Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

“When you shatter the chains of this world and forge the next, remember that art is as vital as food to a kingdom. Without it, a kingdom is nothing, and will be forgotten by time.

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.

“Whatever you had to do to survive, whatever you did from spite or rage or selfishness … I don’t give a damn. You’re here—and you’re perfect. You always were, and you always will be.” She hadn’t realized how much she needed to hear that.

Fae warriors: invaluable in a fight—and raging pains in her ass at all other times.

“You will make mistakes. You will make decisions, and sometimes you will regret those choices. Sometimes there won’t be a right choice, just the best of several bad options. I

don’t need to tell you that you can do this—you know you can. I wouldn’t have sworn the oath to you if I didn’t think you could.”

This piece was a celebration—a reaffirmation of life, of glory, of the pain and beauty in breathing. Perhaps that was why she’d gone to hear it performed every year, after so much killing and torture and punishment: as a reminder of what she was, of what she struggled to keep.

“Just—just give me a moment.” A moment to sort out one friend from another—the friend she had loved and who had lied to her at every chance, and the friend she had hated and who she had kept secrets from herself … hated, until love and hate had met in the middle, fused by loss.

“Even before I knew who you were, Aelin, I knew that what you were working toward … It was worth it.” “What is?” Her throat tightened. “A world where people like me don’t have to hide.”

“Ten years ago, my parents were murdered. My father was executed on a butchering block in front of thousands. But my mother … My mother died defending Aelin Galathynius, the heir to the throne of Terrasen. She bought Aelin time to run. They followed Aelin’s tracks to the frozen river, where they said she must have fallen in and drowned.

“Who would you have become without me? Some pampered, quaking princess. Your beloved cousin would have locked you up in a tower and thrown away the key. I gave you your freedom

If she were to do it, it would have to be now—when his sleep was deepest, when the rain covered up most sounds. A blessing from Temis, Goddess of Wild Things, who had once watched over her as a shape-shifter and who never forgot the caged beasts of the world.

“And what could I ever ask of you that I couldn’t do myself?” “That’s the problem. Yes, you can do most things on your own. That doesn’t mean you have to.”

But if it was death separating us … I would find you. I don’t care how many rules it would break. Even if I had to get all three keys myself and open a gate, I would find you again. Always.”

This witch had been crafted from the darkness between the stars.

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

The Queen of Terrasen had saved her life. Manon didn’t know what to make of it. For she now owed her enemy a life debt. And she had just learned how thoroughly her grandmother and the King of Adarlan intended to destroy them.

“I’d fly overhead every few years, just … just to see.” She wiped at her face. “He never married. And even when he was an old man, I’d sometimes see him sitting on that front porch. As if he were waiting for someone.”

Manon gazed westward across the mountains. Hope, Elide had said—hope for a better future. For a home. Not obedience, brutality, discipline. But hope.

“You make me proud to serve you.”

There she was, that queen looking out at him, a hint of the ruler she was becoming. And it knocked the breath out of him, because it made him feel so strangely young—when she now seemed so old.

“What if we go on,” he said, “only to more pain and despair? What if we go on, only to find a horrible end waiting for us?” Aelin looked northward, as if she could see all the way to Terrasen. “Then it is not the end.”

He’d never realized how precious the calm moments were.

“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.”

“Even when we’re apart tomorrow, I’ll be with you every step of the way. And every step after—wherever that may be.”

They had walked out of darkness and pain and despair together. They were still walking out of it. So that smile … It struck him stupid every time he saw it and realized it was for him.

“You make me want to live, Rowan. Not survive; not exist. Live.”

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.

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.”

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

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

“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.

But they held tighter to each other, past and present and future; flickering between an ancient hall in a mountain castle perched above Orynth, a bridge suspended between glass towers, and another place, perfect and strange, where they had been crafted from stardust and light.

The demon inside the king had hunted her not because of the threat Terrasen posed—but for the fire in her veins. The fire that could end them both.

But she kept that wall of flame burning—for the Royal Theater. And the flower girls at the market. For the slaves and the courtesans and the Faliq family. For the city that had offered her joy and pain, death and rebirth, for the city that had given her music, Aelin kept that wall of fire burning bright.

Not one more. Not one more female would she allow them to take.

It did not seem like a weakness to fight for those who could not defend themselves.

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.”

When Manon dared to look, a third of Morath was a smoldering ruin. Where those catacombs had once been—where those Yellowlegs had been tortured and broken, where they had bred monsters—there was nothing left.

“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.”

Beyond the window, the day was bright, clear. The world had ended and begun anew, and yet nothing at all had changed, either. The sun would still rise and fall, the seasons would still change, heedless of whether he was free or enslaved, prince or king, heedless of who was alive and who was gone. The world would keep moving on. It didn’t seem right, somehow.

A land of towering mountains—the Staghorns—spread before them, with valleys and rivers and hills; a land of untamed, wild beauty. Terrasen.