Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

Aelin made long, gentle strokes over his fur, her head angled as she spoke too softly for Rowan to hear. Slowly, painfully, Fenrys cracked open an eye. Agony filled it—agony and yet something like relief, and joy, at the sight of her bare face. And exhaustion. Such exhaustion that Rowan knew death would be a welcome embrace, a kiss from Silba herself, goddess of gentle ends. Aelin spoke again, the sound either contained or swallowed by her shield. No tears. Only that sorrow—and clarity. A queen’s face, he realized as Lorcan and Gavriel took up spots along the glen’s border. It was a queen’s face that looked upon Fenrys. A queen who took his massive paw in her hands, pushing back folds of fur and skin to unsheathe a curved claw. She slid it over her bare forearm, splitting skin. Leaving blood in its wake. Rowan’s breath caught. Gavriel and Lorcan whirled toward them. Aelin spoke again, and Fenrys blinked once in answer. She deemed that answer enough. “Holy gods,” Lorcan breathed as Aelin extended her bleeding forearm to Fenrys’s mouth. “Holy rutting gods.” For Fenrys’s loyalty, for his sacrifice, there was no greater reward she could offer. To keep him from death, there was no other way to save him. Only this. Only the blood oath. And as Fenrys managed to lap the blood from her wound, as he swore a silent vow to their queen, blinking a few more times, Rowan’s chest became unbearably tight. Severing the blood oath to one queen had snapped his life force, his soul. Swearing t...