Chaol drew his sword, the freshly polished metal whining as it came free of the sheath. The fingers of his other hand tightened around the handles of his shield. A ruk rider’s shield, light and meant for swift combat. The brace that held him in the saddle remained steady, its buckles secure.

The soldiers lining the battlements stirred at the nearing siege tower. The horrors inside.

“They were once men,” Chaol called, his voice carrying over the clamor of the battle beyond the keep walls, “they can still die like them.”

A few swords stopped quivering.

“You are people of Anielle,” Chaol went on, hefting his shield and angling his sword. “Let’s show them what that means.”

The siege tower slammed into the side of the keep, and the metal bridge at its uppermost level snapped down, crushing the battlement parapets beneath.

Chaol’s focus went cold and calculating.

His wife was in the keep behind him. Pregnant with their child.

He would not fail her.

A siege tower had reached the keep walls, and now unloaded soldier after soldier right into the ancient castle.

Despite the distance, Nesryn could see the chaos on the battlements. Just barely make out Chaol atop his gray horse, fighting in the thick of it.

Soaring over the army hurling arrows and spears at them, Nesryn banked left, the ruks behind her following suit.

Across the battlefield, Borte and Yeran, leading another faction of rukhin, banked right, the two groups of rukhin a mirror image swooping toward each other, then back to plow through the rear lines.

Just as Sartaq, leading a third group, slammed from the other direction.

They’d taken out two commanders, but three more remained. Not princes, thank the gods here and the thirty-six in the khaganate, but Valg all the same. Black blood coated Salkhi’s armored feathers, coated every ruk in the skies.

She’d spent hours cleaning it off Salkhi last night. All the rukhin had, not willing to risk the old blood interfering with how their feathers caught the wind.

Nesryn nocked an arrow and picked her target. Again.

The Valg commander had evaded her shot the last time. But he would not now.

Salkhi swept low, taking arrow after arrow against his breastplate, in his thick feathers and skin. Nesryn had almost vomited the first time an arrow had found its mark days ago. A lifetime ago. She now also spent hours picking them from his body each night—as if they were thorns from a prickly plant.

Sartaq had spent that time going from fire to fire, comforting those whose mounts were not so fortunate. Or soothing the ruks whose riders hadn’t lasted the day. Already, a wagon had been piled high with their sulde—awaiting the final journey home to be planted on Arundin’s barren slopes.

When Salkhi came close enough to rip several Valg off their horses and shred them apart in his talons, Nesryn fired at the commander.

She didn’t see if the shot landed.

Not as a horn cut through the din.

A cry rose from the rukhin, all glancing eastward. Toward the sea.

To where the Darghan cavalry and foot soldiers charged for the unprotected eastern flank of Morath’s army, Hasar atop her Muniqi horse, leading the khagan’s host herself.

Two armies clashed on the plain outside an ancient city, one dark and one golden.

They fought, brutal and bloody, for the long hours of the gray day.

Morath’s armies didn’t break, though. And no matter how Nesryn and the rukhin, led by Sartaq and Hasar’s orders, rallied behind their fresh troops, the Valg kept fighting.

And still Morath’s host lay between the khagan’s army and the besieged city, an ocean of darkness.

When night fell, too black for even the Valg to fight, the khagan’s army pulled back to assess. To ready for the attack at dawn.

Nesryn flew Yrene and Chaol, bloodied and exhausted, down from the again-secured keep walls, so they might join in the war council between the khagan’s royal children. All around, soldiers groaned and screamed in agony, healers led by Hafiza herself rushing to tend them before the night gave way to more fighting.

But when they reached Princess Hasar’s battle tent, when they had all gathered around a map of Anielle, they had only a few minutes of discussion before they were interrupted.

By the person Chaol least expected to walk through the flaps.

CHAPTER 46

Perranth appeared on the horizon, the dark-stoned city nestled between a cobalt lake and a small mountain range that also bore its name.

The castle had been built along a towering mountain bordering the city, its narrow towers tall enough to rival those in Orynth. The great city walls had been torn down by Adarlan’s army and never restored, the buildings along its edges now spilling onto the fields beyond the iced-over Lanis River that flowed between the lake and the distant sea.

It was on those fields that Aedion deemed they’d make their stand.

The ice held as they crossed the river and organized their reduced lines once more.

