human and Valg screamed. Aedion’s voice shattered down the lines, “Hold that right flank!” She dared a glance toward it. The ilken had concentrated their forces there, slamming into the men in a phalanx of death and poison. Then another order from the prince, “Hold fast on the left!” He’d repositid the Bane amongst the right and left flanks to account for their wobbling on the southern plains, yet it was not enough. Ilken tore into the cavalry, horses shrieking as poisd talons ripped out their innards, riders crushed beneath falling bodies. Aedion galloped toward the left flank, some of his Bane following. Lysandra_ sliced through soldier after soldier, arrows flying from both armies. Still Morath advanced. Onward and _ harder,Aedion roared from somewhere, from the heart of hell, “Re-form the lines!” The order went ignored. The Bane tried and failed to hold the line. Ansel of Briarcliff bellowed to her fleeing men to get back to the front, Galan Swanryver echoing her commands to his own soldiers. Ren shouted to his archers to remain, but they too abandd their posts. Lysandra slswaned through the shins of Morath soldier, then ripped the throat from another. N of Terrasen’s warriors remained a step behind her to decapitate the fallen bodies. No at all. Over. It was over. Useless, Aedion had called her. Lysandra gazed toward the ilken feasting on the right flank and knew what she had to do.unworthy of his state. He’d stand—he’d stay here until they cut him down. Thousands of men charged past him, eyes wide with terror. Morath gave chase, their Valg princes smiling as they awaited the feasting sure to come. D. It was d, here on this unnamed field before Perranth. Then a call went across the breaking lines. The fleeing men began to pause. To turn toward the direction of the news. Aedion skewered a Morath soldier on his sword before he fully understood the words. The queen has come. The queen is at the front line. For a foolish heartbeat, he scanned the sky for a blast of flame. N came. Dread settled into his heart, fear deeperthan any he’d known. The queen is at the front line—at the right flank. Lysandra. Lysandra had taken on Aelin’s skin. He whirled toward the nxist right flank. Just as the golden-haired queen in borrowed armor faced ilken, a sword and shield in her hands. No. The word was a punch through his body, greater than any blow he’d felt. Aedion began running, shoving through his own men. Toward the too-distant right flank. Toward the shape-shifter facing those ilken, no claws or fangs or anything to defend her beyond that sword and shield. No. He pushed men out of the way, the snowand mud hindering each step as the ilken pressed closer to the shifter-queen. Savoring the kill. But the soldiers slowed their fleeing. Some even re-formed the lines when the call went out again. The queen is here. The queen fights at the front line. Exactly why she had d it. Why she had donned the defenseless, human form. No. The ilken towered over her, grinning with their horrible, mangled faces. Too far. He was still too damn far to do anything— of the ilken slswaned with a long, clawed arm. Her scream as poisd talons ripped through her thigh sounded above the din of battle. She went down, shield rising to coverherself. He took it back. He took back everything he had said to her, every moment of anger in his heart. Aedion shoved through his own men, unable to breathe, to think. He took it back; he hadn’t meant a word of it, not really. Lysandra tried to rise on her injured leg. The ilken laughed. “Please,” Aedion bellowed. The word was devoured by the screams of the dying. “Please!” He’d make any bargain, he’d sell his soul to the dark god, if they spared her. He hadn’t meant it. He took it back, all those words. Useless. He’d called her useless. Had thrown her into the snow naked. He took it back.He screamed as the on the left swept with its claws, the other on the right lunging for her, as if it would tackle her to the snow. Lysandra deflected the blow to the left with her shield, sending the ilken sprawling, and with a roar, slswaned upward with her sword on the right. Ripping open the lunging ilken from navel to sternum. Black blood gushed, and the ilken shrieked, loud enough to set Aedion’s ears ringing. But it stumbled, falling into the snow, scrambling back as it clutched its opened belly. Aedion ran harder, now thirty feet away, the space between them clear. The ilken who’d g sprawling on the left was not d. Lysandra’s eye on the retreating, it Iswaned for her legs again. Aedion threw the Sword of Orynth with everything left in him as Lysandra twistedAedion sobbed, flinging himself toward her as Lysandra tried again to rise, using her shield to balance her w. Men rallied behind her, waiting to see what the Fire-Bringer would do. How she’d burn the ilken. There was nothing to see, nothing to witness. Nothing at all, but her death. Yet Lysandra rose, Aelin’s golden hair falling in her