Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)

by Sarah J. Maas

Lady Marion scooped her into her lap, rocking. “I know. I’m not going to leave—I’m going to stay with you until help comes. They’ll be here tomorrow. Lord Lochan, Captain Quinn, your Aedion—they’re all going to be here tomorrow. Maybe even by dawn.” But Lady Marion was shaking, too. “I know,” she kept saying, weeping quietly. “I know.”

Marion pressing her into the freezing floor, covering her with her delicate body.

“Aelin,” Marion whispered, and small, strong hands found her face, forcing her to look at the white-as-snow features, the bloodred lips.

Witch?

am going to buy you what time I can, Aelin. No matter what you hear, no matter what you see, don’t look back, and don’t stop until you find a place to hide.”

“Tell my Elide …” Her voice broke. “Tell my Elide that I love her very much.”

Through the open window, she could see Lady Marion standing before a hooded, towering man, her daggers out but trembling. “You will not find her.”

“She is a child,” Marion bellowed. She had never heard her scream like that—with rage and disgust and despair. Marion raised her daggers, precisely how her husband had shown her again and again.

She should help, not cower in the trees. She had learned to hold a knife and a small sword. She should help.

The man lunged for Marion, but she darted out of the way—and then leapt on him, slicing and tearing and biting.

Witch?!

Knew that Lady Marion, who had loved her husband and daughter so much, was gone. Knew that this—this was called sacrifice.

The hoofbeats were so powerful they seemed to echo through the forest—the horse had to be a monster.

Tiny eyes in the dark, small fingers at the roots, heaving them up, up.

Little folk

That. That moment Lady Marion had chosen a desperate hope for her kingdom over herself, over her husband and the daughter who would wait and wait for a return that would never come. That was the moment that had broken everything Aelin Galathynius was and had promised to be.

She awoke in a strange bed in a cold keep, the Amulet of Orynth lost to the river. Whatever magic it had, whatever protection, had been used up that night.

Then the hate—the hate that had rebuilt her, the rage that had fueled her, smothering the memories she buried in a grave within her heart and never let out.

She had taken Lady Marion’s sacrifice and become a monster, almost as bad as the one who had murdered Lady Marion and her own family.

It was what she had not been able to tell Chaol, or Dorian, or Elena: that when Nehemia arranged for her own death so it would spur her into action, that sacrifice … that worthless sacrifice …

Her cheek against the moss, the young princess she had been—Aelin Galathynius—reached a hand for her. “Get up,” she said softly.

Aelin strained for her, bridging that rift in the foundation of the world. “Get up.” A promise—a promise for a better life, a better world.

“Get up,” someone said beyond the young princess. Sam. Sam, standing just beyond where she could see, smiling faintly.

“Get up,” said another voice—a woman’s. Nehemia.

“Get up.” Two voices together—her mother and father, faces grave but eyes bright. Her uncle was beside them, the crown of Terrasen on his sil...

One by one, like shadows emerging from the mist, they appeared. The faces of the people she had love...

And then there was Lady Marion, smiling beside her husband. “Get up,” she whispered, her voice full of that hope for the world, and for t...

The king hadn’t done it merely to cause a disruption and hurt her. He had also done it to separate her family, to get them out of the castle—to take the blame away from Adarlan and make it look like an outside attack.

Yet—yet even those faces, so warped with hatred … she still loved them—even if they loathed her, even if it ached; loved them until their hissing faded, until they vanished like smoke, leaving only Aelin lying beside her, as she had been all along.

She could see the snow-capped Staghorns, the wild tangle of Oakwald at their feet, and … and Orynth, that city of light and learning, once a pillar of strength—and her home.

It would be both again. She would not let that light go out. She would fill the world with it, with her light—her gift. She would light up the darkness, so brightly that all who were lost or wounded or broken would find their way to it, a beacon for those who still dwelled in that abyss. It would not take a monster to destroy a monster—but light, light to drive out darkness.

She was not afraid. She would remake the world—remake it for them, those she had loved with this glorious, burning heart; a world so brilliant and prosperous that when she saw them again in the Afterworld, she would not be ashamed. She would build it for her people, who had survived this long, and whom she would not abandon. She would mak...

She was their queen, and she could offer them nothing less. Aelin Galathynius smiled at her, hand still outreach...

Celaena reached across the earth between them and brushed her fingers agai...

He knew Aelin was alive, because during all these weeks that they had been breathing each other’s scents, they had become bonded.

That was why Gavriel and Lorcan were holding him back. If they didn’t, he would run for the darkness, where Lyria beckoned.

Lorcan, the commander who had offered him a company of warriors when he had nothing and no one left.

They would knock him unconscious sooner than allow him into that dark, where Lyria’s beckoning had now turned to screaming for mercy. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.

They turned toward the darkness. And Rowan could have sworn that a golden light arced through it, then disappeared. “That’s impossible,” Gavriel breathed. “She burned out.”

The creatures fed on despair and pain and terror. But what if—what if the victim let go of those fears? What if the victim walked through them—embraced them?

As if in answer, flame erupted from the wall of darkness. The fire unfurled, filling the rainy night, vibrant as a red opal.

And there, beyond the stones, standing between two of those creatures, was Aelin, a strange mark glowing on her brow. Her hair flowed around her, shorter now and bright like her fire. And her eyes—though they were red-rimmed, the gold in her eyes was a living flame.

Rowan ran all of one step before she flung out her arms, grabbing the creatures by their flawless faces—her palms over their open mouths as she exhaled sharply. As if she’d breathed fire into their cores, flames shot out of their eyes, their ears, their fingers.

Her magic was raging so fiercely that the rain turned to steam before it hit her. A weapon bright from the forging.

the gold and red and blue flames utterly hers, this heir of fire. Spying him at last, she smiled faintly. A queen’s smile.

he extended his bleeding palm, offering his raw power to harness now that she was well and truly emptied. She knew it would work. She had suspected it for some time now. They were carranam.

She held his gaze as she grabbed her own dagger and cut her palm, right over the scar she’d given herself at Nehemia’s grave.

And though she knew he could read the words on her face, she said, “To whatever end?” He nodded, and she joined hands with him, blood to blood and soul to soul, his other arm coming around to grip her tightly. Their hands clasped between them, ...

Yet this was not the end—this was not her end. She had survived loss and pain and torture; she had survived slavery and hatred and despair; she would survive this, too. Because hers was not a story of darkness. So she was not afraid of that crushing black, not with the warrior holding her, not with the courage that having one true friend offered—a friend who made living not so awful after all, not if she were with him.

Rowan’s magic punched into her, old and strange and so vast her knees buckled.

He held her with that unrelenting strength, and she harnessed his wild power as he opened his innermost barrie...

Drawing power from the endless well within Rowan, she pulled up fire and light, embers and warmth, the glow of a thousand dawns and sunsets. If the Valg craved the sunshine of Erilea, then she would give it to them.

A spear of black punched into her head—offering one more vision in a mere heartbeat. Not a memory, but a glimpse of the future.