A few bands of Morath soldiers had managed to get grappling hooks into the walls these past two days, hoisting up siege ladders and droves of soldiers with them. Chaol had cut them down, and though the warriors of Anielle had been unsure what to do with the demon-infested men who came to slay them, they’d obeyed his barked commands. Quickly staunched the flow of soldiers over the walls, severing the ties that held the ladders to them.

But the siege towers that approached … those would not be so easily dislodged. And neither would the soldiers who crossed the metal bridge that would span the tower and the keep walls.

Behind him, levels up, he knew his father watched. Had already signaled through the lantern system Sartaq had demonstrated how to use that they needed ruks to fly back—to knock the towers down.

But the ruks were making a pass at the far rear of Morath’s army, where the commanders had kept the Valg lines in order. It had been Nesryn’s idea last night: to stop going for the endless front lines and instead take out those who ordered them. Try to sow chaos and disarray.

The first siege tower neared, metal groaning as wyverns—chained to the ground and wings clipped—hauled it closer. Soldiers already lined up behind it in twin columns, ready to storm upward.

Today would hurt.

Chaol’s horse shifted beneath him again, and he patted a gauntlet-covered hand on the stallion’s armored neck. The thud of metal on metal was swallowed by the din. “Patience, friend.”

Far out, past the reach of the archers, the catapult was reloading. They’d launched a boulder only thirty minutes ago, and Chaol had ducked beneath an archway, praying the tower base it struck did not collapse.

Praying Yrene wasn’t near it.

He’d barely seen her during these days of bloodshed and exhaustion. Hadn’t had a chance to tell her what he knew. To tell her what was in his heart. He’d settled for a deep but brief kiss, and then rushed to whatever part of the battlements he’d been needed at.

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.