From the Bookshelf of PopSugar Reading Challenge en Español…

“Once upon a time,” she said to him, to the world, to herself, “in a land long since burned to ash, there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom.... very much.”

“Once upon a time,” she said to him, to the world, to herself, “in a land long since burned to ash, there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom.... very much.”

Dorian was heir to the mightiest empire in the world, and Sorscha was the daughter of two dead immigrants from a village in Fenharrow that had been burned to ash—a village that no one would ever remember.
But that didn’t stop her from loving him, as she still did, invisible and secret, ever since she’d first laid eyes on him six years ago.

It was not his fault that Nehemia died, not when the princess had orchestrated everything. Yet he had kept information from her. He had chosen the king. Even though he’d claimed he loved her, he still loyally served that monster. Maybe she had been a fool for letting him in, for dreaming of a world where she could ignore the fact that he was captain to the man who had shattered her life again and again.

“I have magic—there is no undoing that, no getting rid of it. And as for Celaena....” He clamped down on the power that surged as he imagined—for the first time, he realized—what it was to be her. “As for Celaena,” he said again, “you do not have the right to wish she were not what she is. The only thing you have a right to do is decide whether you are her enemy or her friend.”

Lashing out at Rowan like that, saying the things she did, trying to fight with him... She’d deserved that punch. More than deserved it. If she was being honest with herself, she was barely passable as a human being these days. She fingered her split lip and winced.

“I claim you, Rowan Whitethorn. I don’t care what you say and how much you protest. I claim you as my friend.”

It was a damn good thing Rowan had no interest in her, either, because she knew she was stupid and reckless enough to consider whether moving on in the physical sense might solve the problem of Chaol.

There was nothing romantic about sharing a bed with Rowan, and they kept to their own sides.

“You are one of the Thirteen,” she said to him. “From now until the Darkness cleaves us apart. You are mine, and I am yours. Let’s show them why.”

He looked at his friend, perhaps for the last time, and said what he had always known, from the moment they’d met, when he’d understood that the prince was his brother in soul. “I love you.”

He’d known, since the moment he figured out who she was, that while Celaena would always pick him, Aelin would not.