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Birds circled above, keeping well away from the white-tailed hawk that had been perched atop a nearby chimney all morning, waiting to snatch up its next meal.
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.
ROWAN
As if his delicately pointed ears and slightly elongated canines weren’t enough to scare the living shit out of everyone in that alley, including the now-whimpering madwoman behind Celaena, 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.
She was Celaena Sardothien, but he was a Fae warrior and had likely been one for a great while.
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.
Because Celaena was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and rightful Queen of Terrasen.
WOOO
But the boom of swords striking shields in salute echoed from the hallway, and Aedion Ashryver—the King of Adarlan’s infamous General of the North and cousin to Aelin Galathynius—stalked into the Great Hall.
HEHE
Manon pulled her bloodred cloak tightly around herself and pressed into the shadows of the closet, listening to the three men who had broken into her cottage.
MANON
Because she was Manon Blackbeak, heir to the Blackbeak Witch-Clan, and she had been here for weeks, pretending to be a Crochan witch in the hope that it would flush out the real ones.
Love her
Maeve, Queen of the Fae. Her aunt. And then came the words she had been dreading for ten years. “Hello, Aelin Galathynius.”
It wasn’t a lie. That girl, that princess had died in a river a decade ago. Celaena was no more Aelin Galathynius than she was any other person.
“To what end?” Celaena asked softly, the anger and the fear dragging her down into an inescapable exhaustion. “You want me to train only so I can make a spectacle of my talents?” Maeve ran a moon-white finger down the owl’s head. “I wish you to become who you were born to be. To become queen.”
She scanned the night sky until she located the Stag, the Lord of the North. The unmoving star atop the stag’s head—the eternal crown—pointed the way to Terrasen. She’d been told that the great rulers of Terrasen turned into those bright stars so their people would never be alone—and would always know the way home. She hadn’t set foot there in ten years. While he’d been her master, Arobynn hadn’t let her, and afterward she hadn’t dared.
What Maeve didn’t understand, what she could never understand, was just how much that little princess in Terrasen had damned them a decade ago, even worse than Maeve herself had. She had damned them all, and then left the world to burn into ash and dust. So Celaena turned away from the stars, nestling under the threadbare blanket against the frigid cold, and closed her eyes, trying to dream of a different world. A world where she was no one at all.
Oh
You didn’t need a weapon at all when you were born one.
With her moon-white hair, alabaster skin, and burnt-gold eyes, she’d been told by ill-fated men that she was beautiful as a Fae queen. But what those men realized too late was that her beauty was merely a weapon in her natural-born arsenal. And it made things so, so fun.
didn’t hurt that my mate felt the same way. You’ll meet him soon enough. He’s always popping in to steal food for himself and his men.” He chuckled, and Luca grinned. Mate—not husband. The Fae had mates: an unbreakable bond, deeper than marriage, that lasted beyond death.
No, Asterin was just insane enough to wear the broken nose like a badge of honor, and would love her crooked nose for the rest of her not-so-immortal life.
Oh
she was fairly certain she wouldn’t feel. “Get up,” he said suddenly, and the world was bright and wide as he stood. “Get up.”
Wanted to know, so he could have it added to his personal map of the continent.
DORIAN ML
“We are the Thirteen, from now until the Darkness claims us.” She said it quietly, but knew all could hear her. “Let’s remind them why.”
Yess
With a silent prayer for forgiveness, Chaol looked straight at Aedion. “Aelin is alive.”
Rowan grinned. “There you are.” Blood—her blood—was on his teeth, on his mouth and chin.
She was forgetting what Nehemia looked like. The shade of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the smell of her. Her laugh. The roaring in Celaena’s head went quiet, silenced by that familiar nothingness. Do not let that light go out.
:(
Manon named her wyvern Abraxos, after the ancient serpent who held the world between his coils at the behest of the Three-Faced Goddess.
Spotting him, Aedion swore, low and viciously, his eyes bright in the glow of his torch. Celaena’s eyes. Aelin Ashryver—Ashryver—Galathynius’s eyes.
cold. Dorian knew he was hurting him—knew it, and didn’t quite care. “Because you want to be Aedion’s king someday?” Chaol’s face drained of color, from the cold or from fear, and Aedion barked a laugh. “My queen will die heirless sooner than marry a man from Adarlan.”
