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after that, then he’d take on the cold-blooded gods themselves, hell-bent on destroying what might remain of his mate.
And sometimes, he spoke along the bond between them, sending his soul on the wind to wherever she was held captive, entombed. I will find you.
That’s where they’d put her. Stored her. In a stone temple built for some forgotten god. As she would likely be forgotten. It was better than the alternative: to be remembered
for her utter failure. If there would be anyone left to remember her. If there would be anyone left at all.
Days, months, years—they bled together, as her own blood often slithered over the stone floor and into the river itself.
A princess who was to live for a thousand years. Longer. That had been her gift. It was now her curse.
Another curse to bear, as heavy as the one placed upon her long before her birth. To sacrifice her very self to right an ancient wrong. To pay another’s debt to the gods who had found th...
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So she told herself the story. The darkness and the flame deep within her whispered it, too, and she sang it back to them. Locked in that coffin hidden on an island within the heart of a river, the princess recited the story, over and over, and let them unleash an eternity of pain upon her body.
For a moment, Aedion was on a spit of blood-soaked sand. An iron box. Maeve had whipped her and put her in a veritable coffin. And sailed off to Mala-knew-where, an immortal sadist with them.
“Aelin,” said Aedion, dredging up a drawl as best he could, even as the lie choked him, “has her own plans that she’ll only tell us about when the time is right.”
Until Lysandra instead was crowned queen, if his own did not return. She would return. She had to.
Evangeline put her hands on her hips in a gesture Aedion had seen Aelin make so many times that his heart hurt to behold it.
The lines have to hold, Rowan ordered before they’d parted. Buy us whatever time you can. He’d make good on that promise.
They had no idea those gods were nothing but beings from another world.
Pawns—that’s all Elide and Aelin and the others were to them.
the young queen would still be expected to pay the ultimate price to those gods.
So Elide endured those occasional nudges, refusing to contemplate what manner of creature had taken such an interest in her. In all of them.
Night had fallen, and in the rolling golden hills beyond the city walls, bonfires had kindled. Rowan had finally stopped growling at the sight. As if they had tugged on some thread of memory, of pain.
There was nothing kind in the prince’s face. Nothing warm. Only cold-blooded predator. Hell-bent on finding the queen who held his heart.
She’d never say them. Never swear the blood oath to Maeve.
The flame flowed over him, invisible and steadying. They hadn’t heard a whisper of Aelin.
I wish he showed a little more care about Aelin in the past books, not as a lover but friend.
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.
Where is Aelin? Where is my wife? Whitethorn’s wife—and his mate.
For it would take an army to keep Whitethorn from reaching his mate.
Lorcan didn’t want to consider if Whitethorn would soon need to add a tattoo to the other side of his face.
“I crawled …” His throat bobbed. “I crawled after Aelin.”
Prince Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius, consort, husband, and mate of the Queen of Terrasen, knew he was dreaming.
Play “Light of the Seven” and read thoroughly.
She stood with her back to him, hair blowing in a sheet of gold. Longer than he’d seen it the last time.
he could only stare toward her, breathe in her scent—jasmine, lemon verbena, and crackling embers—as it floated to him on the wind.
Slowly, she turned to him. It was her face—or it would be in a few years. When she Settled. But it wasn’t the slightly older features that knocked the breath from him. It was the hand on her rounded belly. She stared toward him, hair still flowing. Behind her, four small figures emerged. Rowan fell to his knees. The tallest: a girl with golden hair and pine-green eyes, solemn-faced and as proud as her mother. The boy beside her, nearly her height, smiled at him, warm and bright, his Ashryver eyes near-glowing beneath his cap of silver hair. The boy next to him, silver-haired and green-eyed,
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Scrawny rabbits and small, furred things that burrowed in the cracked earth. Precisely the sort of food Aelin would cringe to eat.
Rowan leaned forward, resting his brow against Goldryn’s hilt. The metal was warm, as if it still held a whisper of its bearer’s flame.
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.
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.
Her people had suffered for ten years. Were likely suffering now. For their sake, she would do this. Embrace it. Outlast it.
Aelin opened her eyes. Lifted her bound hands before her. And gave Maeve an obscene gesture, as filthy and foul as she’d ever made.
Other fire-wielders—hunted and killed. She didn’t know why she felt it then. That shred of sorrow for creatures that had not existed for untold centuries. Who would never again be seen on this earth. Why it made her so unspeakably sad.
She would save it in her own way, too. For as long as she could. She owed Terrasen that much. Would never fully repay that debt.
“And you,” her father went on, “like the many great women and men of this House, shall use it to defend our kingdom.” Her eyes rose to his face, handsome and unlined. Solemn and kingly. “That is your charge, your sole duty.” He braced a hand on the rim of the shield, tapping it for emphasis. “To defend, Aelin. To protect.”
She had nodded, not understanding. And her father had kissed her brow, as if he half hoped she’d never need to.
“I’ll get them out,” he said, and she couldn’t tell him, couldn’t start to explain that it wasn’t the glass, the shredded skin down to the bone.
Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, Aelin turned her head away while the first piece of glass slid from her knee. Flesh and sinew sundered anew. 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.
Had Aelin been here, one breath from her and the five thousand troops they’d exhausted themselves killing today would have been ash on the wind.
“Nox Owen.” The messenger bowed at the waist. “From Perranth.” “I’ve heard of you,” Ren said, scanning the man anew. “You’re a thief.”
She
Play Heart-Shaped Box throughout the rest of Aelin’s POV and Rowan’s.
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.
Aelin slammed her hand into the lid. Cairn paused. Aelin pounded her fist into the iron again. Again. You do not yield.
Again. You do not yield. Again. Again. Until she was alive with it, until her blood was raining onto her face, washing away the tears, until every pound of her fist into the iron was a battle cry. You do not yield. You do not yield. You do not yield. It rose in her, burning and roaring, and she gave herself wholly to it.
Aelin hammered her fist into the metal, the song within her pulsing and cresting, a tidal wave racing for the shore.
