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Rowan inclined his head toward the barrows. “I had planned to wait until you had some handle on your power—planned to make you come at night, when the barrow-wights are really something to behold, but consider this a favor, as there are few that will dare come out in the day. Walk through the mounds—face the wights and make it to the other side of the field, Aelin, and we can go to Doranelle whenever you wish.”
🦅🗡️🫦
“You can either wait to earn back your steel, or you can enter as you are now.” The flash of temper snapped her out of it long enough to say, “My bare hands are weapon enough.” He just gave a taunting grin and sauntered into the maze of hills.
🧝🏼♀️🦅🫦
but when his eyes met hers again, he seemed to say, That thing should not have been there. Then what in hell was it, you stupid bastard? she silently shot back. He clenched his jaw before he said aloud, “I don’t know.
🧝🏼♀️🦅🫦
“You’re done when I say you’re done.”
🧝🏼♀️🦅🫦
The following day she didn’t expect the messenger who arrived after breakfast, asking for the name of her village. And when she hesitated, he said that the Crown Prince wanted to know. Wanted to know, so he could have it added to his personal map of the continent.
Dorian and Sorscha
“We are the Thirteen, from now until the Darkness claims us.” She said it quietly, but knew all could hear her. “Let’s remind them why.”
🔮🗡️- their first time flying the wyverns
The whoops and cackles of her Thirteen as they rode the current were finer than any mortal music.
🔮🫶🏼👯♀️
The Thirteen- 👯♀️
Seated on the floor in front of Emrys’s chair was Luca, a pretty young woman pressed into his side, his arm casually draped around her shoulders—casually, but with enough of a grip to tell every other male in the room that she was his. Celaena rolled her eyes, not at all surprised.
“Long ago,” Emrys began, his voice weaving between the drumming rain and grumbling thunder and crackling fire, “when there was no mortal king on Wendlyn’s throne, the faeries still walked among us. Some were good and fair, some were prone to little mischiefs, and some were fouler and darker than the blackest night.”
Emrys’ first story telling
Aedion smiled broadly as he yanked the black ring off his finger. “The day the king presented me with the Sword of Orynth, he also offered me a ring. Thanks to my heritage, my senses are … sharper. I thought the ring smelled strange—and knew only a fool would accept that kind of gift from him. So I had a replica made. The real one I chucked into the sea. But I always wondered what it did,” he mused, tossing the ring with one hand and catching it. “It seems the captain knows. And disapproves.”
🧔🏼♀️
Aedion Ashryver had been called Wolf, general, prince, traitor, and murderer. And he was all of those things, and more. Liar, deceiver, and trickster were his particular favorites—the titles only those closest to him knew. Adarlan’s Whore, that’s what the ones who didn’t know him called him. It was true—in so many ways, it was true, and he had never minded it, not really. It had allowed him to maintain control in the North, to keep the bloodshed down to a minimum and a lie. Half the Bane were rebels, and the other half sympathizers, so many of their “battles” in the North had been staged, the
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🧔🏼♀️ lore
Cousin—that had been his most beloved title. Cousin, kin, protector. Those were the secret names he harbored deep within, the names he whispered to himself when the northern wind was shrieking through the Staghorns. Sometimes that wind sounded like the screams of his people being led to the butchering blocks. And sometimes it sounded like Aelin—Aelin, whom he had loved, who should have been his queen, and to whom he would have one day sworn the blood oath.
🧔🏼♀️🧝🏼♀️ lore
Ren, heir and Lord of Allsbrook, had trained with Aedion as a child—and had once been his rival. Ten years ago, Ren and his grandfather, Murtaugh, had escaped the butchering blocks thanks to a diversion started by Ren’s parents that cost them their lives and gave Ren the nasty scar down his face. But Aedion hadn’t known—he’d thought them dead, and had been stunned to learn that they were the secret rebel group he’d hunted down upon arriving in Rifthold.
🧔🏼♀️, Ren and Murtaugh lore
the King of Adarlan had snatched the blade from Rhoe Galathynius’s cooling body and brought it to Rifthold.
The Sword of Orynth
So Aedion had fought for years in those war camps and battlefields, fought to prove his invaluable worth to the king, and had taken everything that was done to him, again and again. When he and the Bane won that first battle and the king had proclaimed him the Northern Wolf and offered him a boon, Aedion had asked for the sword.
