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“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.”
Aelin extended her hand—a question and an offer and a promise. “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.
They were infinite. They were the beginning and the ending; they were eternity.
The wicked will tell us anything to haunt our thoughts long after, Nehemia had warned her.
She was a Blackbeak; she was no one’s slave. No one’s prize horse to breed. Neither was Elide.
He shifted his arm so he could brush her hair back. His fingers lingered along her jaw. “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
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She had to swallow before she said, “You light up the darkness.”
“There’s one more task,” Aelin said, holding the box out to Lysandra. “You’ll probably hate me for it later. But you can start by saying yes.” “Proposing to me? How unexpected.” Lysandra took the box but didn’t open it. Aelin waved a hand, her heart pounding. “Just—open it.” With a wary frown, Lysandra opened the lid and cocked her head at the ring inside—the movement purely feline. “Are you proposing to me, Aelin Galathynius?” Aelin held her friend’s gaze. “There’s a territory in the North, a small bit of fertile land that used to belong to the Allsbrook family. Aedion took it upon himself to
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“There is no one who deserves it more,” Aelin said, grabbing her friend’s hand and putting the ring on her finger. “There is no one else I’d want guarding my back. If my people cannot see the worth of a woman who sold herself into slavery for the sake of a child, who defended my court with no thought for her own life, then they are not my people. And they can burn in hell.”
Ten years later, and they were all sitting together at a table again—no longer children, but rulers of their own territories. Ten years later, and here they were, friends despite the forces that had shattered and destroyed them. 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.”
“Things are changing,” Manon said. “Good,” Asterin said. “We’re immortals. Things should change, and often, or they’ll get boring.”
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.”
The winds shifted, and Abraxos rode them, rising higher into the sky, the darkened kingdom below passing by in a blur. Changing winds—a changing world. Perhaps a changing Thirteen, too. And herself. She didn’t know what to make of it. But Manon hoped they’d all survive it. She hoped.
“Right there,” Aedion said, pointing to a small, weather-worn granite boulder carved with whorls and swirls. “Once we pass that rock, we’re on Terrasen soil.” Not quite daring to believe she wasn’t still asleep, Aelin walked toward that rock, whispering the Song of Thanks to Mala Fire-Bringer for leading her to this place, this moment. Aelin ran a hand over the rough rock, and the sun-warmed stone tingled as if in greeting. Then she stepped beyond the stone. And at long last, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was home.
