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Elide had made them keep strolling the merry streets, unnoticed and unmarked. She’d reminded Rowan each time he flashed his teeth that there were eyes in every kingdom, every land. And if word got out that a group of Fae warriors was terrorizing cities in their search for Maeve, surely it would get back to the Fae Queen in no time.
Not something Rowan would normally need reminding for
Only the sound of water entered this place. It surged louder as the iron door unlocked and groaned open.
Asterin’s gold hair ripped free of its braid, blowing westward.
Like a suelde
A monster—the man had been a monster in every possible way. Had sired Dorian while possessed by a Valg demon.
Gavin’s edges warped further, his face turning murky. Dorian dared a step forward. “Am I human?” Gavin’s sapphire eyes softened—just barely. “I’m not the person who can answer that.” And then the king was gone.
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. He didn’t know why he bothered. He hadn’t forgotten her words that day on the beach. I hope you spend the rest of your miserable, immortal life suffering. I hope you spend it alone. I hope you live with regret and guilt in your heart and never find a way to endure it.
Shes his mate and hates him
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.
A soft spot—her ruk had developed a soft spot and an undimming admiration for Sartaq’s mount. Though Nesryn supposed the same could be said about her and the ruk’s rider.
Yrene clutched her cloak to her chest. “I need to be doing something.” The Healer on High patted the railing. “You will, Yrene. Soon enough, you will.” Hafiza ascended the stairs with that, leaving Yrene in the hold amid the stacks of crates. 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.
Shes pregnant
The bear was blasted back, hitting the snow with an icy thump. It was instantly up again, racing for Manon. Only Manon.
“Remove the hood, Cairn.” It vanished, and Aelin needed only a few blinks to take everything in. She had been here before. Had been on this broad veranda overlooking a mighty river and waterfalls, had walked through the ancient stone city she knew loomed at her back.
Shes in Doranelle. Elide was right
“Speak freely, Connall,” Maeve said, her faint smile remaining. The barn owl perched on the back of her throne watched with solemn, unblinking eyes. “Let your brother know these words are your own and not of my command.”
But as Cairn hauled her up, his savage hands roving, she struck. Two blows. A shard of glass plunged into the side of his neck. He staggered back, cursing as blood sprayed. Aelin whirled, glass ripping her soles apart, and hurled the shard in her other hand. Right at Maeve. It missed by a hairsbreadth. Scraping Maeve’s pale cheek before clattering off the throne behind her. The owl perched just above it screeched. Rough hands gripped her, Cairn shouting, raging shrieks of You little bitch, but she didn’t hear them. Not as a trickle of blood snaked down Maeve’s cheek. Black blood. As dark as
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Maeve being Valg revealed to Aelin
Guilt gnawed on him for a heartbeat. “When, exactly, will our queen make her grand return?” Her mouth tightened. “Tonight, if you think it wise.” “To miss the battle and only appear to bask in the glory of victory? I doubt the troops would find that heartening.” “Then tell me where, and when, and I’ll do it.” “Just as you blindly obeyed our queen, you’ll now obey me?” “I obey no man,” she snarled. “But I’m not fool enough to believe I know more about armies and soldiers than you do. My pride is not so easily bruised.”
Her mother placed a phantom hand over Aelin’s heart. It is the strength of this that matters. No matter where you are, no matter how far, this will lead you home.
Evalin’s face didn’t falter. You are my daughter. You were born of two mighty bloodlines. That strength flows through you. Lives in you. Evalin’s face blazed with the fierceness of the women who had come before them, all the way back to the Faerie Queen whose eyes they both bore. 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.
Manon’s golden eyes glowed in the firelight. “I swear it. I did not lead them here.” Glennis nodded, but Dorian stared at Manon. Damaris had gone cold as ice. So cold the golden hilt bit into his skin.
Endymion had never scented Aelin, wouldn’t know that the strange shifter’s scent was all wrong.
They would have scented her on Rowan though, no?
“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.”
I feel like she might be good
Moving her to another location—she had once warned a young healer about that. Had told her if an attacker tried to move her, they would most definitely kill her, and she was to make a final stand before they could.
The wind screamed, shoving northward. As if warding her from flying south. Begging her not to continue.
He had killed his way across the world; he had gone to war and back more times than he cared to remember. And despite it all, despite the rage and despair and ice he’d wrapped around his heart, he’d still found Aelin. Every horizon he’d gazed toward, unable and unwilling to rest during those centuries, every mountain and ocean he’d seen and wondered what lay beyond … It had been her. It had been Aelin, the silent call of the mating bond driving him, even when he could not feel it. They’d walked this dark path together back to the light. He would not let the road end here.
Fenrys barked again, frantic and raging.
Yet something like shock, then horror and sorrow, flashed over his face, as he surveyed her back. It was gone as soon as it appeared.
Did they heal her back scars?
