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Sorscha or the world. The question rang hollow.
this crushes my soul that he still thinks of her as his life's love.
But it hadn’t been Maeve’s sundering of the oath that had rescinded that offer. It had been a betrayal so great he didn’t know how to fix it.
What did lorcan do
Salt overpowered the tang of her blood, and she knew he was crying. The scent of their tears filled the tiny room as he worked. Neither of them said a word.
“Because I’m trying to understand. How you could come to love a monster.” “Why?” He pushed into her space. She didn’t balk one step. Indeed, her eyes were blazing as she hissed, “Because it will help me understand how I did the same.” Her voice snagged on the last words, and Lorcan stilled as they settled into them. He’d never … he’d never had anyone who—
And there is only one witch who will be my queen.
“I was a child then, and I survived. You’re a grown man.” She let her lips curl in another smile. “We’ll see if you do, too.”
Her mouth went dry. “I—I don’t know what I’m doing.” “Anything you do will be enough,” he said.
This was home, as she had never had. For however long they might share it.
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.”
Asterin was barreling toward that open stretch of air, for the tower itself, bought with the lives of the Thirteen. With their final stand. Manon could only watch, watch and watch and watch, shaking her head as if she could undo it, as Asterin removed her leathers, the shirt beneath.
The sun arced and descended. At some point, she lay down upon the stones, curled against the wall. When she awoke, a wing had covered her, and warm breath whispered across her head as Abraxos dozed.
Behind her, had she looked, she would have seen Glennis. And Bronwen. Petrah Blueblood. Aedion Ashryver and Lysandra and Ren Allsbrook. Prince Galan and Captain Rolfe and Ansel of Briarcliff, Ilias and the Fae royals beside them. Had she looked, she would have seen the small white flowers they bore.
“Be the bridge, be the light. When iron melts, when flowers spring from fields of blood—let the land be witness, and return home.”
She passed through a world where a great city had been built along the curve of a river, the buildings impossibly tall and glimmering with lights.
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.
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.” She chewed on her lip. “So I would choose to fight. Until the very end. For my home, new as it is. I choose to fight.”
Gavriel smiled at him. “Close the gate, Aedion,” was all his father said.
Stopped seeing everything but the fallen warrior, who gazed toward the darkening sky with sightless eyes.
Gavriel. His father.
tears for the never ending story of the guilty father sacrificing himself for the relationship he would never experience with his only child
“I hope you found peace, my brother. And in the Afterworld, I hope you find her again.”
Yet the songs would mention this—that the Lion fell before the western gate of Orynth, defending the city and his son.
Soldiers streamed past him, down the battlement stairs, yet Aedion only stared at his father. A bloodied rock in the stream of war.
Her name was Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius. And she would not be afraid.
Aelin smiled, and Goldryn burned brighter. “I am a god.”
im sorry... what??
Not fast enough at all as Fenrys vanished from where he knelt, and reappeared—right behind Maeve.
lone candle had been lit in the empty barracks room where they’d set his body atop a worktable. It was there that Aedion knelt before his father. How long he stayed there, head bowed, he didn’t know.
The years he and his father would not have. The years he’d realized he wanted to have, the stories he wished to hear, the male he wished to know. And never would. Had Gavriel known that? Or had he fallen believing his son wished nothing to do with him? He couldn’t endure it, that potential truth. Its weight would be unbearable.
“I miss them,” she whispered, shuddering.
She’d reached the door when Rowan knelt as well. And began to sing the ancient words—the words of mourning, as old and sacred as Terrasen itself.
“Live, Elide,” was all the witch said to her before striding out of the hall once more. “Live.”
Lorcan nodded, as if in answer, and his smile was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. “Ask me to marry you.” Elide began crying, even as she laughed. “Will you marry me, Lorcan Salvaterre?”
“And when we are wed,” he whispered, “I will bind my life to yours. So we will never know a day apart. Never be alone, ever again.”
“Rise,” Darrow said, “Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen.”
Aelin looked at Chaol and Dorian and sobbed. Opened her arms to them, and wept as they held each other. “I love you both,” she whispered. “And no matter what may happen, no matter how far we may be, that will never change.”
