Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

“Get me that gloriella!” The words meant nothing. He was nothing. Would always be nothing.

Over and over, she pounded against the lid. Over and over, that song of fire and darkness flared through her, out of her,...

It hit him a heartbeat later. Erupted around him and roared. Over and over and over, as if it were a hammer against an anvil. The others whirled to him. That raging, fiery song charged closer. Through him.

Down the mating bond. Down into his very soul. A bellow of fury and defiance.

A beacon in the night. Power rippling into the world, as it had done in Skull’s Bay. It filled him with sound, with fire and light. As if it screamed, again and again, I am alive, I am alive, I am alive.

Glennis grinned, that aged face lighting. “I struck first.” She drew another arrow. Such lightness, even in the face of an ambush. “I wish you were my great-grandmother,” Dorian muttered,

Dorian, Darkness embrace his soul, cut in,

Manon found Glennis wincing slightly. “Our family, you will find, has a hotheaded streak.”

It wasn’t Darrow’s own army, wasn’t even Aedion’s.

Not from the death sweeping over him. But as he seemed to convey a message down a long, obsidian bond. The message that might doom them: Aelin Galathynius was not here.

My first time, and I wound up unwittingly training alongside my queen.”

“Why would I tell him? I serve Terrasen, and the Galathynius family. I always have.”

Using the very language of existence itself,

Aelin tried not to shift against the chains, against her broken arms, against the tight pressure pushing on her skin from the inside. A rising intensity along her bones, in her head. A little more, every day.

“Do you know what being encased in iron does to a magic-wielder? You wouldn’t feel it immediately, but as time goes on … your magic needs release, Aelin. That pressure is your magic screaming it wants you to come free of these chains and release the strain.

That would be nothing compared to this.

“She’s a good female, that’s why,” Rowan said.

“We all go in. We all go out.”

She had to be there. Aelin had to be there.

he had begged Mala to protect Aelin from Maeve when they entered Doranelle, to give her strength and guidance, and to let her walk out alive. Then, he had begged Mala to let him remain with Aelin, the woman he loved. The goddess had been little more than a sunbeam in the rising dawn, and yet he had felt her smile at him.

Tonight, with only the cold fire of the stars for company, he begged her once more.

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.

He’d sat in a stone room for two months, witness to what they’d done to a young queen’s body, her spirit. Had been unable to help her as she’d screamed and screamed. He’d never stop hearing those screams. But it was the sound that came out of her as Cairn hurled her into the chest of drawers where Fenrys had watched him arranging his tools, the sound she made as she hit the floor, that shattered him entirely. A small sound. Quiet. Hopeless. He’d never heard it from her, not once.

He would not allow it. That final breaking.

He blocked it out as Cairn pointed the smoldering poker at the young queen with a heart of wildfire.

One swung his sword, a strike that would cleave her skull in two. The fool didn’t realize who he faced. What he faced. That it wasn’t a fire-breathing queen bound in iron who charged at him, but an assassin.

The sob that came out of Aelin at the hawk’s bellow of fury cracked Lorcan’s chest.

She sniffed at the blood pooling in his hand, her nostrils flaring. Her eyes lifted to his, like the scent of his blood posed some question. “I am your mate,” Rowan whispered, as if it was the answer she sought. And the love in his eyes, in the way his voice broke, his bloodied hand trembling … Elide’s throat tightened.

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 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.

Rowan couldn’t move. None of them moved.

His gaze met Rowan’s, and Rowan smiled, bowing his head. “Welcome to the court, pup,” he said, his voice thick. Raw emotion rippled across that lupine face, and then Fenrys turned back to Aelin.

She was staring at nothing. Fenrys nudged her shoulder with his furry head. She ran an idle hand through the wolf’s white coat. Rowan’s heart clenched.

his own voice thick as he took in Fenrys, standing proud and watchful beside Aelin.

She only walked on, Fenrys at her side within that sphere of fire, as if they were two ghosts of memory. A vision of old, striding through the trees, the queen and the wolf.

And behind them, Aelin continued as well. So Rowan followed her, as he would follow her until his last breath, and beyond it.

He’d never so much as heard of the Little Folk talking. But there was his queen, his wife, his mate, murmuring with them.

But Aelin paid them no heed, paid the world no heed, as she took up a spot between the fire and the cave wall, lay upon the bare stone, and closed her eyes.

Lorcan shot back, and were it not for the fact that Aelin was currently allowing him to rest a hand upon her shoulder, Rowan would have thrown the male into the lake.

“Watch it,” Rowan snarled. Fenrys indeed bared his teeth at the dark-haired warrior, fur bristling.

Aelin leveled unfazed eyes upon him. “Then you’ll have to find a way out, I suppose.” A hint—just a spark—of temper belied those calm words.

Fenrys and Elide dozed, the lady’s head leaning against his flank, inky black hair spilling over a coat of whitest snow.

She’d fight for it, claw her way back to it, who she’d been before. Remember to swagger and grin and wink.

Close enough that the pine-and-snow scent of him eased her into slumber.

A small sigh broke from Fenrys before he folded Aelin into his arms, a shudder rippling through him.

They pulled away, and Fenrys cupped her cheek. “When you are ready, we can talk.” About what they’d endured. To unravel all that had happened. Aelin nodded, blowing out a breath. “Likewise.”

“I assume the sparkly emerald is for me,” Rowan said with a half smile. She huffed a laugh. The soft, whispered sound was as precious as the rings she’d found for them in this hoard.

Aelin and Rowan emerged from the passage. Goldryn hung at the queen’s side,

Rattle the stars. She’d promised to do that. Had done so much toward it, yet more remained.