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“We’re having a child,” he murmured onto her hair.
But Chaol ran his thumb over her wedding band. “I’ll have to win this war quickly, then, so I can have our house built by the summer.”
Chaol stole another kiss from her. “As much as I would like to show you just how much I am at your command,” he said against her mouth, “I have another matter to deal with before bed.”
Wildfire touched with insanity.
Enjoy your evening, we’ll see you on the battlements tomorrow, and please do rot in hell.”
Manon was glowing, as if the stars atop her head pulsed through her body. A wondrous and mighty beauty, like no other in the world. Like no one had ever been, or would be again.
“What was stolen has been restored; what was lost has come home again. I hail thee, Manon Crochan, Queen of Witches.”
She was no helpless princess. She had never been.
How far they both were from Rifthold. From the assassin and the captain.
Death had been her curse and her gift and her friend for these long, long years. She was happy to greet it again under the golden morning sun.
A horse whose name meant butterfly—stomping all over Valg foot soldiers.
His wife lay within the keep behind him. He would not fail her.
She had come for him. She had found him.
“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.”
“And if I asked you to stay?”
“Because I don’t want you to go,” was all she said.
“You were right,” she said quietly. “I am afraid.” Manon laid her hand over his. “I am afraid that you will go into Morath and return as something I do not know. Something I shall have to kill.”
He held her stare. Let some inner wall within him come crumbling down. Only for her. For this sharp-eyed, cunning little liar who had slipped through every defense and ironclad rule he’d ever made for himself.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Even now, he was half inclined to bow before her, the true owner of his ancient, wicked heart.
And yet the hand grasping his … He’d never known anything more precious.
“Say it,” she whispered, fingers stilling in his hair. Lorcan opened his eyes, finding her gaze. “I love you.”
“Then it will be the scar I treasure most.”
He’d very much enjoy driving her out of her mind.
Perhaps it is our lot—to never have the fathers we wish, but to still hope they might surpass what they are, flaws and all.”
“You will find, Your Majesty, that a loyal friend is a rare thing indeed. They are not so easy to sacrifice.”
And there is only one witch who will be my queen.
“We will try. That is the best we can do.”
“I lost my family ten years ago. Tomorrow I will fight for the new one I’ve made.”
“Because I am not in love with our other allies.”
“I should have told you,” Aedion said, voice breaking. “Every day after I realized it, all these months. I should have told you every day.”
Where Dorian was, what he was doing—she didn’t let herself think about. If only because doing so would send her flying southward again, all the way to Morath.
Evangeline had decided that she no longer wished to be page to Lord Darrow, but rather a Crochan witch.
That wolfish grin remained as he whispered in her ear, “If I don’t die tomorrow, may I kiss you when the day is done?”
But another tattoo lay there now. A tattoo that sprawled across her shoulder bones as if it were a pair of spread wings. Or so he’d sketched for her. The story of them. Rowan and Aelin.
Home. This, with him. This was home, as she had never had. For however long they might share it.
Hers. He was hers, and she was his, and the Darkness had chosen them to be together.
He who mattered more than any other, whom she would trade places with if the Three-Faced Goddess allowed it, to have her own throat gripped in those terrible jaws—
Her warrior-hearted mount. Who had saved her far more than she had ever saved him. Who had saved her in the ways that counted most.
She didn’t care about any of it. The Wastes, the Crochans and Ironteeth, her crown. She didn’t care about any of it, if Abraxos was not there with her.
And she said to Abraxos, touching his spine, “I love you.”
It was not Asterin. It was not any of the Thirteen. But Petrah Blueblood.
Her Second, her cousin, her friend, smiled, eyes bright as stars. “Live, Manon.” Manon blinked. Asterin smiled wider, kissed Manon’s brow, and whispered again, “Live.”
Screaming, endless and wordless, as that thing in her chest, as her heart, shattered.
“Be the bridge, be the light. When iron melts, when flowers spring from fields of blood—let the land be witness, and return home.”
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.
