Kingdom of Ash
Page 4
A flash of light, and there she was.
Shining. Lysandra seemed to be shining as she swept a cloak around her bare body, the garment left on a nearby chair for precisely this purpose. Evangeline hurled herself into the shifter’s arms, half sobbing with joy. Evangeline’s shoulders shook, and Lysandra smiled, deeply and warmly, stroking the girl’s head. “You’re well?”
For all the world, the shifter would have seemed calm, serene. But Aedion knew her—knew her moods, her secret tells. Knew that the slight tremor in her words was proof of the raging torrent beneath the beautiful surface.
“Oh, yes,” Evangeline said, pulling away to beam toward Ren. “He and Lord Murtaugh brought me here soon after. Fleetfoot’s with him, by the way. Murtaugh, I mean. She likes him better than me, because he sneaks her treats all day. She’s fatter than a lazy house cat now.”
Lysandra laughed, and Aedion smiled. The girl had been well cared for.
As if realizing it herself, Lysandra murmured to Ren, her voice a soft purr, “Thank you.”
Red tinted Ren’s cheeks as he rose to his feet. “I thought she’d be safer here than in the war camp. More comfortable, at least.”
“Oh, it’s the most wonderful place, Lysandra,” Evangeline chirped, gripping Lysandra’s hand between both of hers. “Murtaugh even took me to Caraverre one afternoon—before it started snowing, I mean. You must see it. The hills and rivers and pretty trees, all right up against the mountains. I thought I spied a ghost leopard hiding atop the rocks, but Murtaugh said it was a trick of my mind. But I swear it was one—even bigger than yours! And the house! It’s the loveliest house I ever saw, with a walled garden in the back that Murtaugh says will be full of vegetables and roses in the summer.”
For a heartbeat, Aedion couldn’t endure the emotion on Lysandra’s face as Evangeline prattled off her grand plans for the estate. The pain of longing for a life that would likely be snatched away before she had a chance to claim it.
Aedion turned to Ren, the lord’s gaze transfixed on Lysandra. As it had been whenever she’d taken her human form.
Fighting the urge to clench his jaw, Aedion said, “You recognize Caraverre, then.”
Evangeline continued her merry jabbering, but Lysandra’s eyes slid toward them.
“Darrow is not Lord of Allsbrook,” was all Ren said.
Indeed. And who wouldn’t want such a pretty neighbor?
That is, when she wasn’t living in Orynth under another’s skin and crown, using Aedion to sire a fake royal bloodline. Little more than a stud to breed.
Lysandra again nodded her thanks, and Ren’s blush deepened. As if they hadn’t spent all day trekking through snow and slaughtering Valg. As if the scent of gore didn’t still cling to them.
Indeed, Evangeline sniffed at the cloak Lysandra kept wrapped around herself and scowled. “You smell terrible. All of you.”
“Manners,” Lysandra admonished, but laughed.
Evangeline put her hands on her hips in a gesture Aedion had seen Aelin make so many times that his heart hurt to behold it. “You asked me to tell you if you ever smelled. Especially your breath.”
Lysandra smiled, and Aedion resisted the tug on his own mouth. “So I did.”
Evangeline yanked on Lysandra’s hand, trying to haul the shifter down the hall. “You can share my room. There’s a bathing chamber in there.” Lysandra conceded a step.
“A fine room for a guest,” Aedion muttered to Ren, his brows rising. It had to be one of the finest here, to have its own bathing chamber.
Ren ducked his head. “It belonged to Rose.”
His oldest sister. Who had been butchered along with Rallen, the middle Allsbrook sibling, at the magic academy they’d attended. Near the border with Adarlan, the school had been directly in the path of invading troops.
Even before magic fell, they would have had few defenses against ten thousand soldiers. Aedion didn’t let himself often remember the slaughter of Devellin—that fabled school. How many children had been there. How none had escaped.
Ren had been close to both his elder sisters, but to high-spirited Rose most of all.
“She would have liked her,” Ren clarified, jerking his chin toward Evangeline. Scarred, Aedion realized, as Ren was. The slash down Ren’s face had been earned while escaping the butchering blocks, his parents’ lives the cost of the diversion that got him and Murtaugh out. Evangeline’s scars hailed from a different sort of escape, narrowly avoiding the hellish life her mistress endured.
Aedion didn’t let himself often remember that fact, either.
Evangeline continued pulling Lysandra away, oblivious to the conversation. “Why didn’t you wake me when you arrived?”
Aedion didn’t hear Lysandra’s answer as she let herself be led from the hall. Not as the shifter’s gaze met his own.
She had tried to speak with him these past two months. Many times. Dozens of times. He’d ignored her. And when they’d at last reached Terrasen’s shores, she’d given up.
She had lied to him. Deceived him so thoroughly that any moment between them, any conversation … he didn’t know what had been real. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to know if she’d meant any of it, when he’d so stupidly left everything laid out before her.
