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

Only thirty feet to the summit now.

Rowan kept climbing, the others close behind.

She was here. She’d been here the entire time. If they’d come directly to Doranelle—

He didn’t let himself consider it. Not as he cleared the hilltop.

Under the sliver of a moon, the gray-stoned city was bathed in white, wreathed in mist from the surrounding rivers and waterfalls. Elide, amid her panting, gasped.

“I—I thought it would be like Morath,” she admitted.

The serene city lay in the heart of a river basin. Lanterns still glowed despite the late hour, and he knew that in some squares, music would be playing.

Home. Or it had been. Were its citizens still his people, when he’d wed a foreign queen? When he’d fought and killed so many of them on Eyllwe’s waters? He didn’t look for the black mourning banners that would be hanging from so many windows.

Beside him, he knew Lorcan and Gavriel were avoiding counting them, too. For centuries, they had known these people, lived amongst them. Called them friends.

But were any aware who was held in their midst? Had they heard her screams?

“That’s the palace,” Gavriel said to Elide, pointing toward the cluster of domes and elegant buildings set on the eastern edge, right along the lip of the massive waterfall.

None of them spoke as they scanned the column-lined building that housed the queen’s private quarters. And their own suites. No lights burned within.

“It doesn’t confirm anything,” Lorcan said. “Whether Maeve left, or if Aelin remains.”

Rowan listened to the wind, scented it, but felt nothing. “The only way to confirm either is to go into the city.”

“Are those two bridges the only way in?” Elide frowned toward the twin stone bridges on the southern and northern sides of Doranelle. Both open, both visible for miles around.

“Yes,” Lorcan said, his voice tight.

The river was too wide, too wild, to swim. And if any other ways in existed, Rowan had never learned them.

“We should make a wide sweep of the basin,” Lorcan said, studying the city in the heart of the plain. To the north, the forested foothills flowed to the towering wall of the Cambrian Mountains. To the west, the plain rolled into farmland, endless and open, to the sea. And in the east, past the waterfall, the grassy plain yielded to ancient forests, more mountains beyond them.

His mountains. The place he’d once called home, where that mountain house had stood until it had been burned. Where he’d buried Lyria and had one day expected to be laid to rest himself.

“We need an exit strategy as well,” Rowan said, though he’d already been considering it. Where to run afterward. Maeve would send out her best to hunt them down.

That had once included him. He’d been sent to track and dispatch the Fae who turned too monstrous for even Maeve to stomach, rogue Fae who had no business existing anymore. He’d trained the hunters Maeve would now unleash. Had taught them the veiled paths, the places Fae preferred to hide.

He’d never considered that would someday be used against him.

“We take a day,” Lorcan said.

Rowan leveled a cold look at him. “A day is more than we can spare.”

Aelin was down there. In that city. He knew it, could feel it. He’d been plunging into his power for the past two days, readying for the killing he’d unleash, the flight they’d make. The strain of holding it back yanked on him, on any lingering control.

Lorcan said, “We’ll pay for a hasty plan if we don’t take the time. Your mate will pay, too.”

His former commander’s control was also on a knife’s edge. Even Gavriel, calm and steady, was pacing. All of them had descended into their power, drawing it up from the very dregs.

But Lorcan was right. Rowan would say the same if their positions were reversed.

Gavriel pointed to a rocky outcropping on the hill face below them. “It’s shielded from sight. We camp there tonight, make our assessments tomorrow. Get some rest.”

The idea was abhorrent. Sleeping while Aelin was mere miles away. His ears strained, as if he might pick up her screams on the wind. But Rowan said, “Fine.”

He didn’t need to declare that they wouldn’t risk a fire. The air was chill, but mild enough that they could survive.

Rowan stepped down the hill face, offering a hand to Elide to help her skirt the dangerous, rocky plunge. She took his hand with shaking fingers.

Still she hadn’t balked to come with them, to do any of this.

Rowan found another foothold before turning to assist her. “You don’t need to go into the city. We’ll decide on the escape route and you can meet us there.”

When Elide didn’t answer, Rowan looked up at her.

Her eyes weren’t on him. But on the city ahead.

Wide with terror. Her scent became drenched in it.

Lorcan was there in a heartbeat, hand at her shoulder. “What is—”

Rowan twisted toward the city. The hilltop had been a border.

Not of the city limits, but of an illusion. A pretty, idyllic illusion for any scouting its fringes to report. For what now surrounded the city on every side, even on the eastern plain …

An army. A great army lay camped there.

“She’s summoned most of her forces,” Gavriel breathed, wind whipping his hair across his face.