Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6)

by Sarah J. Maas

Atop his snowy head sat no crown. For gods among mortals did not need markers of their divine rule.

History was written by the victors, apparently.

Look like you’d put up a fight—be more trouble than you’re worth.

“You would be surprised by how closely the healing of physical wounds is tied to the healing of emotional ones.”

Some of the girls laughed quietly at the accompanying pop the girl made with her mouth. Aelin would have been beside herself with glee.

“Don’t you waste one heartbeat being afraid of a coward who hunts women in the darkness,”

there were plans so long in the making that for someone who let the world deem her unchecked and brash, Aelin showed a great deal of restraint in keeping it all hidden.

It was like waking up or being born or falling out of the sky. It was an answer and a song, and she could not think or feel fast enough.

that knowledge that beauty was fleeting, yet power … power was a far more valuable currency.

Aelin frightens everyone.” He snorted. “But not him. I think that’s why she fell in love with him, against her best intentions. Rowan beheld all Aelin was and is, and he was not afraid.”

“I will cherish it always,” Yrene said, and he knew she wasn’t talking about the locket. Not as she lowered a hand from his face to his chest. Atop his raging heart. “No matter what may befall the world.” Another featherlight kiss. “No matter the oceans, or mountains, or forests in the way.”

“I loved you before I ever set eyes on you,” he said. “Please,” Nesryn wept. Sartaq’s hand tightened on hers. “I wish we’d had time.”

“We wait for the Queen of the Valg,” the spider purred, rubbing against the carving. “Who in this world calls herself Maeve.”

What if we go on, only to more pain and despair? Aelin had smiled at his question, posed on that rooftop in Rifthold. As if she had understood, long before he did, that he would find this pit. And learn the answer for himself. Then it is not the end.

“The darkness belongs to you. To shape as you will. To give it power or render it harmless.” “Was it ever the Valg’s to begin with?” His words echoed into nothing. “Yes. But it is yours to keep now. This place, this final kernel of it.” It would remain in him, a scar and a reminder. “Will it grow again?” “Only if you let it. Only if you do not fill it with better things. Only if you do not forgive.” He knew she didn’t just mean others. “But if you are kind to yourself, if you—if you love yourself …” Yrene’s mouth trembled. “If you love yourself as much as I love you …” Something began to pound in his chest. A drumbeat that had gone silent down here. Yrene held a hand toward him, her iridescence rippling into the darkness. It is not the end.

Because Yrene, ripe with power and facing down that preening Valg demon … Hope. It was hope that stood beside him, hidden and protected these years in this city, and in the years before it, spirited across the earth by the gods themselves, concealed from the forces poised to destroy her. A kernel of hope. The most dangerous of all weapons against Erawan, against the Valg’s ancient darkness. What he had been brought here to retrieve for his homeland, his people. What he had been brought here to protect. More precious than soldiers, than any weapon. Their only shot at salvation. Hope.

He’d almost told the princess that she could keep Hellas’s Horse, but there was something to be said about the prospect of charging down Morath foot soldiers atop a horse named Butterfly.

For wherever you need to go—and then some. The world needs more healers.

Every step, all of it, had led here. From that keep in the snow-blasted mountains where a man with a face as hard as the rock around them had thrown him into the cold; to that salt mine in Endovier, where an assassin with eyes like wildfire had smirked at him, unbroken despite a year in hell. An assassin who had found his wife, or they had found each other, two gods-blessed women wandering the shadowed ruins of the world. And who now held the fate of it between them. Every step. Every curve into darkness. Every moment of despair and rage and pain. It had led him to precisely where he needed to be. Where he wanted to be.

A moment of kindness. From a young woman who ended lives to a young woman who saved them.

Chaol smiled back at his wife, at the light he’d unknowingly walked toward his entire life, even when he had not been able to see it.