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

Elide gathered the reins. “To the battlefield, Farasha.”

With a whinnying cry, Farasha plunged into the fray.

Soldiers leaped from their path, and Elide did not stop to apologize, did not stop for anyone, as she and the black mare charged toward the gates. Then through them.

And onto the plain.





CHAPTER 60

Rowan knew his magic would merely delay the inevitable. He’d debated flying to the dam, to see if he might hold the structure in place for just long enough, if he could not halt the river entirely, but the force of the thing on the other side … it could not be stopped.

Soldiers and healers raced for the keep, the ruks darting across the battlefield to bear those first in the water’s path to safety. But not fast enough. Even without knowing when the dam would break, it would not be fast enough.

Was Lorcan currently amongst those running, or had he managed to get onto a ruk?

“The power,” Fenrys said quietly to him, gripping the gore-slick wall. “It was the one thing Connall and I shared.”

“I know,” Rowan said. He shouldn’t have pushed. “I’m sorry.”

Fenrys just nodded. “I haven’t been able to stomach it since then. I—I’m not even certain I can use it again,” he said, and repeated, “I’m sorry.”

Rowan clapped him on the shoulder. Another thing he’d make Maeve pay for. “You might not have even found him, anyway.”

Fenrys’s jaw tightened. “He could be anywhere.”

“He could be dead,” murmured Princess Hasar.

“Or injured,” Chaol cut in, wheeling to the wall’s edge to survey the battlefield below and distant dam beyond it.

Aelin, a few feet away, gazed toward it as well, her blood-soaked hair ripping free of its braid in the harsh wind. Flowing toward those mountains, the destruction that would soon be unleashed.

She said nothing. Had done nothing since Nesryn and Sartaq brought the news. Her exact sort of nightmare, he realized, to be unable to help, to be forced to watch while others suffered. No words could comfort her, no words could fix this. Stop this.

“I could try to track him,” Gavriel offered.

Rowan shook off his creeping dread. “I’ll fly out, try to pinpoint him, and signal back to you—”

“Don’t bother,” said Princess Hasar, and Rowan was about to snarl his retort when she pointed to the battlefield. “She’s already ahead of you.”

Rowan whirled, the others following suit.

“No,” Fenrys breathed.

There, galloping across the plain on a familiar black horse, was Elide.

“Farasha,” Chaol murmured.

“She’ll be killed,” said Gavriel, tensing as if he might jump off the battlements and chase after her. “She’ll be—”

Farasha leaped over fallen bodies, weaving between the injured and dead, Elide twisting this way and that in the saddle. And from the distance, Rowan could make out her mouth moving, shouting one word, one name, over and over. Lorcan.

“If any of you go down there,” Hasar warned, “you’ll be killed, too.”

It went against every instinct, against the centuries of training and fighting he’d done with Lorcan, but the princess was right. To lose one life was better than several. Especially when he would need his cadre so badly during the rest of this war.

Lorcan would agree—had taught Rowan to make those sorts of hard calls.

Still Aelin remained silent, as if she’d descended deep within herself, and gazed at the battlefield.

At the small rider and the mighty horse racing across it.



Farasha was a tempest beneath her, but the mare did not seek to unseat Elide as they thundered across the body-strewn plain.

“Lorcan!”

Her shout was swallowed by the wind, by the screams of fleeing soldiers and people, by the shriek of the ruks above. “Lorcan!”

She searched every corpse she passed for a hint of that shining black hair, that harsh face. So many. The field of the dead stretched on forever, bodies piled several deep.

Farasha leaped over them, cutting sharp turns as Elide pivoted to look and look and look.

Darghan horses and riders ran past. Some to the keep, some to the distant forest along the horizon. Farasha wove between them, biting at those in her path.

“Lorcan!” How small her cry sounded, how feeble.

Still the dam held.

I will always find you.

And her words, her stupid, hateful words to him … Had she done this? Brought this upon him? Asked some god to do this?

Her words had all melted away the moment she’d realized he was not on the battlements. The past few months had melted away entirely.

“Lorcan!”

Unfaltering, Farasha kept moving, her black mane streaming in the wind.

The dam had to hold. It would hold. Until she brought him back to the keep.

So Elide did not stop, did not look toward the doom that lurked, waiting to be unleashed.

She rode, and rode, and rode.



Atop the battlement, Chaol didn’t know what to watch: the dam, the people fleeing its oncoming destruction, or the young Lady of Perranth, racing across the battlefield atop his horse.

A warm hand settled on his shoulder, and he knew it was Yrene without turning. “I just heard about the dam. I’d sent Elide to see if you were …” His wife’s words trailed off as she beheld the lone rider charging away from the masses thundering for the keep.