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The Blueblood witch blinked, eyes wide with what could only be fear and dread. Manon jerked her chin toward the wyvern waiting behind the witch. “Tell your daughter all debts between us are paid. And she may decide what to do with you. Take that other wyvern out of here.”
Aw I’m kinda glad the Bluebood Matron won’t be killed. She never seemed truly all that bad to me
A hateful, wasted scrap of existence. That’s what her grandmother was.
Damn right she is!
Her grandmother spat on the ground, baring her rusted teeth. This death, though … It was not her death to claim.
Then whose is it??
But her grandmother had not charged. Not at her. No, the Blackbeak Matron sprinted for her wyvern. Fleeing.
What a chickenshit!!!
Manon didn’t move as Glennis lifted the crown and set it again on Manon’s head. Then the ancient witch knelt in the snow. “What was stolen has been restored; what was lost has come home again. I hail thee, Manon Crochan, Queen of Witches.”
How soon would that awe and hope crumble today when not a spark of that fire was unleashed? How soon would the men’s fear turn rank when the Queen of Terrasen did not wipe away Morath’s legions? He hadn’t been able to ask her. Had told himself to, had roared at himself to ask these past few weeks, when even their training hadn’t summoned an ember. But he couldn’t bring himself to demand why she wouldn’t or couldn’t use her power, why they had seen or felt nothing of it after those initial few days of freedom. Couldn’t ask what Maeve and Cairn had done to possibly make her fear or hate her
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Aelin better use her powers soon otherwise people are going to start losing faith 😬
“They burned her.” Rowan glanced sidelong at Fenrys. “What?” But Fenrys nodded to a passing healer. “Cairn—and Maeve, through her orders.” “Why are you telling me this?” Fenrys, blood oath or no, what he’d done for Aelin or no, was not privy to these matters. No, it was between him and his mate, and no one else. Fenrys threw him a grin that didn’t meet his eyes. “You were staring at her half the night. I could see it on your face. You’re all thinking it—why doesn’t she just burn the enemy to hell?”
Fenrys knows Rowan too well
“Your claiming marks, though.” Fenrys wiped his face again. “No matter what they did to her, they remained. Longer than any other scar, they stayed.” Yet her neck had been smooth when he’d found her. Reading that thought, Fenrys said, “The last time they healed her, right before she escaped. That’s when they vanished. When Maeve told her that you had gone to Terrasen.” The words hit like a blow. When she had lost hope that he was coming for her. Even the greatest healers in the world hadn’t been able to take that from her until then.
🥺🥺🥺 this knowledge will always make my heart hurt… that she actually lost hope and didn’t think anyone was coming to save her
And as a lone ruk screeched its challenge, the khaganate advanced.
The Battle of Anielle (can I call it that? I’m gonna call it that) begins!
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.
Damn straight! She’s a badass queen with our without magic! 👏🏻
“To Lord Chaol! To the queen!” How far they both were from Rifthold. From the assassin and the captain.
Our babies are all grown up 🥹
Elide wasn’t even on the battlements, and she already wished to never endure another war again.
A mood 🤣
A group of Morath soldiers had taken the night not to rest, but to sneak through the abandoned city. To scale the foothills, then the mountain wall. To the dam itself. Where they now, with battering rams and wicked cunning, sought to unleash it.
I’m telling you this dam’s gonna break before the battle’s over!
Heart thundering, the battle on the plain below still raging, Nesryn wheeled Salkhi around and took stock of the dam wall, Sartaq doing the same beside her. What they saw made them soar back to the keep as swiftly as the winds could carry them.
Yeah this dam is broken isn’t it?
Lorcan could barely lift his sword before the soldier plunged his own into Lorcan’s gut. Lorcan fell, sword clattering. Icy mud sucked at his face, as if it would swallow him whole. Pull him down into the dark depths of Hellas’s realm, where he deserved to be. The earth shook beneath thundering hooves, and arrows screamed overhead. Then there was roaring. And then blackness.
