Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

Lysandra looked at Aelin again. “Say something.” Aelin held up a hand. “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.

Lysandra hadn’t lied to her. Nehemia had lied outright, kept things that were vital. What Lysandra was … They were even: after all, she hadn’t told Lysandra she was queen.

Rowan just asked, “Did you have a favorite form?” Lysandra’s grin was nothing short of wicked. “I liked anything with claws and big, big fangs.”

“Thank you—for everything.” “He could still have a few tricks up his sleeve. Be on your guard.” “And you be on yours.” “You’re not … mad that I didn’t tell you?” “Your secret could get you killed just as easily as mine, Lysandra. I just felt … I don’t know. If anything, I wondered if I’d done something wrong, something to make you not trust me enough to tell me.” “I wanted to—I’ve been dying to.” Aelin believed her. “You risked those Valg guards for me—for Aedion that day we rescued him,” Aelin said. “They’d probably be beside themselves if they learned there was a shifter in this city.” And that night at the Pits, when she’d kept turning away from the Valg and hiding behind Arobynn … It had been to avoid their notice. “You have to be insane.” “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.” Lysandra turned away, but Aelin grabbed her by the hand. Lysandra smiled a bit. “Times like these, I wish I had your particular skill set instead.” “Would you do it if you could? About two nights from now, I mean.” Lysandra gently let go of her hand. “I’ve thought about it every single day since Wesley died. I would do it, and gladly. But I don’t mind if you do it. You won’t hesitate. I find that comforting, somehow.”

“Hello, Sam,” she breathed onto the river breeze. She said nothing for a time, content to be near him, even in this form. The sun warmed her hair, a kiss of heat along her scalp. A trace of Mala, perhaps, even here.

“I miss you,” she said. “Every day, I miss you. And I wonder what you would have made of all this. Made of me. I think—I think you would have been a wonderful king. I think they would have liked you more than me, actually.” Her throat tightened. “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.” She would not apologize, nor say it was her fault. Because his death wasn’t her fault. And tonight … tonight she would settle that debt.

Everything went quiet in Manon’s head. “Go on.” Elide’s face was white as death, making her freckles look like dried, splattered blood. “From what I saw, they’ve delivered at least one baby each. And are already about to give birth to another.” “That’s impossible,” Sorrel said. “The witchlings?” Asterin breathed. Elide really did vomit again this time. When she was done, Manon mastered herself enough to say, “Tell me about the witchlings.” “They are not witchlings. They are not babies,” Elide spat, covering her face with her hands as if to rip out her eyes. “They are creatures. They are demons. Their skin is like black diamond, and they—they have these snouts, with teeth. Fangs. Already, they have fangs. And not like yours.” She lowered her hands. “They have teeth of black stone. There is nothing of you in them.”

Slowly, slowly Manon turned to her Second and Third. Sorrel was pale, her eyes raging. But Asterin met Manon’s gaze—met it with a fury that Manon had never seen directed at her. “You let them do this.” Manon’s nails flicked out. “These are my orders. This is our task.” “It is an abomination!” Asterin shouted. Elide paused her weeping. And backed away to the safety of the fireplace. Then there were tears—tears—in Asterin’s eyes.

:((((

“You gave him those witches. You gave him witches!”

Asterin whirled toward the Second, and something like hurt flashed across her face. Manon blinked. Those feelings … Asterin turned on her heel and left, slamming the door behind her.

Manon said nothing. Elide stepped away, heading to the bathing room to wash her hands. The Wing Leader said from behind her, “Do you believe monsters are born, or made?” From what she’d seen today, she would say some creatures were very much born evil. But what Manon was asking … “I’m not the one who needs to answer that question,” Elide said.

The oil was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, gleaming like amber in the afternoon light. Naked, Aelin stood before it, unable to reach for the bottle. It was what Arobynn wanted—for her to think of him as she rubbed the oil into every inch of her skin. For her breasts, her thighs, her neck to smell like almond—his chosen scent. His scent, because he knew that a Fae male had come to stay with her, and all signs pointed to their being close enough for scent to matter to Rowan. She closed her eyes, steeling herself.

