Kingdom of Ash

snaking through it, down far below.
She stood with her back to him, hair
blowing in a sheet of gold. Longer than he’d
seen it the last time.
He tried to shift, to fly over the chasm. His
body’s innate magic ignored him. Locked in
his Fae body, the jump too far, he could only
stare toward her, breathe in her scent—
jasmine, lemon verbena, and crackling embers
—as it floated to him on the wind. This wind
told him no secrets, had no song to sing.
It was a wind of death, of cold, of nothing.
Aelin.
He had no voice here, but he spoke her
name. Threw it across the gulf between them.
Slowly, she turned to him.
It was her face—or it would be in a few
years. When she Settled.
But it wasn’t the slightly older features that
knocked the breath from him.