through the hall.

Aedion