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“You know who I am,” Manon said, gazing into those endless black eyes, not giving one inch to fear or doubt. “I am Manon Blackbeak, heir to the Blackbeak Clan, and you are mine. Do you understand?”
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“You are Abraxos,” Manon said to him, a chill slithering down her neck. “I gave you that name because he is the Great Beast, the serpent who wrapped the world in his coils, and who will devour it at the very end when the Three-Faced Goddess bids him to. You are Abraxos,” she repeated, “and you are mine.”
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Sorrel raised her thick brows innocently, and Manon rolled her eyes. “You’re a worse liar than Vesta. You think I haven’t noticed those men grinning at her at all hours of the day? Or the bite marks on them? Just keep the death toll down. We have enough to worry about as it is—we don’t need a mutiny from the mortals.” Asterin snorted, but when Manon gave her a sidelong look, the witch kept her gaze ahead, face all too innocent. Of course, if Vesta had been bedding and bleeding the men, then Asterin had been right there with her.
If Manon was ice and Asterin was fire, then Sorrel was rock.
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“The only ones having fun right now,” Asterin said, “are the green-eyed demon-twins.” Indeed, the midnight-haired Faline and Fallon were grinning with maniacal glee
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“And my Shadows?” Manon asked Asterin. “How are they doing?” Edda and Briar, two cousins that were as close as sisters, had been trained since infancy to blend into any sliver of darkness and listen—and they were nowhere to be seen in this hall. Just as Manon had ordered. “They’ll have a report for you tonight,” Asterin said. Distant cousins to Manon, the Shadows bore the same moon-white hair. Or they had, until they’d discovered eighty years ago that the silver hair was as good as a beacon and dyed it solid black. They rarely spoke, never laughed, and sometimes even Asterin herself couldn’t
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“I’ll have Lin and Vesta stand watch,” Asterin said. They were Manon’s fallback sentries—Vesta for the disarming smiles, and Lin because if anyone ever called her by her full name, Linnea—the name her softhearted mother had given her before Lin’s grandmother tore out her heart—that person wound up with missing teeth at best. A missing face at worst.
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“Shift, and let’s go,” he said. His second words to her this morning. “And here I was, thinking we’d become friends.” He raised his brows and gestured with a hand for her to shift. “It’s twenty miles,” he said by way of encouragement, and gave her a wicked grin. “We’re running. Each way.”
I want to go to the nearby town to question the citizens, but …” His mouth twisted to the side, then he shook his head at some silent conversation with himself. “But I need your help. It’ll be easier for the mortals to talk to you.” “Is that a compliment?” He rolled his eyes.
He gave her braid a sharp, painful tug. “Unless you’re still frightened.” Her nostrils flared. “The only thing that frightens me is how very much I want to throttle you.”
Rowan murmured, “Hone it—the anger.”
🦅 teaching 🧝🏼♀️
“Let it be a blade, Aelin. If you cannot find the peace, then at least hone the anger that guides you to the shift. Embrace and control it—it is not your enemy.”
🦅 teaching 🧝🏼♀️
“See what you want, Aelin, and seize it. Don’t ask for it; don’t wish for it. Take it.”
🦅 teaching 🧝🏼♀️
A
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Rowan
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Windows were shuttered as they passed, probably because of Rowan, who looked like nothing short of death incarnate. But he was surprisingly calm with the villagers they approached. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t snarl, didn’t threaten. He didn’t smile, but for Rowan, he was downright cheerful.
She noticed the wide-eyed, pale shopkeeper a heartbeat before the woman slashed the curtains shut. Well, then. Rowan snorted, and Celaena turned to him. “You’re used to this, I assume?”
Manon rubbed her eyes. “Is it not fresh enough?” He moved to sniff some white-and-yellow flowers. A nightmare. This was a nightmare. “You can’t really like flowers.” Again those dark eyes shifted to her. Blinked once. I most certainly do, he seemed to say.
When he went back to sniffing the flowers rather delicately—the insufferable, useless worm—she
It was thanks to Abraxos, the flower-loving worm, who had just watched while she scaled one of the nearby cliffs and brought down a braying mountain goat for him.