He’d believed this was his last hunt. That he’d be able to take his time with her, show her everything Terrasen had to offer. Show her everything he had to offer, too.
Lying bitch, he’d called her. Screamed the words at her.
He’d mustered enough clarity to be ashamed of it. But the rage remained.
Lysandra’s eyes were wary, as if asking him, Can we not, in this rare moment of happiness, speak as friends?
Aedion only returned to the fire, blocking out her emerald eyes, her exquisite face.
Ren could have her. Even if the thought made him want to shatter something.
Lysandra and Evangeline vanished from the hall, the girl still chirping away.
The weight of Lysandra’s disappointment lingered like a phantom touch.
Ren cleared his throat. “You want to tell me what’s going on between you two?”
Aedion cut him a flat stare that would have sent lesser men running. “Get a map. I want to go over the passes again.”
Ren, to his credit, went in search of one.
Aedion gazed at the fire, so pale without his queen’s spark of magic.
How long would it be until the wind howling outside the castle was replaced by the baying of Erawan’s beasts?
Aedion got his answer at dawn the next day.
Seated at one end of the long table in the Great Hall, Lysandra and Evangeline having a quiet breakfast at the other, Aedion mastered the shake in his fingers as he opened the letter the messenger had delivered moments before. Ren and Murtaugh, seated around him, had refrained from demanding answers while he read. Once. Twice.
Aedion at last set down the letter. Took a long breath as he frowned toward the watery gray light leaking through the bank of windows high on the wall.
Down the table, the weight of Lysandra’s stare pressed on him. Yet she remained where she was.
“It’s from Kyllian,” Aedion said hoarsely. “Morath’s troops made landfall at the coast—at Eldrys.”
Ren swore. Murtaugh stayed silent. Aedion kept seated, since his knees seemed unlikely to support him. “He destroyed the city. Turned it to rubble without unleashing a single troop.”
Why the dark king had waited this long, Aedion could only guess.
“The witch towers?” Ren asked. Aedion had told him all Manon Blackbeak had revealed on their trek through the Stone Marshes.
“It doesn’t say.” It was doubtful Erawan had wielded the towers, since they were massive enough to require being transported by land, and Aedion’s scouts surely would have noticed a one-hundred-foot tower hauled through their territory. “But the blasts leveled the city.”
“Aelin?” Murtaugh’s voice was a near-whisper.
“Fine,” Aedion lied. “On her way back to the Orynth encampment the day before it happened.” Of course, there was no mention of her whereabouts in Kyllian’s letter, but his top commander had speculated that since there was no body or celebrating enemy, the queen had gotten out.
Shining. Lysandra seemed to be shining as she swept a cloak around her bare body, the garment left on a nearby chair for precisely this purpose. Evangeline hurled herself into the shifter’s arms, half sobbing with joy. Evangeline’s shoulders shook, and Lysandra smiled, deeply and warmly, stroking the girl’s head. “You’re well?”
For all the world, the shifter would have seemed calm, serene. But Aedion knew her—knew her moods, her secret tells. Knew that the slight tremor in her words was proof of the raging torrent beneath the beautiful surface.
“Oh, yes,” Evangeline said, pulling away to beam toward Ren. “He and Lord Murtaugh brought me here soon after. Fleetfoot’s with him, by the way. Murtaugh, I mean. She likes him better than me, because he sneaks her treats all day. She’s fatter than a lazy house cat now.”
Lysandra laughed, and Aedion smiled. The girl had been well cared for.
As if realizing it herself, Lysandra murmured to Ren, her voice a soft purr, “Thank you.”
Red tinted Ren’s cheeks as he rose to his feet. “I thought she’d be safer here than in the war camp. More comfortable, at least.”
“Oh, it’s the most wonderful place, Lysandra,” Evangeline chirped, gripping Lysandra’s hand between both of hers. “Murtaugh even took me to Caraverre one afternoon—before it started snowing, I mean. You must see it. The hills and rivers and pretty trees, all right up against the mountains. I thought I spied a ghost leopard hiding atop the rocks, but Murtaugh said it was a trick of my mind. But I swear it was one—even bigger than yours! And the house! It’s the loveliest house I ever saw, with a walled garden in the back that Murtaugh says will be full of vegetables and roses in the summer.”
For a heartbeat, Aedion couldn’t endure the emotion on Lysandra’s face as Evangeline prattled off her grand plans for the estate. The pain of longing for a life that would likely be snatched away before she had a chance to claim it.
Aedion turned to Ren, the lord’s gaze transfixed on Lysandra. As it had been whenever she’d taken her human form.
Fighting the urge to clench his jaw, Aedion said, “You recognize Caraverre, then.”
Evangeline continued her merry jabbering, but Lysandra’s eyes slid toward them.
“Darrow is not Lord of Allsbrook,” was all Ren said.
Indeed. And who wouldn’t want such a pretty neighbor?
That is, when she wasn’t living in Orynth under another’s skin and crown, using Aedion to sire a fake royal bloodline. Little more than a stud to breed.
