Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

She didn’t bother to push it. Not with Chaol now in front of her, his bronze eyes wide as he took in the blood on Aelin herself. “Are you hurt?” His voice was hoarse.

Aelin silently shook her head. Gods. Gods. Without that hood, now that she could see his features … He was exactly as she remembered—that ruggedly handsome, tan face perhaps a bit more gaunt and stubbly, but still Chaol. Still the man she’d come to love, before … before everything had changed.

Even then, she’d understood that what Chaol had done, whom he had chosen, had forever cleaved what was between them. It was the one thing she could not forget, could not forgive.

Chaol nodded distantly, blinking. “You … You look different.” She fingered her red hair. “Obviously.” “No,” he said, taking one step closer, but only one. “Your face. The way you stand. You …” He shook his head, glancing toward the darkness they’d just fled. “Walk with me.”

All the words she’d wanted to say rushed around in her head, fighting to get out, but she pushed back against them for a moment longer. I love you—that’s what he’d said to her the day she left. She hadn’t given him an answer other than I’m sorry.

She nodded. There were perhaps only three feet between them now—three feet and months and months of missing and hating him.

But now that she was here … Everything was an effort not to say she was sorry. Sorry not for what she’d done to his face, but for the fact that her heart was healed—still fractured in spots, but healed—and he … he was not in it. Not as he’d once been.

But then Chaol looked—to the empty finger where his amethyst ring had once been. The skin was soaked with the blood that had seeped in through the fabric, some red, some black and reeking. Chaol gazed at that empty spot—and when his eyes rose to hers again, it became hard to breathe.

You do not get to pick and choose which parts of her to love, Dorian had once said to him. He’d been right. So painfully right.

A month ago, Rowan had covered her scars from Endovier with a stunning, scrolling tattoo, written in the Old Language of the Fae—the stories of her loved ones and how they’d died. She would not have Rowan ink another name on her flesh.

and thought of the empty place on the mantel where the clock should have been. The place that had never quite been filled again since that day she’d shattered the clock. Maybe—maybe she’d also stopped in that moment. Stopped living and started just … surviving. Raging.

And maybe it had taken until this spring, when she had been sprawled on the ground while three Valg princes fed on her, when she had at last burned through that pai...

For her friends, for her family, she would gladly be a monster. For Rowan, for Dorian, for Nehemia, she would debase and degrade and ruin herself. She knew they would have done the same for her.

She could forgive the girl who had needed a captain of the guard to offer stability after a year in hell; forgive the girl who had needed a captain to be her champion. But she was her own champion now. And she would not add another name of her beloved dead to her flesh.

But it had been a kindness when Aelin had desperately needed one.

She was the heir of fire. She was fire, and light, and ash, and embers. She was Aelin Fireheart, and she bowed for no one and nothing, save the crown that was hers by blood and survival and triumph.

Behind them, across the hall, the dancers shattered their roses on the floor, and Aedion grinned at his queen as the entire world went to hell.

and books and knowledge were her domain.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping like the dead, considering your busy night?” “Can we not get into a fight about it before my first cup of tea?” With lethal calm, he set the kettle on the stove. “After tea, then?”

Life, she thought as she strode through the small, pretty graveyard overlooking the Avery. The clothes Sam would have wanted her to wear reminded her of life.

Beloved—not just by her, but by many. Sam. Her Sam.

For a moment, she stared at that stretch of grass, at the white stone. For a moment she could see that beautiful face grinning at her, yelling at her, loving her.

“I never told you—how I felt. But I loved you, and I think a part of me might always love you. Maybe you were my mate, and I never knew it. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about that. Maybe I’ll see you again in the Afterworld, and then I’ll know for sure. But until then … until then I’ll miss you, and I’ll wish you were here.”

She’d come here to remind herself—remind herself why that grave before them existed, and why she had those scars on her back. “And the Amulet of Orynth?” “An endgame, but also a distraction.” The sunlight danced on the Avery, nearly blinding. “You’re ready to do it?” She looked back at the gravestone, and at the grass concealing the coffin beneath. “I have no choice but to be ready.”

Aelin set down the ring. “I had to know.” “Know what? That Arobynn is a monster?” “That there was no redeeming him. I knew, but … It was his final test. To show his hand.”

She had picked up the amulet to drop it into the little space when a thread tugged inside her—no, not a thread, but … a wind, as if some force barreled from Rowan into her, as if their bond were a living thing, and she could feel what it was to be him—

“You know I’ll take care of it tonight,” he said, stepping beside her, “if you don’t want to be the one to do it.” And after what that bastard had tried to do to her, what he’d planned to do to her … He and Aedion would take a long, long time ending Arobynn’s life.

“As you wish,” he said, pocketing the combs. “Such a pity, though. Your enemies would have fallen to their knees if they ever saw you in it.”

Rowan stood with his queen in the rain, breathing in her scent, and let her steal his warmth for as long as she needed.

It hit her like a stone—the wanting. She was a fool to have dodged it, denied it, even when a part of her had screamed it every morning that she’d blindly reached for the empty half of the bed.

She would find that love again—one day. And it would be deep and unrelenting and unexpected, the beginning and the end and eternity, the kind that could change history, change the world.

For Wesley. For Sam. For Aelin. And for herself.

One last time—you have to wear this mask one last time, and then you can bury Celaena Sardothien forever.

“Do I need a reason to smile at a beautiful woman?”

“But would you bleed red, or black?” “I’ll bleed whatever color you tell me to.”

“What is your name.” A command, not a question, as eyes of pure gold met his. “Dorian,” he breathed.

The words soon faded, swallowed up by screaming and blood and the demon’s cold fingers running over his mind. But the eyes lingered—and that name. Manon. Manon.

Aelin twisted to avoid it, only to find a second arrow from the witch already there, anticipating her maneuver. A wall of muscle slammed into her, shielding her and shoving her to the stones. And the witch’s arrow went clean through Rowan’s shoulder.

Her heart—it had been meant for her heart. And he had taken that arrow for her. The killing calm spread through her like hoarfrost. She’d kill them all. Slowly.

She shoved Rowan onto the planks. “Run,” she said. “No—” “Run.” It was a voice that she’d never heard herself use—a queen’s voice—that came out, along with the blind yank she made on the blood oath that bound them together. His eyes flashed with fury, but his body moved as though she’d compelled him.

But perhaps the monsters needed to look out for each other every now and then.

To save the queen who held his heart in her scarred hands.

“Dorian, we get to come back from this loss—from this darkness. We get to come back, and I came back for you.”

“Fight it,” she panted. The sun angled closer. “Fight it. We get to come back.”

We get to come back, she said. As if she knew what this darkness was, what horrors existed. Fight it. A light was burning at his finger—a light that cracked inside him. A light that cracked a sliver into the darkness. Remember, she said.

Remember. A sliver of light in the blackness. A cracked doorway. Remember.

Over the demon’s screaming, he pushed—pushed, and looked out through its eyes. His eyes. And saw Celaena Sardothien standing before him.

Then she shed her human skin, that mortal cage, and ran, tracking the scents of her friends. The soldiers in the sewer were screaming as she tore into them— a death for every day in hell, a death for the childhood taken from her and from Evangeline. She was fury, she was wrath, she was vengeance.

More soldiers rushed into the sewers and Lysandra whirled toward them, giving herself wholly to the beast whose form she wore. She became death incarnate.

Faster and faster, every movement of that leopard’s body a joy, even as her queen battled for her kingdom and their world high, high above.