Chapter 3

The Staghorns were burning, and Oakwald

with them.

The mighty, ancient trees were little more

than charred husks, ash thick as snow raining

down.

Embers drifted on the wind, a mockery of

how they had once bobbed in her wake like

fireflies while she’d run through the Beltane

bonfires.

So much flame, the heat smothering, the

air itself singeing her lungs.

You did this you did this you did this.

The crack of dying trees groaned the

words, cried them.

The world was bathed in fire. Fire, not

darkness.

Motion between the trees snared her

attention.

The Lord of the North was frantic,

mindless with agony, as he galloped toward

her. As smoke streamed from his white coat,

as fire devoured his mighty antlers—not the

immortal flame held between them on her

own sigil, the immortal flame of the sacred

stags of Terrasen, and of Mala Fire-Bringer

before that. But true, vicious flames.

The Lord of the North thundered past,

burning, burning, burning.

She reached a hand toward him, invisible

and inconsequential, but the proud stag

plunged on, screams rising from his mouth.

Such horrible, relentless screams. As if the

heart of the world were being shredded.

She could do nothing when the stag threw

himself into a wall of flame spread like a net

between two burning oaks.

He did not emerge.

The white wolf was watching her again.

Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius

ran an ironclad finger over the rim of the

stone altar on which she lay.

As much movement as she could manage.

Cairn had left her here this time. Had not

bothered moving her to the iron box against

the adjacent wall.

A rare reprieve. To wake not in darkness,

but in flickering firelight.

The braziers were dying, beckoning in the

damp cold that pressed to her skin. To

whatever wasn’t covered by the iron.

She’d already tugged on the chains as

quietly as she could. But they held firm.

They’d added more iron. On her. Starting

with the metal gauntlets.

She did not remember when that was.

Where that had been. There had only been the

box then.

The smothering iron coffin.

She had tested it for weaknesses, over and

over. Before they’d sent that sweet-smelling

smoke to knock her unconscious. She didn’t

know how long she’d slept after that.

When she’d awoken here, there had been

no more smoke.

She’d tested it again, then. As much as the

irons would allow. Pushing with her feet, her

elbows, her hands against the unforgiving

metal. She didn’t have enough room to turn

over. To ease the pain of the chains digging

into her. Chafing her.

The lash wounds etched deep into her back

had vanished. The ones that had cleaved her

skin to the bone. Or had that been a dream,

too? She had drifted into memory, into years of

training in an assassin’s keep. Into lessons

where she’d been left in chains, in her own

waste, until she figured out how to remove

them.

But she’d been bound with that training in

mind. Nothing she tried in the cramped dark

had worked.

The metal of the glove scraped against the

dark stone, barely audible over the hissing

braziers, the roaring river beyond them.

Wherever they were.

Her, and the wolf.

Fenrys.

No chains bound him. None were needed.

Maeve had ordered him to stay, to stand

down, and so he would.

For long minutes, they stared at each other.

Aelin did not reflect on the pain that had

sent her into unconsciousness. Even as the

memory of cracking bones set her foot

twitching. The chains jangled.

But nothing flickered where agony should

have been rampant. Not a whisper of

discomfort in her feet. She shut out the image

of how that male—Cairn—had taken them

apart. How she’d screamed until her voice had

failed.

It might have been a dream. One of the

endless horde that hunted her in the blackness.

A burning stag, fleeing through the trees.

Hours on this altar, her feet shattered beneath

ancient tools. A silver-haired prince whose

very scent was that of home.

They blurred and bled, until even this

moment, staring at the white wolf lying

against the wall across

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