More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The display was for the others, for the city watching them. For the world to know she was no mere princess playing with pretty embers.
For what gazed at the dark fleet assembled, what had filled his beloved’s body … He knew. Some primal, intrinsic part of him knew. “Deanna,” Rowan whispered. She flicked her eyes to him in question and confirmation.
And for the first time, he hated his cousin.
Leaping through the water, twining around debris and coral and bodies, the sunlight glinting on green scales and ruby blood, Lysandra led the bull into a dance of death.
“But you know what I told them? I said that they didn’t stand a chance in hell.” Aedion lowered his voice, holding her pained, exhausted stare. “Because I am going to marry you,” he promised her. “One day. I am going to marry you. I’ll be generous and let you pick when, even if it’s ten years from now. Or twenty. But one day, you are going to be my wife.”
“Because I’m the only one arrogant and insane enough to ask Mala Fire-Bringer to let me stay with the woman I love.”
“Something tells me,” he said, his breath skittering along her skin, “you might not mind if we were discovered. If someone saw how thoroughly I plan to worship you.”
“I love you. I am in love with you, Rowan. I have been for a while. And I know there are limits to what you can give me, and I know you might need time—”
“I love you. There is no limit to what I can give to you, no time I need. Even when this world is a forgotten whisper of dust between the stars, I will love you.”
Rowan pulled back, wiping away her tears with his thumbs, one after another. He said softly, barely audible over the crashing waves around them, “Fireheart.” She sniffed back tears. “Buzzard.”
And when Aelin laid her palm flat on him again, she said, “You are mine.” Rowan’s breathing started again, jagged and savage as the waves breaking around them. She flicked open the top button of his pants. “I’m yours,” he ground out. Another button popped free. “And you love me,” she said. Not a question. “To whatever end,” he breathed.
“You don’t want to know the depraved things I’ve thought about this mouth.”
Aelin eyed his throat, his glorious body, and the face she had once so fiercely hated. And she wondered if it were possible to love someone enough to die from it. If it were possible to love someone enough that time and distance and death were of no concern.
“She who loved my father best. She who blessed him with such mighty gifts, and then bound herself in a mortal body and offered him the gift of her heart.” Aelin’s arms slackened at her sides. Aedion blurted, “Shit.” Elena laughed humorlessly as she said to Aelin, “Why do you think you burn so brightly? It is not just Brannon’s blood that is in your veins. But Mala’s.” Aelin breathed, “Mala Fire-Bringer was your mother.”
“Did you sell your shirt, too?” Lorcan gave a feral grin. “Got ten coppers from a farmer’s wife for it.”
“If you try to bring me to Morath, I will end my own life before you can carry me over the Keep’s bridge.”
“Hello, witchling,” he said.
“Hello, princeling,” she said.
“Witch, woman … as long as the parts that matter are there, what difference does it make?”
“You know my circumstances. I am now at the mercy of my friends.” “And the Queen of Terrasen is your friend?” “There is no one else I’d want guarding my back.”
He’d seen a kingdom, perhaps three hundred years ago, that relied on barges to sail its goods from one end to another. Its name eluded him, lost to the catacombs of his memory. Lorcan wondered if it still existed, tucked away between two mountain ranges on the other side of the world.
“I see you. I see every part of you. And I am not afraid.”
“A court that can change the world.”
“I love you,” Rowan breathed onto her skin, and flicked his tongue over the spot where his canines had scratched. “I’d walk into the burning heart of hell itself to find you.”
She whispered onto his mouth, “I’ll always find a way back to you.”
“It’s called the Yielding,” she said, a chill brushing down her spine. “The bit of magic we have. We usually cannot summon or wield, but for one moment in a witch’s life, she can summon great power to unleash upon her enemies. The cost is that she is incinerated in the blast, her body yielded to the Darkness. In the witch wars, witches on both sides made Yieldings during every battle and skirmish.”
“As tempting as seeing you naked and chained might be …” A soft lover’s laugh. “I don’t think you’d enjoy the loss of control.”
Invisible hands wrapped around her wrists, tightly enough that she dropped the shirt.
The invisible fingers on her wrists vanished. The door unlatched. And that cocky grin returned as Dorian shrugged with one shoulder and said, “Maybe another night, witchling.”
Aedion hadn’t dared tell the shifter that he often counted the minutes until she returned, that his chest always felt unbearably tight until he spotted whatever winged or finned form she wore returning to them.
Round two, he seemed to say. As soon as this is dealt with. We’re having round two. This time, I get to see what noises you make.
“This is what we are meant to do—protect, serve, cherish. What Maeve offers is … a mockery of that.” He surveyed the wounds now healing on his chest, mending so slowly. “But it is what calls to a Fae male’s blood, what guides him. What we’re all looking for, even when we say we’re not.”
“She was a bright star in centuries of darkness. I would have followed that star to the ends of the earth, if she had let me. But she didn’t, and I respected her wishes to stay away. To never seek her out again. I went to another continent and didn’t let myself look back.”
“I have no interest in human women,” he purred. “Too breakable.”
“I am the last Crochan Queen—the last direct descendant of Rhiannon Crochan herself.”
“Nameless is the price of Maeve’s allegiance,” Fenrys snapped. “It can’t be purchased.”
For the first time in five centuries, Lorcan knew true fear as Elide turned that knife on herself, the blade angled to plunge up and into her heart.
“I want Erawan to know that the next time he sends you after me like a pack of dogs, I’ll return the favor. I want Erawan to know that the next time I see him, I will carve Manon’s name on his gods-damned heart.”
“I made a promise to protect you. I will not break it, Elide.” She made to pull away, but he gripped her a little harder, keeping her eyes on him. “I will always find you,” he swore to her.
Elide stood on her toes, kissed his stubble-rough cheek, and said, “I will always find you, too, Lorcan.”
When she awoke, clean strips of linen for her cycle were next to the bed. His own shirt, washed and dried overnight—now cut up for her to use as she would.
“You and me,” she promised him. “From now until the Darkness claims us.”
“Do you love her?” Those eyes, darker than the gaps between the stars, slid to her. “I have been in love with Maeve since I first laid eyes on her.” “Are you—are you her lover?” She had not dared ask it, hadn’t really wanted to know. “No. I offered once. She laughed at me for the insolence.” His mouth tightened. “So I have made myself invaluable in other ways.”
“I would hide you. In Perranth. If you … if you do what you need to do, and need somewhere to go … You would have a place there. With me.”
Fenrys’s voice was a broken whisper as he said, “Kill me. If that order is given. Kill me, Rowan, before I have to do it.” “You’ll be dead before you can get within a foot of her.”
“I keep a tally, you know, Princess. To remind myself to repay you the next time we’re alone for all the truly wonderful things you say.”
“I certainly hope you make me beg for it.”
“Where are our allies, Aelin? Where are our armies? All we have to show for our efforts is a Pirate Lord who might very well change his mind if he hears about this from the wrong lips.”
“I won’t be his prisoner again.”
“If it comes to that, princeling, I’ll kill you before they can.”
