Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)

by Sarah J. Maas

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

Despite all that had happened, and Chaol’s role in Nehemia’s death, even after she’d destroyed what was between them, she hadn’t been able to forfeit his ring. She’d lost it thrice now in card games, only to get it back—by whatever means necessary.

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

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

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’s temper and insolence were near-legendary—part of the reason he was stationed in the far reaches of the North. Chaol had always thought it wise to keep him far from Rifthold, especially as Aedion seemed to be a bit of a two-faced bastard, and the Bane—Aedion’s legion—was notorious for its skill and brutality,

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.

She slipped through the grasses, no more than shadow and mist.

The warm air hummed, leaving a metallic taste coating her tongue. Far behind them, thunder grumbled.

Magic

Gods, the water tasted … new and ancient and powerful and delicious.

It wasn’t the carved oak furniture, or the faded green drapes, or the warmth of the fire that made her stop dead. It was the dark-haired woman seated behind the desk. Maeve, Queen of the Fae. Her aunt. And then came the words she had been dreading for ten years. “Hello, Aelin Galathynius.”

Then she said in a too-quiet voice, “Aelin Galathynius is dead.” Just speaking her name aloud—the damned name she had dreaded and hated and tried to forget …

“Prince Rowan—” Prince. She swallowed the urge to turn to him. “—is from my sister Mora’s bloodline. He is my nephew of sorts, and a member of my household. An extremely distant relation of yours; there is some ancient ancestry linking you.”

No one had lived to tell anything beyond shadows and claws and a darkness to devour your soul.

Like Rhys's beast form?

“They broke my laws, you know. Your parents disobeyed my commands when they eloped. The bloodlines were too volatile to be mixed, but your mother promised to let me see you after you were born.” Maeve cocked her head, eerily similar to the owl behind her. “It would seem that in the eight years after your birth, she was always too busy to uphold her vow.”

“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.”

A soft, harsh laugh. “Just wait, Aelin.” Another jab. And she let herself fall for it. “Don’t call me that.” “It’s your name. I’m not going to call you anything different.”

“Why should I waste flattery on a child who’s already in love with herself ?” “We’re related, you know.” “We’ve as much blood in common as I do with the fortress pig-boy.”

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.

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.

And when you were one of Manon’s Thirteen, with whom she had fought and flown for the past hundred years … Often just the name of the coven was enough to send enemies fleeing. The Thirteen did not have a reputation for mercy—or making mistakes.

Manon had been born soulless, her grandmother said. Soulless and heartless, as a Blackbeak ought to be. She was wicked right down to the marrow of her bones.

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.

The gold-speckled eyes were the most cherished trait in their Clan for a reason Manon had never bothered to learn—and when her grandmother had seen that Manon’s were wholly of pure, dark gold, the Matron had carried her away from her daughter’s still-cooling corpse and proclaimed Manon her undisputed heir.

“The king needs riders,” Mother Blackbeak said, still staring at the horizon. “Riders for his wyverns—to be his aerial cavalry. He’s been breeding them in the Gap all these years.” It had been a while—too damn long—but Manon could feel the threads of fate twisting around them, tightening. “And when we are done, when we have served him, he will let us keep the wyverns. To take our host to reclaim the Wastes from the mortal pigs who now dwell there.”

They insisted Aedion was last seen playing the fiddle in the main room.

Like tamlin

You wanted to remain unidentified, so go ahead, Princess. Introduce yourself with whatever name you want. At least he’d listened to her last night. “Elentiya,” she choked out. “My name is Elentiya.” Her gut tightened.

Celaena quickly looked away from the two females in the center—one crowned with a star and armed with a bow and quiver, the other bearing a polished bronze disk upheld between her raised hands. She could have sworn she felt them watching her.

Mate—not husband. The Fae had mates: an unbreakable bond, deeper than marriage, that lasted beyond death.

We did have a female wander in with raw magic two years ago—she could do anything she wanted, summon any element, and she was here a week before Maeve called her to Doranelle and we never heard from her again. A shame—she was so pretty, too. But it’s the same here as it is everywhere else: a few people with a pathetic trace of elemental powers that are really only fun for farmers.”

there are six of them who closely serve the Queen as war leaders or spies,

“We’re not allowed to learn the Old Language until we enter Doranelle,” Luca said, “but I heard his tattoo is a list of all the people he’s slaughtered.”

The kitchen sounds turned muffled as she let herself spiral down, contemplating that horrible realization again and again: she could not remember what it was like to be free.

Even though Asterin was her cousin, she wasn’t a friend. Manon didn’t have friends. None of the witches, especially the Thirteen, had friends. But Asterin had guarded her back for a century, and the grin was a sign that she wouldn’t put a dagger in Manon’s spine the next time they were knee-deep in battle.

Nonsense. Especially when magic had been gone these past ten years. But Manon had heard rumors of the rituals the Bluebloods did in their forests and caves, rituals in which pain was the gateway to magic, to opening their senses. Oracles, mystics, zealots.

Magic was gone, and yet this was possible—this creation of magnificent beasts. Magic was gone, and yet Manon felt the sureness of the moment settle along her bones. She was meant to be here. She’d have Titus or no other. Because she’d suffer no creature to be her mount but the fiercest, the one whose blackness called to her own. As her eyes met with the endless dark of Titus’s, she smiled at the wyvern. She could have sworn he smiled back.

She was outweighed, outmuscled, and for the first time in her life, she realized she was utterly outmatched.