Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

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.

Actually, I believe the title our esteemed friends in the empire now like to use is ‘fire-breathing bitch-queen.’

Aedion just hoped Death arrived before Aelin did.

“Do you understand what it was like for us here? While you were off playing with magic, off gallivanting with your faerie prince, do you understand what happened to me—to Dorian? Do you understand what’s happening every day in this city? Because your antics in Wendlyn might very well have been the cause of all this.”

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.

The woman before him shouldered burdens that would break the spine of someone three times her age.

You and I are nothing but beasts wearing human skins.

One last time—you have to wear this mask one last time, and then you can bury Celaena Sardothien forever.

“Think it over, Princess. What is immunity worth in a world where your enemies are waiting to shackle you, where one slip could mean becoming their eternal slave?”

… 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.”

“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.”

The bridge exploded from beneath her, and the world turned into shards of flying glass.

“My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius,” she said. “And I am the Queen of Terrasen.”

“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.”