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She left her nephew kneeling as she turned her violet, starry eyes to Celaena and gave her that spider’s smile.
Violet starry eyes and SPIDERS SMILE?!
“The Wyrdkeys.” “How they can be destroyed, where they are, and what else you know of them.” “They cannot be destroyed. They can only be put back in the gate.”
“I do know about them. I know they can be used to create, to destroy, to open portals. But I do not know how to put them back. I never learned how, and then they were taken by Brannon across the sea and I never saw them again.”
“Black and glittering, no more than slivers of stone. But they were not stone—they were like nothing on this earth, in any realm. It was like holding the living flesh of a god, like containing the breath of every being in every realm all at once. It was madness and joy and terror and despair and eternity.”
“There are many different races of Valg—creatures that even your darkest nightmares would flee from. They are ruled by the princes, who themselves are made of shadow and despair and hatred and have no bodies to occupy save those that they infiltrate. There aren’t many princes—but I once witnessed an entire legion of Fae warriors devoured by six of them within hours.”
“How do you think Brannon won himself such glory and a kingdom? He was a discarded son of nobody, unclaimed by either parent. But Mala loved him fiercely, so his flames were sometimes all that held the Valg princes at bay until we could summon a force to push them back.”
“Brannon wasn’t royal-born?”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you what the mark on your brow means?” “I was told it was a sacred mark.”
Brannon was born with the bastard’s mark—the mark every unclaimed, unwanted child possessed, marking them as nameless, nobody. Each of Brannon’s heirs, despite their noble lineage, has since been graced with it—the nameless mark.”
Wyrdstone ring he’d worn instead of a collar. It had recognized Elena—and it had said to both of them, You were brought here—all of you were. All the players in the unfinished game.
“Are fire and light the only way to kill the Valg princes?” “They are hard to kill, but not invincible,” Maeve admitted. “With the way the Adarlanian king compels them, cutting off their heads to sever the collar might do the trick. If you are to return to Adarlan, that will be the only way, I suspect.”
“The King of Adarlan, it seems, is doing what I never had the nerve to do while the keys were briefly in my possession. Without all three keys, he is limited. He can only open the portal between our worlds for short periods, long enough to let in perhaps one prince to infiltrate a body he has prepared. But with all three keys, he could open the portal at will—he could summon all the Valg armies, to be led by the princes in their mortal bodies, and …” Maeve looked more intrigued than horrified. “And with all three keys, he might not need to rely on magically gifted hosts for the Valg. There are
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His control would be absolute. And he would not need living hosts—only bodies.”
“He could have an army of the dead, inhabited by the Valg.” “An army that does not need to eat or sleep or breathe—an army that will sweep like a plague across your continent, and others. Maybe other worlds, too.”
A calming warmth wrapped around her, as if someone had pulled her into an embrace. Feminine, joyous, infinitely powerful. This doom has not yet come to pass, it seemed to whisper in her ear. There is still time. Do not succumb to fear yet.
Brannon—he had possessed all three, yet had chosen to hide them, rather than put them back. And somehow, suddenly, that became the greatest question of all: why?
just enough to make Celaena glance at the stone. So much stone here—in this palace and in the city. And that word Maeve had used earlier, taken …
“She found a riddle, and she knows the King of Adarlan has at least the first key, but doesn’t know where he keeps it. She also learned what Brannon did with the third—and where it is. She refused to tell me.” There was a glimmer of horror in his eyes, and his fists were trembling, as if some invisible force had compelled him to say it. The wolves only watched.
She snapped her fingers, and the wolves rose to their feet, shifting in flashes of light into the most beautiful men she’d ever beheld. Warriors from the size of them, from the lethal grace with which they moved; one light and one dark, but stunning—perfect.
Maeve had harmed Rowan before. How many of his scars had she given him?
Was this why he had been praying to Mala that morning? Because he knew what to expect from Maeve?
She knew the gold in her eyes had shifted to flame, because when she looked to Maeve, the queen’s face had gone bone-white. And then Celaena set the world on fire.
“One thought from me, and your city will burn.” “It is stone,” Maeve snapped. Celaena smiled. “Your people aren’t.”
“Try me. Just try to push me, Aunt, and see what comes of it. This was what you wanted, wasn’t it? Not for me to master my magic, but for you to learn just how powerful I am. Not how much of your sister’s blood flows in my veins—no, you’ve known from the start that I have very little of Mab’s power. You wanted to know how much I got from Brannon.”
