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She threaded her fingers through his hair. “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. Rowan lifted his head. “Then fight for it. One more time. Fight for that future.”
No, she had not ever really escaped at all, had she?
My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, and I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid.
“My boy,” his father whispered again. And it was love—love and pride and sorrow that shone in his face.
“Your parents are … They are so very proud of you. They asked me to tell you that they love you so very much.” He was nearly invisible now, his words little more than a whisper of wind. “And that the debt has been paid enough, Fireheart.”
Once upon a time, in a land long since burned to ash, there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom
“The debt has been paid enough.”
A flick of Mala’s fingers and symbols rose from it. Hidden within the words, the feathers. Wyrdmarks. Rowan had hidden Wyrdmarks in her tattoo. Had inked Wyrdmarks all over it.
“A map home,” Mala said, the image fading. “To him.”
What if we go on, only to more pain and despair? Then it is not the end.
She would live. She would live, and they could all go to hell. A better world. With no gods, no fates. A world of their own making.
It is the strength of this that matters, her mother had said, long ago. Wherever you go, Aelin, no matter how far, this will lead you 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.
It was not the end. She was not finished.
And Aelin plunged back into her own body.
An ordinary gift. A Fire-Bringer no more. But Aelin all the same.
“I owe it to your mother to see that you survive this.”
“You owe it to my mother to live, Aelin.”
And you have given much yourself, Heir of Brannon. We who remember him know he would have made such a choice, had he been able to do so. Oakwald shall never forget Brannon, or his Heir.
A better world, the dryad replied at last. Even for us.
“So I would choose to fight. Until the very end. For my home, new as it is. I choose to fight.”
Before them all, riding on the Lord of the North, was Aelin.
Turning it. Away from Orynth, from the castle. Precisely as Aelin had told him Sam Cortland had done in Skull’s Bay, the catapult’s mechanisms allowed her to rotate its base.
“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. If they survived today, if they somehow lived, the bards would sing of it.
“I know a king shouldn’t slouch,” he said, rubbing at his blood-and-dirt-splattered face. “But I can’t bring myself to care.”
So she whispered it to herself, one last time. The story. Her story. Once upon a time, in a land long since burned to ash, there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom …
The queen had come home at last. The queen had come to hold the gate.
Her name was Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius. And she would not be afraid.
Aelin smiled, and Goldryn burned brighter. “I am a god.”
“Go save the world, Yrene,”
He’d come to hope. Had found there was something better out there. Someone better. And he’d go down swinging to defend all of it.
An oath. She had sworn an oath. To Terrasen. To Nehemia. To Rowan. Aelin closed her eyes, shutting out the queen above her, the mask, the chains, the iron box. Not real. This was not real. Wasn’t it?
I name you Elentiya, “Spirit That Could Not Be Broken.”
Two women, who had never known each other, two women who the world had deemed ordinary. Two women, Josefin and Marion, who had chosen hope in the face of darkness. Two women, in the end, who had bought them all this moment. This one shot at a future. For them, Yrene was not afraid. For the child she carried, she was not afraid. For the world she and Chaol would build for that child, she was not afraid at all.
The power of creation and destruction. That’s what lay within her. Life-Giver. World-Maker.
He would not let her take it again.
Aelin let out a low laugh. “I may have no magic,” she said, “but my mate does.”
“I’d say,” Aelin panted, speaking above the glorious roar of magic through her, the unbreakable song of her and Rowan, “that you haven’t wronged us the most at all.” Like alternating punches, Lorcan struck with them. Fire, then midnight death. Maeve’s dark brows narrowed. Aelin flung out a wall of flame that pushed Maeve back another step. “But him—oh, he has a score to settle with you.” Maeve’s eyes went wide, and she made to turn. But not fast enough. Not fast enough at all as Fenrys vanished from where he knelt, and reappeared—right behind Maeve. Goldryn burned bright as he plunged it
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“Long live the queen.” The Faerie Queen of the West.
Fireheart, her mother had called her. Not for her power. The name had never once been about her power.
And whispered in Maeve’s ear, “Then go to hell.”
“We’ll pretend my last words to you were something worthy of a song.”
But life, Chaol realized—life was just beginning.
No, Aelin only looked at her people, smiling broadly and freely, as she entered Orynth, and they began to cheer, welcoming her home at long last.
“Terrasen is my home,”
“Welcome,” he said, then added as he rose, “Your Majesty.”
“Live, Elide,” was all the witch said to her before striding out of the hall once more. “Live.”