🧔🏼♀️ lore
Even though he’d been thirteen, and even though he’d been forty miles away in Orynth when Aelin had been killed on the country estate, he should have stopped it. He’d been sent to her land upon his mother’s death to become Aelin’s sword and shield, to serve in the court she was supposed to have ruled, that child of kings. So he should have ridden out when the castle erupted with news that Orlon Galathynius had been assassinated. By the time anyone did, Rhoe, Evalin, and Aelin were dead.
🧔🏼♀️ guilt, part of his lore
It was that reminder he’d carried with him on his back, the reminder of who the sword belonged to, and to whom, when he took his last breath and went to the Otherworld, he’d finally give it.
🧔🏼♀️’s devotion to 🧝🏼♀️, even when he thiught her dead
Story Keeper—that’s what Emrys was, a title of honor amongst both Fae and humans in Wendlyn. What it meant was that when he began telling a story, you sat down and shut up. It also meant that he was a walking library of the kingdom’s legends and myths.
He gave a battle cry and swooped, talons slashing for her eyes. She lunged behind the tree just as there was another flash and shudder of color, and then he was clothed and armed and growling in her face. “Your turn.” She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her tremble. It was—incredible.
🦅🧝🏼♀️🫦
He bared his teeth, but she didn’t submit.
🦅🧝🏼♀️🫦
“Don’t use that tone when you talk about her.” “Oh, I can use whatever tone I want. And you can taunt and snarl at me and make me chop wood all day, but short of ripping out my tongue, you can’t—” Faster than lightning, his hand shot out and she gagged, jolting as he grabbed her tongue between his fingers. She bit down, hard, but he didn’t let go. “Say that again,” he purred. She choked as he kept pinching her tongue, and she went for his daggers, simultaneously slamming her knee up between his legs, but he shoved his body against hers, a wall of hard muscle and several hundred years of lethal
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🦅🧝🏼♀️🫦
🦅 pushing 🧝🏼♀️ to her first shift
Rowan grinned. “There you are.”
🫦
inside herself, against the power, shoving it down, down. Rowan prowled closer. “Let it out. Don’t fight it.” A pulse beat against her, nipping, smelling of snow and pine. Rowan’s power, taunting hers. Not like her fire, but a gift of ice and wind. A freezing zap at her elbow had her falling back against the tree. The magic bit her cheek now. Magic—attacking her.
🦅🧝🏼♀️🫦
won’t be biting you again,” he said,
He walked uphill—to the ridge. “You don’t bite the women of other males.”
🦅🧝🏼♀️🫦
“Because he’s safer if he’s as repulsed by me as you are.” “At least you’ve already learned one lesson.” When she cocked her head, he said, “The people you love are just weapons that will be used against you.”
🧝🏼♀️🦅 lore
Rowan gripped her by the shoulders. “Are you listening?” She gave him a bored stare, even as his fingers dug into her skin. “Why don’t you just bite me again?” “Why don’t I give you the lashing you deserve?”
🦅🧝🏼♀️🫦
He looked so dead set on it that she blinked. “If you ever take a whip to me, I will skin you alive.”
🧝🏼♀️ lore
Rowan paused his stalking. “You’re worthless.” “Tell me something I don’t know.” He went on, “You would probably have been more useful to the world if you’d actually died ten years ago.” She just looked him in the eye and said, “I’m leaving.”
Fuck 🦅 is ruthless
“Why bother? Maybe the world’s not worth saving.” She knew he meant it, too. Those lifeless eyes spoke volumes.
🦅🥺
His tattoo scrunched as he snarled.
🫦
Why can’t your friend save her own kingdom?” “Because she is dead!” She screamed the last word so loudly it burned in her throat. “Because she is dead, and I am left with my worthless life!”
👸🏾💔🧝🏼♀️🥺
“Surprise,” she hissed. The world erupted in blue wildfire.