There’s no way Lorcan is dying already I’m sorry I’m not buying it
“The power,” Fenrys said quietly to him, gripping the gore-slick wall. “It was the one thing Connall and I shared.” “I know,” Rowan said. He shouldn’t have pushed. “I’m sorry.” Fenrys just nodded. “I haven’t been able to stomach it since then. I—I’m not even certain I can use it again,” he said, and repeated, “I’m sorry.”
So *that’s* why he hasn’t teleported 🥺
“Hellas guards Lorcan,” Fenrys murmured. “And Anneith, his consort, watches over Elide. Perhaps they will find each other.” “Hellas’s horse,” Chaol said. They turned toward him, dragging their eyes from the field. 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.
I love how everything interconnects no matter how minuscule the detail
“I promised to always find you. I promised you, and you promised me. I came for you because of it; I am here because of it. I am here for you, do you understand? And if we don’t get onto that horse now, we won’t stand a chance against that dam. We will die.”
Listen to Elise, Lorcan!!
Lorcan slid his other arm around Elide, bringing his mouth close to her ear as he said, “You have to let me go.” Each word was gravelly, his voice strained nearly to the point of uselessness. Elide didn’t shift her focus from the keep ahead. “No.” That gentle quiet flowed around him, clearing the fog of pain and battle. “You have to. You have to, Elide. I’m too heavy—and without my weight, you might make it to the keep in time.”
Don’t you dare fall off that horse Lorcan!
“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.”
Damn it Lorcan you cannot die! Not when you have me crying after this profession of love!!! 😭
So Lorcan kissed Elide’s cheek again, allowed himself to breathe in her scent one last time. “I love you,” he repeated, and began to withdraw his arms from around her waist. Elide slapped a hand onto his forearm. Dug in her nails, right into his skin, fierce as any ruk. “No.” There were no tears in her voice. Nothing but solid, unwavering steel. “No,” she said again. The voice of the Lady of Perranth. Lorcan tried to move his arm, but her grip would not be dislodged. If he tumbled off the horse, she would go with him. Together. They would either outrun this or die together.
YES DONT LET HIM DIE ELIDE! YOU STRONG BADASS
There was nothing he could do, nothing that brave, unfaltering horse could do, as the dam ruptured.
I called it! I knew the dam would break!
Rowan made himself stand there, to watch the last moments of the Lady of Perranth and his former commander. It was all he could offer: witnessing their deaths, so he might tell the story to those he encountered. So they would not be forgotten.
DONT SAY THAT ROWAN THEY WILL LIVE
But Aelin was not at his side. She was not on the battlement at all. Rowan’s heart halted. Simply stopped beating as a ruddy-brown ruk dropped from the skies, spearing for the center of the plain. Arcas, Borte’s ruk. A golden-haired woman dangling from his talons. Aelin. Aelin was— Arcas neared the earth, talons splaying. Aelin hit the ground, rolling, rolling, until she uncoiled to her feet. Right in the path of that wave.
Oh shit… 😧
“Three months,” he said again, his knees wobbling. “She’s been making the descent into her power for three months.” Every day she had been with Maeve, bound in iron, she had gone deeper. And she had not tapped too far into that power since they’d freed her because she had kept making the plunge. To gather up the full might of her magic. Not for the Lock, not for Erawan. But for Maeve’s death blow. A few weeks of descent had taken her powers to devastating levels. Three months of it … Holy gods. Holy rutting gods. And when her fire hit the wall of water now towering over her, when they
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Oh shit she’s gonna blow 🫢
Maeve’s death blow. Spent here, to save the army that might mean Terrasen’s salvation. To spare the lives on the plain.
“And if I asked you to stay?” The question also took him by surprise. He carefully thought through his answer. “I’d need a very convincing reason, I suppose.” Her fingers went to the buckles and buttons of her leathers, and began to loosen them. “Because I don’t want you to go,” was all she said.
I love vulnerable Manon so much
“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.
That’s always the price to be paid in times of war, isn’t it?
She awoke at dawn to a cold bed. Manon took one look at the empty place where the king had been, at the lack of supplies and that ancient sword, and knew. Dorian had gone to Morath. And had taken the two Wyrdkeys with him.
