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Valg. Human. Iron. Blood.
He hadn’t killed the remaining Wyrdhounds. He’d just given them Rowan’s scent.
“You forget, Princess,” the king said, “that I have two sons.”
A wave of black reared up behind the king, sucking the light out of the room. 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.
“We get to come back,” Aelin said, pushing her hand harder and harder into her wound until the blood stopped, until 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.”
And on his finger, Athril’s golden ring glowed.
And was ripped clean off by a ghost leopard.
Dorian. His name was Dorian.
Dorian lifted his hands to the Wyrdstone collar—cold, smooth, thrumming. Don’t, the demon shrieked. Don’t! There were tears running down Aelin’s face as Dorian gripped the black stone encircling his throat. And, bellowing his grief, his rage, his pain, he snapped the collar from his neck.
They joined hands. So the world ended. And the next one began.
Infinite—Dorian’s power was infinite.
Erawan was Perrington.
The Crown Prince tipped his head back to the sky and roared, and it was the battle cry of a god. Then the glass castle shattered.
What Dorian had done. The glass castle was gone.
The glass castle was gone. The king was dead. And Dorian— Aelin scrambled up, her arms buckling under her. There, not three feet away, was Dorian, sprawled on the grass, eyes closed. But his chest was rising and falling. Beside him, as if some benevolent god had indeed been looking after them, lay Chaol. His face was bloody, but he breathed. No other wounds that she could detect.
“Cormac.” A young man stepped into view. He was a man of unearthly beauty, with a flawless face beneath his red hair, but his green eyes were cold and distant. Horrific. There was a black collar around his throat.
A sacrificial offering; a lamb to the slaughter.
“How long has it been since you destroyed the demon inside that collar, Kaltain?” A low, broken laugh. “A while.” “Does the duke know?” “My dark liege sees what he wants to see.”
Kaltain just squeezed Elide’s fingers. “You find Celaena Sardothien. Give her this. No one else. No one else. Tell her that you can open any door, if you have the key. And tell her to remember her promise to me—to punish them all. When she asks why, tell her I said that they would not let me bring the cloak she gave me, but I kept a piece of it. To remember that promise she made. To remember to repay her for a warm cloak in a cold dungeon.”
As she brought it all crashing and crumbling around them, Kaltain smiled, and at last burned herself into ash on a phantom wind.
Rowan had thanked him for that in the only way he knew how: offering Aedion one of his own daggers, forged by the greatest of Doranelle’s blacksmiths. Aedion had initially refused, insisting he needed no thanks, but had worn the blade at his side ever since.
“You make me want to live, too, Aelin Galathynius,” he said. “Not exist—but live.” He cupped her cheek, and took a steadying breath—as if he’d thought about every word these past three days, over and over again. “I spent centuries wandering the world, from empires to kingdoms to wastelands, never settling, never stopping—not for one moment. I was always looking toward the horizon, always wondering what waited across the next ocean, over the next mountain. But I think … I think that whole time, all those centuries, I was just looking for you.”
She had to swallow before she said, “You light up the darkness.”
He knew then—that the demon inside the prince was gone. Chaol wept.
“I’m not leaving you. Not again.”
Dorian’s mouth tightened. “You never left me, Chaol.” He shook his head once, sending tears slipping down his face. “You never left me.”
“Hope,” Manon said quietly.
Aelin looked at the kernel of hope glowing in that dining room and lifted her glass. “To a new world,” the Queen of Terrasen said. The King of Adarlan lifted his glass, such endless shadows dancing in his eyes, but—there. A glimmer of life. “To freedom.”
His face was gaunt, but a flicker of determination shone there. Hope. He would not let his injury destroy him.
Dorian said, “So here we are.” “The end of the road,” Aelin said with a half smile. “No,” Chaol said, his own smile faint, tentative. “The beginning of the next.”
they're back together 🥹💗
“Will you—will you be all right?” “Do I have any option but to be?”
“And will keep changing,” she said, squeezing his arm once. “But … There are things that won’t change. I will always be your friend.”
We’ll face it together. To whatever end.
And as they passed by the domed Royal Theater, there was music—beautiful, exquisite music—playing within.
And Chaol was to leave in two days. He didn’t want to think about what missing his friend would be like.
Not a shadow but a giant beast, its claws gripping the wall, its wings tucked into its body, shimmering faintly in the glow of the full moon. Shimmering like the white hair of the rider atop it.
hehe manon...
Aedion touched her shoulder. “Welcome home, Aelin.” A land of towering mountains—the Staghorns—spread before them, with valleys and rivers and hills; a land of untamed, wild beauty. Terrasen.
And the smell—of pine and snow … How had she never realized that Rowan’s scent was of Terrasen, of home?
And at long last, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was home.
