Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

She shoved a hand between them as if she could push him away, grabbing one of his own hands tight.

But something massive slammed into the creature, and it yelped as it was thrown against the wall. The dead one was hurled away a heartbeat later, and then— And then there was Lorcan, swords out and swinging, a battle cry on his lips as he tore into the remaining creatures.

knew— A phantom pain lanced through his ribs, brutally violent and nauseating. His knees buckled. Not pain from a wound of his—but another’s. No. No, no, no, no, no.

Reeking to Hellas’s realm with Valg blood, Manon and Asterin were soaring down the continent, back to Morath, when— A soft wind, a shudder in the world, a silence.

At the magic that now rippled through the world, free. Darkness embrace her. Magic.

That mortal, human weight vanished. Strength coursed through her, coating her bones like armor. Invincible, immortal, unstoppable. Manon tipped her head back to the sky, spread her arms wide, and roared.

But she could feel it, even with the collar around her neck and that scar on her arm. The loosing of some great beast inside her. A beast who purred at the shadowfire.

And then a great wind, a soft wind, a lovely wind, as if the heart-song of the world were carried on it.

it was only her tears that flowed. “Dorian, we get to come back from this loss—from this darkness. We get to come back, and I came back for you.”

The prince’s daggers had gone slack in his hands. And on his finger, Athril’s golden ring glowed.

face twisting. “You human worm.” He had been too busy stabbing her to notice the ring she’d slipped onto his finger when she’d grabbed his hand as if to shove him away.

“Take it off,” he growled, trying to touch it—and hissing as though it burned. “Take it off!”

The light hit her, and it filled her heart with the force of an exploding star.

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.

Her flames only kept the demon at bay. 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.

Aedion hadn’t recognized Lorcan’s magic as it had blasted from him in near-invisible dark winds.

Aedion could have sworn the prince whispered Aelin’s name.

The commander’s hand came down. And was ripped clean off by a ghost leopard.

Lysandra had sprinted two blocks toward the castle, not caring if she had little to offer them in their fight, when the wind slammed into her and a wild song sparkled in her blood.

Then she shed her human skin, that mortal cage, and ran, tracking the scents of her friends.

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.

Oh, she liked this body.

Lysandra whirled toward them, giving herself wholly to the beast whose form she wore. She became death incarnate.

For Evangeline. For her future. For her freedom. For the friends who had come for her. The bolt neared her heart. And was knocked from the air by an arrow.

There was only one sharpshooter with that sort of aim.

Lysandra loosed a roar, and became a storm of death upon the guards nearest her while arrows rained on the rest.

When Lysandra dared look, it was in time to see Nesryn Faliq draw another arrow atop the neighboring rooftop, flanked by her rebels, and fire it clean through the eye of t...

Flame and night warred in the highest spires, and the earth shuddered.

Nothing but this sleek, powerful body, her shape-shifter’s heart burning, glowing, singing with each step, each curve she took, fluid and swift and free.

“You killed Chaol,” she said, the words hollow.

Dorian went silent.

“My one regret,” the king said to her, “is that I did not get to take my time.”

“What did you say?” Dorian. The voice was hoarse, broken.

Dorian. His name was Dorian. Dorian Havilliard, and he was the Crown Prince of Adarlan. And Celaena Sardothien—Aelin Galathynius, his friend … she had come back for him.

And, bellowing his grief, his rage, his pain, he snapped the collar from his neck.

The Wyrdstone collar broke in two—severing along a hairline fracture where the ring’s power had sliced through.

Aelin extended her hand—a question and an offer and a promise. “To a better future,” she said. “You came back,” he said, as if that were an answer. They joined hands. So the world ended. And the next one began.

They were infinite. They were the beginning and the ending; they were eternity.

He struck them, swallowed them. But they held tighter to each other, past and present and future;