Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)

by Sarah J. Maas

Because Celaena was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and rightful Queen of Terrasen.

When she’d attended the captain a week after that, four brutal scratches down his face and a dead look in his eyes, Sorscha had understood. And understood again the last time, when the prince, the captain, and the girl were all bloodied along with the hound, that whatever had existed between the three of them was broken.

How had she been afraid of this body for so long? Even her soul felt looser. As if it had been locked up and buried and was only now starting to shake free. Not joy, perhaps not ever, but a glimmer of what she had been before grief had decimated her so thoroughly.

“She has no hope, Prince. She has no hope left in her heart. Help her. If not for her sake, then at least for what she represents—what she could offer all of us, you included.” “And what is that?” he dared ask. Emrys met his gaze unflinchingly as he whispered, “A better world.”

The grief and pain were still there, writhing inside her, but for the first time in a long while, she felt as though she could see. As though she could breathe.

“As for Celaena,” he said again, “you do not have the right to wish she were not what she is. The only thing you have a right to do is decide whether you are her enemy or her friend.”

Though she did catch a few females looking at him with far warmer interest. She wanted to claw their faces off for it.

If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought he was fussing. Worried, even.

And when she awoke before dawn, warm and safe and rested, Rowan was still holding her hand, clasped to his chest. Something molten rushed through her, pouring over every crack and fracture still left gaping and open. Not to hurt or mar—but to weld. To forge.

So she left Rowan in the hall. But it did not stop her from wishing she could keep him.

“I claim you, Rowan Whitethorn. I don’t care what you say and how much you protest. I claim you as my friend.”