Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)

by Sarah J. Maas

She was gazing toward the nearby watchtower nestled at the base of the mountain. He watched her green eyes survey the lower level where Ship-Breaker was wrapped around a massive wheel, the spiraling exterior staircase up the tower itself, all the way up to the upper levels, where a catapult, and a turret-mounted, massive harpoon—or was it a giant crossbow?—was locked into place, its wielder’s seat and arrow aimed at an invisible enemy in the bay below. With the size of the weapon and the machine that had been rigged to launch it into the bay, he had no doubt it could smash through a hull and do lethal damage to a ship. Or spear three men on it.

She nudged him with an elbow. “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.”

Aelin was insane, Dorian realized. Brilliant and wicked, but insane. And perhaps the greatest, most unremorseful liar he’d ever encountered.

Two sea-wyverns … against one sea dragon.

She lifted her head to study his face, the harsh planes and the curving tattoo. He leaned in to brush a kiss to her mouth. And as his lips met hers, he joined their bleeding palms. Magic jolted through her, ancient and wicked and cunning, and she arched against him, knees buckling as his cataclysmic power roared into her. All anyone on deck saw, she knew, was two lovers embracing. But Aelin tunneled down, down, down into her power, felt him doing the same with his, felt every ounce of ice and wind and lightning go slamming from him into her. And when it reached her, the core of his power yielded to her own, melted and became embers and wildfire. Became the molten heart of the earth, shaping the world and birthing new lands.

Aelin’s ongoing display was not for them. Because there was no escape, not with the power she’d dragged up with her. 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.

“Aelin,” Rowan said again, trying to tug on that bond between them. But there was nothing. Only the gaping maw of some immortal, ancient beast. A beast that had opened an eye, a beast that spoke in the tongue of a thousand worlds. Ice flooded his veins. She was wearing the Wyrdkey. “Aelin.” But Rowan felt it then. Felt that bottom of her power crack open as if the beast within that Wyrdkey stomped its foot, and ash and crusted rock crumbled away beneath it. And revealed a roiling, molten core of magic beneath it. As if it were the fiery heart of Mala herself.

Just as she ripped her hand from his. Just as her power and the Wyrdkey between her breasts merged. Rowan collapsed to his knees, and there was a crack inside his head, as if thunder cleaved through him. As Aelin opened her eyes, he realized it wasn’t thunder—but the sound of a door slamming open. Her face turned expressionless. Cold as the gaps between the stars. And her eyes … Turquoise burned bright … around a core of silver. No hint of gold to be found. “That’s not Aelin,” Fenrys breathed.

Cold white light. Tendrils flickered—silver flame …

Like Nesta

“Deanna,” Rowan whispered. She flicked her eyes to him in question and confirmation. And she said to him, in a voice that was deep and hollow, young and old, “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.” Then she looked away again. And Rowan realized what the power in her hand was. Realized that the flame she would unleash would be so cold it burned, realized it was the cold of the stars, the cold of stolen light. Not wildfire—but moonfire.

Aedion drawled, even as his relief began to crumble his mask of arrogant calmness, “The useless sentries in the watchtower are now all half in love with you,” he lied. “One said he wanted to marry you.” A low snarl. He yielded a foot but held eye contact with her as he grinned. “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.” Those eyes narrowed—in what he could only call female outrage and exasperation. He shrugged. “Princess Lysandra Ashryver sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

The Lion remained out of sight and held in the offer of help. Held in the words he needed to say to the Wolf, who had downed a sea-wyvern with one arrow. Twenty-four years old and already a myth whispered over campfires.

And the Lion wondered if he himself would ever be mentioned in those whispered stories—if his son would ever allow the world to know who had sired him. Or even care.

The Queen Who Was Promised.

Rowan shucked off his boots, tossing them onto the dry sand behind him. “Because I’m the only one arrogant and insane enough to ask Mala Fire-Bringer to let me stay with the woman I love.”

She felt the words dangling there, felt herself dangling there, off the edge of the cliff. She swallowed. But Rowan had caught her each time she had fallen—first, when she had plummeted into that abyss of despair and grief; second, when that castle had shattered and she had plunged to the earth. And now this time, this third time … She was not afraid.

Aelin met Rowan’s stare and said clearly and baldly and without a speckle of doubt, “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—” His lips crushed into hers, and he said onto her mouth, dropping words more precious than rubies and emeralds and sapphires into her heart, her soul, “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.”

His sculpted chest heaved slightly as he ran an eye over her bare body. “You … are so beautiful.” She knew he didn’t just mean the skin and curves and bones.