I hope they fine their way back to each other again. I don’t believe Dorian was meant to die like this
“You insist I’m still your general? Then here’s my final order. Call for aid.” A muscle feathered in Ren’s jaw. But he said, “Consider it done.” Then he was gone. They didn’t bother with good-byes. Their luck was bad enough.
Aelin and crew better get their asses there asap before this army loses anymore hope or soldiers
It was not arrows alone that had been fired, and now peppered the snow. But heads. Human heads, many still in their helmets. Bearing Ansel of Briarcliff’s roaring wolf insignia. The rest of the army that she’d promised. That they’d been waiting for. They must have intercepted Morath—and been obliterated.
Well that’s disgusting and demoralizing
It was not Aelin who unleashed fire upon the left flank. It was not Aelin at all who had crept up through the snow-veiled river. Ships filled the Florine, near-ghosts in the swirling snows. Some bore the banners of their united fleet. But many, so many he couldn’t count, bore a cobalt flag adorned with a green sea dragon. Rolfe’s fleet. The Mycenians.
About damn time you showed up Rolfe!!
Her smile faded, but the color on her cheeks lingered. “Did you mean it? What you said.” 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. He let her see that in his face. Let her see all of it, as no one had ever done before. “Yes.” Her mouth tightened, but not in displeasure. So Lorcan said softly, “I meant every word.” His heart thundered, so wildly it was a wonder she couldn’t hear it. “And I will until the day I fade into the
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Well if that’s not a declaration of love then idk what is 🥹
Lorcan didn’t breathe as Elide gently reached out her hand. And interlaced their fingers. “I love you,” she whispered. He was glad he was lying down. The words would have knocked him to his knees. Even now, he was half inclined to bow before her, the true owner of his ancient, wicked heart. “I have loved you,” she went on, “from the moment you came to fight for me against Vernon and the ilken.” The light in her eyes stole his breath. “And when I heard you were somewhere on that battlefield, the only thing I wanted was to be able to tell you that. It was the only thing that mattered.”
FINALLY!! THEY BOTH CONFESS HOW MUCH THEY LOVE ONE ANOTHER 😭
Also “the true owner of his ancient, wicked heart” has me shattered!! 🥹
But then Elide sat on the edge of his cot, right beside his shoulder, and ran a hand through his hair. Lorcan closed his eyes, leaning into the touch, unable to stop the deep purr that rolled through his chest. She made a low noise of wonder, perhaps something more, and her fingers stroked again.
This is one of the most wholesome things I’ve ever read. Period. Like… the fact that his Fae who is Basalely cold hearted and rather reincarnate is letting this mortal girl thG he’s in love with pet his head like a cat is just… ugh he’s probably never let anyone or had anyone to treat him with such care and it’s just so heartwarming and such character development for Lorcan 🥹
She pulled back. “Rest, Lorcan. I’ll be here again when you wake.” Anything she asked, he’d give her. Anything at all. Too shaken by that soft, beautiful kiss to bother with words, he lay back down. She smiled at his utter obedience, and, as if she couldn’t help herself, leaned in once more.
The fact that Elide is the only one he will listen to just makes their relationship that much more meaningful
Lorcan sent a flicker of his power to wrap around her ankle. The limp vanished. A hand on the knob, she gave him a small, grateful nod. “I missed that.” He heard the unspoken words as she disappeared into the busy hall. I missed you. Lorcan allowed himself a rare smile.
OH MY GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH
A rising tide of witches, who took to the skies in their red cloaks, swords strapped to their backs, brooms shedding years of dust with each mile northward. Witches who bade their families farewell, offering no explanation before they kissed their sleeping babes and vanished into the starry night. Mile after mile, across the darkening world, the call went out, ceaseless and unending as the eternal flame that passed from hearth to hearth. “Fly, fly, fly!” they shouted. “To the queen! To war!” Far and wide, through snow and storm and peril, the Crochans flew.
And so Terrasen’s army grows!
“Will that display be the last of your surprises, or are there more coming?” She debated it—telling him, revealing it. Maybe.
