Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

He could not remember if the thing was the prince, or if he himself had once been a prince. Not likely. A prince would not have allowed that woman’s head to be cut off. A prince would have stopped the blade. A prince would have saved her.

There were two men in this city responsible for destroying her life and the people she’d loved. She would not leave Rifthold until she’d buried them both.

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

So he bore down on every spike of fever, every roiling fit of nausea and pain. Soon—soon Death would come to greet him. Aedion just hoped Death arrived before Aelin did.

What a shame that the current owner of the Vaults, a former underling of Rourke Farran and a dealer of flesh and opiates, had accidentally run into her knives. Repeatedly.

Sorry not for what she’d done to his face, but for the fact that her heart was healed—still fractured in spots, but healed—and he … he was not in it. Not as he’d once been.

“Celaena Sardothien doesn’t exist anymore.”

No, Celaena Sardothien certainly did not exist anymore. That woman—the woman he had loved … Perhaps she’d drowned in the vast, ruthless sea between here and Wendlyn.

The place that had never quite been filled again since that day she’d shattered the clock. Maybe—maybe she’d also stopped in that moment. Stopped living and started just … surviving. Raging.

But she was her own champion now. And she would not add another name of her beloved dead to her flesh.

Manon didn’t care that they’d been fighting at each other’s sides for a century, that Asterin was her closest relative, or that Asterin had gone to the mat again and again to defend Manon’s position as heir. She’d put Asterin down the moment she became a useless nuisance.

He liked to do that—just tumble off as though he’d been struck dead. Her wyvern, it seemed, had a wicked sense of humor.

“Start explaining,” Aelin said, leaning against the door frame, “or you’re rat meat.”

She was not a dog to be called for, and neither were her witches. Humans were for sport and blood and the occasional, very rare siring of witchlings. Never commanders; never superiors.

She could handle this mortal pig who would be worm food in a few decades—and then she could return to her glorious, wicked, immortal existence.

“Some night soon, I’ll sneak back in here and we can eat chocolates until we vomit.” “We’re such refined, genteel ladies.”

Maybe this city did deserve Aelin Galathynius’s flames. Maybe Chaol deserved to burn, too.

“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. I have amassed enough money in my miserable life to not need any more—so you will understand me clearly when I say that wherever you set your throne, no matter how long it takes, I will come to you, and I will bring music and dancing.”

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.

Behind them, across the hall, the dancers shattered their roses on the floor, and Aedion grinned at his queen as the entire world went to hell.

Abraxos’s tail thumped on the ground, the iron spikes in it glinting. A giant, lethal dog. With wings.

But he wished she had killed him. He hated her for not killing him.

“Tell me he’s in a rage the likes of which have never been seen before.” “If you listen hard enough, you can actually hear him shrieking from the palace.”

Even if there was another scent entwined with hers. Staggeringly powerful and ancient and—male. Interesting.

They’d been forged of the same ore, two sides of the same golden, scarred coin.

Not flowers—never flowers in Terrasen. Instead, they carried small stones to graves to mark their visits, to tell the dead that they still remembered. Stones were eternal—flowers were not.

Rowan was the most powerful full-blooded Fae male alive. And his scent was all over her. Yet she had no gods-damned idea.

But if she couldn’t put the princeling down, he’d do it. He wouldn’t enjoy it, and the captain might very well kill him in return, but to keep Terrasen safe, he’d cut off Dorian’s head.

“Need I remind you, Captain, that you went to Endovier and did not blink at the slaves, at the mass graves? Need I remind you that I was starved and chained, and you let Duke Perrington force me to the ground at Dorian’s feet while you did nothing? And now you have the nerve to accuse me of not caring, when many of the people in this city have profited off the blood and misery of the very people you ignored?”

“Has anyone ever taught you humility?” “You didn’t learn it, so why should I?”

“Hush. Your hair was so pretty. I was hoping you’d let me braid it one day. I suppose I’ll have to buy a pony instead.” She cocked her head. “When you shift, will your hawk form be plucked, then?”

Aelin tried not to look too jolted by the sight of him with the towel wrapped around his hips, at the tan and muscled body that gleamed with the oils of the bath, at the scars crisscrossing it like the stripes of a great cat. Even Common Sense was at a loss for words.

The two princes stared at each other, one gold and one silver, one her twin and one her soul-bonded. There was nothing friendly in the stares, nothing human—two Fae males locked in some unspoken dominance battle.

“Are you actually going to get into a pissing contest with every person we meet? Because if that’s the case, then it’ll take us an hour just to make it down one block of this city, and I doubt the residents will be particularly happy.”

Jasmine, and lemon verbena, and crackling embers. Elegant, feminine, and utterly wild. Warm, and steadfast—unbreakable, his queen.

Boundaries. Lines. Off-limits. Those were his new favorite words, he reminded himself as he grimaced at the silken sheets, even as the huff of her breath still touched his cheek.

“Is there a specific color you’d like me to wear? If I’m going to scandalize you, I should at least do it in something you like.”

Rowan was watching Chaol as if he might be dinner. Depending on his Fae form, that might not be too far wrong.

And when Lorcan walked right into that den of Valg commanders and the Wyrdhound that had come to retrieve their reports, when the clash of weapons and roar of dying filled her ears, Aelin merely sauntered down the street, whistling to herself.

“Ah, about that,” she said, and shifted her wrist just enough for him to feel the blade she’d flicked free in the moment before she’d sensed his attack—the steel now resting against his groin. “Immortality seems like a long, long time to go without your favorite body part.”

“Still warming your bed?” She didn’t want to know how Lorcan knew that. “Isn’t that all you pretty males are good for?”

It explained so much. You and I are nothing but beasts wearing human skins.

“So this face,” Aelin said, “isn’t your real face? Your real body?” “No. And what kills me is that I can’t remember what my real face was.

It was a lovely grave—simple, clean—and on the stone was written: SAM CORTLAND BELOVED

She opened her fist of pebbles and picked out the three loveliest—two for the years since he’d been taken from her, one for what they’d been together. Carefully, she placed them at the apex of the headstone’s curve.

“I never told you—how I felt. But I loved you, and I think a part of me might always love you. Maybe you were my mate, and I never knew it. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about that. Maybe I’ll see you again in the Afterworld, and then I’ll know for sure. But until then … until then I’ll miss you, and I’ll wish you were here.”

“Don’t forget your cloak. You’d feel rather guilty when all those poor mortal women combust at the sight of you.” “I’d say likewise, but I think you’d enjoy seeing men bursting into flames as you strutted by.”

Sam had been tortured in ways she hadn’t even known until she read Wesley’s letter. The worst of it had been requested by Arobynn. Requested, as punishment for Sam’s loving her—punishment for tampering with Arobynn’s belongings.

Aelin lifted her hands in front of her and turned. She pulled off the ring. “So that was what he wanted. I honestly expected something grander.”

He’s all yours. A gift, she knew—a gift from the queen who had nothing else to give a no-name whore with a sad story.