Truth and lies, lies and truth. She shook her head and looked toward the window, ever the confused and conflicted protégée falling for Arobynn’s poisoned words.

The amulet was exactly as she remembered it. It had been with a child’s hands that she’d last held it, and with a child’s eyes that she’d last seen the cerulean blue front with the ivory stag and the golden star between its antlers. The immortal stag of Mala Fire-Bringer, brought over to these lands by Brannon himself and set free in Oakwald Forest. The amulet glinted in Arobynn’s hands as he removed it from his neck. The third and final Wyrdkey. It had made her ancestors mighty queens and kings; had made Terrasen untouchable, a powerhouse so lethal no force had ever breached its borders. Until she’d fallen into the Florine River that night—until this man had removed the amulet from around her neck, and a conquering army had swept through. And Arobynn had risen from being a local lord of assassins to crown himself this continent’s unrivaled king of their Guild. Perhaps his power and influence derived solely from the necklace—her necklace—that he’d worn all these years.

“So do it,” he said. “I don’t want to touch it.” “If it was that easy to trigger, your ancestors would have figured out what it was.” “You pick it up,” she said, frowning. He just gave her a look. She bent down, willing her mind blank while she lifted the amulet off the table. Rowan stiffened as if bracing himself, despite his reassurance. The key was a millstone in her hand, but that initial sense of wrongness, of an abyss of power … It was quiet. Slumbering.

“The fact that you worry says enough about your intentions.” She stepped all around the area to ensure that no creaking boards gave away the hiding place. Thunder rumbled above the city. “I’m going to pretend that’s not an omen,” she muttered. “Good luck with that.” He nudged her with an elbow as they reentered the bedroom. “We’ll keep an eye on things—and if you appear to be heading toward Dark Lorddom, I promise to bring you back to the light.”

She would find that love again—one day. And it would be deep and unrelenting and unexpected, the beginning and the end and eternity, the kind that could change history, change the world.

For Wesley. For Sam. For Aelin. And for herself. For the child she’d been, for the seventeen-year-old on her Bidding night, for the woman she’d become, her heart in shreds, her invisible wound still bleeding. It was so very easy to sit up and slice the knife across Arobynn’s throat.

“What are the odds,” she said, “that the king is sending his forces down to Morath by mere coincidence?” “What are the odds,” Aedion countered, “that our illustrious king has acquired a key that can unlock any door—even a door between worlds—and his second in command happens to own the very place where Erawan is buried?” “The king is insane,” Chaol said. “If he plans to raise Erawan—” “Who says he hasn’t already?” Aedion asked.

There was no one in earshot as Manon stopped a few feet away from the Crown Prince. “Hello, princeling,” she purred.

Not too close, it said. Do not let the witchling too close. The eyes of the Valg kings— “Hello, princeling,” she said, her voice bedroom-soft and full of glorious death. “Hello, witchling,” he said. And the words were his own.

“Is there a reason you’re smiling at me,” she said, “or shall I interpret it as a death wish?” Do not speak to it. He didn’t care. Let this be another dream, another nightmare. Let this new, lovely monster devour him whole. He had nothing beyond the here and now. “Do I need a reason to smile at a beautiful woman?” “I’m not a woman.” Her iron nails glinted as she crossed her arms. “And you …” She sniffed. “Man or demon?” “Prince,” he said. That’s what the thing inside him was; he had never learned its name. Do not speak to it! He cocked his head. “I’ve never been with a witch.” Let her rip out his throat for that. End it.

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

Manon didn’t know where to stare, what to do with her arms. A stillborn was a witch’s greatest sorrow—and shame. But for her grandmother … Asterin unbuttoned her jacket and shrugged it off into the flowers. She removed her shirt, and the one beneath, until her golden skin glowed in the sunlight, her breasts full and heavy. Asterin turned, and Manon fell to her knees in the grass. There, branded on Asterin’s abdomen in vicious, crude letters was one word: UNCLEAN

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.”

“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.

