Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

Once upon a time, in a land long since burned to ash, there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom …

AND IM A SOBBING DISASTER

“Erawan could be defeated without sealing the gate.”

It was the hand on her rounded belly.

The tallest: a girl with golden hair and pine-green eyes, solemn-faced and as proud as her mother. The boy beside her, nearly her height, smiled at him, warm and bright, his Ashryver eyes near-glowing beneath his cap of silver hair. The boy next to him, silver-haired and green-eyed, might as well have been Rowan’s twin. And the smallest girl, clinging to her mother’s legs … A fine-boned, silver-haired child, little more than a babe, her blue eyes harking back to a lineage he did not know. Children. His children. Their children.

Tell Rowan that I’m sorry I lied. But tell him it was all borrowed time anyway. Even before today, I knew it was all just borrowed time, but I still wish we’d had more of it.

And tell him thank you—for walking that dark path with me back to the light. It had been his honor. From the very beginning, it had been his honor, the greatest of his immortal life. An immortal life they would share together—somehow. He’d allow no other alternative. Rowan silently swore it to the stars. He could have sworn the Lord of the North flickered in response.

“Am I not keeping you warm enough these days, wife?”

He’d given it to her, had a master engraver carve the mountains and seas onto the surface. Inside, it still bore the note Aelin Galathynius had left her years ago, when his wife worked as a barmaid in a backwater port, and the queen lived as an assassin under another name.

To rule beside him. As the future empress of the khaganate.

That Maeve was not a Fae Queen at all, but a Valg imposter.

I FUCKING KNEW IT

She didn’t tell the Healer on High that she wasn’t entirely sure how much longer she’d be a help—not yet. Hadn’t whispered a word of that doubt to anyone, even Chaol. Yrene’s hand drifted across her abdomen and lingered.

Her mother’s voice.

Fireheart, why do you cry?

Because I am lost. And I do not know the way.

You have been very brave, her mother said. You have been very brave, for so very long.

But you must be brave a little while longer, my Fireheart.

You must be brave a little while longer, and remember …

It is the strength of this that matters. No matter where you are, no matter how far, this will lead you home.

You do not yield. 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.

Another thing they’d inherited from the Fae: their difficulty conceiving and the deadly nature of childbirth.

They’d walked this dark path together back to the light. He would not let the road end here.

He signaled again. To me, to me.

RUN AELIN, RUN.

“Take it off.”

She was Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius, and she was Queen of Terrasen.

“Two months, three days, and seven hours.”

Her mouth tightened, either at the length of time, or the fact that he’d counted every single one of those hours apart.

“There … there was no collar.”

An unbroken Fire-Bringer. Aelin of the Wildfire.

“To whatever end,” he whispered. Silver lined her eyes. “To whatever end.”

A reminder—and a vow, more sacred than the wedding oaths they’d sworn on that ship.

Rattle the stars.

His wife was in the keep behind him. Pregnant with their child. He would not fail her.

OMG HE KNEW

Stood a queen of two peoples.

“What was stolen has been restored; what was lost has come home again. I hail thee, Manon Crochan, Queen of Witches.”

“I love you,” he whispered in Elide’s ear. “I have loved you from the moment you picked up that axe to slay the ilken.” Her tears flowed past him in the wind. “And I will be with you …” His voice broke, but he made himself say the words, the truth in his heart. “I will be with you always.”

LORCAN WHY

Slammed her heels into the dark flank and screamed, “FLY, FARASHA.” She cracked the reins. “FLY, FLY, FLY!” And gods help her, that horse did.

“What you felt in there—that is why I left their world.” She gazed ahead, a shadow darkening her face. “Every day, that was what I felt.”

Wait sus

And there is only one witch who will be my queen.

KING STATUS!!!

“We came,” Manon said, loud enough that all on the city walls could hear, “to honor a promise made to Aelin Galathynius. To fight for what she promised us.” Darrow said quietly, “And what was that?” Manon smiled then. “A better world.”

“We are the Thirteen,” she said. “From now until the Darkness claims us.”

Evangeline had decided that she no longer wished to be page to Lord Darrow, but rather a Crochan witch.

As if the words themselves were a signal, Bronwen lifted the horn of Telyn Vanora to her lips and blew.

“Let’s make this a fight worthy of a song,” Aedion said.

Home. This, with him. This was home, as she had never had. For however long they might share it.

So Lorcan did.

WHAT DID LORCAN DO

Her Second, her cousin, her friend, smiled, eyes bright as stars. “Live, Manon.”

PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINNNNN

“Bring our people home, Manon.”

And bring me to therapy omgggg

Imogen went down first. Then Lin. And Ghislaine, her wyvern swarmed by their enemy. Then Thea and Kaya, together, as they had always been. Then the green-eyed demon twins, laughing as they went. Then the Shadows, Edda and Briar, arrows still firing. Still finding their marks. Then Vesta, roaring her defiance to the skies. And then Sorrel. Sorrel, who held the way open for Asterin, a solid wall for Manon’s Second as she soared in. A wall against whom the waves of Ironteeth broke and broke.

Manon began screaming then. Screaming, endless and wordless, as that thing in her chest, as her heart, shattered.

And far away, across the snow-covered mountains, on a barren plain before the ruins of a once-great city, a flower began to bloom.

KINGSFLAME!!!!!