Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

The fool didn’t realize who he faced. What he faced. That it wasn’t a fire-breathing queen bound in iron who charged at him, but an assassin.

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.

“I am your mate,” Rowan whispered, as if it was the answer she sought. And the love in his eyes, in the way his voice broke, his bloodied hand trembling … Elide’s throat tightened.

Manon stared and stared at the slaughtered warrior. What she had once delighted in. What she had once flaunted before the world, and done with not a shred of regret. Only with the wish that her grandmother would approve. That the Ironteeth would approve.

“All this time, I wanted it to be you.”

“Even if I had my choice of any dream-realities, any perfect illusions, I would still choose you, too.”

“I am so tired,” she wept. “I am so, so tired, Rowan.”

Gone was the witch who had slept and wished for death. Gone was the witch who had raged at the truth that had torn her to shreds. And in her place, fighting as if she were the very wind, unfaltering against the Matrons, stood someone Dorian had not yet met. Stood a queen of two peoples.

And as Rowan fought his way closer, as that cry went down the battlements and Anielle men ran to aid her, he realized that Aelin did not need an ounce of flame to inspire men to follow. That she had been waiting, yanking at the bit, to show them what she, without magic, without any godly power, might do.

Not from this place of killing and movement, of breath and blood. Of freedom. 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.

Chaol shook his head and gestured to the field, to the black mare and her rider. “I call Farasha Hellas’s horse. I’ve done so from the moment I met her.” As if meeting that horse, bringing her here, was not as much for him as it was for this. For this desperate race across an endless battlefield.

“You would marry me, all so we could aid Terrasen in this war?” “Aelin is willing to die to end this conflict. Why should she bear the brunt of sacrifice?” And there it was, her answer, though he knew she didn’t realize it. Sacrifice.

The face of the mighty lady she was growing into, and had already become, and who would rule Perranth with wisdom in one hand and compassion in the other.

Yet it had been a farewell. One last coupling before he ventured into the jaws of death. He would not cage her, would not accept what she’d given. As if he knew her better than she knew herself.

Witches, the townsfolk whispered, husbands wide-eyed and disbelieving as the women took to the skies, red cloaks billowing. Witches amongst us all this time.

Aelin awoke to the scent of pine and snow, and knew she was home. Not in Terrasen, not yet, but in the sense she would always be home, if Rowan was with her.

TEARS.

“So you free them,” Gavriel said, silent for minutes now, “and then torture them?” “This is war,” Hasar said simply. “We leave them able to function. But we will not risk sparing their lives only to find a new army at our backs.”

To tie off the gift that allowed her to jump between places. To open those portals. World-walker no longer, he said as his raw magic shifted her own. Changed its very essence. I suggest you invest in a good pair of shoes. Then he let go of Maeve’s mind.

“I was defenseless when you let my leg remain unhealed,” she said, a steady sort of calm settling over her. “I was a child then, and I survived. You’re a grown man.”

GAG HIM

“It will not take long,” he said upon noting the displeasure still on Lysandra’s face. She was done making herself appear nice for men whom she had no interest in being nice to.

It was not the witch he had last seen on a beach in Eyllwe. No, there was nothing of that cold, strange creature in the face that smiled grimly at him. Nothing of her in that remarkable crown of stars atop her brow. A crown of stars. For the last Crochan Queen.

Her coven grinned, wicked and defiant, and touched two fingers to their brows in deference. Manon returned the gesture, bowing her head as she did. “We are the Thirteen,” she said. “From now until the Darkness claims us.”

Where Ironteeth, rebels and the faithful alike, had been fighting, where Crochans had been weaving between them, there was nothing. Just ash.

“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 as Chaol Westfall dismounted and ran the last few feet toward Dorian, the King of Adarlan wept.

“I wanted that thousand years with you,” she said softly. “I wanted to have children with you. I wanted to go into the Afterworld together.” Her tears landed in his hair.

She passed through a world of snowcapped mountains under shining stars. Passed over one of those mountains, where a winged male stood beside a heavily pregnant female, gazing at those very stars. Fae.

RHYS AND FEYRE?!???

“As soon as Aelin freed Lysandra, and offered to let us join her court, Terrasen has always meant home. A place where … where the sort of people who hurt us don’t get to live. Where anyone, regardless of who they are and where they came from and what their rank is can dwell in peace. Where we can have a garden in the spring, and swim in the rivers in the summer. I’ve never had such a thing before. A home, I mean. And I would have liked for Caraverre, for Terrasen, to have been mine.”

But a true home, and a queen who saw them as males and not weapons … Something worth fighting for. No enemy could withstand it.

The cry went down the castle battlements, through the city, along the walls. The queen had come home at last. The queen had come to hold the gate.

Arobynn had not broken her. Neither had Endovier. She would not allow this waste of existence to do so now.

His hands curled at his sides. Aelin, who had known suffering as he did. Who had been shown peaceful lives and still chosen him, exactly as he was, for what they had both endured.

Aedion watched, silent and ripped open. Yet happy for her—he would always be happy for her, for any ray of light she found.

Rowan kissed her. “A new library and Royal Theater,” he murmured onto her mouth. “Consider them my mating presents to you, Fireheart.”

“I am thinking about how very grateful I am. That we made it. That I found you. And how, even with all that work to be done, I will not mind a moment of it because you are with me.”

She would never stop being grateful for that. For the light, the life in Rowan’s eyes.