Dorian was staring at his father: the man who had broken him, enslaved him. In a voice she had never heard, the king whispered, “My boy.” Dorian didn’t react. The king gazed up at his son, his eyes wide—bright—and said again, “My boy.” Then the king looked to where she was on her knees, gaping at him. “Have you come to save me at last, Aelin Galathynius?”

Aelin said, “How is it possible he’s been inside Perrington all this time and no one noticed?” “He can hide inside a body like a snail in its shell. But cloaking his presence also stifles his own abilities to scent others—like you. And now you are back—all the players in the unfinished game. The Galathynius line—and the Havilliard, which he has hated so fiercely all this time. Why he targeted my family, and yours.”

The wicked will tell us anything to haunt our thoughts long after, Nehemia had warned her.

Aelin’s blood turned to ice. No—no, it couldn’t be true, couldn’t be right. “All of it was to find you,” the king said to her. “So you could save me—so you could end me at last. Please. Do it.” The king was weeping now, and his body seemed to waste away bit by bit, his cheeks hollowing out, his hands thinning.

She lifted a hand as Dorian stepped toward his father. They had to ask more, learn more— 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.

“Your king is dead,” she said. The crowd stirred. “Your prince lives.” “All hail Dorian Havilliard,” someone shouted down the street. No one else echoed it.

“Wing Leader,” the young woman said. Manon looked over her shoulder. The woman put a hand on her heart. “Thank you.” Manon didn’t let herself think about the laundress’s gratitude, or what it meant for those weak, helpless humans to have even considered trying to rescue Elide on their own.

Her grandmother had sold them to these people. She was a Blackbeak; she was no one’s slave. No one’s prize horse to breed. Neither was Elide.

Manon dropped Elide’s arm. Elide hardly dared to breathe as the witch said, “How long has it been since you destroyed the demon inside that collar, Kaltain?” A low, broken laugh. “A while.”

“What is that?” Manon asked, sniffing subtly. 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.”

Kaltain stepped away. “We can take you with us,” Elide tried again. A small, hateful smile. “I have no interest in living. Not after what they did. I don’t think my body could survive without their power.” Kaltain huffed a laugh. “I shall enjoy this, I think.” Manon tugged Elide to her side. “They’ll notice you without the chains—” “They’ll be dead before they do,” Kaltain said. “I suggest you run.” Manon didn’t ask questions, and Elide didn’t have time to say thank you before the witch grabbed her and they ran.

“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.”

He choked on a laugh. “Let’s have an adventure, Nesryn Faliq.”

She did not know how long it would take or how far she would have to walk, but she would make it. She would not look back.

“What was it like?” Manon asked quietly. “To love.” For love was what it had been—what Asterin perhaps alone of all the Ironteeth witches had felt, had learned. “It was like dying a little every day. It was like being alive, too. It was joy so complete it was pain. It destroyed me and unmade me and forged me. I hated it, because I knew I couldn’t escape it, and knew it would forever change me. And that witchling … I loved her, too. I loved her in a way I cannot describe—other than to tell you that it was the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt, greater than rage, than lust, than magic.” A soft smile. “I’m surprised you’re not giving me the ‘Obedience. Discipline. Brutality’ speech.”

Made into monsters. “Things are changing,” Manon said. “Good,” Asterin said. “We’re immortals. Things should change, and often, or they’ll get boring.”

His throat bobbed. “I wish I could see her, just one last time. To tell her … to say what was in my heart.” “She knows,” Aelin said, blinking against the burning in her eyes. “I’ll miss you,” Dorian said. “Though I doubt the next time we meet will be in such … civilized circumstances.” She tried not to think about it. He gestured over her shoulder to her court. “Don’t make them too miserable. They’re only trying to help you.” She smiled. To her surprise, a king smiled back. “Send me any good books that you read,” she said. “Only if you do the same.” She embraced him one last time. “Thank you—for everything,” she whispered. Dorian squeezed her, and then stepped away as Aelin mounted her horse and nudged it into a walk.

She didn’t know why she’d bothered to go; why she’d been curious. But there had been the prince, no collar to be seen around his neck. And he had lifted his hand in greeting—as if to say I remember you.

And at long last, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was home.