Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)

by Sarah J. Maas

Ruhnn Mountains and

ruhn?!?!??!!!

smelling of snow and pine.

Rowan paused his stalking. “You’re worthless.” “Tell me something I don’t know.” He went on, “You would probably have been more useful to the world if you’d actually died ten years ago.” She just looked him in the eye and said, “I’m leaving.”

“There is nothing that I can give you. Nothing I want to give you. You are not owed an explanation for what I do outside of training. I don’t care what you have been through or what you want to do with your life. The sooner you can sort out your whining and self-pity, the sooner I can be rid of you. You are nothing to me, and I do not care.”

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?”

She yawned, and Rowan rubbed his eyes, his other hand still in hers. But he didn’t let go. And when she awoke before dawn, warm and safe and rested, Rowan was still holding her hand, clasped to his chest. Something molten rushed through her, pouring over every crack and fracture still left gaping and open. Not to hurt or mar—but to weld. To forge.

Tiny eyes in the dark, small fingers at the roots, heaving them up, up. Her foot slipped free and she was up again, unable to thank the Little Folk who had already vanished,

That was the moment that had broken everything Aelin Galathynius was and had promised to be.

“Once upon a time,” she said to him, to the world, to herself, “in a land long since burned to ash, there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom … very much.”