“When she returns,” Aedion said quietly, “what she will do to the King of Adarlan will make the slaughtering ten years ago look merciful.” And in his heart, Aedion hoped he spoke true.
As she dusted the block off, an image emerged of a stag with a glowing star between its antlers, so like the one in Terrasen.
She had forgotten how primal the Fae were, with their scents and mating and territorial nature.
This was her apartment. Whether she accepted or hated her past, she’d decorated the dining table in Terrasen’s royal colors—green and silver. The table and the stag figurine atop the mantel were the only shreds of proof that she might remember. Might care.
When she came back, he was never letting her go.
Her mother had called her Fireheart.
Oh
“Tell me.” When her mother didn’t respond, her father growled. “She is eight—and she has told me that her dearest friends are characters in books.” “She has Aedion.” “She has Aedion because he is the only child in this castle who isn’t petrified of her—who hasn’t been kept away because we have been lax with her training. She needs training, Ev—training, and friends. If she doesn’t have either, that’s when she’ll turn into what they’re afraid of.”
She knew he meant it. He’d burn the library, the city, or the whole world to ashes if she asked him. It was their bond, marked by blood and scent and something else she couldn’t place. A tether as strong as the one that bound her to her parents. Stronger, in some ways.
Saying those last words made a sharp, quick panic rise up in her, an aching pain that had her throat closing. “You left me,” she repeated. Maybe it was only out of blind terror at the abyss opening up again around her, but she whispered, “I have no one left. No one.” She hadn’t realized how much she meant it, how much she needed it not to be true, until now.
She vaguely felt the light shifting on the lake. Vaguely felt the sighing wind, warm as it brushed against her damp cheeks. And heard, so soft it was as if she dreamed it, a woman’s voice whispering, Why are you crying, Fireheart?
Fireheart—why do you cry? “Because I am lost,” she whispered onto the earth. “And I do not know the way.”
“I wanted to learn to use it like the other healers—long ago, I mean. But never was allowed to. They said … well, it wouldn’t be all that useful, since I didn’t have much of it, and Queens don’t become healers.” She should stop talking.
“My only wish,” Aedion said, growling in Ren’s face, “is to see her again. Just once, if that’s all the gods will allow me. If they grant me more time than that, then I’ll thank them every damn day of my life. But for now, all I’m working for is to see her, to know for certain that she’s real—that she survived. The rest is none of your concern.”
HE JUST WANRS HIS COUSIN
Aelin Fireheart, people had whispered as she bounded past, embers streaming from her like ribbons, Aedion and a few of her more lethal court members trailing as indulgent guards. Aelin of the Wildfire.
He left once she’d nodded again. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought he was fussing. Worried, even.
Aww
Curled as she was against her knees, he could see the whole expanse of ruined flesh, each scar from the lashings. “Who did that to you?” It would have been easy to lie, but she was so tired, and he had saved her useless hide. So she said, “A lot of people. I spent some time in the Salt Mines of Endovier.” He was so still that she wondered if he’d stopped breathing. “How long?” he asked after a moment. She braced herself for the pity, but his face was so carefully blank—no, not blank. Calm with lethal rage.
Her back. Rowan soared over the trees, riding and shaping the winds to push him onward, faster, their roar negligible to the bellowing in his head.
He’d bestowed plenty of them on his enemies and friends alike. In the grand sense of things, her back wasn’t even close to some of those wounds. Yet when he’d seen it, his heart had clean stopped—and for a moment, there had been an overwhelming silence in his mind.
That day—that day early on, he’d threatened to whip the girl, gods above. And she had lost it. He’d been such a proud fool that he’d assumed she’d lashed out because she was nothing more than a child. He should have known better—should have known that when she did react to something like that, it meant the scars went deep. And then there were the other things he’d said …
She had barely been grown into her woman’s body when they hurt her like that.
My poor girl
He gripped the winds with his magic, choking off their current. Aelin … Aelin had not trusted him—had not wanted him to know. And she’d almost burned out completely, gods be damned, leaving her currently defenseless.
Primal anger sharpened in his gut, brimming with a territorial, possessive need. Not a need for her, but a need to protect—a male’s duty and honor. He had not handled the news as he should have.
In the flickering dark, he said roughly, “You’re staying with me from now on.” She found him lying as far away from her as he could get without falling off the mattress. “The bed is for tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll get a cot. You’ll clean up after yourself or you’ll be back in that room.”
