They’d barely stepped onto the boat when a hissing flitted from the passage they’d vacated.

Tensing, Rowan and Gavriel swiftly shoved the boat from the shore. The creatures tugging them along lurched into motion, pulling them farther into the river.

Blades gleamed, all the immortal warriors deathly still.

Aelin didn’t draw Goldryn, though. Didn’t lift a burning hand. She merely lingered by Elide, her face like stone.

The hissing grew louder. Shadowed, scabbed hands clawed at the passage archway, recoiling wherever they met the light.

“Someone’s pissed about the treasure,” Fenrys muttered.

“They can get in line,” Aelin said, and Elide could have sworn that the gold in the queen’s eyes glowed. A flare of deep-hidden light, then nothing.

An ice-kissed wind snapped through the caves. The hissing stopped.

Shuddering, Elide murmured, “I don’t think I should care to return to these lands.”

Fenrys chuckled, a sensuous laugh that didn’t meet his eyes. “I agree with you, Lady.”

They drifted into the blackness for another day, then two. Still the sea did not appear.

Aelin was sleeping, a dreamless, heavy slumber, when a strong hand clasped her shoulder. “Look,” Rowan whispered, his breath brushing her ear.

She opened her eyes to pale light.

Not the ocean, she realized as she sat up, the others rousing, undoubtedly at Rowan’s word.

Overhead, clinging to the cavern ceiling as if they were stars trapped beneath the rock, small blue lights glowed.

Glowworms, like those in the lantern. Thousands of them, made infinite by the reflection in the black water. Stars above and below.

From the corner of her eye, Aelin glimpsed Elide press a hand to her chest.

A sea of stars—that’s what the cave had become.

Beauty. There was still beauty in this world. Stars could still glow, still burn bright, even buried under the earth.

Aelin breathed in the cool cave air, the blue light. Let it flow through her.

Rattle the stars. She’d promised to do that. Had done so much toward it, yet more remained. They had to hurry. How many suffered at Morath’s claws?

Beauty remained—and she would fight for it. Needed to fight.

It was a constant thrum in her blood, her bones. Right alongside the power that she shoved down deep and dismissed with each breath. Fight—one last time.

She’d escaped so she might do it. Would think of all those still defying Morath, defying Maeve, while she trained. She wouldn’t hesitate. Didn’t dare to pause.

She’d make this time count. In every way possible.

The emerald on her marriage band glistened with its own fire.

Selfish of her, to enforce that bond when her very blood destined her for a sacrificial altar, and yet she had gotten out of the boat to find them. The rings. Raiding the trove had been an afterthought. But if she was to have no scars on her, no reminder of where she’d been and who she was and what she’d promised, then she’d needed this one scrap of proof.

Aelin could have sworn the living stars overhead sang, a celestial choir that floated through the caves.

A star-song carried along the river current, running beside them, for the last miles to the sea.

CHAPTER 39

The enemy’s army arrived not in three days, or four, but five.

A blessing and a curse, Nesryn decided. A blessing, for the time it granted them to prepare, for the ruks to carry some of the most vulnerable of Anielle’s people to a snow-blasted camp beyond the Fangs.

And a curse for the fear it allowed to fester in the keep, now teeming with those who would not or could not make the journey. By sunset on the fourth day, they could see the black lines marching for them through the swaths of Oakwald that they hewed down.

By dawn on the fifth day, they were near the outskirts of the lake, the plain.

Nesryn sat atop Salkhi on one of the keep’s spires, Borte on Arcas beside her.

“For a demon army, they march slower than my ej’s own mother.”

Nesryn snorted. “Armies have supply trains—and this one had a river to cross and a forest to fell.”

Borte sniffed. “Seems like an awful lot of trouble for such a small city.”

Indeed, the ruk riders had not been impressed by Anielle, certainly not after camping in Antica before their passage to these lands.

“Save this city, take the Ferian Gap to the north of it, and we could clear a path northward. It might be an ugly place, but it’s vital.”

“Oh, the land is beautiful,” Borte said, gazing toward the lake sparkling under the winter light, steam from the nearby hot springs drifting across its surface. “But the buildings …” She made a face.

Nesryn chuckled. “You may be right.”

For a few moments, they watched the army creep closer. People were fleeing in the streets now, rushing up the keep’s endless steps and battlements.

“I’m surprised Sartaq will let his future empress fly against them,” Borte said slyly. The girl had relentlessly teased her these weeks.

Nesryn scowled. “Where’s Yeran?”

Borte stuck out her tongue, despite the army inching toward them. “Burning in hell, for all I care.”

Even away from their respective aeries and ancient rivalries, the betrothed pair had not warmed to each other. Or perhaps it was part of the game the two of them played, had been playing for years now. To feign loathing, when it was so clear they’d slaughter anyone who posed a threat to the other.

Nesryn lifted her brows, and Borte crossed her arms, her twin braids blowing in the wind. “He’s bringing the last two healers to the keep.” Indeed, a near-black ruk flapped up from the plain.

“No inclination to finally wed before the battle?”

Borte recoiled. “Why would I?”

Nesryn smirked. “So you might have your wedding night?”

Borte barked a laugh. “Who says I haven’t already?”

Nesryn gaped.

But Borte only inclined her head, clicked her tongue at Arcas, and rider and ruk dove into the brisk sky.

Nesryn stared after Borte until she’d reached the plain, passing by Yeran and his ruk in a daring maneuver that some might have interpreted to be a giant, vulgar gesture to the warrior.

Yeran’s dark ruk screeched in outrage, and Nesryn smiled, knowing Yeran was likely doing the same, even with the two healers riding with him.

Yet Nesryn’s smile proved short-lived as she again beheld the marching army nearer and nearer with each minute. An unbroken, untiring mass of steel and death.

Would they camp until dawn, or attack at nightfall? Would the siege be quick and lethal, or long and brutal? She’d seen their supply trains. They were prepared to stay for as long as it took to bring this city to rubble.

And wipe out every soul dwelling within.

The bone drums began at sundown.

Yrene stood on the highest parapet of the keep, counting the torches sprawling into the night, and fought to keep her dinner down.

It was no different from the other meals she’d eaten today, she told herself. The meals she had struggled to consume without gagging.

The parapet was filled with soldiers and onlookers alike, all gazing toward the army at the border of the plain that separated them from the city’s edge, all listening in hushed silence to the relentless drumming.