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

The Silent Assassins lived up to their name as Ilias signaled back and they spread out. Amongst them moved Rolfe’s Mycenians, bearing their heavy loads.

But it was the shape-shifter who began to work first. Turning herself into a giant badger, bigger than a horse, who scooped out the frozen earth with skilled, strong paws.

The scent of her blood filled the air, but Lysandra didn’t stop digging.

And when she’d finished the first pit, she moved on to the next, leaving the group of Silent Assassins and Mycenians to lay their trap, then bury it once more.

The brutal wind moaned past them. Yet they worked through the night, used every minute given to them. And when they were done, they vanished back to the city, invisible once more.



Morath appeared on the horizon a day later.

From the castle’s highest towers and walkways, every marching line could be counted. One after another after another.

Her hands still bruised and bandaged from digging through frozen earth, Lysandra stood with an assortment of their allies on one of those walkways, Evangeline clinging to her.

“That’s fifteen thousand,” Ansel of Briarcliff announced as yet another line emerged. No one said anything. “Twenty.”

“Morath must be empty to now have so many here,” Prince Galan murmured.

Evangeline trembled, not entirely from the cold, and Lysandra tightened her arm around the girl. Down the wall of the walkway, Darrow and the other Terrasen lords spoke quietly. As if sensing Lysandra’s attention, Darrow threw a narrow glance her way—that then dipped to the pale-faced, shaking Evangeline. Darrow said nothing, and Lysandra didn’t bother to look pleasant, before he turned back to his companions.

“That’s thirty,” Ansel said.

“We can count,” Rolfe snipped.

Ansel lifted a wine-red brow. “Can you really?”

Despite the army marching on them, Lysandra’s mouth twitched upward.

Rolfe just rolled his eyes and went back to watching the approaching army.

“They won’t arrive until dawn at the earliest,” Aedion observed, his face grim.

She had not yet decided what form to take. Where to fight. If ilken still flew in their ranks, then it would be a wyvern, but if closer quarters were required, then … she hadn’t decided. No one had asked her to be anywhere in particular, though Aedion’s request the other night to assist in their wild plan had been a rare reprieve from these days of waiting and dreading.

She’d gladly take days of pacing instead of what approached them.

“Fifty thousand,” Ansel said, throwing a wry glance to Rolfe.

Lysandra swallowed against the tightness in her throat. Evangeline pressed her face into Lysandra’s side.

And then the witch towers took form.

Like massive lances jutting from the horizon, they appeared through the gray morning light. Three of them, spread out equally amid the army that continued to flow behind them.

Even Ansel stopped counting now.

“I did not think it would be so terrible,” Evangeline whispered, hands digging into Lysandra’s heavy cloak. “I did not think it would be so wretched.”

Lysandra pressed a kiss to the top of her red-gold hair. “No harm shall come to you.”

“I am not afraid for myself,” Evangeline said. “But for my friends.”

Those citrine eyes indeed shone with tears of terror, and Lysandra brushed one away before watching the advancing witch towers creep toward them. She had no words to comfort the girl.

“Any minute now,” Aedion murmured, and Lysandra glanced down to the snowy plain.

To the figures that emerged from beneath the snow, clad in white. Flaming arrows nocked in their bows. Morath’s front lines were nearly upon them, but those soldiers were not their target.

Down the wall, Murtaugh gripped the ancient stones as a figure that had to be Ren gave the order. Flaming arrows arched and flew, Morath soldiers ducking under their shields.

They did not bother to look beneath their feet.

Neither did the witches leading their three towers.

The flaming arrows struck the earth with deadly accuracy, thanks to the Silent Assassins who wielded those bows.

Right atop the fuse lines that flowed directly into the pits they’d dug. Just as the witch towers passed over them.

Blinding flashes broke apart the black sea of the army. Then the mighty boom.

And then a rain of stone, all Morath’s forces whirling to see. Providing the right distraction as Ren, Ilias, and the Silent Assassins raced on foot to the white horses hidden behind a snowdrift.

When the flash cleared, when the smoke was gone, a sigh of relief went down the walkway.

Two of those witch towers had been directly over the pits. Pits that they had filled with the chemical reactors and powders that fueled Rolfe’s firelances, then concealed beneath the earth—waiting for a spark to ignite them.

Those two towers now lay in scattered ruin, their wyverns broken beneath them, soldiers squashed under falling stone.

Yet one still stood, the pit it had been closest to exploding too soon. One of the wyverns who had pulled it had been hit by debris from another tower—and lay either dead or injured.

And that third remaining tower had stopped.

A wicked, low horn sounded from the enemy host, and the army halted, too.

“Thank the rutting gods,” Rolfe said, head bowing.