His father shot to his feet and braced his hands on his desk. “You would spit on the lives of all the men of Anielle who fought and died to keep this territory from their filthy hands?”

“If offering them a small piece of land will mean that future generations of Anielle men and women won’t have to fight or die, then I’d think our ancestors would be pleased.”

“They are beasts, barely fit to be their own masters.”

Chaol sighed, slumping back in his chair. A lifetime of this—that’s what Dorian had laid upon him. As Hand, he’d have to deal with lords and rulers just like his father. If they survived. If Dorian survived, too. The thought was enough for Chaol to say, “Everyone in this war is making sacrifices. Most far, far greater than a few miles of land. Be grateful that’s all we’re asking of you.”

The man sneered. “And what if I was to bargain with you?”

Chaol rolled his eyes, reaching to turn his chair back toward the door.

His father lifted a piece of paper. “Don’t you wish to know what your brother wrote to me?”

“Not enough to stop this alliance,” Chaol said, pivoting his chair away.

His father unfolded the letter anyway, and read, “I hope Anielle burns to the ground. And you with it.” A small, hateful smile. “That’s all your brother said. My heir—that’s how he feels about this place. If he will not protect Anielle, then what shall become of it without you?”

Another approach, to guilt him into relenting. Chaol said, “I’d wager that Terrin’s regard for Anielle is tied to his feelings for you.”

The aging lord lowered himself into his seat once more. “I wish you to know what Anielle will face, should you fail to protect it. I am willing to bargain, boy.” He chuckled. “Though I know how well you hold up your end of things.”

Chaol took the blow. “I am a rich man, and need nothing you could offer me.”

“Nothing?” His father pointed to a trunk by the window. “What about something more priceless than gold?”

When Chaol didn’t speak, his father strode for the trunk, unlocked it with a key from his pocket, and flipped back the heavy lid. Wheeling closer, Chaol peered at its contents.

Letters. The entire trunk was filled with letters bearing his name in an elegant script.

“She discovered the trunk. Right before we got word of Morath marching on us,” his father said, his smile mocking and cold. “I should have burned them, of course, but something prompted me to save them instead. For this exact moment, I think.”

The trunk was piled thick with letters. All written by his mother. To him. “How long,” he said too quietly.

“From the day you left.” His father’s sneer lingered.

Years. Years of letters, from a mother he had not heard from, had believed hadn’t wanted to speak to him, had yielded to his father’s wishes.

“You let her believe I didn’t write back,” Chaol said, surprised to find his voice still calm. “You never sent them, and let her believe I didn’t write back.”

His father shut the trunk and locked it again. “It would appear so.”

“Why.” It was the only question that mattered.

His father frowned. “I couldn’t allow you to walk away from your birthright, from Anielle, without consequences, could I?”

Chaol clamped onto the arms of his chair to keep from wrapping his hands around the man’s throat. “You think showing me this trunk of her letters will make me want to bargain with you?”

His father snorted. “You’re a sentimental man. Watching you with that wife of yours only proves it. I’d think you’d bargain quite a bit to be able to read these letters.”

Chaol only stared at him. Blinked once, as if it would quell the roaring in his head, his heart.

His mother had never forgotten him. Never stopped writing to him.

Chaol smiled slightly.

“Keep the letters,” he said, steering his chair back to the doors. “Now that she’s left you, it might be your only way to remember her.” He opened the study door and looked over his shoulder.

His father remained beside the trunk, stiff as a sword.

“I don’t make bargains with bastards,” Chaol said, smiling again as he entered the hall beyond. “I’m certainly not going to start with you.”

Chaol gave the wild men of the Fangs a small chunk of territory in South Anielle. His father had raged, refusing to acknowledge the trade, but no one had heeded him, to Aelin’s eternal amusement.

Two days later, a small unit of those men arrived at the city’s westernmost edge, near the gaping hole where the dam had been, and beckoned the way.

Each of the bearded men rode a shaggy mountain pony, and though their heavy furs hid much of their bulky bodies, their weapons were on sharp display: axes, swords, knives all gleamed in the gray light.

Cain’s people—or they had been. Aelin decided not to mention him during their brief introduction. And Chaol, wisely, refrained from admitting that he’d killed the man.

Another lifetime. Another world.

Seated atop a fine Muniqi horse Hasar had lent her, Aelin rode at the front of the company, as it marched from Anielle, Chaol on Farasha to her left, Rowan on his own Muniqi horse to her right. Their companions were scattered behind, Lorcan healed enough to be riding, Elide beside him.

And behind them, snaking into the distance, the army of the khagan moved.

Part of it, at least. Half the ruks and Darghan riders would march under Kashin’s banner on the eastern side of the mountains, to draw out the forces from the Ferian Gap into open battle in the valley. While they snuck behind, right through their back door.

Snow lay heavy on the Fangs, the gray sky threatening more, but the rukhin scouts and wild men had assessed that no bad weather would hit them for a while yet—not until they reached the Gap, at least.

Five days’ trek, with the army and mountains. It would be three for the army that marched along the lake’s edge and river.

Aelin tipped her face toward that cold sky as they began the endless series of switchbacks up the mountainsides. The rukhin could carry much of the heavier equipment, thank the gods, but the climb into the mountains would be the first test.

The khagan’s armies had crossed every terrain, though. Mountains and deserts and seas. They did not balk now.

So Aelin supposed she would not, either. For whatever time she had left, until it was over.

This final push north, homeward … She smiled grimly at the looming mountains, at the army stretching away behind them.

And just because she could, just because they were headed to Terrasen at last, Aelin unleashed a flicker of her power. Some of the standard-bearers behind them murmured in surprise, but Rowan only smiled. Smiled with that fierce hope, that brutal determination that flared in her own heart, as she began to burn.

She let the flame encompass her, a golden glow that she knew could be spied even from the farthest lines of the army, from the city and keep they left behind.

A beacon glowing bright in the shadows of the mountains, in the shadows of the forces that awaited them, Aelin lit the way north.

PART TWO

Gods and Gates

CHAPTER 68