#Still aching-needs to know-land of darkness & cold-they do know-inclined to agree-BORTE&THEM-FALKAN HE KNOWS HER&

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Kingdom of Ash Chapter 49🚨

He had just been crowned the khagan's Heir. With Nesryn as his potential bride. Potential, to Aelin's amusement, because Nesryn herself wasn't so keen on being empress of the mightiest empire in the world.

But what Sartaq had said— Elide blurted, "You mean to not go to Terrasen?" Aelin kept still, her fingers curling at her sides.

"Terrasen needs aid," Rowan said, his face the portrait of steely calm as he surveyed their new allies and old friends.

"And yet Terrasen has not called for it," Hasar countered, utterly unfazed by the wall of Fae warriors glowering at her. Exactly the sort of person Aelin had hoped she'd be when she wrote to her all those months ago.

Chaol cleared his throat. Gods above, Chaol was walking again. And married to Yrene Towers, who had healed him.

A thread in a tapestry. That's what it had felt like the night she'd left the gold for Yrene in Innish. Like pulling a thread in a tapestry, and seeing just how far and wide it went.

All the way to the southern continent, it seemed. And it had rippled back with an army and a healed, happy friend. Or as happy as any of them might be at the moment.

Aelin glanced sidelong to Rowan. Found him already staring at her. We'll convince them to go to Terrasen, her mate said silently.

"It's back," he panted, gaping at Nesryn. "For days now, I swore I felt something, noted changes, but today it just all came back."

Nesyn angled her head, her curtain of dark hair sliding over an armored shoulder. "Who…"

Borte squeezed the young man's arm. "Falkan. It's Falkan, Nesryn." Prince Sartaq stalked to Nesryn's side, graceful as any Fae warrior. "How." But the young man had turned toward Aelin, eyes narrowing. As if trying to place her.

Then he said, "The assassin from the market in Xandria."

Aelin arched a brow. "Hopefully, the horse I stole didn't belong to you." A cough from Fenrys. Aelin threw the warrior a grin over her shoulder.

"I was always young," Falkan muttered. "I just didn't look it." His gray eyes again found Aelin's. "I gave you a piece of Spidersilk."

For a heartbeat, the then and the now blended and wobbled. "The merchant," Aelin murmured. She'd last seen him in the Red Desert-looking twenty years older. "You sold your youth to a stygian spider."

"You two know each other?" Nesryn gaped.

"The threads of fate weave together in strange ways," Falkan said, then smiled at Aelin. "I never got your name."

Hasar chuckled from the other side of the desk. "You already know it, shifter."

Before Falkan could figure it out, Fenrys stepped forward. "Shifter?"

But Nesryn said, "And Lysandra's uncle." Aelin slumped into the chair beside Chaol's.

Rowan laid a hand on her shoulder, and when she looked up, she found him near laughter.

"What's so funny, exactly?" she hissed.

Rowan smirked. "That for once, you are the one who gets knocked on your ass by a surprise."

Aelin stuck out her tongue. Borte grinned, and Aelin winked at the girl.

But Falkan said to Aelin and her companions, "You know my niece."

"Lysandra is my friend, and Lady of Caraverre," Aelin said. "She is not with us," she added upon Falkan's hopeful glance toward the tent flaps. "She's in the North."

Not their considerable beauty, but their size, their pointed ears, their weapons and elongated canines. Aelin whispered conspiratorially to the girl, "Make them roll over before you offer them a treat."

Lorcan glared, but Fenrys shifted in a flash, the enormous white wolf filling the space.

Hasar swore, Sartag backing away a step, but Borte beamed. "You are all truly Fae, then." Gavriel, ever the gallant knight, sketched a bow. Lorcan, the bastard, just crossed his arms.

Yet Rowan smiled at Borte. "Indeed we are."

Borte whirled to Aelin. "Then you are Aelin Galathynius. You look just how Nesryn said." Aelin grinned at Nesryn, the woman leaning against Sartaq's side. "I hope you only said horrible things about me."

"Only the worst," Nesryn said with dead flatness, though her mouth twitched.

But Falkan whispered, "The queen," and fell to his knees.

Hasar laughed. "He never showed that sort of awe when he met us."

Sartaq lifted his brows. "You told him to turn into a rat and scuttle away."

Aelin hoisted up Falkan by the shoulder. "I can't have my friend's uncle kneeling on the ground, can I?"

"You said you were an assassin." Falkan's eyes were so wide the whites around them gleamed. "You stole horses from the Lord of Xandria—"

"Yes, yes," Aelin said, waving a hand. "It's a long story, and we're in the middle of a war council, so..."

"Piss off?" Falkan finished

Aelin laughed, but glanced to Nesryn and Sartaq. The former jerked her chin to Falkan. "He's become our spy of sorts. He joins us in these meetings." Aelin nodded, then winked at the shifter. "I suppose you didn't need me to slay that stygian spider after all."

But Falkan tensed, his attention going to Nesryn and Sartaq, to Borte, still gawking at the Fae males. "Do they know?"

Aelin had a feeling she'd need to sit down again. Chaol indeed patted the chair beside him, earning a chuckle from Yrene. Doing herself a favor, Aelin indeed sat, Rowan taking up his place behind her, both of his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. His thumb ran along the nape of her neck, then drifted over the mating marks again scarring one side thanks to the seawater they'd used to seal them. But as her muscles soothed beneath that loving touch, her soul with it, her breath remained tight.

It didn't get any better when Nesryn said, "The stygian spiders are Valg."

Silence.

"We encountered their kin, the kharankui, deep in the Dagul Fells. They came into this world through a temporary crack between realms, and remained afterward to guard the entrance, should it ever reappear."

"This cannot end well," Fenrys muttered. Elide hummed her agreement.

"They feed on dreams and years and life," Falkan said, a hand on his own chest. "As my friends have said the Valg do."

Aelin had seen Valg princes drain a human of every last drop of youth and vigor and leave only a dried corpse behind. She wouldn't put it past the spiders to have a similar gift.

"What does this mean for the war?" Rowan asked, his thumbs still stroking Aelin's neck.

"Will they join Erawan's forces is the better question," Lorcan challenged with a face like stone.

"They do not answer to Erawan," Nesryn said quietly, and Aelin knew. Knew from the look Chaol gave her, the sympathy and fear, knew in her bones before Nesryn even finished.

"The stygian spiders, the kharankui, answer to their Valg queen. The only Valg queen. To Maeve."