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

Such agony that Lorcan couldn’t imagine what it would be like to sever the oath on his own, without bidding. It was not the sort of pain one walked away from.

The oath could be stretched, drawn thin. That Vaughan, the last of their cadre, still undoubtedly roamed the wilds of the North in his “hunt” for Lorcan was proof enough that the blood oath’s restraints might be worked around. But to break it outright of his own will, to find some way to snap the tether, would be to embrace death.

He’d wondered during these months if he should have done just that.

Lorcan swallowed. “I tried to get to her. To Aelin. I tried to get to that box.” He added so quietly only Elide could hear it, “I promise.”

His word was his bond, the only currency he cared to trade in. He’d told her that once, during those weeks on the road. Nothing flickered in her eyes to tell him she remembered.

Elide merely strode back for the camp. Lorcan remained where he was.

He had done this. Brought this upon her, upon them.

Elide reached the campfire, and Lorcan followed at last, nearing its ring of light in time to see her plop down beside Gavriel, her mouth tight.

The Lion murmured to her, “He wasn’t lying, you know.”

Lorcan clenched his jaw, making no attempt to disguise his footsteps. If Gavriel’s ears were sharp enough to have heard every word of their conversation, the Lion certainly knew he was approaching. And certainly knew better than to shove his nose in their business.

Yet Lorcan still found himself scanning Elide’s face, waiting for her answer.

And when she ignored both the Lion and Lorcan, he found himself wishing he hadn’t spoken at all.



Prince Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius, consort, husband, and mate of the Queen of Terrasen, knew he was dreaming.

He knew it, because he could see her.

There was only darkness here. And wind. And a great, yawning chasm between them.

No bottom existed in that abyss, that crack in the world. But he could hear whispers snaking through it, down far below.

She stood with her back to him, hair blowing in a sheet of gold. Longer than he’d seen it the last time.

He tried to shift, to fly over the chasm. His body’s innate magic ignored him. Locked in his Fae body, the jump too far, he could only stare toward her, breathe in her scent—jasmine, lemon verbena, and crackling embers—as it floated to him on the wind. This wind told him no secrets, had no song to sing.

It was a wind of death, of cold, of nothing.

Aelin.

He had no voice here, but he spoke her name. Threw it across the gulf between them.

Slowly, she turned to him.

It was her face—or it would be in a few years. When she Settled.

But it wasn’t the slightly older features that knocked the breath from him.

It was the hand on her rounded belly.

She stared toward him, hair still flowing. Behind her, four small figures emerged.

Rowan fell to his knees.

The tallest: a girl with golden hair and pine-green eyes, solemn-faced and as proud as her mother. The boy beside her, nearly her height, smiled at him, warm and bright, his Ashryver eyes near-glowing beneath his cap of silver hair. The boy next to him, silver-haired and green-eyed, might as well have been Rowan’s twin. And the smallest girl, clinging to her mother’s legs … A fine-boned, silver-haired child, little more than a babe, her blue eyes harking back to a lineage he did not know.

Children. His children. Their children.

With another mere weeks from being born.

His family.

The family he might have, the future he might have. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Aelin.

Their children pressed closer to her, the eldest girl peering up to Aelin in warning.

Rowan felt it then. A lethal, mighty black wind sweeping for them.

He tried to scream. Tried to get off his knees, to find some way to them.

But the black wind roared in, ripping and tearing everything in its path.

They were still staring at him as it swept them away, too.

Until only dust and shadow remained.



Rowan jerked awake, his heart a frantic beat as his body bellowed to move, to fight.

But there was nothing and no one to fight here, in this dusty field beneath the stars.

A dream. That same dream.

He rubbed at his face, sitting up on his bedroll. The horses dozed, no sign of distress. Gavriel kept watch in mountain-lion form just beyond the light of the fire, his eyes gleaming in the dark. Elide and Lorcan didn’t stir from their heavy slumber.

Rowan scanned the position of the stars. Only a few hours until dawn.

And then to Akkadia—to that land of scrub and sand.

While Elide and Lorcan had debated where to go, he’d weighed it himself. Whether to fly to Doranelle alone and risk losing precious days in what might be a fool’s search.

Had Vaughan been with them, had Vaughan been freed, he might have dispatched the warrior in his osprey form to Doranelle while they continued on to Akkadia.

Rowan again considered it. If he pushed his magic, harnessed the winds to him, the two weeks it would take to reach Doranelle could be done in days. But if he somehow did find Aelin … He’d waged enough battles to know he’d need Lorcan and Gavriel’s strength before things were over. That he might jeopardize Aelin in trying to free her without their help. Which would mean flying back to them, then making the agonizingly slow trip northward.