Abraxos was still lying on his belly, sniffing the wildflowers, when she returned with the dead goat in her arms, its blood now iced on her cloak and tunic.
Abraxos was curled up like a cat on the narrow stretch of flat rock atop the mountain. “Willful, lazy worm.” He didn’t even blink at her.
“Let’s go.” Abraxos lifted his massive head as if to say, We just got here. She pointed to the eastern edge. “Flying. Now.” He huffed, curling his back to her, the leather saddle gleaming. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she snapped, stalking around to get in his face. She pointed to the edge again. “We’re flying, you rutting coward.” He tucked his head toward his belly, his tail wrapping around him. He was pretending he couldn’t hear her. She knew it might cost her life, but she gripped his nostrils—hard enough to make his eyes fly open. “Your wings are functional. The humans said they were. So you
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Abraxos continued to lie in the sun, vain and indulgent as a cat. “Warrior heart indeed.”
The sun was blinding as they hit the open sky, and there was nothing around them but clouds as massive as the mountains far below, castles and temples of white and purple and blue. And the cry that Abraxos let out as they entered that hall of clouds, as he leveled out and caught a lightning-fast current carving a pathway through it … She had not understood what it had been like for him to live his entire life underground, chained and beaten and crippled—until then. Until she heard that noise of undiluted, unyielding joy. Until she echoed it, tipping her head back to the clouds around them.
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“Long ago, 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. But they were all of them ruled by Maeve and her two sisters, whom they called Mora and Mab. Cunning Mora, who bore the shape of a great hawk”—that was Rowan’s mighty bloodline—“Fair Mab, who bore the shape of a swan. And the dark Maeve, whose wildness could not be contained by any single form.”
Emrys’ story when 🧝🏼♀️ asked to hear about 👸🏻
Mora and Mab had fallen in love with human men, and yielded their immortality. Some said Maeve forced them to give up their gift of eternal life as punishment. Some said they wanted to, if only to escape their sister.
when Celaena asked, the room falling deathly silent again, if Maeve herself had ever mated, Emrys told her no—though she had come close, at the dawn of time. A warrior, rumor claimed, had stolen her heart with his clever mind and pure soul. But he had died in some long-ago war and lost the ring he’d intended for her, and since then, Maeve had cherished her warriors above all others. They loved her for it—made her a mighty queen whom no one dared challenge. Celaena expected Rowan to puff his feathers at that, but he remained still and quiet on his perch.
👸🏻 lore
In a flash that could have been distant lightning, the mountain cat became a tall, broad-shouldered male walking toward the open door. Rowan surged into flight, then shifted, seamlessly landing midstride as he walked into the rain.
Gavriel- 🦁
His features remained impassive, turning vicious, even, as he said, “There is nothing that I can give you. Nothing I want to give you. You are not owed an explanation for what I do outside of training. I don’t care what you have been through or what you want to do with your life. The sooner you can sort out your whining and self-pity, the sooner I can be rid of you. You are nothing to me, and I do not care.”
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it would have been nice, she supposed. It would have been nice to have one person who knew the absolute truth about her—and didn’t hate her for it. It would have been really, really nice. She walked away without another word. With each step she took back to her room, that flickering light inside of her guttered. And went out.
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“Did you know that Evalin Ashryver was my friend? She spent almost a year working in this kitchen—living here with us, fighting to convince your queen that demi-Fae have a place in your realm. She fought for our rights until the very day she departed this kingdom—and the many years after, until she was murdered by those monsters across the sea. So I knew. I knew who her daughter was the moment you brought her into this kitchen. All of us who were here twenty-five years ago recognized her for what she is.”
Emrys knew 🧝🏼♀️ mother
“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.”
Fireheart—why do you cry? “Because I am lost,” she whispered onto the earth. “And I do not know the way.”
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He smiled grimly. “I think I’ve started to figure you out, Aelin Galathynius.”
Rowan strode into the gaping maw of the cave mouth, his pale-gray cloak flapping behind him. “Hurry up.”
