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and more as he reached into his tunic and pulled out a dagger. Her dagger. He extended it to her, its long blade gleaming as if he’d been secretly polishing and caring for it these months.
And when she grasped the dagger, its weight lighter than she remembered, Rowan looked into her eyes, into the very core of her, and said, “Fireheart.”
“You actually called for aid?” His eyes narrowed. I just said that I did.
“I claim you, Rowan Whitethorn. I don’t care what you say and how much you protest. I claim you as my friend.”
It doesn’t matter. Even if we survive, when we go to Doranelle, you will walk out of Maeve’s realm alone.
She was awoken that night by a large, callused hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake. It seemed that death was already waiting for them.
“I don’t know, and when I find them, I’ll splatter them on the walls. But for now, we have bigger problems to worry about.” The darkness on the horizon had spread, devouring the stars, the trees, the light. “What is that?” Rowan’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Bigger problems.”
Rowan grabbed her elbow. “That was an order.” She knocked his hand away. “You’re needed inside. Leave the barrier to me.” “You don’t know if it’ll work—” “It will work,” she snarled. “I’m the expendable one, Rowan.” “You are heir to the throne of—” “Right now, I am a woman who has a power that might save lives. Let me do this. Help the others.”
But she would—she was going to burn these things into ash and dust.
Whether Rowan lingered to see her break his first order, then his next, then his next, she didn’t know.
were a towering man, a massive bird, and three of the largest predators she had ever seen. Five in all.
swiped with Goldryn, but the blow was feeble. Against the Valg, against this horrible power that the King of Adarlan possessed, the army at his disposal … it was all useless.
But moving her limbs, even breathing, had become a monumental effort. She was so tired.
Gavriel held out an arm. As if to stop him. “She’s in bad shape, Rowan. I think—” Rowan ran, shoving aside his oldest friend,
She had lied to him. She had wanted to save lives, yes. But she had gone out there with no intention of saving her own.
Rowan was screaming as the creature pulled her into its arms. As she stopped fighting. As her flames winked out and darkness swallowed her whole.
She had walked out there for the same reason she had snapped that day in Endovier.
An end to the abyss. And an end to her, perhaps, at last.
But her attention was on the prince across from her, who seemed utterly ignored by his father and his own court, shoved down near the end with her and Aedion. He ate so beautifully, she thought, watching him cut into his roast chicken.
“If you like, you could be my friend.” Not one of the men around them said anything, or coughed. Dorian lifted his chin. “I have a friend. He is to be Lord of Anielle someday, and the fiercest warrior in the land.”
A monster, that was what she was. A monster who had to be contained and monitored.
“Wear it, and know that you are loved, Fireheart—that you are safe, and it is the strength of this”—she placed a hand on her heart—“that matters. Wherever you go, Aelin,” she whispered, “no matter how far, this will lead you home.”
They didn’t reach for her, didn’t ask what was wrong, and the bed was so cold—colder than her own, and reeking of copper and iron, and that scent that did not sit well with her.
Murdered. Her family was—dead. There was no coming back from death, and her parents … What
“Aelin, listen to me.” Though Marion was breathing quickly, her voice was even. “You are going to run for the river. Do you remember the way to the footbridge?”
She had taken Lady Marion’s sacrifice and become a monster, almost as bad as the one who had murdered Lady Marion and her own family. That was why she could not, did not, go home.
Her cheek against the moss, the young princess she had been—Aelin Galathynius—reached a hand for her. “Get up,” she said softly. Celaena shook her head.
“Get up,” someone said beyond the young princess. Sam. Sam, standing just beyond where she could see, smiling faintly. “Get up,” said another voice—a woman’s. Nehemia.
One by one, like shadows emerging from the mist, they appeared. The faces of the people she had loved with her heart of wildfire.
She would not let that light go out.
She would light up the darkness, so brightly that all who were lost or wounded or broken would find their way to it, a beacon for those who still dwelled in that abyss. It would not take a monster to destroy a monster—but light, light to drive out darkness.
He knew Aelin was alive, because during all these weeks that they had been breathing each other’s scents, they had become bonded.
But for Aelin, he had tried to break free.
“She is dead, you fool, or close enough to it. You can still save other lives.” They began hauling him to his feet, away from her. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll rip your head from your body,” he snarled at Lorcan,
rumbling shook the earth, and they froze. Beneath them some huge power was surging—a behemoth rising from the deep. They turned toward the darkness. And Rowan could have sworn that a golden light arced through it, then disappeared.
The creatures fed on despair and pain and terror. But what if—what if the victim let go of those fears? What if the victim walked through them—embraced them?
And there, beyond the stones, standing between two of those creatures, was Aelin, a strange mark glowing on her brow. Her hair flowed around her, shorter now and bright like her fire. And her eyes—though they were red-rimmed, the gold in her eyes was a living flame.
Rowan ran all of one step before she flung out her arms, grabbing the creatures by their flawless faces—her palms over their open mouths as she exhaled sharply. As if she’d breathed fire into their cores, flames shot out of their eyes, their ears, their fingers. The two creatures didn’t have a chance to scream as she burned them into cinders.
The wall of black swelled, one final hammer blow to squash her, but she stood fast, a golden light in the darkness. That was all Rowan needed to see before he knew what he had to do.
Rowan drew his dagger and sliced his palm open as he sprinted through the gate-stones.
She knew it would work. She had suspected it for some time now. They were carranam.
He had come for her. She held his gaze as she grabbed her own dagger and cut her palm, right over the scar she’d given herself at Nehemia’s grave. And though she knew he could read the words on her face, she said, “To whatever end?”
Their hands clasped between them, he whispered into her ear, “I claim you, too, Aelin Galathynius.”
Rowan’s magic punched into her, old and strange and so vast her knees buckled. He held her with that unrelenting strength, and she harnessed his wild power as he opened his innermost barriers, letting it flow through her.
Narrok and the prince were shrieking. The Valg did not want to go back; they did not want to be ended, not after so long spent waiting to return to her world. But she crammed the light down their throats, burning up their black blood.
Just for a moment; then she burned both demon and Narrok to ash.
“Do that again,” he breathed. So Sorscha smiled again, laughing. And he looked so baffled by it that she asked, “What?” “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.
When Dorian had spoken, it hadn’t been a prince who looked at him. It had been a king.
He’d asked her point-blank what had happened when his friends had arrived—if any of them had tried to help. She had tried to avoid it, but he was relentless, and she finally told him that only Gavriel had shown any inclination. She didn’t blame his men. They didn’t know her,
She didn’t know why it mattered so much to Rowan, and he told her it was none of her business.