“You never gave the keys to Brannon. And you didn’t journey with Brannon and Athril to retrieve the keys from the Valg,” Celaena went on, a crown of fire wreathing her head. “You went to steal them for yourself. You wanted to keep them. Once Brannon and Athril realized that, they fought you. And Athril …” Celaena drew Goldryn, its hilt glowing bloodred. “Your beloved Athril, dearest friend of Brannon … when Athril fought you, you killed him. You, not the Valg. And in your grief and shame, you were weakened enough that Brannon took the keys from you. It wasn’t some enemy force who sacked the
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It was why Brannon had hidden the Wyrdkey in his household’s heirloom—to give them that extra ounce of power. Not against ordinary enemies, but in case Maeve ever came for them.
“That was why you abandoned your land in the foothills and left it to rot. That was why you built a city of stone surrounded by water: so Brannon’s heirs could not return and roast you alive. That was why you wanted to see me, why you bargained with my mother. You wanted to know what manner of threat I would pose. What would happen when Brannon’s blood mixed with Mab’s line.”
“Behold my power, Maeve. Behold what I grapple with in the deep dark, what prowls under my skin.”
The power wasn’t in might or skill. It was in the control—the power lay in controlling herself.
“Give me that sword and get out.” She extended a hand toward Goldryn. Celaena shook her head. “I don’t think so. Brannon left it in that cave for anyone but you to find. And so it is mine, through blood and fire and darkness.” She sheathed Goldryn at her side. “Not very pleasant when someone doesn’t give you what you want, is it?”
the vision Narrok had given her as she burned him. He had known. Somehow he had seen the potential, as if he’d figured it out while the Valg princes sorted through her memories. It was not a future etched in stone, but she did not let her aunt know that. She yielded the memory as if it were truth, as if it were a plan.
She was more than human, more than queen. Aelin. Beloved. Immortal. Blessed. Aelin. Aelin of the Wildfire. Aelin Fireheart. Aelin Light-Bringer. Aelin.
It was the simple golden ring that had been left in Goldryn’s scabbard. She had kept it safe all these weeks, asking Emrys to tell story after story about Maeve as she carefully pieced together the truth about her aunt, just for this very moment, for this very task. Maeve went as still as death while Celaena lifted the ring between two fingers.
I found it, after all. In Goldryn’s scabbard, where Brannon left it after grabbing it off Athril’s corpse—the family ring Athril would have given you someday. And in the thousands of years since then, you never found it, so … I suppose it’s mine by chance.”
All of it—all of it for him. For Rowan, who had known exactly what sword he was picking up that day in the mountain cave, who had thrown it to her across the ice as a future bargaining chip—the only protection he could offer her against Maeve, if she was smart enough to figure it out.
She had only realized what he’d done—that he’d known all along—when she’d mentioned the ring to him weeks ago and he’d told her he hoped she found some use for it.
“I’ll make a trade with you, though.” Maeve’s brows narrowed. Celaena jerked her chin. “Your beloved’s ring—for Rowan’s freedom from his blood oath.”
“By my blood that flows in you,” Maeve said. “Through no dishonor, through no act of treachery, I hereby free you, Rowan Whitethorn, of your blood oath to me.”
She had never heard of a blood oath being broken before, but had risked it regardless. Perhaps not in all the history of the world had one ever been broken honorably.
Maeve said, “You are free of me, Prince Rowan Whitethorn.”
Complete and utter submission, that’s what a blood oath was. He would yield everything to her—his life, any property, any free will.
I claim you, Aelin. To whatever end.
that strange, feminine warmth that she’d felt at the campsite that morning wrapped around her, as if assuring her it was all right to want this badly enough that it hurt, telling her that she could trust the prince, and more than that—more than anything, she could trust herself.
“Together, Fireheart,” he said, pushing back the sleeve of her tunic. “We’ll find a way together.” He looked up from her exposed wrist. “A court that will change the world,” he promised.
“Do you promise to serve in my court, Rowan Whitethorn, from now until the day you die?” She did not know the right words or the Old Language, but a blood oath wasn’t about pretty phrases. “I do. Until my last breath, and the world beyond. To whatever end.”
For a heartbeat, something lightning-bright snapped through her and then settled—a thread binding them, tighter and tighter with each pull Rowan took of her blood.
There were no words to do justice to what passed between them in that moment.
Shoulder to shoulder, they looked at the Fae Queen one last time. But there was only a white barn owl flapping off into the moonlit night.
Over breakfast, he’d already sketched a few designs for her approval. They were so perfect it was as if he’d reached into her soul to find them. It hadn’t surprised her at all.
That was what the salt was for with this manner of tattoo, Rowan had told her. To remind the bearer of the loss.
