Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

The queen has come. Goldryn unfaltering, her shield an extension of her arm, Aelin glowed like the sun that now broke over the khagan’s army as she engaged each soldier that hurtled her way.

Five, ten—she moved and moved and moved, ducking and swiping, shoving and flipping, black blood spraying, her face the portrait of grim, unbreaking will. “The queen!” the men shouted. “To the queen!” And as Rowan fought his way closer, as that cry went down the battlements and Anielle men ran to aid her, 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. He’d never seen such a glorious sight. In every land, every battle, he had never seen anything as glorious as Aelin before the throat of the siege tower, holding the line. Dawn breaking around them, Rowan loosed a battle cry and tore into Morath.

She was no helpless princess. She had never been.

She dimly knew that Rowan fought at her side, Gavriel and Fenrys battling near her left flank.

They’d made it this far. They would survive today, too.

“To Lord Chaol! To the queen!” How far they both were from Rifthold. From the assassin and the captain.

Aelin smiled grimly. She’d bring them all down. Then Erawan. And then she’d unleash herself upon Maeve.

Not helpless. Not contained. Never again.

Death became a melody in her blood, every movement a dance as the tide of soldiers pouring from the tower slowed.

Death had been her curse and her gift and her friend for these long, long years. She was happy to greet it again under the golden morning sun.

And in the minutes since the walls had been cleared, she’d remained quiet—distant. As if she was still climbing out of that calm, calculating place she’d descended into while fighting.

Aelin said nothing, her eyes distant. Like she’d retreated into herself at the realization that this sliver of hope was about to be washed away. Her friends with it.

to

ground. 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 gods,” Fenrys breathed, seeing her, too. They all saw her. The queen on the plain. The endless wall of water surging for her. The keep stones began shuddering.

Rowan threw out a hand to brace himself, fear like nothing he had known ripping through him as Aelin lifted her arms above her head. A pillar of fire shot up around her, lifting her hair with it. The wave roared and roared for her, for the army behind her. The shaking in the keep was not from the wave. It was not from that wall of wa...

He knew then. Either as her mate or carranam, he knew. “Three months,” Rowan breathed. The others stilled. “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.

“GET DOWN!” Rowan bellowed, over the screaming waters. “GET DOWN NOW!”

As Aelin opened her hand toward it. Fire erupted. Cobalt fire. The raging soul of a flame. A tidal wave of it. Taller than the raging waters, it blasted from her, flaring wide. The wave slammed into it. And where water met a wall of fire, where a thousand years of confinement met three months of it, the world exploded.

Maeve’s death blow. Spent here, to save the army that might mean Terrasen’s salvation. To spare the lives on the plain.

Princess Hasar said, rising beside him, “That power is no blessing.” “Tell that to your soldiers,” Fenrys snarled, standing, too. “I did not mean it that way,” Hasar snipped, and awe was indeed stark on her face.

Then silence. Utter silence. Fire flickered through the mist, blue turning to gold and red. A muted, throbbing glow.

The glowing flames shrank, steam rippling past. Until there was only a slim pillar of fire, veiled in the mist-shrouded plain. Not a pillar of fire. But Aelin. Glowing white-hot. As if she had given herself so wholly to the flame that she had become fire herself. The Fire-Bringer someone whispered down the battlements. The mist rippled and billowed, casting her into nothing but a glowing effigy. The silence turned reverent. A gentle wind from the north swept down. The veil of mist pulled back, and there she was.

She glowed from within. Glowed golden, tendrils of her hair floating on a phantom wind. “Mala’s Heir,” Yrene breathed. Down on the plain, Elide and Lorcan had halted. The wind pushed away more of the drifting mist, clearing the land beyond Aelin. And where that mighty, lethal wave had loomed, where death had charged toward them, nothing remained at all.

For three months, she had sung to the darkness and the flame, and...

A death blow. One to wipe a dark queen from the earth forever. She’d kept that power coiled in herself even after she’d been freed from the irons. Had struggled to keep it down these weeks, the strain enormous. Some days, it had been easier to barely speak. Some days, swaggering arrogance had been her key to ignoring it.

Aelin lifted a glowing hand before her as blessed, cooling emptiness filled her at last. Slowly, starting from her fingertips, the glow faded. As if she were forged anew, forged back into her body. Back into Aelin.

