Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)

by Sarah J. Maas

There would be no marker to tell the world where a Princess of Terrasen had fallen. There would be no marker for any of them.

Elena looked over her shoulder, her unbound silver hair snagging on the intricate leather scales of her armor.

The war leader at her side remained silent. So rare for Gavin, that silence. Not a flicker of that untamed fierceness shone in his uptilted eyes, and his shaggy brown hair hung limp.

Gavin turned to her with that frank assessment that had stripped her bare from the moment she’d first met him in her father’s hall nearly a year ago. Lifetimes ago.

“I would sooner die tomorrow than live for a thousand years with a coward’s shame.”

“My father’s power is failing. He is close—decades now—from the fading. Mala’s light dims inside him with every passing day. He cannot stand against Erawan and win.”

Her father’s last words before she’d set out on this doomed quest months ago: My sun is setting, Elena. You must find a way to ensure yours still rises.

Perhaps the gods were still listening. Perhaps her mother’s fiery soul had convinced them.

With her free hand, Elena lifted her fingers in the air between them. The raw magic in her veins now danced, from flame to water to curling vine to cracking ice. Not an endless abyss like her father’s, but a versatile, nimble gift of magic. Granted by her mother.

Dorian’s power

Because Erawan would go for Gavin first. The human warrior who had been a bastion against the Dark Lord’s forces for so long, who had fought him when no other would … Erawan’s hatred for the human prince was rivaled only by his hatred for her father.

“He cannot be killed, Elena. You heard what your father’s oracle whispered.”

But perhaps, when that third movement comes … perhaps the players in our unfinished game will be different. Perhaps it will be a future in which Fae and humans fight side by side, ripe with power. Maybe they will find a way to end this. So we will lose this battle, Gavin,”

we will use it as our distraction to contain Erawan so that Erilea might have a future.”

His lips tightened, his sapphir...

Dorian’s eyes

“No one must know,” she said, her voice breaking. “Even if we succeed, no one...

The Lord of the North flickered down at her. Perhaps the final gift of Mala to these lands—in this age, at least. Perhaps a thank-you to Elena herself, and a farewell.

Because for Terrasen, for Erilea, Elena would walk into the eternal darkness lurking across the valley to buy them all a chance.

Elena sent up a final prayer on a pillar of smoke rising from the valley floor that the unborn, faraway scions of this night, heirs to a burden that would doom or save Erilea,...

It had been weeks since Manon Blackbeak and the Thirteen had left her in this forest, the Wing Leader ordering her to head north. To find her lost queen, now grown and mighty—and to also find Celaena Sardothien, whoever she was, so that Elide might repay the life debt she owed to Kaltain Rompier.

She could have sworn a faint throbbing echoed into her skin, a counterbeat to her own racing heart.

Unfortunately, Elide had learned the hard way about what water to drink.

Three days, she’d been near death with vomiting and fever after gulping down that stagnant pond water. Three days, she’d shivered so badly she thought her bones would crack apart. Three days, quietly weeping in pitiful despair that she’d die here, alone in this endless forest, and no one would ever know.

And through it all, that stone in her breast pocket thrummed and throbbed. In her fevered dreams, she could have sworn it whispered to her, sang lullabies in languages th...

She hadn’t heard it since, but she still wondered. Wondered if most humans would have died. Wondered whether she carried a gift or a curse northward. And if this Cel...

Tell her that you can open any door, if you have the key,...

It certainly didn’t look like a key: rough-hewn, as if it had been cleaved from a larger chunk of stone. Perhaps Kaltain’s words were ...

No—she had seen enough of the kindness and mercy of men.

Thank Anneith. At least the Lady of Wise Things had not abandoned her yet.

But—there. Like some thread in a great tapestry had snagged, her body locked up.

the first hollowed-out boom echoed. Not thunder. No, she would never forget this one particular sound—for it, too, haunted her dreams both awake and asleep. The beating of mighty, leathery wings. Wyverns.

They’d fly in perfect, mirrored formation, so listening ears might only report one wyvern. But these two, whoever they were, were sloppy. Or as sloppy as one of the immortal, lethal witches could be. Lower-level coven members, perhaps. Out on a scouting mission. Or hunting for someone, a small, petrified voice whispered in her head.

Rarely—so rarely—were they ever out in daylight. Whatever they hunted—it had to be important.

Elide made it two steps before that sense-that-was-not-a-sense twanged again, as if a warm, female hand had gripped her shoulder to stop. The tangled wood murmured with life. But she could feel it—feel something out there. Not witches or wyverns or beasts. But someone—someone was watching her. Someone was following her.

Lorcan Salvaterre had been running from those gods-damned beasts for two days now.

The witches had been pissed when he’d snuck into their forest camp in the dead of night, slaughtered three of their sentinels without them or their mounts noticing, and dragged a fourth into the trees for questioning.

Twin witch armies now stood poised to take the continent: one in Morath, one in the Ferian Gap.

The Yellowlegs knew nothing of what power Duke Perrington wielded—knew nothing of what Lorcan hunted: the other two Wyrdkeys, the siblings to the one he wore on a long chain around his neck.

Three slivers of stone cleaved from an unholy Wyrdgate, each key capable of tremendous and terrible power. And when all three Wyrdkeys were united … they could open that gate between worlds. Destroy th...

She was delicately built, small enough that he might have thought her barely past her first bleed were it not for the full breasts beneath her close-fitting leathers.

And when she turned in his direction, those dark eyes scanned the forest with an assessment that was too old, too practiced, to belong to a child. At least eighteen—maybe older.

Her pale face was dirty, gaunt. She’d likely been out here for a while, struggling to find food. And the knife she palmed shook enough to suggest she likely had no idea what to do with it.

She knew he was out there, somehow. Interesting. When he wanted to stay hidden, few could find him.

The length of her braid snapped against her pack, her silky hair dark like his own. Darker. Black as a starless night.

The wind shifted, blowing her scent toward him, and Lorcan breathed it in, allowing his Fae senses—the senses he’d inherited from his prick of a father—to assess, analyze, as they had done for over five centuries.

Human. Definitely human, but— He knew that scent. During the past few months, he’d slaughtered many, man...

Perhaps a gift from the gods: someone useful to interrogate. But later—once he had a chance to stu...

The demon-possessed girl limped up the streambed, that useless knife still out, her grip on its hilt wholly ineffective. Good. And so Lorcan began his hunt.

It was the flame that had been the difficult thing to work around—how to keep it crackling while also summoning the small gift of water her mother had given her.

Across the brook, atop a mossy boulder tucked into the arms of a gnarled oak, a pair of tiny bone-white fingers flexed and cracked, a mirror to her own movements.

“If you have any pointers, friend, I’d love to hear them.” The spindly fingers darted back over the crest of the rock—which, like so many in these woods, had been carved with symbols and whorls. The Little Folk had been tracking them since they crossed the border into Terrasen. Escorting, Aedion had insisted whenever they spotted large, depthless eyes blinking from a tangle of brambles or peering through a cluster of leaves atop one of Oakwald’s famed trees.