Kingdom of Ash

“Aedion could only hope that Erawan also remained unaware that they no longer had the Fire-Bringer in their midst. What Terrasen’s own troops would say or do when they realized Aelin’s flame would not shield them in battle, he didn’t want to consider.”

The opening chapters point out that Terrasen’s armies and their allies rely on Aelin’s presence; the longer she remains missing, the more tension is heightened. The novel often draws connections between her flame and her people’s hope, a link that further increases the stakes should Lysandra’s ruse be discovered.

“She would never forget the sight of him crawling after Maeve once the queen had severed the blood oath. Crawling after Maeve like a shunned lover, like a broken dog desperate for its master. Aelin had been brutalized, their very location betrayed by Lorcan to Maeve, and still he tried to follow. Right through the sand still wet with Aelin’s blood.”

This passage from Elide’s point of view illustrates the current state of her relationship with Lorcan. It provides a jumping-off point for their arcs: Elide and Lorcan must overcome their conflict to determine the future they wish to have.

“A monster—the man had been a monster in every possible way. Had sired Dorian while possessed by a Valg demon. What did it make him? His blood ran red, and the Valg prince who’d infested Dorian himself had delighted on feasting on him, on making him enjoy all he’d done while collared. But did it still make him fully human?”

This quote shows the depths of Dorian’s confusion about himself and his heritage. Dorian has been confident in his abilities until recently, but learning about his father’s life-long Valg possession has taken his character backward rather than forward. His character arc will be to discover his identity as a son, king, romantic partner, and friend.

“Rhoe had taught him that—the art of making his men want to follow him, die for him. But more than that, seeing them as men, as people with families and friends, who had as much to risk as he did in fighting here. It was no burden, despite the exhaustion creeping over him, to thank them for their courage, their swords.”

The compassion that Aedion shows for his fellow soldiers earns him their undying loyalty, playing into the theme of Love as the Ultimate Motivator. Not only does he practice this kind of devotion himself, but he inspires others to do so as well, reminding everyone of what they must fight to protect.

“Be what you wish—a thing far easier said than done. Especially with the weight of a crown.”

Dorian struggles with The Burden of Power throughout the novel. Not only does he grapple with the cost of forging the Lock, but also the terrible legacy his father left to him as King of Adarlan. As the war forces Dorian to do morally ambiguous things for the sake of his people’s survival, he struggles with becoming the person he hopes to be. The Burden of Power forces him to commit acts he’d never choose for himself but must be done for the greater good.

“Only with her did he not need to explain. Only with her did he not need to be a king, or anything but what he was. Only with her would there be no judgment for what he’d done, who he’d failed, what he might still have to do. Just this—pleasure and utter oblivion.”

Dorian connects with Manon because he recognizes his experiences in her dark past: They were both forged into cruel and unforgiving weapons. Now, both wish to be better than their forbearers while also struggling with the tainted legacies they’ve inherited.

“Gods above, she was beautiful. He wondered when it would stop feeling like a betrayal to think so.”

Dorian still suffers from grief after Sorscha’s death. His guilt about the role he and his father played in the deaths of many haunts him and holds him back from seeking things he doesn’t believe he deserves—a crown, friends, and new love with Manon.

“He pushed and pushed and pushed against those invisible chains, against that blood-sworn order to obey, to stay down, to watch. He defied it. All that the blood oath was. Pain lanced through him, into his very core. He blocked it out as Cairn pointed the smoldering poker at the young queen with a heart of wildfire.”

Fenrys’s love and admiration for Aelin, his queen, gives him the strength to break his blood oath to Maeve, even though the act will inevitably kill him. He uses Love as the Ultimate Motivator for his actions, sacrificing his life to protect the monarch he has pledged himself to.

“Dorian nodded, though he was not a part of this conversation. Who did the Thirteen, the Ironteeth and Crochans, wish to be, to build, as a people?”

The novel again draws parallels between Manon and Dorian, as both consider similar questions. Dorian wonders who he wishes to be both as a king and for the sake of shape-shifting magic. Meanwhile, if Manon wishes to unite the Crochan, Ironteeth, and the Thirteen, she must understand who they wish to be as a people. The weight of these decisions weighs heavily on both characters.

“So she would not yield to this. What had been done. What remained. For the companions around her, to lift their despair, their fear, she wouldn’t yield. She’d fight for it, claw her way back to it, who she’d been before. Remember to swagger and grin and wink. She’d fight against that lingering stain on her soul, fight to ignore it. Would use this journey into the dark to piece herself back together—just enough to make it convincing.”

Despite the trauma Aelin has endured and the long road to recovery ahead of her, she reverts to her former swagger to be the beacon of hope her allies want to see. Eventually, her love for her people inspires true healing and becomes the reason she looks forward to reclaiming her life.

“But he glanced toward Elide again. And saw hope—just a glimmer of it—lighting her face. So Lorcan took the queen’s arm in his hands and drank. The taste of her—jasmine, lemon verbena, and crackling embers—filled his mouth. Filled his soul, as something burned and settled within him. An ember of warmth. Like a piece of that raging magic had come to rest inside his very soul.”

Lorcan has spent the entire series as a pessimist without hope, a wandering warrior without a home, and a solo male without a family or partner to love. His reluctant admission to Aelin’s court gifts him the home, companionship, and love he’s denied himself for so long. In her court, he realizes he deserves more than he’s led himself to believe.

“I wanted to die by the end, before she ever threatened me with the collar. And even now, I feel like someone has ripped me from myself. Like I’m at the bottom of the sea, and who I am, who I was, is far up at the surface, and I will never get back there again.”

