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Their family’s trade business had been too important to the king to warrant executing both their parents. So their father had chosen the execution block, and their mother had been left to keep Suria running as a vital trade port. The two Surian boys would be twenty and twenty-two by now, and since his mother’s death, Sol had become Lord of Suria.
“Vernon Lochan survived, but only because he was already the king’s puppet, and after Cal was executed, Vernon seized his brother’s mantle as Lord of Perranth. You know what happened to Lady Marion. But we never learned what happened to Elide.” Elide—Lord Cal and Lady Marion’s daughter and heir, almost a year younger than Aelin. If she were alive, she would be at least seventeen by now. “Lots of children vanished in the initial weeks,” Murtaugh finished. Aedion didn’t want to think about those too-small graves.
Celaena did not utter a sound as she unleashed her magic on the barrier, a blast that shook the trees and set the earth rumbling. She fed her power into the invisible wall, begging the ancient stones to take it, to use it. The wards, as if sensing her intent, devoured her power whole, absorbing every last ember until it flickered, hungry for more. So she burned and burned and burned.
“I have been forced to do many, many things. Depraved, despicable things. Yet nothing made me feel as filthy as I did today, thanking that man for murdering my people.”
It was the Song of Eyllwe. Then the Song of Fenharrow. And Melisande. And Terrasen. Each nation that had people in those labor camps. And finally, not for pomp or triumph, but to mourn what they had become, they played the Song of Adarlan.
As one, they looked to the boxes, to all those jewels bought with the blood of a continent.
The next morning, by royal decree, the theater was shut down. No one saw those musicians or their conductor again.
A monster to destroy monsters.
But the words caught in her throat as a memory struck, from months ago—a lifetime ago. Of a realm that was in-between, of the thing that lived inside Cain speaking. To her, and—Elena. Elena, daughter of Brannon. You were brought back, it said. All the players in the unfinished game.
Knew that this—this was called sacrifice.
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. The sounds and smell and look of it were so real that only her grip on Rowan kept her anchored in the world.
she wouldn’t have made it to the riverbank, let alone survived the hours she lay here. The cold would have claimed her. Which meant she’d had it when … when … Arobynn Hamel had taken it from her and kept it all these years, a prize whose power he had never guessed the depth of.
She had awoken this morning and slipped the amethyst ring off her finger. It had felt like a blessed release, a final shadow lifted from her heart. But there were still words left unsaid between them, and she needed to make sure he was safe—and would remain that way.