Aelin knelt there, burning, and did not speak. The flames flickered around her, though the moss, the roots, did not burn. Didn’t so much as steam. And through the fire, Aelin’s now-long hair half hiding her nakedness, Elide got a good look at what had been done to her. Aside from a bruise along her ribs, there was nothing. Not a mark. Not a callus. Not a single scar. The ones Elide had marked in those days before Aelin had been taken were gone. As if someone had wiped them away.
His magic could leap between one element and another, yet the ability to shift lay within something else entirely. Lay within a part of him that had always yearned for one thing above all others: to let go. To be free. As Temis, Goddess of Wild Things, was free—uncaged. As he had once wished to be, when he had been little more than a reckless, idealistic prince.
I wonder if he will always have the white band like Lysandra has the tattoo
The Crochans and the Thirteen had halted for their midday break under the heavy cover of Oakwald, the trees barren, yet not a hint of snow on the earth.
“I can burn them,” Dorian offered no one in particular.
Dorian’s magic flared, rallying to strike, as the figure took form. As Kaltain Rompier, clad in an onyx gown and dark hair unbound, smiled sadly at him.
Woah
He didn’t want to contemplate why or how the sword had somehow called her, not Gavin.
The key?
“Is the third one indeed at Morath, then?” She nodded gravely. Her body shimmered, fading swiftly. “Though I do not know where he kept it. I wasn’t … ready to receive the second one before I took matters into my own hands.” She ran her slender fingers over the black scar snaking down her arm.
“How did you do it?” he whispered. “How did you break free of its control?” He had to know. If he was walking into hell itself, if it was more than likely he’d wind up with a new collar around his throat, he had to know. Kaltain studied his neck before she met his stare. “Because I raged against it. Because I did not feel that I deserved the collar.” The truth of her words slammed into him as surely as if she’d shoved his chest.
A tremor went through his hands, but he balled them into fists. “If I can kill him, should I take the chance?”
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.
Blow after blow, the words landed upon her weary heart. “We—” “If you were so willing to let Aelin die, then you should have let her do it after she incinerated Erawan’s hordes!” “It would not have stopped Maeve from capturing her.” “If you’d told us, we might have planned differently, acted differently, and we would not be here, damn you!”
Hes putting on a show to retain galans respect
“You ruined everything.” His words were colder than the wind outside. “You, and her.” Lysandra closed her eyes.
Then she pivoted back toward him. “Maeve said you and the others were in the North. That you’d been spotted by her spies there. Did you plant that deception for her, too?” He shook his head. “Lysandra has been thorough, it seems.” Aelin’s throat bobbed. “I believed her.” It sounded like a confession, somehow. So Rowan found himself saying, “I told you once that even if death separated us, I would rip apart every world until I found you.” He gave her a slash of a smile. “Did you really believe this would stop me?”
“You should have gone to Terrasen. It needs you.” “I need you more.”
A pearl-and-ruby necklace scattered from Gavriel’s fingers. The temperature in the tomb spiked, but there was no flash of flame, no swirl of embers.
She took his hand, and he tried not to shudder in relief, tried not to fall to his knees as she slid the ruby ring onto his finger. It fit him perfectly, the ring no doubt forged for the king lying in this barrow. Silently, Rowan grasped her own hand and eased on the emerald ring. “To whatever end,” he whispered. Silver lined her eyes. “To whatever end.”
Everywhere, war raged. But where the fighting occurred, the aging innkeeper didn’t know. Boats didn’t stop at the port anymore—and the great warships just sailed past. Whether they were enemy or friendly, he also didn’t know. Knew absolutely nothing, it seemed. Including how to cook. And clean his inn.
Not actually the innkeeper?
Aelin sheathed Goldryn and loosed a long breath. Deep down, her power grumbled. She flexed her fingers. Maeve’s cold, pale face flashed before her eyes. Her magic went silent.
Shes going to have to address this trauma in order to use her magic in war
“It’s an honor to meet all of you,” Elide said, her voice low and steady. Her dark eyes swept over them, cunning and clear. Like she could see beneath their skin and bones, to the souls beneath.
“A few hours in that water,” Yrene countered, mouth a tight line, “would kill them. The hypothermia would set in quickly. Maybe within minutes, depending on the wind.”
Rowan
Yrene said nothing, monitoring Chaol’s movements. The pain in his back had to be great, if he was limping this deeply, even while her magic refilled.
The baby is leeching
The crown’s light danced over Manon’s face as she lifted it above her head and set it upon her unbound white hair. Even the mountain wind stopped. Yet a phantom breeze shifted the strands of Manon’s hair as the crown glowed bright, the white stars shining with cores of cobalt and ruby and amethyst. As if it had been asleep for a long, long time. And now awoke.
Her grandmother spat on the ground, baring her rusted teeth. This death, though … It was not her death to claim.
Asterin's
“Queen of Witches,” Crochan and Blackbeak declared as one voice. As one people.
Lorcan again lost track of time. Only vaguely knew the sun was arcing across the sky.
Whats going on
Still Aelin remained silent, as if she’d descended deep within herself, and gazed at the battlefield.
