Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

So Dorian felt for that tangle in his magic, the place where raw power eddied and emerged as whatever he wished. Let go—the shifting magic’s command. Let go of everything. Let go of that wall he’d built around himself the moment the Valg prince had invaded him, and look within. At himself. Perhaps what the sword had asked him to do in summoning Kaltain instead. Who do you wish to be? “Someone worthy of my friends,” he said into the quiet night. “A king worthy of his kingdom.” For a heartbeat, snow-white hair and golden eyes flashed into his mind. “Happy,” he whispered, and wrapped a hand around Damaris’s hilt. Let go of that lingering scrap of terror. The ancient sword warmed in his hand, a friendly and swift heat. It flowed up through his fingers, his wrist. To that place within him where all those truths had dwelled, where it became warmth edged with sharpest pain. And then the world grew and expanded, the trees rising, the ground approaching— He made to touch his face, but found he had no hands. Only soot-black wings. Only an ebony beak that allowed no words past it. A raven. A— A soft inhale of air had him twisting his neck—far more easily in this form—toward the trees. Toward Manon, standing in the shadows of an oak, her bloody, filthy hand braced against the trunk as she stared at him. At the transformation.