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“If I recall correctly,” she drawled, “someone said to remind him to prove me wrong about my hesitations. I think I had two options: words, or tongue and teeth.”
If he moved an inch, he’d be on her, would take her in his arms and begin learning just what made the Heir of Fire really burn.
Gods, that scent. From the moment he’d bitten her neck in Wendlyn, the moment he’d tasted her blood and loathed the beckoning wildfire that crackled in it, he’d been unable to get it out of his system.
“Aelin, you deserve better than this—than me.” He’d wanted to say it for a while now.
“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t deserve. Don’t tell me about tomorrow, or th...
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What do you want me to tell you, Fireheart?
“Tell me that we’ll get through tomorrow. Tell me that we’ll survive the war. Tell me—” She swallowed hard. “Tell me that even if I lead us all to ruin, we’ll burn in hell together.”
“We’re not going to hell, Aelin,” he said. “But wherever we go, we’ll go together.”
“Just once,” she said. “I want to kiss you just once.”
“You and I have always relished damning the odds.”
“Even when we’re apart tomorrow, I’ll be with you every step of the way. And every step after—wherever that may be.”
She said softly, “You make me want to live, Rowan. Not survive; not exist. Live.”
“You didn’t see the message on your way in?”
“Oddest thing. No one can make any sense of it. They say it’s written in what looks like blood, but it’s darker—”
The message had been written in giant black letters, the reek coming off them sure enough that of Valg blood, as if someone with very, very sharp nails had ripped open one of the guards and used him as a paint bucket.
The message on the wall had only been one sentence. Payment for a life debt. One sentence just for Aelin Galathynius; one sentence that changed everything:
WITCH KILLER— THE HUMAN IS STILL INSIDE HIM
When the Fae Prince turned to Aelin, she focused instead on a torn corner of his cloak—as if it had snagged on some long-ago obstacle and been ripped off. She kept staring at that ripped-off bit of cloak as she embraced him—quickly,
she turned to Aedion. Ashryver eyes met her own, and she touched the face that was the other side of her fair coin. “For Terrasen,” she said to him. “For our family.” “For Marion.” “For us.”
Slowly, Aedion drew his blade and knelt, his head bowed as he lifted the Sword of Orynth. “Ten years of shadows, but no longer. Light up the darkness, Majesty.”
She did not have room in her heart for tears, would not allow or yield to them. Aelin took her father’s sword from him, its ...
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She looked at them, at the three males who meant everything—more than everything.
Then she smiled with every last shred of courage, of desperation, of hope for the glimmer of that glorious future. “Let’s go rattle the stars.”
And she began praying—praying to Mala Fire-Bringer, whose holiday had dawned so bright and clear, and to Temis, who never forgot the caged things of this world.
But she was no longer in a cage. For Evangeline, she could stay in this carriage, and she could leave this city. Even if it meant leaving her friends behind.
“The plan,” he said, his voice shaking. “We change it. Now.” “Chaol—” He told her what he needed to do. When he finished, she wiped away her tears as she gripped his hand and said, “I’ll make it count.”
the gates he had ridden through not even a year ago with an assassin newly freed from Endovier, her chains tied to his saddle. Now she led him in chains through those gates, an assassin one last time.
“Tell His Majesty that his Champion has returned—and she’s brought him one hell of a prize.”
Wyrdmarks written in Chaol’s blood covered her beneath her clothes, its human scent hopefully masking any hints of her heritage that the Valg might otherwise pick up.
Their faces. They were faces that tugged at him.
The woman—he recognized that face as she yanked back her dark hood and knelt before the dais on which he stood.
The ring on his finger seemed to suck in the light. But she could spy no sign of the Wyrdkeys, couldn’t feel them here, as she’d felt the presence of the one in the amulet.
“I do wonder,” the king mused, leaning back on his throne, “who has been conspiring more: the captain, or you, Champion. Or should I call you Aelin?”
Something on the ceiling moved, then. Seven somethings.
A piece of fabric—gray, small, worn—dropped from the maw of the creature clinging to the stone ceiling. His cloak—the missing corner of his cloak. Lorcan had lied. He hadn’t killed the remaining Wyrdhounds. He’d just given them Rowan’s scent.
“Is that fatherly concern I detect?”
ground, and he flexed his wrists. “Such traitorous filth, dwelling in my own home. And to think I once had you in chains—once had you so close to execution, and had no idea what prize I instead sentenced to Endovier. The Queen of Terrasen—slave and my Champion.”
Aelin tugged the cloth from the pommel of her father’s blade and drew the Sword of Orynth.
“What would the noble people of Terrasen say if they knew Aelin of the Wildfire had such a bloody history? If they knew that she had signed her services over to me? What hope would it give them to know that even their long-lost princess was corrupted?”
“I’ll admit that I don’t know how I didn’t see it. You’re the same spoiled child who strutted about her castle. And here I was, thinking I’d helped you. I saw into your mind that day, Aelin Galathynius. You loved your home and your kingdom, but you had such a wish to be ordinary, such a wish for freedom from your crown, even then. Have you changed your mind? I offered you freedom on a platter ten years ago, and yet you wound up a slave anyway. Funny.”
Do you understand the cost of the keys? What you must become to use one?”
“Would you like to go head-to-head with me, then, Aelin Galathynius? To see if the spells you learned, the books you stole from me, will hold out? Little tricks, Princess, compared to the raw power of the keys.”
“He’s your son—your heir.” “You forget, Princess,” the king said, “that I have two sons.”
“You came into my family’s home and murdered them in their sleep,” Aelin said. The grandfather clock began chiming twelve. A heartbeat later, the miserable, off-kilter clanging of the clock tower sounded. “It’s only fair,” she said to the king as she backed a step toward the doors, “that I destroy you in return.”
She tugged the Eye of Elena from under her suit. The blue stone glowed like a small star. Not just a ward against evil. But a key in its own right, that could be used to unlock Erawan’s tomb.
The king’s attention was fixed on the Eye of Elena around her neck. She removed it, holding it in a steady hand. “Been looking for this, have you? Poor Erawan, locked in his little tomb for so long.”
“Turns out your ancestor didn’t approve of your hobbies. We Galathynius women stick together, you know.”
The king kept approaching, and Chaol held his sword before him, not yielding one step. For Ress. For Brullo. For Sorscha. For Dorian. For Aelin, and Aedion, and their family, for the thousands massacred in those labor camps. And for Nesryn—who he’d lied to, who would wait for a return that wouldn’t come, for time they wouldn’t have together. He had no regrets but that one.
Chaol spread his arms wide as the darkness hit him, shattered him, obliterated him until there was nothing but light—burning blue light, warm and welcoming. Aelin and Dorian had gotten away. It was enough.
When the pain came, he was not afraid.