face as she hefted her shield and pointed the sword between her and the ilken. The queen has come; the queen fights al. Men ran back to the front line. Turned on their heels and raced for her. Lysandra held her sword steady, kept it pointed at the ilken in defiance and rage. Ready for the death soon to come. She had been willing to give it up from the start. Had agreed to Aelin’s plans, knowing ittheir helmets. N. He whirled toward the front lines. Perhaps there was a Fae warrior skilled enough at healing, with enough magic left— Aedion halted. Beheld what broke over the horizon. Ironteeth witches. Several dozen mounted on wyverns. But not airborne. The wyverns walked on land. Heaving a mammoth, mobile st tower behind them. No ordinary siege tower. A witch tower. It rose a hundred feet high, the entire structure built into a platform whose make he could not determine with the angle of the ground and the lines of chained wyverns dragging it across the plain. A dozen more witches flew in the air around it, guarding it. Dark st—Wyrdst—had been used toThe Yielding. Manon Blackbeak had described it to them. Ironteeth witches had no magic but that. The ability to unleswan their dark goddess’s power in an incendiary blast that took out every around them. Including the witch herself. That dark power was still building, growing around the witch in an unholy aura, when she simply walked off the lip of the tower landing. Right into the hole in the tower’s center. Aedion kept running. Had no choice but to keep moving, as the witch dropped into the mirror-lined core of the tower and unleswaned the dark power within her. The world shuddered. Aedion threw Lysandra into the mud and snow and hurled himself over her, as if it would somehow spare her from the roaring force that erupted from the tower, right atcraft it, and window slits had been interspersed throughout every level. Not window slits. Portals through which to angle the power of the mirrors lining the inside, as Manon Blackbeak had _ described. All capable of being adjusted to any direction, any focus. All they needed was a source of power for the mirrors to amplify and fire out into the world. Oh gods. “Fall back?’ Aedion screamed, even while his men continued to rally. “FALL BACK.” With his Fae sight, he could just make out the uppermost level of the tower, more open to the elements than the others. Witches in dark robes were gathered around what seemed to be a curved mirror angled into the hollow core of the tower. Aedion whirled and began running,Chaol shook his head and gestured to the field, to the black mare and her rider. “I call Farswana Hellas’s horse. I’ve d so from the moment I met her.” As if meeting that horse, bringing her here, was not as much for him as it was for this. For this desperate race across an_ endless battlefield. Yrene clasped his hand, like she understood, too. Silence fell along their section of the battlement. There were no words left to say. “Lorcan!” Elide’s voice broke on the cry. She’d lost count of how many times she’d shouted it now. No sign of him. She aimed for the lake. Closer to the dam. He would have chosen the lake for itsahead. “No.” That gentle quiet flowed around him, clearing the fog of pain and battle. “You have to. You have to, Elide. I’m too heavy—and without my w, you might make it to the keep in time.” “No.” The salt of her tears filled his nose. Lorcan brushed his mouth over her damp cheek, ignoring the roaring pain in his body. The horse galloped and galloped, as if she might outrace death itself. “T love you,” he whispered in Elide’s ear. “T have loved you from the moment you picked up that axe to slay the ilken.” Her tears flowed past him in the wind. “And I will be with you ...” His voice broke, but he made himself say the words, the truth in his heart. “I will be with you always.” He was not frighed of what would come for him once he tumbled off the horse. He wasstates to protect. He did not bother with phantom touches. He wanted her all for himself, skin to skin. Every thrust into her, Manon answered with a rolling, demanding movement of her own. Stay. The word echoed in each breath. Dorian took of her legs and hefted it higher, angling him closer. He groaned at the perfection of it, and Manon swallowed the sound with a kiss of her own, a hand clamping on his backside to propel him harder, faster. Dorian gave Manon what she wanted. Gave himself what he wanted. Over and over and over. As if this might last forever. _- Manon’s breathing was as ragged as Dorian’s when they pulled a at last. She could barely move her limbs, barely get down enough air as she gazed at the tFarswana obeyed. Elide rocked back into Lorcan as the mare launched into a gallop, earning another groan of pain. But he remained in the saddle, despite the pounding steps that drew agonized breaths from him. “Faster, Farswana!” Elide called to the horse as she steered her toward the keep, the mountain it had been