Clarity, sharp and crystal clear, filled its wake. As if she could see again, breathe again.

Inch by inch, the golden glow faded into skin and bone. Into a woman once more. Already, a white-tailed hawk launched skyward. But as the last of the glow faded, disappearing out through her toes, Aelin fell to her knees. Fell to her knees in the utter silence of the world, and curled ont...

A vision of what would have been left of them, were it not for Aelin Galathynius.

Yrene hadn’t been able to stop her hands from shaking as she’d hovered them over Aelin’s unconscious body. There had been no sign of harm beyond a few already-healing cuts and slices from the battle itself. Nothing at all beyond a sleeping, tired woman. Who held the might of a god within her veins.

“You are one lucky bastard.” Too soon. Too damn soon after hovering near death to hear Fenrys’s drawl.

Aelin awoke to the scent of pine and snow, and knew she was home. Not in Terrasen, not yet, but in the sense she would always be home, if Rowan was with her. His steady breaths filled her right ear, the sound of the well and truly asleep, and the arm he’d draped across her middle was a solid, warm weight.

Even is such deep sleep, they know where each other are and reach for them.

She didn’t bother arguing. Not as she admitted, “I want it to be over.”

She’d wanted it to be over since she’d learned the true cost of forging the Lock anew. Had wanted it to be over with each of Cairn’s lashes on the beach in Eyllwe. And all he’d done to her afterward.

Aelin looped her arm through his. “I’m going to start a rumor about you, then. Something truly grotesque.” He groaned. “I dread the thought of what you might come up with.” She adopted a harsh whisper as they passed a group of human soldiers. “You flew back onto the battlefield to peck out the eyes of our enemies?” Her gasp echoed off the rock. “And ate those eyes?” One of the soldiers tripped, the others whipping their heads to them. Rowan pinched her shoulder. “Thank you for that.” She inclined her head. “You’re very welcome.” Aelin kept smiling as they found food and ate a quick lunch—it was midday, they’d learned—sitting side by side in a dusty, half-forgotten stairwell. Much like the days they’d spent in Mistward, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen while listening to Emrys’s stories.

Fenrys let out a low, disbelieving laugh. Rowan snarled softly.

That path would take them right past Endovier. Aelin’s stomach tightened. Rowan’s hand grazed her own.

Rowan laid a hand on her lower back, and Fenrys stepped closer to her side.

“Utterly pathetic,” she spat toward him—the demon inside him. The man hissed. Yrene only smiled. The man—the demon—whimpered.

Borte said, “It’s not very exciting with them tied down, is it?” Sartaq threw her an exasperated glare. As if this were a conversation they’d already had many times.

Rowan ran his fingers over the claiming marks on her neck. “I told you that love was a weakness. It would be far easier if we all hated each other.” She snorted. “Give it a few weeks on the road with this army, in those mountains, and we might not be such pleasant allies anymore.” Rowan kissed the top of her head. “Gods help us.”

And just because she could, just because they were headed to Terrasen at last, Aelin unleashed a flicker of her power. Some of the standard-bearers behind them murmured in surprise, but Rowan only smiled. Smiled with that fierce hope, that brutal determination that flared in her own heart, as she began to burn.

She let the flame encompass her, a golden glow that she knew could be spied even from the farthest lines of the army, from the city and keep they left behind. A beacon glowing bright in the shadows of the mountains, in the shadows of the forces that awaited them, Aelin lit the way north.

With an answering nod, Aelin trotted to Rowan’s side, the ruby in Goldryn’s hilt like a small sun. Fenrys followed, guarding the queen’s back even amongst allies.

You hurt my friend, he said with lethal calm. It will not be so very difficult to end you for it.

He laughed again. You are not helpless. And if I could, I would seal you in an iron box for eternity.

He should let Erawan find her. Doom her to the life she’d intended for him. For Aelin.

I don’t know what to do, she said silently. He kissed the top of her head. Together.

“Please,” he said to her. Lysandra only linked her fingers through his in silent answer. And challenge. His heart cracked at that refusal. At the hand, shaking and cold, that clung to his. He squeezed her fingers tightly, and did not let go as he faced his commanders.

the others peeled off toward the great, towering palace. Manon had never seen its like—even the former glass castle in Rifthold had been nothing compared to it.