Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

Then she was gone, like dew under the morning sun. But the words lingered. Blossomed within Aelin, bright as a kindled ember. You do not yield.

A beacon in the night. Power rippling into the world, as it had done in Skull’s Bay. It filled him with sound, with fire and light. As if it screamed, again and again, I am alive, I am alive, I am alive.

He had killed his way across the world; he had gone to war and back more times than he cared to remember. And despite it all, despite the rage and despair and ice he’d wrapped around his heart, he’d still found Aelin. Every horizon he’d gazed toward, unable and unwilling to rest during those centuries, every mountain and ocean he’d seen and wondered what lay beyond … It had been her. It had been Aelin, the silent call of the mating bond driving him, even when he could not feel it. They’d walked this dark path together back to the light. He would not let the road end here.

“Be the bridge, be the light. When iron melts, when flowers spring from fields of blood—let the land be witness, and return home.”