Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)

by Sarah J. Maas

Birds circled above, keeping well away from the white-tailed hawk that had been perched atop a nearby chimney all morning,

She had made a vow—a vow to free Eyllwe.

Celaena had decided on one plan to follow when she reached these shores. One plan, however insane and unlikely, to free the enslaved kingdom: find and obliterate the Wyrdkeys the King of Adarlan had used to build his terrible empire.

There was one person in Erilea who had been present when the Wyrdkeys were wielded by a conquering demon race that had warped them into three tools of such mighty power that they’d been hidden for thousands of years and nearly wiped from memory. Queen Maeve of the Fae. Maeve knew everything—as was expected when you were older than dirt.

So the first step of her stupid, foolish plan had been simple: seek out Maeve, get answers about how to destroy the Wyrdkeys, and then return to Adarlan.

the reef was the main defense keeping Adarlan’s legions from these shores.

Varese, the city where her mother had been born; the vibrant heart of the kingdom.

Rumor claimed the Wendlynite soldiers were trained by the Fae to be ruthless and cunning and swift.

But these days, Celaena knew the only threat she posed was to herself.

The same way Galan Ashryver, Crown Prince of Wendlyn, was good.

Celaena stuck out her tongue. At the guards, at the market, at the hawk on the nearby chimney,

But then a deep male voice chuckled from the shadows behind her.

Tall, broad-shouldered, every inch of him seemingly corded with muscle, he was a male blooded with power. He paused in a dusty shaft of sunlight, his silver hair gleaming.

a wicked-looking tattoo was etched down the left side of his harsh face, the whorls of black ink stark against his sun-kissed skin.

but she still remembered enough of the Fae language to recognize them as words, even in such an artistic rendering.

at his temple, the tattoo flowed over his jaw and down his neck, where it disappeared beneath the pa...

she realized he might have been handsome were it not for the promise of violence in his pine-green eyes.

All Fae possessed a secondary animal form. Celaena was currently in hers, her mortal human body as animal as the birds wheeling above.

He spoke the common tongue, and his accent was subtle—lovely, if she was feeling generous enough to admit it. A soft, rolling purr.

“Rowan.” His tattoo seemed to soak up the sun, so dark it looked freshly inked.

Do what has to be done, Elena had told her. In her usual fashion, Elena had omitted to specify what had to be done once she arrived in Wendlyn.

It was the price for getting Celaena to the safety of Wendlyn: his father’s support in exchange for his return to the Silver Lake to take up his title as the heir of Anielle. And he’d been willing to make that sacrifice; he’d make any sacrifice to keep Celaena and her secrets safe. Even now that he knew who—what she was. Even after she’d told him about the king and the Wyrdkeys. If this was the price he had to pay, so be it.

You will always be my enemy. Celaena had screamed those words at Chaol the night Nehemia had died.

Because Celaena was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and rightful Queen of Terrasen.

He just prayed that she could piece herself back together again. Because a broken, unpredictable assassin was one thing. But a queen …

Aedion Ashryver—the King of Adarlan’s infamous General of the North and cousin to Aelin Galathynius—stalked into the Great Hall.

Handsome was a light way of describing what Aedion was. Overwhelming was more like it. Towering and heavily muscled, Aedion was every inch the warrior rumor claimed him to be.

A white wolf pelt was slung across his broad shoulders, and a round shield had been strapped to his back—along with an ancient-looking sword.

They were Celaena’s eyes. Ashryver eyes. A stunning turquoise with a core of gold as bright as their hair. Their hair—even the shade of it was the same. They could have been twins, if Aedion weren’t twenty-four and tanned from years in the snow-bright mountains of Terrasen.

Aedion was a prince of the Ashryver royal line and had been raised in the Galathynius household—and yet he served the king.

Aedion’s temper and insolence were near-legendary—part of the reason he was stationed in the far reaches of the North.

the Bane—Aedion’s legion—was notorious for its skill and brutality,

black ring—the same that the king, Perrington, and most of those under their control wore. That explained why the king allowed the insolence: when it came down to it, the king’s will truly was Aedion’s.

They’d met as children. When Dorian and his father had visited Terrasen in the days before the royal family was slaughtered. When Dorian had met Aelin—met Celaena.

Gods, that face. It was Celaena’s face—the other side of the coin. The same arrogance, the same unchecked anger. But where Celaena crackled with it, Aedion seemed to … pulse. And there was something nastier, far more bitter in Aedion’s face.

slender white line across Chaol’s cheek. The scar Celaena had given to him the night Nehemia died and she’d tried to kill him—now a permanent reminder of everything he’d lost.

Dull metal flecked with dings and scratches, its pommel nothing more than a bit of cracked, rounded horn. Such a simple, plain sword for one of the greatest warriors in Erilea. “The Sword of Orynth,” Aedion drawled. “A gift from His Majesty upon my first victory.”

It had been an heirloom of Terrasen’s royal family, passed from ruler to ruler. By right, it was Celaena’s. It had belonged to her father.

“Symbols have power, Prince,” Aedion said,

“You’d be surprised by the power this still wields in the North—what it does to convince people not to pursue foolhardy plans.”

Aedion was an Ashryver, not a Galathynius—which meant that his great-grandmother had been Mab, one of the three Fae-Queens, in recent generations crowned a goddess and renamed Deanna, Lady of the Hunt.

“I make it my business to know when the power brokers of the realm meet their end.”

Take nothing with you, leave nothing behind.

she brought her mouth close to his ear and whispered, “Wrong kind of witch.”

Manon merely smiled, her silver-white hair glinting in the moonlight.

Manon smiled broader, and a row of dagger-sharp iron teeth pushed from the slits high in her gums, snapping down like armor.

And then, just to really make him soil his pants, she flicked her wrists in the air between them. The iron claws shot over her nails in a stinging, gleaming flash.

She counted to ten, because she wanted to hunt, and had been that way since she tore through her mother’s womb and came roaring and bloody into this world.

Because she was Manon Blackbeak, heir to the Blackbeak Witch-Clan,

They were still out there, the self-righteous, insufferable Crochans, hiding as healers and wise-women.