Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

He could not remember his name.

There was nothing but that moment, again and again and again—and that thing pacing nearby, waiting for him to break, to yield, to let it in. A prince.

He could not remember if the thing was the prince, or if he himself had once been a prince. Not likely. A prince would not have allowed that woman’s head to be cut off. A prince would have stopped the blade. A prince would have saved her.

no one noticed that he had become hardly more than a marionette, struggling to speak, to act past the shackles on his mind. He hated them for not noticing. That was one of the emotions he still knew.

But there was a thing waiting in the darkness, and he could not bring himself to fight it for much longer.

Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir of fire, beloved of Mala Light-Bringer, and rightful Queen of Terrasen,

onyx wyvern embroidered on their uniforms. Black on black—perhaps the King of Adarlan had grown tired of pretending he was anything but a menace and had issued a royal decree to abandon the traditional crimson and gold of his empire. Black for death; black for his two Wyrdkeys; black for the Valg demons he was now using to build himself an unstoppable army.

auburn hair

the riverside Shadow Market—where anyone could find anything they wanted, rare or contraband or commonplace—and

Everyone would be looking for a golden-haired young woman, once word arrived in a few weeks that the King’s Champion had failed in her task to assassinate Wendlyn’s royal family and steal its naval defense plans.

She’d sent a warning to the King and Queen of Eyllwe months ago,

that still left one person at risk before she could fulfill the first steps of her plan—the same person who might be able to explain the new guards by the docks. And why t...

If she were to overhear anything regarding the Captain of the Guard and whether he wa...

Tern—one of Arobynn’s favored assassins—buying

If her people could only see her: Aelin of the Wildfire, assassin and pickpocket. Her parents and uncle were probably thrashing in their graves.

a gleam of polished leather boots stretched out beneath the table. A second pair of boots, worn and muddy, were braced on the floor across from the first, as if the client were ready to bolt. Or, if he were truly stupid, to fight.

Chaol

He was certainly stupid enough to have let his personal guard stay visible, a beacon alerting anyone who cared to notice that something rather important was happening in that last booth.

Nesryn

a slender, hooded young woman armed to the teeth—was leaning against a wooden pillar nearby, her silky, shoulder-length dark hair shining in the light as she carefully monitored the pleasure hall. Too stiff to be a casual patron. No uniform, no house colors or sigils. Not surprising, given the client’s need for secrecy.

Nesryn

He had no idea that Arobynn was also a major investor in the Vaults, and it would take only a nod from Aelin’s former master for the metal doors to lock—and the client and his guard to never walk out again.

Aelin had given herself a day at sea to rest and to miss Rowan. With the blood oath now eternally binding her to the Fae Prince—and him to her—his absence was like a phantom limb.

There were two men in this city responsible for destroying her life and the people she’d loved. She would not leave Rifthold until she’d buried them both.

she’d written page after page of notes and ideas, until she had a list of names and places and targets. She’d memorized every step and calculation, and then she’d burned the pages with the power smoldering in her veins, making sure every last scrap was nothing more than ash floating out the porthole window and across the vast, night-darkened ocean.

All that fire she’d spent so many months carefully mastering … gone as if it had never existed, not even an ember left flickering in her veins. A new sort of emptiness—different from the hole Rowan’s absence left in her.

So she had breathed in the brine and the wood, and reminded herself that she’d been trained to kill with her bare hands long before she’d ever learned to melt bones with her fire. She did not need the extra strength, speed, and agility of her Fae form to bring down her enemies.

the man who had been savior and tormentor, but never declared himself father or brother or lover—was

Even with the hood, she knew the way he moved. She knew the shape of the chin poking from the shadows of the cowl, the way his left hand tended to brush against his scabbard. But the sword with the eagle-shaped pommel was not hanging at his side. And there was no black uniform—only brown, nondescript clothes, spotted with dirt and blood.

Chaol was Arobynn’s client. Or he wanted something from her former master badly enough to risk meeting here. What the hell had happened while she was away?

Something that had been coiled tightly in her chest for months slowly loosened.

she would have known him moving or still, cloaked or bare.

Who the hell was that? There hadn’t been any female guards at the palace when she’d left, and she had been fairly certain the king had an absurd no-women rule.

the bare finger on her right hand. It hadn’t felt naked until now.

Arobynn looked exactly as he had the last time she’d seen him: a fine-boned aristo face, silky auburn hair that grazed his shoulders, and a deep-blue tunic of exquisite make, unbuttoned with an assumed casualness at the top to reveal the toned chest beneath.

No indication that he was wearing the Amulet of Orynth, the royal heirloom he’d stolen from her when he found her half-dead on the banks of the Florine. He’d allowed her to believe the amulet that secretly contained the third and final Wyrdkey had been lost to the river. For a thousand years, her ancestors had unwittingly worn the amulet, and it had made their kingdom—her kingdom—a powerhouse: prosperous and safe, the ideal to which all courts in all lands were held.

Perhaps that was why he’d lured her here—so she would spy Chaol with him … and hesitate.

It had been a decade since they’d spoken baldly of her heritage, or of the title he had helped her walk away from, had taught her to hate and fear. Sometimes he’d mentioned it in veiled terms, usually as a threat to keep her bound to him. But he had never once said her true name—not even when he’d found her on that icy riverbank and carried her into his house of killers.

“One can’t put much faith in gossip, but word arrived about a month ago from Wendlyn. It claimed that a certain lost queen put on a rather spectacular show for an invading legion from Adarlan. Actually, I believe the title our esteemed friends in the empire now like to use is ‘fire-breathing bitch-queen.’ ”

She’d never discovered where they’d buried Sam after Rourke Farran—second

And Farran … She’d later learned that Farran had been murdered by Arobynn’s own bodyguard, Wesley, as retribution for what had been done to Sam.

Arobynn had killed Wesley to mend the bond between the Assassins’ Guild and the new Crime Lord. Another debt.

It didn’t matter if it was valuable information or not; it was the withholding, the power of it, that he loved.

No one—not even the King of Adarlan—would be stupid enough to go after him.

“It hurts my heart to see so many new scars on you.” “I rather like them.” It was the truth.

“First Sam,” she said, “then me, then Wesley—what a tyrant you’ve become.

She wished Rowan were beside her, wished she could smell his pine-and-snow scent and know that no matter what news Arobynn bore, no matter how it shattered her, the Fae warrior would be there to help put the pieces back together.

But Rowan was across an ocean—and she prayed he’d never get within a hundred miles of Arobynn.

would have thought,” Arobynn said, “given how close you two were, and your abilities, that you’d somehow be able to sense it. Or at least hear of it, considering what he was accused of.”

“Your cousin Aedion has been imprisoned for treason—for conspiring with the rebels here in Rifthold to depose the king and put you back on the throne.”

fire-breathing bitch-queen

Aedion is to be executed in three days at the prince’s birthday party as the main entertainment. Practically screams trap, doesn’t it?

“I do not expect you to trust me; I do not expect you to love me.”