Something tight in her chest eased. “Is it that different? With someone like me.” “I don’t know,” Rowan admitted. Again, his eyes slid along her body, as if he could see through skin to her burning heart beneath. “I’ve never been with … an equal. I’ve never allowed myself to be that unleashed.”

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 are mine,” Rowan breathed, and she felt the claiming in her bones, her soul. “I am yours,” she answered. “And you love me.” Such hope and quiet joy in his eyes, beneath all that fierceness. “To whatever end.” For too long—for too long had he been alone and wandering. No longer.

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.

and when Rowan roared her name again into the star-flecked black, Aelin hoped the gods themselves heard it and knew their days were now numbered.

And yet his very blood was still electrified. And yet he still wanted more.

He still needed it. When they’d finished after that first time, he’d been left reeling, to pull his sanity back together after the joining that had … unleashed him. Broken and remade him. His magic had been a song, and she had been … He’d never had anything like her. Everything he’d given her, she’d given right back to him. And when she had bit him during that second coupling in the sand … His magic had left six nearby palm trees in splinters as he’d climaxed hard enough that he thought his body would shatter.

He’d marked her—richer than the scent that had clung to her before. Marked her deep and true, and there was no undoing it, no washing it away. She’d claimed him, and he’d claimed her, and he knew she was well aware of what that claiming meant—just as he knew … He knew it had been a choice on her part. A final decision regarding the matter of who would be in her royal bed.

Rowan loosed a sharp breath, trying to draw up his magic to cool the fire still in his blood. To calm the instincts roaring and raging at him. Not to take her—but to eliminate any other threat. A dangerous time, for any Fae male, when they first took a lover. Worse, when it meant something more.

Mates

She was exquisite: her face young and grave, her hair long and silvery-white—like Manon’s—and

“Deanna is a god. She does not have rules and morals and codes the way we do. Time does not exist for her the way it does for us. You let your magic touch the key, the key opened a door, and Deanna happened to be watching at that exact moment. That she spoke to you at all is a gift. That you managed to shove her out before she was ready … She will not soon forget that insult, Majesty.”

“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.”

“It’s not just possible,” Aelin murmured. “She did it. That … pit of power I uncovered today … That was from Mala herself. Elena might be many things, but she wasn’t lying about that.”

But even as the queen stood undimming before the shadows of the world … a lick of cold traced the contours of Dorian’s heart. And he wondered if Aelin was somehow watching the archipelago, and the seas, and the skies, as if she might never see them again.

And he’d been so focused on cursing himself for staring at that ripe, sinful mouth while she admitted she was still untouched, that he hadn’t detected anything amiss until the screaming started. No, he’d been too busy contemplating what sounds might come from that full mouth if he slowly, gently, taught her the art of the bedroom.

But he knew … some small, stupid part of him knew that if he took from this woman who had already had too much stolen from her … He didn’t know if there was any coming back from that. He’d done such despicable, vicious things over the centuries and hadn’t thought twice. He’d reveled in them, relished them, the cruelty. But this … there was a line. Somehow … somehow there was a gods-damned line here.

Elide said quietly, “Marion was my mother’s name. She died defending Aelin Galathynius from her assassin. My mother bought Aelin time to run—to get away so she could one day return to save us all. My uncle, Vernon, watched and smiled as my father, the Lord of Perranth, was executed outside our castle. Then he took my father’s title and lands and home. And for the next ten years, my uncle locked me in the highest tower of Perranth Castle, with only my nursemaid for company. When I broke my foot and ankle, he did not trust healers enough to let them treat it. He kept bars on the tower windows to keep me from killing myself, and shackled my ankles to keep me from running. I left for the first time in a decade when he shoved me into a prison wagon and dragged me down to Morath. There, he made me work as a servant—for the humiliation and terror he delights in. I planned and dreamed of escaping every day. And when the time came … I took my chance. I did not know about the ilken, had only heard rumors of fell things being bred in the mountains beyond the Keep. I have no lands, no money, no army to offer Aelin Galathynius. But I will find her—and help her in whatever way I can. If only to keep just one girl, just one, from ever enduring what I did.”

I can kill faster—I can sense when death is near. I think my magic is death, given to me by Hellas himself.

Find somewhere safe, she’d told Abraxos. Had he somehow found the queen? Somehow known this was the only place she might stand a chance of surviving?

She had not realized how impossible the survival of the Thirteen might indeed have been until she was practically begging Dorian Havilliard to find them for her. Until she had found herself desperate enough to sell her sword for any news of them.