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 …

thought of him. Held on to his memory as if it were a rock in the raging river.

If beings from another world could be considered gods at all.

I thought I spied a ghost leopard hiding atop the rocks, but Murtaugh said it was a trick of my mind. But I swear it was one—even bigger than yours!

Find someone else. Find a way to use your own powers to forge the Lock. Find a way to accept your fates to be trapped in this world, so we needn’t pay a debt that wasn’t ours to begin with.

“You’ll still have to learn for yourself what is truth and what is lie.”

Hellas damn him, he’d had to resort to giving his cut-up shirt to Whitethorn and Gavriel to hand to her for her cycle. He’d threatened to skin them alive if they’d said it was his, and Elide, with her human sense of smell, hadn’t scented him on the fabric.

But it wasn’t the slightly older features that knocked the breath from him. It was the hand on her rounded belly. She stared toward him, hair still flowing. Behind her, four small figures emerged.

He hadn’t felt pain in the bond that day in Eyllwe. He’d felt it when Dorian Havilliard had stabbed her in the glass castle, had felt the bond—what he’d so stupidly thought was the carranam bond between them—stretching to the breaking point as she’d come so, so close to death.

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.

he’d loved learning all her sounds—loved coaxing them from her.

The band of soldiers didn’t have the chance to shout before Nesryn and Sartaq were upon them.

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.

The spider seethed. “I took two decades from a young merchant’s life in exchange for my silk. The gift of his shifting flowed through his life force—some of it, at least.” All those eyes narrowed on Manon. “He willingly paid the price.”

Rarely, so rarely did Manon hear that voice from him, the tone that sent a thrill through her blood and bones. A king’s voice.

His raw power had lent itself to every other form of magic, able to move between flame and ice and healing. To shape-shift … might he learn it, too?

The very glass you lay on comes from one of those wars, you know. From the glass mountains in the South. They once were sand dunes, but dragons burned them to glass during an ancient and bloody conflict.”

“Nox Owen.” The messenger bowed at the waist. “From Perranth.”

Fireheart. The woman’s voice was soft, loving. Her mother’s voice.

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.

Over and over, that song of fire and darkness flared through her, out of her, into the world. You do not yield.

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.

The Ironteeth had found them. Far sooner than Manon had planned.

The body he’d turned into solid flame, so hot it had melted through the wyvern’s jaws, its throat, and he had passed through the beast’s mouth as if it were nothing but a cobweb.

“Shut me up, then,” he said, a hand drifting southward to cup her backside as she nipped at his neck, his jaw.

To think like a king. He’d killed that spider like a blue-blooded witch, though. Not an ounce of mercy. It shouldn’t have thrilled her the way it did.

So while you sit here in your miserable keep, tossing insults at him, know that he has done what no other could do, and if your city survives, it will be because of him, not you.” His father blinked at her. Slowly.

She screamed again. Screamed at her ruined arm, the unscarred skin, screamed at the lingering echo of the severed mating bond. “Do you know what pains me most, Aelin?” Maeve’s words were soft as a lover’s. “It’s that you believe I’m the villain in this.”

A rising intensity along her bones, in her head. A little more, every day.

Elide only said to Rowan, “Find Cairn, and we find Aelin. And learn if Maeve remains.” Fear no longer bloomed in Elide’s eyes. Not a trace remained in her scent. So Rowan nodded, even as Lorcan tensed. “Good hunting, Lady.”

Elide recoiled, and the fire vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “My name is Essar,” the female said softly. “I am a friend—of your friends, I believe.”

Asterin remained staring at Abraxos and Narene, scratching her hair. “You really think they’re mated?” Abraxos lifted his head from where it rested atop Narene’s back and looked toward them, as if to say, It took you long enough to figure it out.

Where that edge had dulled in his chest, his magic now flowed freer. As if it, too, had been freed from those inner restraints he’d loosened slightly last night. What he’d opened up, revealed to her. A sort of freedom, that letting go.

This wasn’t just a breaking of her body. But a breaking of her—of the fire she’d come to love. To destroy the part of her that sang.

He shredded into it, biting and tearing with every scrap of defiance he possessed. Let it kill him, wreck him. He would not serve. Not another heartbeat. He would not obey. He would not obey. And slowly, Fenrys got to his feet.

With a roar, Fenrys leaped. And with it, he snapped the blood oath completely.

Fenrys met her stare again, ripping into Cairn’s shoulder even as the male shoved them into the edge of the table. Hammered Fenrys’s spine into the metal, hard enough that bone cracked.

The sob that came out of Aelin at the hawk’s bellow of fury cracked Lorcan’s chest.

The rage in Rowan’s eyes could devour the world. And that rage was about to extract the sort of vengeance only a mated male could command. Rowan’s canines flashed, but his voice was deadly soft as he said to Lorcan, “Take her to the glen.” A jerk of his chin to Gavriel. “You’re with me.”

“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.

Perhaps through whatever differences existed between his raw magic and a true shifter’s gift. But Manon’s lip curled back from her teeth. Her golden eyes glowed like embers. “When, exactly, were you going to inform me that you were about to retrieve the third Wyrdkey?”

Rowan Whitethorn. Now Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius, her husband and king-consort. Her mate. She mouthed his name. He had come for her.

That lake water had never seen sunlight, had flowed from the dark, cold heart of the mountains themselves. It would kill even the most hardened of Fae warriors within minutes. Yet there was Aelin, swimming as if it were a sun-warmed forest pool.

“You want to know why?” Gavriel softly asked Lorcan as Aelin strode for the rock. Nothing but solemn reverence on her face. “Because she is not only Brannon’s Heir, but Mab’s, too.”

On that beach, my only thought was to get Maeve to forget about you, to let you go—” “I don’t care about me! I didn’t care about me on that beach!” “Well, I do.” His growled words echoed across the water and stone, and he lowered his voice.

“I gave you the blood oath to save your life,” she said. “But if you do not want it, Fenrys, I … we can find some way to free you—” “I want it,” Fenrys said, no trace of his usual swaggering humor. He glanced to Rowan, and bowed his head. “It is my honor to serve this court. And serve you,” he added to Aelin.

“I am a Crochan,” she said. “And I am an Ironteeth witch.” She flexed her fingers, willing the stiffness from them. “The Ironteeth are my people, too. Regardless of what my grandmother may decree. They are my people, Blueblood and Yellowlegs and Blackbeak alike.”

“You’ll come back,” Manon said. It sounded like more of a threat than anything. Dorian smirked. “Would you miss me if I didn’t?”

“I have seen witch and human and Fae dwell together in peace. And it is not a weakness to do so, but a strength. I have met kings and queens whose love for their kingdoms, their peoples, is so great that the self is secondary. Whose love for their people is so strong that even in the face of unthinkable odds, they do the impossible.”

Aedion kept running. Had no choice but to keep moving, as the witch dropped into the mirror-lined core of the tower and unleashed the dark power within her. The world shuddered.