Lysandra again nodded her thanks, and Ren’s blush deepened. As if they hadn’t spent all day trekking through snow and slaughtering Valg. As if the scent of gore didn’t still cling to them.
Indeed, Evangeline sniffed at the cloak Lysandra kept wrapped around herself and scowled. “You smell terrible. All of you.”
“Manners,” Lysandra admonished, but laughed.
Evangeline put her hands on her hips in a gesture Aedion had seen Aelin make so many times that his heart hurt to behold it. “You asked me to tell you if you ever smelled. Especially your breath.”
Lysandra smiled, and Aedion resisted the tug on his own mouth. “So I did.”
Evangeline yanked on Lysandra’s hand, trying to haul the shifter down the hall. “You can share my room. There’s a bathing chamber in there.” Lysandra conceded a step.
“A fine room for a guest,” Aedion muttered to Ren, his brows rising. It had to be one of the finest here, to have its own bathing chamber.
Ren ducked his head. “It belonged to Rose.”
His oldest sister. Who had been butchered along with Rallen, the middle Allsbrook sibling, at the magic academy they’d attended. Near the border with Adarlan, the school had been directly in the path of invading troops.
Even before magic fell, they would have had few defenses against ten thousand soldiers. Aedion didn’t let himself often remember the slaughter of Devellin—that fabled school. How many children had been there. How none had escaped.
Ren had been close to both his elder sisters, but to high-spirited Rose most of all.
“She would have liked her,” Ren clarified, jerking his chin toward Evangeline. Scarred, Aedion realized, as Ren was. The slash down Ren’s face had been earned while escaping the butchering blocks, his parents’ lives the cost of the diversion that got him and Murtaugh out. Evangeline’s scars hailed from a different sort of escape, narrowly avoiding the hellish life her mistress endured.
Aedion didn’t let himself often remember that fact, either.
Evangeline continued pulling Lysandra away, oblivious to the conversation. “Why didn’t you wake me when you arrived?”
Aedion didn’t hear Lysandra’s answer as she let herself be led from the hall. Not as the shifter’s gaze met his own.
She had tried to speak with him these past two months. Many times. Dozens of times. He’d ignored her. And when they’d at last reached Terrasen’s shores, she’d given up.
She had lied to him. Deceived him so thoroughly that any moment between them, any conversation … he didn’t know what had been real. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to know if she’d meant any of it, when he’d so stupidly left everything laid out before her.
He’d believed this was his last hunt. That he’d be able to take his time with her, show her everything Terrasen had to offer. Show her everything he had to offer, too.
Lying bitch, he’d called her. Screamed the words at her.
He’d mustered enough clarity to be ashamed of it. But the rage remained.
Lysandra’s eyes were wary, as if asking him, Can we not, in this rare moment of happiness, speak as friends?
Aedion only returned to the fire, blocking out her emerald eyes, her exquisite face.
Ren could have her. Even if the thought made him want to shatter something.
Lysandra and Evangeline vanished from the hall, the girl still chirping away.
The weight of Lysandra’s disappointment lingered like a phantom touch.
Ren cleared his throat. “You want to tell me what’s going on between you two?”
Aedion cut him a flat stare that would have sent lesser men running. “Get a map. I want to go over the passes again.”
Ren, to his credit, went in search of one.
Aedion gazed at the fire, so pale without his queen’s spark of magic.
How long would it be until the wind howling outside the castle was replaced by the baying of Erawan’s beasts?
Aedion got his answer at dawn the next day.
Seated at one end of the long table in the Great Hall, Lysandra and Evangeline having a quiet breakfast at the other, Aedion mastered the shake in his fingers as he opened the letter the messenger had delivered moments before. Ren and Murtaugh, seated around him, had refrained from demanding answers while he read. Once. Twice.
Aedion at last set down the letter. Took a long breath as he frowned toward the watery gray light leaking through the bank of windows high on the wall.
Down the table, the weight of Lysandra’s stare pressed on him. Yet she remained where she was.
“It’s from Kyllian,” Aedion said hoarsely. “Morath’s troops made landfall at the coast—at Eldrys.”
Ren swore. Murtaugh stayed silent. Aedion kept seated, since his knees seemed unlikely to support him. “He destroyed the city. Turned it to rubble without unleashing a single troop.”
Why the dark king had waited this long, Aedion could only guess.
“The witch towers?” Ren asked. Aedion had told him all Manon Blackbeak had revealed on their trek through the Stone Marshes.
“It doesn’t say.” It was doubtful Erawan had wielded the towers, since they were massive enough to require being transported by land, and Aedion’s scouts surely would have noticed a one-hundred-foot tower hauled through their territory. “But the blasts leveled the city.”
“Aelin?” Murtaugh’s voice was a near-whisper.
“Fine,” Aedion lied. “On her way back to the Orynth encampment the day before it happened.” Of course, there was no mention of her whereabouts in Kyllian’s letter, but his top commander had speculated that since there was no body or celebrating enemy, the queen had gotten out.
