Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass #7) by Sarah J. Maas

Aedion whirled and began running, carrying the shifter with him. “FALL BACK! ”

The army beheld what approached. Whether they realized it was no siege tower, they understood his order clearly enough. Saw him sprinting, Aelin over his shoulder.

Manon had never known the range of the tower, how far it might fire the dark magic rallied within it.

There was nowhere to hide on the field. No dips in the earth where he might throw himself and Lysandra, praying the blast went over them. Nothing but open snow and frantic soldiers.

“RETREAT!” Aedion’s throat strained.

He glanced over a shoulder as the witches atop the tower parted to let through a small figure in onyx robes, her pale hair unbound.

A black light began glowing around the figure—the witch. She lifted her hands above her head, the power rallying.

The Yielding.

Manon Blackbeak had described it to them. Ironteeth witches had no magic but that. The ability to unleash their dark goddess’s power in an incendiary blast that took out everyone around them. Including the witch herself.

That dark power was still building, growing around the witch in an unholy aura, when she simply walked off the lip of the tower landing.

Right into the hole in the tower’s center.

Aedion kept running. Had no choice but to keep moving, as the witch dropped into the mirror-lined core of the tower and unleashed the dark power within her.

The world shuddered.

Aedion threw Lysandra into the mud and snow and hurled himself over her, as if it would somehow spare her from the roaring force that erupted from the tower, right at their army.

One heartbeat, their left flank was fighting as they retreated once more.

The next, a wave of black-tinted light slammed into four thousand soldiers.

When it receded, there was only ash and dented metal.





CHAPTER 48

The khagan’s forces had dealt enough of a blow to Morath that the bone drums had ceased.

Not a sign of sure defeat, but enough to make Chaol’s heavily limping steps feel lighter as he entered Princess Hasar’s sprawling war tent. Her sulde had been planted outside, the roan horsehair blowing in the wind off the lake. Sartaq’s own spear had been sunk into the cold mud beside his sister’s. And beside the Heir’s spear …

Leaning on his cane, Chaol paused at the ebony spear that had also been planted, its jet-black horsehair still shining despite its age. Not to signify the royals within, a marker of their Darghan heritage, but to represent the man they served. Ivory horsehair for times of peace; the Ebony for times of war.

He hadn’t realized the khagan had given his Heir the Ebony to bring to these lands.

At Chaol’s side, her dress blood-splattered but eyes clear, Yrene also halted. They’d traveled for weeks with the army, yet seeing the sign of their commitment to this war radiating the centuries of conquest it had overseen … It seemed almost holy, that sulde. It was holy.

Chaol put a hand on Yrene’s back, guiding her through the tent flaps and into the ornately decorated space. For a woman who had arrived at Anielle not a moment too late, only Hasar would somehow have managed to get her royal tent erected during battle.

Bracing his muddy cane on the raised wooden platform, Chaol gritted his teeth as he took the step upward. Even the thick, plush rugs didn’t ease the pain that lashed down his spine, his legs.

He stilled, leaning heavily on the cane while he breathed, letting his balance readjust.

Yrene’s blood-flecked face tightened. “Let’s get you into a chair,” she murmured, and Chaol nodded. To sit down, even for a few minutes, would be a blessed relief.

Nesryn entered behind them, and apparently heard Yrene’s suggestion, for she went immediately to the desk around which Sartaq and Hasar stood, and pulled out a carved wooden chair. With a nod of thanks, Chaol eased into it.

“No gold couch?” Princess Hasar teased, and Yrene blushed, despite the blood on her golden-brown skin, and waved off her friend.

The couch Chaol had brought with him from the southern continent—the couch from which Yrene had healed him, from which he had won her heart—was still safely aboard their ship. Waiting, should they survive, to be the first piece of furniture in the home he’d build for his wife.

For the child she carried.

Yrene paused beside his chair, and Chaol took her slim hand in his, entwining their fingers. Filthy, both of them, but he didn’t care. Neither did she, judging by the squeeze she gave him.

“We outnumber Morath’s legion,” Sartaq said, sparing them from Hasar’s taunting, “but how we choose to cleave them while we cut a path to the city still must be carefully weighed, so we don’t expend too many forces here.”

When the real fighting still lay ahead. As if these terrible days of siege and bloodshed, as if the men hewn down today, were just the start.

Hasar said, “Wise enough.”

Sartaq winced slightly. “It might not have wound up that way.” Chaol lifted a brow, Hasar doing the same, and Sartaq said, “Had you not arrived, sister, I was hours away from unleashing the dam and flooding the plain.”

Chaol started. “You were?”

The prince rubbed his neck. “A desperate last measure.”

Indeed. A wave of that size would have wiped out part of the city, the plain and hot springs, and leagues behind it. Any army in its path would have drowned—been swept away. It might have even reached the khaganate’s army, marching to save them.