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Three unblocked blows. One to the gut, so Asterin could feel her own powerlessness; one to the ribs, so she’d consider her actions every time she drew breath; and one to the face, so her broken nose would remind her that the punishment could have been far worse.
Because I had nowhere else to go … for a second, it hadn’t been Sorscha but Celaena, broken with grief and loss and rage, coming to his room because there was no one else to turn to.
Because she was Manon Blackbeak, and she’d never failed at anything. And there would be nothing better than watching Abraxos bite off Iskra’s head on the battlefield.
She could have flown, could have soared for the sudden surge of ecstasy in her blood, the sheer freedom granted by the marvel of creation that was her body.
Oh, he was definitely fussing, and though it warmed her miserable heart, it was becoming rather irritating.
They don’t just kill you in the mines—they break you.
I’m going to find a way to free them someday. I will free them. Them, and all the slaves in Calaculla, too. So my scars serve as a reminder of that.”
“This despair and hatred and rage that lives and breathes inside me. There is no sanity to it, no gentleness. It is a monster dwelling under my skin. For the past ten years, I have worked every day, every hour, to keep that monster locked up. And the moment I talk about those two days, and what happened before and after, that monster is going to break loose, and there will be no accounting for what I do.
“At least if you’re going to hell,” he said, the vibrations in his chest rumbling against her, “then we’ll be there together.”
The darkness had no end and no beginning. It was the abyss that had haunted her steps for ten years, and she free-fell into it, welcomed it. There was no sound, only the vague sense of going toward a bottom that might not exist, or that might mean her true end.
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 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.
There were no words to do justice to what passed between them in that moment.
And then Dorian, still screaming, was scrambling through the blood toward it—toward her head, as if he could put it back. As if he could piece her together.
He looked at his friend, perhaps for the last time, and said what he had always known, from the moment they’d met, when he’d understood that the prince was his brother in soul. “I love you.”
She lifted her face to the stars. She was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir of two mighty bloodlines, protector of a once-glorious people, and Queen of Terrasen. She was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius—and she would not be afraid.
