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“Marion.”
“Because I am from Terrasen and believed my queen dead. And now she is alive, and fighting, so I will fight with her. So that no other girls will be taken from their homes and brought to Morath and forgotten.”
“Your Second, Asterin Blackbeak, shall pay the blood debt between our clans. She dies at sunrise tomorrow.”
The Mycenians had once ruled Ilium not as nobility, but crime lords.
“Aelin is my heart. I taught her what I knew, and it worked because our magics understood each other deep down—just as our souls did. You are … different. Your magic is something I have rarely encountered. You need someone who grasps it, or at least how to train you in it. But I can teach you control; I can teach you about spiraling down into your power, and taking care of yourself.”
“Good thing I know how to make women purr.”
She’d burned him alive. From the inside out. Someone screamed.
“At least you know how to make a good entrance, Erawan.”
Then Manon Blackbeak whirled and brought Wind-Cleaver down upon her grandmother.
“Duke Perrington—or should I call him King Perrington now?—issued a decree, signed by the majority of Adarlan’s lords and ladies, naming you, Majesty, an enemy to your kingdom, and claiming that he liberated Rifthold from your claws after you and the Queen of Terrasen slaughtered so many innocents this spring. It also claims that any ally”—a nod toward Rowan—“is an enemy. And that you will be crushed under his armies if you do not yield.”
“Your brother has been named Perrington’s heir and Crown Prince.”
“Captured, along with others, and taken into the Dead Islands. Used for information about how and where to strike you. The only way to free them when they were sent back to you, demons wearing their bodies, was to behead them. Burn them.”
“Was your aim that shitty when you cut your own hair?”
“How you even manage to walk with that much steel on you, Whitethorn, has always been a mystery to me.” Rowan said smoothly, “How no one has ever cut out your tongue just to shut you up has always been a mystery to me as well.” An edged chuckle. “I’ve been told it’s my best feature. At least the women think so.”
Perhaps it was torture, too, for Fenrys to be so far from Maeve’s grip—but to know that his twin was back in Doranelle, that if Fenrys never came back … Connall would be punished in unspeakable ways. It was how the queen had ensnared them in the first place: offspring were rare among the Fae—but twins? Even rarer. And for twins to be born gifted with strength, to grow into males whose dominance rivaled that of warriors centuries older than them …
Fenrys had bargained: he’d swear the oath, but only to get Maeve to back off his brother. For over a century now, Fenrys had served in the queen’s bedroom, had sat chained by invisible shackles beside her dark throne.
“So you’ve been sent here to bring Lorcan back?” Those tattoos on Gavriel’s throat—marks Rowan himself had inked—bobbed with each word as he said, “We’ve been sent here to kill him.”
“Ten years ago, we did nothing to stop this. If Maeve had sent a force, we might have kept it from growing so out of control. Our brethren were hunted and killed and tortured. Maeve let it happen for spite, because Aelin’s mother would not yield to her wishes. So yes—my Fireheart is one flame in the sea of darkness. But she is willing to fight, Fenrys. She is willing to take on Erawan, take on Maeve and the gods themselves, if it means peace can be had.”
“she will die. And once that flame goes out, it is done. There is no second chance. Once that fire extinguishes, we are all doomed, in every land and every world.”
“I have a son?”
“You know, you ladies can let us males do things every now and then.” Aelin lifted a brow. “Where would the fun be in that?”
“I don’t blame him,” Aelin said at last. “I don’t blame Darrow for block-ing me from Terrasen. I would do the same, judge the same, if I were him.”
“You will find, Rolfe, that one does not deal with Celaena Sardothien. One survives her.”
“The world,” Aelin said, “will be saved and remade by the dreamers, Rolfe.”
“You are very young,” he said carefully. “And I am very old.” “How old?” She’d never asked. “Old.”
Twilight vibes
Love had broken a perfect killing tool. Lorcan wondered if it would take him centuries more to stop being so pissed about it.
“Would you like me to kill him for you?”
“I would have fought for the rest of my life to find a way to return to you again. I knew it the moment you emerged from the Valg’s darkness and smiled at me through your flames.”
“What I felt for you in Doranelle and what I feel for you now are the same. I just didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to act on it.”
They could burn the entire world to ashes with it. He was hers and she was his, and they had found each other across centuries of bloodshed and loss, across oceans and kingdoms and war.
“Even when you’re in another kingdom, Aelin, your fire is still in my blood, my mouth.”
“She died so your queen wouldn’t get her claws on me.”
“They could have cured her in the Fae compounds, but she wouldn’t go near them, wouldn’t let them come for fear of Maeve”—he spat the name—“knowing I existed. For fear I’d be enslaved to her as you were.”
“You say the word, General, and I’ll transform into the face of their nightmares.” “And what creature is that?” She gave him a knowing little smile. “Something I’ve been working on.” “I don’t want to know, do I?” White teeth flashed. “No, you really don’t.”
“It’s the latest report,” Rolfe drawled, “of the locations of Morath’s armies. They have moved into position. Aid to the North is now impossible. And they stand poised to strike Eyllwe.”
“Milady has to release bits of her power daily or it can consume her.” Despite herself, despite what she’d done, she decided she wanted Rowan to call her milady at least once every day. Rowan continued on, pressing Rolfe about the moving army.
“For every Morath ship you sack, you can keep whatever gold and treasure is aboard it. But weapons and ammunition go to the front. I’ll give you land, but no royal titles beyond those of Lord of Ilium and King of the Archipelago. If you bear any offspring, I will recognize them as your heirs—as I would any children Dorian might bear.” Dorian nodded gravely. “Adarlan will recognize you and your heirs, and this land as yours.”
yay
They had not come ten years ago. She wanted them to know she had not forgotten it.
“That’s not Aelin,” Fenrys breathed.
“Deanna,” Rowan whispered.
“Every key has a lock. Tell the Queen Who Was Promised to retrieve it soon, for all the allies in the world shall make no difference if she does not wield the Lock, if she does not put those keys back with it. Tell her flame and iron, together bound, merge into silver to learn what must be found. A mere step is all it shall take.”
The sea-wyverns that, Rolfe had claimed, would go to the ends of the earth to slaughter whoever killed their offspring. Only being in the heart of the continent might save you—but even then, waterways would never be safe. And Lysandra had just killed two.
Rock met ice and flesh. And the wyvern shattered into a thousand pieces.
Lysandra’s long body arched away from those jaws as the bull lifted clean out of the water, baring his white throat— As Aedion’s massive spear went clean through it.
“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.”
And one day the ship I was on got caught in a storm. The captain was a haughty bastard, refused to find safe harbor, and the ship was destroyed. Most of the crew drowned. I drifted for a day, washed up on an island at the edge of the archipelago, and awoke to find a man staring down at me. I asked if I was dead, and he laughed and inquired what I wanted for myself. I was so delirious I told him that I wanted to be captain—I wanted to be Pirate Lord of Skull’s Bay and make the arrogant fools like the captain who had killed my friends bow before me. I thought I was dreaming when he explained
...more
And it wasn’t until I learned that my mother and sister had used their little money to hire a skiff to go looking for me—and that the skiff had returned to harbor but they had not—that I realized the price I’d handed over. That’s what the sea claimed. What he claimed.
“Because I’m the only one arrogant and insane enough to ask Mala Fire-Bringer to let me stay with the woman I love.”
“I’ve never taken a woman on a beach,” he purred against her skin,
“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.”