🧝🏼♀️🗡️
“That’s how our enemies will sometimes try to fight against us if they don’t have magic—iron everything.” He must have seen her brows rise, because he added, “I was captured once. While on a campaign in the east, in a kingdom that doesn’t exist anymore. They had me shackled head to toe in iron to keep me from choking the air out of their lungs.” She let out a low whistle. “Were you tortured?” “Two weeks on their tables before my men rescued me.” He unbuckled his vambrace and pushed back the sleeve of his right arm, revealing a thick, wicked scar curving around his forearm and elbow. “Cut me
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🦅 lore
“I am bound by an unbreakable blood oath to my Queen, so I had no choice but to ensure you didn’t die.”
🦅 lore
“You’re mine,” Manon said to him.
Abraxos- 🐲🌸
his
🐲🌸 🫶🏼 🔮
Attack or clumsiness, Asterin was punished by Mother Blackbeak that night for letting the heir fall into the pit. Manon had asked to be the one to dispense the whipping, but her grandmother ignored her. Instead, she had the Yellowlegs heir do it. As Asterin’s failure had occurred in plain sight of the other Matrons and their heirs, so would her punishment. Standing in the mess hall, Manon watched each brutal lash, all ten of them at full strength, as Iskra sported a bruise on her jaw courtesy of Asterin. To her everlasting credit, Asterin didn’t scream. Not once. It still took all of Manon’s
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Asterin- 👩🏼🦳🗡️
“We know Ravi and Sol are still alive and in Suria.” Aedion knew the story. Their family’s trade business had been too important to the king to warrant executing both their parents. So their father had chosen the execution block, and their mother had been left to keep Suria running as a vital trade port. The two Surian boys would be twenty and twenty-two by now, and since his mother’s death, Sol had become Lord of Suria. In his years leading the Bane, Aedion had never set foot in the coastal city. He didn’t want to know if they’d damn him. Adarlan’s Whore.
🦌🧔🏼♀️
“Vernon Lochan survived, but only because he was already the king’s puppet, and after Cal was executed, Vernon seized his brother’s mantle as Lord of Perranth. You know what happened to Lady Marion. But we never learned what happened to Elide.” Elide—Lord Cal and Lady Marion’s daughter and heir, almost a year younger than Aelin. If she were alive, she would be at least seventeen by now.
🦌👩🏻
👩🏻- Elide Lochan
Aedion, not Ren, was favored to take the blood oath to Aelin. The oath of pure submission—the oath that would have sealed Aedion as her lifelong protector, the one person in whom she could have absolute trust. Everything he possessed, everything he was, should have belonged to her.
🧔🏼♀️🫶🏼🧝🏼♀️
Aedion made to walk away, but looked back. Just two cloaked figures, one hunched, the other tall and armed. The first shred of Aelin’s court. The court he’d raise for her to shatter Adarlan’s chains. He could keep playing the game—for a little longer.
🧔🏼♀️🫶🏼🧝🏼♀️
“When she returns,” Aedion said quietly, “what she will do to the King of Adarlan will make the slaughtering ten years ago look merciful.”
🧔🏼♀️>🧝🏼♀️🗡️
“The Sun Goddess’s temple.” Mala, Lady of Light, Learning, and Fire.
🌳🌱🪵🍃
Mala, Sun Goddess and Light-Bringer, was sister and eternal rival to Deanna, Keeper of the Moon.
🌳🌱🪵🍃
“Mab was immortalized into godhood thanks to Maeve,” Celaena mused as she ran a hand down the jagged block. “But that was over five hundred years ago. Mala had a sister in the moon long before Mab took her place.” “Deanna was the original sister’s name. But you humans gave her some of Mab’s traits. The hunting, the hounds.” “Perhaps Deanna and Mala weren’t always rivals.”
🌳🌱🪵🍃
She’d heard Emrys tell the story of the sun stags, who held an immortal flame between their massive antlers and who had once been stolen from a temple in this land
🌞🦌
“Is this where the stags were kept—before this place was destroyed?” “I don’t know. This temple wasn’t destroyed; it was abandoned when the Fae moved to Doranelle, and then ruined by time and weather.” “Emrys’s stories said destroyed, not abandoned.” “Again, what are you getting at?” But she didn’t know, not yet,
“You’re going to have to decide,” Manon said, not bothering to bare her iron teeth. “Are you her spy or my Second?” No hint of pain or fear or betrayal. Just a slight narrowing of her eyes. “I serve you.” “She’s your Matron.” “I serve you.”
👩🏼🦳🫶🏼🔮