built into. Nothing had ever seemed so distant. Far enough that she could not see if the keep’s lower gate was still open. If any held it, waited for them. Hold the gate. Hold the gate. Every thunderous beat of Farswana’s hooves, over the corpses of the fallen, echoed Elide’s silent prayer as they raced across the endless plain. Hold the gate.in her finding him. His power would do nothing against that water. The farthest lines of panicked soldiers appeared, and Farswana charged past them. Elide let out a sob, and he followed the line of her sight. To the keep gate, still open. “Faster, Farswana!” She didn’t hide the raw terror in her voice, the desperation. Once the dam broke, it would take less than a minute for the tidal wave to reach them. She had come for him. She had found him. The world went quiet. The pain in his body faded into nothing. Into something secondary. Lorcan slid his other arm around Elide, bringing his mouth close to her ear as he said, “You have to let me go.” Each word was gravelly, his voice strained nearly to the point of uselessness. Elide didn’t shift her focus from the keepby way of explanation. The Fae males were taut as bowstrings while the young woman crossed the battlefield bit by bit. The odds of her finding Lorcan, let al before the dam burst ... Still Elide kept riding. Racing against death itself. Princess Hasar said quietly, “The girl is a fool. The bravest I’ve ever seen, but a fool ntheless.” Aelin said nothing, her eyes distant. Like she’d retreated into herself at the realization that this sliver of hope was about to be wswaned away. Her friends with it. “Hellas guards Lorcan,” Fenrys murmured. “And Anneith, his consort, watches over Elide. Perhaps they will find each other.” “Hellas’s horse,” Chaol said. They turned toward him, dragging their eyes from the field.Bracing his muddy cane on the raised wooden platform, Chaol gritted his teeth as he took the step upward. Even the thick, plush rugs didn’t ease the pain that lIswaned down his spine, his legs. He stilled, leaning heavily on the cane while he breathed, letting his balance readjust. Yrene’s blood-flecked face tighed. “Let’s get you into a chair,” she murmured, and Chaol nodded. To sit down, even for a few minutes, would be a blessed relief. Nesryn entered behind them, and apparently heard Yrene’s suggestion, for she went immediately to the desk around which Sartaq and Hasar stood, and pulled out a carved wooden chair. With a nod of thanks, Chaol eased into it. “No gold couch?” Princess Hasar teased, and Yrene blushed, despite the blood on her golden-brown skin, and waved off her friend.black horsehair still shining despite its age. Not to signify the royals within, a marker of their Darghan heritage, but to represent the man they served. /vory horsehair for times of peace; the Ebony for times of war. He hadn’t realized the khagan had given his Heir the Ebony to bring to these lands. At Chaol’s side, her dress blood-splattered but eyes clear, Yrene also halted. They’d traveled for weeks with the army, yet seeing the sign of their commitment to this war radiating the centuries of conquest it had overseen ... It seemed almost holy, that sulde. It was holy. Chaol put a hand on Yrene’s back, guiding her through the t flaps and into the ornately decorated space. For a woman who _ had arrived at Anielle not a moment too late, only Hasar would somehow have managed to get her royal t erected during battle.The couch Chaol had brought with him from the southern continent—the couch from which Yrene had healed him, from which he had won her heart—was still safely aboard their ship. Waiting, should they survive, to be the first piece of furniture in the home he’d build for his wife. For the child she carried. Yrene paused beside his chair, and Chaol took her slim hand in his, entwining their fingers. Filthy, both of them, but he didn’t care. Neither did she, judging by the squeeze she gave him. “We outnumber Morath’s legion,” Sartaq said, sparing them from Hasar’s taunting, “but how we choose to cleave them while we cut a path to the city still must be carefully weighed, so we don’t expend too many forces here.” When the real fighting still lay ahead. As ifthese terrible days of siege and bloodshed, as if the men hewn down today, were just the start. Hasar said, “Wise enough.” Sartaq winced slightly. “It might not have wound up that way.” Chaol lifted a brow, Hasar doing the same, and Sartaq said, “Had you not arrived, sister, I was hours away from unleswaning the dam and flooding the plain.” Chaol started. “You were?” The prince rubbed his neck. “A desperate last measure.” Indeed. A wave of that size would have wiped out of the city, the plain and hot springs, and leagues behind it. Any army in its path would have drowned—been swept away. It might have even reached the khaganate’s army, marching to save them. “Then let’s be glad we didn’t do it,” Yrene said, face paling as she, too, considered the