“Adarlan controls the entire Avery,” Chaol said, drawing an invisible line inland from Rifthold. “To pass north, we have to cross that river anyway. In picking the Gap as our battleground, we’ll avoid the mess that would come with fighting in the midst of Oakwald. The ruks, at least, would be able to provide aerial coverage. Not so with the trees.”

Rowan nodded. “We’d need to march the majority of the host up into the mountains, then—to come at the Gap from where they’d least expect it. It’s rough terrain, though. We’ll need to pick our route carefully.”

Chaol’s father grumbled. Aelin lifted her brows, but his son answered, “I sent out emissaries the day after the battle—into the Fangs. To contact the wild men who live there, if they might know of secret ways through the mountains to the Gap.”

Ancient enemies of this city. “And?”

“They do. But at a cost.”

“One that shall not be paid,” the Lord of Anielle snapped.

“Let me guess: territory,” Aelin said.

Chaol nodded. Hence the tension in this room.

She tapped a foot as she surveyed the Lord of Anielle. “And you won’t give one sliver of land to them?”

He just glared.

“Apparently not,” Fenrys muttered.

Aelin shrugged, and turned to Chaol. “Well, it’s settled, then.”

“What is settled?” his father ground out.

Aelin ignored him, and winked at her friend. “You’re the Hand to the King of Adarlan. You outrank him. You’re authorized to act on Dorian’s behalf.” She gestured to the map. “The land might be a part of Anielle, but it belongs to Adarlan. Go ahead and barter it.”

His father started. “You—”

“We are going north,” Aelin said. “You will not stand in our way.” She again let some of her fire kindle in her eyes, set the gold in them burning. “I halted that wave. Consider this alliance with the wild men a way to repay the favor.”

“That wave destroyed half my city,” the man snarled.

Fenrys let out a low, disbelieving laugh. Rowan snarled softly.

Chaol growled at his father, “You’re a bastard.”

“Watch your tongue, boy.”

Aelin nodded sympathetically to Chaol. “I see why you left.”

Chaol, to his credit, winced and returned to the map. “If we can get past the Ferian Gap, then we continue northward.”

Past Endovier. That path would take them right past Endovier. Aelin’s stomach tightened. Rowan’s hand grazed her own.

“We have to decide soon,” Sartaq declared. “Right now, we sit between the Ferian Gap and Morath. It would be very easy for Erawan to send hosts to crush us between them.”

Hasar turned to Chaol. “Is Yrene anywhere near done?”

He leaned an elbow against the arm of his wheeled chair. “Even with the few survivors, there are too many of them. We’d be here weeks.”

“How many injured?” Rowan asked.

Chaol shook his head. “Not injured.” His jaw tightened. “Valg.”

Aelin frowned. “Yrene’s healing the Valg?”

Hasar grinned. “In a manner of speaking.”

Aelin waved her off. “Can I see?”

They found Yrene not in the keep, but in a tent on the remnants of the battlefield, leaning over a human man thrashing upon a cot. The man had been restrained to anchors in the floor at his wrists and ankles.

Aelin took one look at those chains and had to swallow.

Rowan laid a hand on her lower back, and Fenrys stepped closer to her side.

Yrene paused, her hands wreathed in white light. Borte, sword out, lingered nearby.

“Is something wrong?” Yrene asked, the glow in her hands fading. The man sagged, going boneless as the healer’s assault on the demon inside him halted.

Chaol steered his chair closer to her, the wheels equipped for rougher terrain. “Aelin and her companions want a demonstration. If you’re up for it.”

Yrene smoothed back the hair that had escaped her braid. “It’s not really anything that you can see. What happens is beneath the skin—mind to mind.”

“You go up against Valg demons directly,” Fenrys said with no small amount of awe.

“They’re hateful, cowardly wretches.” Yrene crossed her arms and scowled at the man tied to the cot. “Utterly pathetic,” she spat toward him—the demon inside him.

The man hissed. Yrene only smiled. The man—the demon—whimpered.

Aelin blinked, unsure whether to laugh or fall to her knees. “Show me. Do whatever it is you do, but show me.”

So the healer did. Hands shining, she laid them atop the man’s chest. He screamed and screamed and screamed.

Yrene panted, brows scrunching. For long minutes, the shrieking continued.

Borte said, “It’s not very exciting with them tied down, is it?”

Sartaq threw her an exasperated glare. As if this were a conversation they’d already had many times. “You can be on mucking duty, if you’d prefer.”

Borte rolled her eyes, but turned to Aelin, looking her over with a frankness that Aelin could only appreciate. “Any other missions for me?”

Aelin grinned. “Not yet. Soon, perhaps.”

Borte grinned right back. “Please. Please spare me from the tedium of this.”

Aelin glanced toward the healer radiant with light. “How many does this make today?”