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“Go get him,” was Rowan’s answer. “Are you out of your mind?” Rowan gave her a smile that suggested he was, in fact, insane.
This is the stupidest thing I have ever had to—” “Hurry,” Rowan said with a wolfish grin,
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Celaena Sardothien, gloriously mortal Celaena, never had to worry about accidentally scorching a playmate, or having a nightmare that might incinerate her bedroom. Or burning all of Orynth to the ground. Celaena had been everything Aelin wasn’t. She had embraced that life, even if Celaena’s accomplishments were death and torture and pain.
🧝🏼♀️ lore
Luca’s eyes were wide as she came at last within touching distance. “You have nothing to hide, you know. We all knew you could shift, anyway,” he said. “And if it makes you feel any better, Sten’s animal form is a pig. He won’t even shift for shame.”
“Control,” Rowan barked from the shore, pulling free a discarded sword from where it had been knocked into the little crevice in the wall, its golden hilt glinting.
Rowan finding Goldryn & the Ring
“Hurry,” Rowan barked, and Celaena lifted her head long enough to see him slide the blade he’d found across the ice, a brisk wind spinning it toward her. Luca abandoned the blanket, shuffle-running, and Celaena scooped up the golden-hilted sword as she followed him. A ruby the size of a chicken egg was embedded in the hilt, and despite the age of the scabbard, the blade shone when she whipped it free, as if it had been freshly polished. Something clattered from the scabbard onto the ice—a plain golden ring. She grabbed it, shoving it into her pocket, and ran faster, as—
Discovering Goldryn & the Ring
“No one else!” “Tell me why, Aelin.” That gods-damned name … She dug her nails into his wrists. “Because I am sick of it!” She was gulping down air, each breath shuddering as the horrific realization she’d been holding at bay since Nehemia’s death came loose. “I told her I would not help, so she orchestrated her own death. Because she thought …” She laughed—a horrible, wild sound. “She thought that her death would spur me into action. She thought I could somehow do more than her—that she was worth more dead. And she lied—about everything. She lied to me because I was a coward, and I hate her
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🧝🏼♀️👸🏾 lore
“You know,” she said slyly, “that’s twice now you’ve made a mess of my training with your tasks. I’m fairly sure that makes you the worst instructor I’ve ever had.” He gave her a sidelong look. “I’m surprised it took you this long to call attention to it.” She snorted, and as they approached the fortress, the torches and candles ignited as if to welcome them home.
“No better than alley cats, brawling at all hours of the day and night,” Emrys said, slamming two bowls of stew onto the worktable. “Eat, both of you. And then get cleaned up. Elentiya, you’re off kitchen duty tonight and tomorrow.” Celaena opened her mouth to object, but the old man held up a hand. “I don’t want you bleeding on everything. You’ll be more trouble than you’re worth.” Wincing, Celaena slumped next to Rowan on the bench, and swore viciously at the pain in her leg, her face, her arms. Swore at the pain in the ass sitting right next to her. “Clean out your mouth, too, while you’re
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“Makes no difference to me whether your ears are pointy or round, or what your teeth look like. But,” he added, looking at Rowan, “I can’t deny I’m glad to see you got in a few punches this time.” Rowan’s head snapped up from his bowl, and Emrys pointed a spoon at him.
You think any of us like to hear you two cursing and screaming every afternoon? The language you use is enough to curdle all the milk in Wendlyn.” Rowan lowered his head and mumbled something into his stew. For the first time in a long, long while, Celaena felt the corners of her lips tug up.
Though Celaena didn’t smile, her eyes crinkled. “What do you know of a creature that dwells in the lake under …” She glanced at Rowan to finish. “Bald Mountain. And he can’t know that story,” Rowan said. “No one does.” “I am a Story Keeper,” Emrys said, staring down at him with all the wrath of one of the iron figurines on the mantel. “And that means that the tales I collect might not come from Fae or human mouths, but I hear them anyway.” He sat down at the table, folding his hands in front of him. “I heard one story, years ago, from a fool who thought he could cross the Cambrian Mountains
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Where they found Goldryn