The Whitethorn royals and their warriors were nearly burnt out, their magic a mere breeze. But they’d kept Morath a day behind with their shields.

A day the army used to rest, hewing wood from whatever trees, barns, or abandoned farmsteads they could find to fuel their fires. A day when Aedion had ordered Nox Owen to go as his emissary into Perranth, the thief’s home city, and see if men and women from the city might come to fill their depleted ranks.

Not many. Nox returned with a few hundred even-less-trained warriors. No magic-wielders.

But they did have some weapons, most old and rusted. Fresh arrows, at least. Vernon Lochan had seen to it that his people had remained unarmed, fearing their uprising should they learn the true Heir to Perranth had been held captive in the highest tower of the castle.

But the people of Perranth already had enough of their puppet lord, it seemed.

And at least they had blankets and food to spare. Wagons hauled them in hourly, along with healers—none magically gifted—to patch up the wounded. Those who were too injured to fight were sent on the supply wagons to the city, some piled atop one another.

But a warm blanket and hot meal would not add to their numbers. Or keep Morath at bay.

So Aedion planned, keeping his Bane commanders close. They would make this count. Every inch of terrain, every weapon and soldier.

He didn’t see Lysandra. Aelin made no appearances, either.

The queen had abandoned them, the soldiers muttered.

Aedion made sure to shut down the talk. Had snarled that the queen had her own mission to save their asses, and if she wanted Erawan to know about it, she would have announced it to them all, since they were so inclined to gossip.

It eased the discontent—barely.

Aelin had not defended them with her fire, had left them to be butchered.

Some part of him agreed. Wondered if it would have been better to ignore the keys, to use the two they possessed and obliterate these armies, rather than destroy their greatest weapon to forge the Lock.

Hell, he would have wept to see Dorian Havilliard and his considerable power at that moment. The king had blasted ilken from the sky, had snapped their necks without touching them. He’d bow before the man if it saved them.

It was midday when Morath’s army reached them once more, their mass spilling over the horizon. A storm sweeping across the fields.

He’d warned the people of Perranth to flee into Oakwald, if they could. Locking themselves in the castle would be of little use. It had no supplies to outlast a siege. He’d debated using it for this battle, but their advantage lay in the frozen river, not in letting themselves be cornered to endure a slow death.

No one was coming to save them. There had been no word from Rolfe, Galan’s forces were depleted, his ships spread thin on the coast, and no whisper of the remainder of Ansel of Briarcliff’s soldiers.

Aedion kept that knowledge from his face as he rode his stallion down the front lines, inspecting the soldiers.

The tang of their fear fogged the frosty air, the weight of their dread a bottomless pit yawning open in their eyes as they tracked him.

The Bane began striking their swords against their shields. A steady heartbeat to override the vibrations of the Morath soldiers marching toward them.

Aedion didn’t look for a shifter in the ranks. Ilken flew low over Morath’s teeming mass. She’d undoubtedly go for them first.

Aedion halted his horse in the center of their host, the iced-over Lanis almost buried beneath the snow that had fallen the night before. Morath knew it existed, though. Those Valg princes had likely studied the terrain thoroughly. Had likely studied him thoroughly, too, his technique and skill. He knew he’d face one of them before it was done, perhaps all of them. It wouldn’t end well.

Yet as long as they risked the crossing, he didn’t care. Endymion and Sellene, the only Fae still left with a whisper of power, were stationed just behind the first of the Bane.

The eyes of his own soldiers were a phantom touch between his shoulder blades, on his helmeted head. He had not prepared a speech to rally them.

A speech would not keep these men from dying today.

So Aedion drew the Sword of Orynth, hefted his shield, and joined the Bane’s steady beat.

Conveying all the defiance and rage in his heart, he clashed the ancient sword against the dented, round metal.

Rhoe’s shield.

Aedion had never told Aelin. Had wanted to wait until they returned to Orynth to reveal that the shield he’d carried, had never lost, had belonged to her father. And so many others before that.

It had no name. Even Rhoe had not known its age. And when Aedion had spirited it away from Rhoe’s room, the only thing he grabbed when the news came that his family had been butchered, he had let the others forget about it, too.

Even Darrow had not recognized it. Worn and simple, the shield had gone unnoticed at Aedion’s side, a reminder of what he’d lost. What he’d defend to his final breath.