Aelin likens her despair to drowning at the bottom of a sea; only conserving her unending well of power for a death blow against Maeve keeps her going. However, when Aelin permanently depletes her power to forge the Lock, she doesn’t mourn that loss but rather delights in it. She becomes more herself without the burden of her power because the people who remain at her side are those who truly care about her—not those who wish to use her power for their own agendas.

“And as Rowan fought his way closer, as that cry went down the battlements and Anielle men ran to aid her, he realized that Aelin did not need an ounce of flame to inspire men to follow. That she had been waiting, yanking at the bit, to show them what she, without magic, without any godly power, might do.”

As Aelin fights on the Anielle battlefield, she uses skill rather than wielding her fire, a foreshadowing of the peace she’ll find once her power is depleted after forging the Lock. This is how Aelin’s always wanted things—inspiring people with her example rather than the godly power she’s never seen as a gift.

“Aelin unleashed a flicker of her power. […] Rowan only smiled. Smiled with that fierce hope, that brutal determination that flared in her own heart, as she began to burn. She let the flame encompass her, a golden glow that she knew could be spied even from the farthest lines of the army, from the city and keep they left behind. A beacon glowing bright in the shadows of the mountains, in the shadows of the forces that awaited them, Aelin lit the way north.”

Fire imagery and symbolism pervade the novel, as it symbolizes hope. Aelin and her magic are a beacon to her armies and her allies, who believe in her protective power and the better world she promises everyone.

“Manon only looked to Aedion, that smile lingering. ‘Long ago, the Crochans fought beside Terrasen, to honor the great debt we owed the Fae King Brannon for granting us a homeland. For centuries, we were your closest allies and friends. […] We heard your call for aid. […] And we have come to answer it.’”

The theme of Kindness Begets Kindness is shown here in Manon’s loyalty to Aelin and in the recognition of the long past Terrasen shares with witches, who are some of its oldest allies. Manon’s speech demonstrates how kindness can forge friendships and loyal allies lasting thousands of years.

“In memory of the stillborn witchling who had been thrown by Manon’s grandmother into the fire before Asterin had a chance to hold her. In memory of the hunter whom Asterin had loved, as no Ironteeth ever had loved a man, and had never gone back to, for shame and fear. The hunter who had never stopped waiting for her to return, even when he was an old man. For them, for the family she had lost, Manon knew her Second would fight today. So it might never happen again.”

Love motivates Asterin’s fight against Erawan, specifically her vendetta against the Blackbeak Matron who burned her stillborn baby’s body and murdered the man she loved. Asterin provides the best example to Ironteeth witches of the strength of love, inspiring many of her fellow witches to embrace it alongside her.

“She couldn’t see what he inked, but knew the design. A replica of what he’d written on her back this spring, the stories of her loved ones and their deaths, written right where her scars had been. Exactly where they’d been, as if he had their memory etched in his mind.”

Aelin’s new tattoos replace the scars that were erased from her body. Her tattoos symbolize the same things her scars had—the love she holds for her friends, family, and people, and the reason she continues fighting. Her tattoos are promises, just as her scars were promises—to Rowan, to Nehemiah, to Terrasen.

“Even as part of him glowed with pride that she had chosen now, here, as the moment when that new world she had promised would rise. A world in which a few did not hold all the power, but many. Beginning with this, this most vital choice. This unbearable fate.”

Aelin has not only the weight of Terrasen on her shoulders but also the power of a Fire-Goddess that feels more like a curse than a blessing. After enduring The Burden of Power for so long, Aelin yearns to share it with others, to ease the weight that no one person should have to bear alone.

“She could barely move. Barely think. Gone. Where light and life had flowed within her, there was nothing. Not an ember. Only a droplet, just one, of water.”

When all of Aelin’s fire is taken to forge the Lock, she clings to the drop of water magic that she inherited from her mother’s side. Water often symbolizes peace and tranquility. Aelin’s decision to hold on to this magic shows her desire for an end to the conflicts that have defined her life so far.

“And when Aelin looked behind her, to the archway into her own world, she indeed could…feel them. As if the Wyrdmarks he’d secretly inked onto her were a rope. A tether home. A lifeline into eternity.”

This passage reveals that the Wyrdmarks Rowan has tattooed into Aelin’s skin are a map home, hidden within the story of her loved ones. This symbolizes the promises she’s made to fight for them until the very end, the promises that motivate her to cheat death and return to her realm, to end the war.

“He didn’t care. Didn’t give a shit whether she had all the power of the sun, or not an ember. It had never mattered to him anyway.”

Rowan proves why Aelin is relieved to be rid of her godly power. Without it, she can be sure the people who remain by her side care about her as a person, rather than what she can offer them.

“It was the least he could do, with all the warriors who had fallen thanks to him, to his choices. To fall himself for Terrasen. A death worthy of a song. An end worthy of being told around a fire. If in Erawan’s new world of darkness, flames would be allowed to exist.”

Maas returns to fire imagery in this passage. If flame is not allowed to exist in Erawan’s world should he win, hope itself will be forever lost. Conversely, if Aelin’s armies win, war stories will be told around campfires—fires that connote community, the hearth, and togetherness.

“Each step a memory of his friend, an image of the kingdoms they had seen, the enemies they had fought, the quiet moments that no song would ever mention. Yet the songs would mention this—that the Lion fell before the western gate of Orynth, defending the city and his son.”

Rowan’s grieving thoughts after Gavriel’s death echo the lasting power of love. Though the legends won’t contain much about Gavriel’s pre-war adventures, they will sing of his loving sacrifice for his son.