Of course she’s got more surprises up her sleeve; she’s Aelin! 😂
“Saying that I was indeed imprisoned by Maeve, and that while I was her captive, she laid out some rather nefarious plans.” Her mate went still. “With what goal in mind?” Aelin sat up, and picked at her nails. “Convincing them to disband her army. Start a revolt in Doranelle. Kick Maeve off the throne. You know, small things.” Rowan just looked at her. Then scrubbed at his face. “You think a letter could do that?” “It was strongly worded.” He gaped a bit. “What sort of nefarious plans did you mention?” “Desire to conquer the world, her complete lack of interest in sparing Fae lives in a war,
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Oh so she’s not lying to anyone about being a prisoner anymore huh?
On the other side of the door, she could have sworn that cat-soft feet quickly padded away.
lol Daddy Gabriel doesn’t want to hear his kids canoodling 😂
Gavriel lingering to learn how Yrene healed the Valg,
Oh yes! I wonder if Gavriel could do the same with his healing powers?!?
“Could Yrene heal them? Erawan and Maeve? I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.” “Is Erawan’s body made by him, or stolen? Is Maeve’s?” Rowan shook his head. “They might be wholly different.”
Yeah are they even capable of being healed?
His mother had never forgotten him. Never stopped writing to him. Chaol smiled slightly. “Keep the letters,” he said, steering his chair back to the doors. “Now that she’s left you, it might be your only way to remember her.” He opened the study door and looked over his shoulder. His father remained beside the trunk, stiff as a sword. “I don’t make bargains with bastards,” Chaol said, smiling again as he entered the hall beyond. “I’m certainly not going to start with you.”
GOOD FOR YOU CHAOL 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
PART TWO Gods and Gates
Oh wow I always forget there are parts in these books! 😂. Um ok I guess this is a good spot to break considering it’s well past midnight and I should what some sleep but I’m glad that everyone is officially moving north to continue the battles in Terrasen! Although I am fearful of when Maeve eventually shows up and what she may have planned. I also am nervous about Dorian going into Morath alone… I can’t picture him dying bc that’s not normally SJM’s style, but there’s so many characters that she may end up sacrificing one of them main ones? Idk 🤷🏻♀️ but on happier notes, I can’t wait for Aelin to reunite with Aedion and Lysandra and for Lysandra to finally meet Falkan. Also, I hope the rest of the Ironteeth witches come to Manon’s aid and that her grandmother finally gets killed off bc she’s an evil old bitch! Ummm that’s all I can think of right now but so far I’m loving this book and I have high hopes for Part 2!
A fool—only a fool would willingly go to see Erawan. Risk it. Perhaps he had a death wish. Perhaps he truly was a fool. But he wanted to see him. Had to see him, this creature who had ruined so many things. Who stood poised to devour their world. He had to look at him, this thing who had ordered him enslaved, who had butchered Sorscha. And if he was fortunate—maybe he’d kill him.
Tbh Dorian… I don’t think you’re gonna kill Erawan on your own.. and if you do, I think it’s going to have dire consequences and someone make Marc stronger or something terribly that will effect the war
Erawan smiled as he sat, pouring a goblet of wine for the female, then for himself. And all thoughts of killing vanished from Dorian’s head as the Valg king asked, “Is there any other reason you would deign to visit Morath, Maeve?”
OH SHUT WHY IS SHE THERE?!?!
Lysandra only pointed to Rolfe, then Ansel, then Galan. Swept her arm to the windows, to where the Fae royals and Ilias of the Silent Assassins tended to their own on the castle grounds. “All of them. All of them came here because of Aelin. Not you. So before you sneer that there is no Her Majesty’s Armada, allow me to tell you that there is. And you are not a part of it.”
You tell him Lysandra!!
“Deep down, I thought we might actually make it somehow. Even with Morath, and the Lock, and all of it.” There was no hope in her face. It was perhaps because of it that she bothered to speak to him. “I thought so, too,” Aedion said with equal quiet, though the words echoed in the vast, empty chamber. “I thought so, too.”
I can’t take their hopelessness it’s hurting me 🙈
Maeve tipped back her head and laughed. “Millennia apart, and you have forgotten even your own sister-in-law.”
Oh sh it why is she revealing herself to Erawan?!? WHAT IS HER END GAME?!?
