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

The spider and all her kind could burn in hell.



Dorian’s heart was still racing when he found himself an hour later lying in a tent not even tall enough to stand in, on one of two bedrolls.

Manon entered the tent just as he toed off his boots and hauled the heavy wool blankets over him. They smelled of horses and hay, and might very well have been snatched from a stable, but he didn’t care. It was warm and better than nothing.

Manon surveyed the tight space, the second bedroll and blanket. “Thirteen is an uneven number,” she said by way of explanation. “I’ve always had a tent to myself.”

“Sorry to ruin that for you.”

She cut him a drily amused glance before seating herself on the bedroll and unlacing her boots. But her fingers halted as her nostrils flared.

Slowly, she looked over her shoulder at him. “What did you do.”

Dorian held her stare. “You did what you had to today,” he said simply. “I did as well.” He didn’t bother trying to touch Damaris where it lay nearby.

She sniffed him again. “You killed the spider.” No judgment in her face, just raw curiosity.

“She was a threat,” he admitted. And a Valg piece of shit.

Wariness now flooded her eyes. “She could have killed you.”

He gave her a half smile. “No, she couldn’t have.”

Manon assessed him again, and he withstood it. “You have nothing to say about my own … choices?”

“My friends are fighting and likely being killed in the North,” Dorian said. “We don’t have the time to spend weeks winning the Crochans over.”

There it was, the brutal truth. To gain some degree of welcome here, they’d had to cross that line. Perhaps such callous decisions were part of wearing a crown.

He’d keep her secret—so long as she wished it hidden.

“No self-righteous speeches?”

“This is war,” he said simply. “We’re past that sort of thing.”

And it wouldn’t matter, would it, when his eternal soul would be the asking price to staunch so much of the slaughter? He’d already had it wrecked enough. If crossing line after line would spare any others from harm, he’d do it. He didn’t know what manner of king that made him.

Manon hummed, deeming that an acceptable answer. “You know about court intrigue and scheming,” she said, deft fingers again flying over the laces and hooks of the boots. “How would you … play this, as you called it earlier? My situation with the Crochans.”

Dorian rested a hand under his head. “The problem is that they hold all the cards. You need them far more than they need you. The only card you have to play is your heritage—and that they seem to have rejected, even with the skirmish. So how do we make it vital for them? How do you prove that they need their last living queen, the last of the Crochan bloodline?” He contemplated it. “There is also the prospect of peace between your peoples, but you …” He winced. “You’re no longer recognized as Heir. Any bargaining you might have as a Blackbeak would be on behalf of only you and the Thirteen, not the rest of the Ironteeth. It wouldn’t be a true peace treaty.”

Manon finished with her boots and lay back on her bedroll, sliding the blanket over her as she stared up at the tent’s low ceiling. “Did they teach you these things in your glass castle?”

“Yes.” Before he’d shattered that castle into shards and dust.

Manon turned on her side, propping her head with a hand, her white hair spilling from its braid to frame her face. “You can’t use that magic of yours to simply … compel them, can you?”

Dorian huffed a laugh. “Not that I know of.”

“Maeve wormed her way into Prince Rowan’s mind to convince him to take a false mate.”

“I don’t even know what Maeve’s power is,” Dorian said, cringing. What the Fae Queen had done to Rowan, what she was now doing to the Queen of Terrasen … “And I’m not entirely certain I want to start experimenting on potential allies.”

Manon sighed through her nose. “My training did not include these things.”

He wasn’t surprised. “You want my honest opinion?” Her golden eyes pinned him to the spot as she gave a curt nod. “Find the thing they need, and use it to your advantage. What would prompt them to rally behind you, to see you as their Crochan Queen? Fighting in battle tonight won some degree of trust, but not immediate acceptance. Perhaps Glennis might know.”

“I’d have to risk asking her.”

“You don’t trust her.”

“Why should I?”

“She’s your great-grandmother. And didn’t order you executed on sight.”

“My grandmother didn’t until the end, either.” No emotion passed over her face, but her fingers dug into her scalp at her words.

So Dorian said, “Aelin needed Captain Rolfe and his people shaken out of centuries of hiding in order to rally the Mycenian fleet. She learned they would only return to Terrasen when a sea dragon reappeared at last, one of their long-lost allies on the waves. So she engineered it to happen: provoked a small Valg fleet to attack Skull’s Bay while it lay mostly defenseless, and then used the battle to showcase the sea dragon that arrived to aid them, summoned from air and magic.”