“Ten,” Borte grumbled.

Aelin asked Chaol, “And how many can she do every day?”

“Fifteen, at most. Some require more energy than others to expel, so those days it’s less.”

Aelin tried to do the math on how many infested soldiers were left on the field. “And once they’re cured? What do you do with them then?”

“We interrogate them,” Chaol said, frowning. “See what their stories are, how they wound up captured. Where their allegiances lie.”

“And you believe them?” Fenrys asked.

Hasar patted the hilt of her fine sword. “Our interrogators are skilled at retrieving the truth.”

Aelin ignored the roiling in her stomach.

“So you free them,” Gavriel said, silent for minutes now, “and then torture them?”

“This is war,” Hasar said simply. “We leave them able to function. But we will not risk sparing their lives only to find a new army at our backs.”

“Some willingly joined Erawan,” Chaol said quietly. “Some willingly took the ring. Yrene can tell, when she’s in there, who wanted it or not. She doesn’t bother to save those who gladly knelt. So most of those she does save were either fools or taken forcibly.”

“Some want to fight for us,” Sartaq said. “Those who pass our vetting process are allowed to begin training with the foot soldiers. Not many of them, but a few.”

Fine. Fine, and fine.

Yrene gasped, her light flaring bright enough that Aelin squinted.

The man bound to the cot coughed, arching.

Black, noxious vomit sprayed.

Borte grimaced, waving away the smell. Then the black smoke that rippled from his mouth.

Yrene slumped back, Chaol shooting out an arm to brace her. The healer only took a perch on the arm of his chair, a hand on her heaving chest.

Aelin gave her a moment to catch her breath. To manage such a feat was remarkable. To do it while pregnant … Aelin shook her head in wonder.

Yrene said to no one in particular, “That demon didn’t want to go.”

“But it’s gone now?” Aelin asked.

Yrene pointed to the man on the cot, now opening his eyes. Brown, not black, gazed upward.

“Thank you,” was all the man said, his voice raw.

And human. Utterly human.

CHAPTER 67

Rowan followed Aelin as she meandered across the battlefield, to the edge of the Silver Lake. She stopped only now and then to pick up any worthwhile enemy weapons. There were few.

The others had dispersed, Gavriel lingering to learn how Yrene healed the Valg, Fenrys heading off with Chaol to meet with emissaries from the wild men, and the khaganate royals seeing to their troops.

They would leave in two days, if the weather held. Two days, and then they’d begin the push north.

Thank the gods. Even though they were the last beings Rowan wished to thank.

Aelin halted at the rocky shore, peering across the mirror-flat expanse now choked with debris. She rested a hand atop Goldryn’s hilt, flame dancing at her fingers, seemingly into the red stone itself.

“It would take years,” she observed, “to heal everyone infected by the Valg.”

“Each of those soldiers has a family, friends who would want us to try.”

“I know.” The chill wind whipped her hair across her face, blowing northward.

“Then why the walk out here?” She’d gone contemplative during their meeting in the tent, her brow furrowing.

“Could Yrene heal them? Erawan and Maeve? I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”

“Is Erawan’s body made by him, or stolen? Is Maeve’s?” Rowan shook his head. “They might be wholly different.”

“I don’t see how I can ask Yrene to do it. Ask it of Chaol.” Aelin swallowed. “To even put Yrene near Erawan or Maeve … I can’t do it.”

Rowan wouldn’t be able to, either. Not for a thousand different reasons.

“But is it a mistake to put Yrene’s safety above that of this entire world?” Aelin mused, examining one of the enemy daggers she’d pilfered. An unusually fine blade, likely stolen in the first place. “She’s the greatest weapon we have, if the keys are not in play. Are we fools not to push to use it?”

It wasn’t his choice, his call. But he could offer her a sounding board. “Will you be able to live with yourself if something happens to Yrene, to her unborn child?”

“No. But the rest of the world will live, at least. My guilt would be secondary to that.”

“And if you don’t push Yrene to try to destroy them, and Erawan or Maeve wins—what then?”

“There is still the Lock. There’s still me.”

Rowan swallowed. Saw the reason she’d needed to be away from the others, needed to walk. “Yrene is a ray of hope for you. For us. That you might not need to forge the Lock at all. You, or Dorian.”

“The gods demand it.”

“The gods can go to hell.”

Aelin chucked away the dagger. “I hate this. I really do.”

He slid an arm around her shoulders. It was all he could offer her.

Over—she’d said she wanted it to be over. He’d do all he could to make it so.

Aelin leaned her head against his chest, and they stared across the cold lake in silence. “Would you let me do it, if I were Yrene? If I were carrying our child?”

He failed to block out the image of that dream—of Aelin, heavily pregnant, their children around her. “I don’t let you do anything.”