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It would take a monster to destroy a monster.
And then came the words she had been dreading for ten years. “Hello, Aelin Galathynius.”
Maeve, the face of a thousand legends … and nightmares. Epics and poems and songs had been written about her, so many that some even believed she was just a myth. But here was the dream—the nightmare—made flesh.
There was a faint pulse in the air, a throbbing against her blood. A tapping, then a razor-sharp slicing against her mind—as if Maeve were trying to cleave open her skull and peer inside.
“I wish you to become who you were born to be. To become queen.”
As her eyes met with the endless dark of Titus’s, she smiled at the wyvern. She could have sworn he smiled back.
“Show me how you do it.” Her memories of the Fae in Terrasen were foggy, as if someone had smeared oil over them. She couldn’t remember seeing one of them change, where their clothes had gone, how fast it had been … He stared her down, seeming to say, Just this once, and then— A soft flash of light, a ripple of color, and a hawk was flapping midair, beating for the nearest tree branch. He settled on it, clicking his beak. She scanned the mossy earth. No sign of his clothes, his weapons. It had taken barely more than a few heartbeats.
Celaena was Aelin Galathynius. He had danced with her, kissed her, slept beside her, his mortal enemy.
He ripped his cold magic from the air and turned it inward, wrapping it around his heart.
Aelin would come back, and when she did … With every breath, Aedion felt that lingering scent wrapping tighter around his heart and soul. When she came back, he was never letting her go.
“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.”
“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.”
“But maybe,” he said, quietly enough that she looked at him again. He didn’t smile, but his eyes were inquisitive. “Maybe we could find the way back together.”
“With that legendary charm of yours, I suppose.”
A feral smile, and he grabbed her by the chin—not hard enough to hurt, but to get her to look at him. “First thing,” he breathed, “we’re not friends. I’m still training you, and that means you’re still under my command.” The flicker of hurt must have shown, because he leaned closer, his grip tightening on her jaw. “Second—whatever we are, whatever this is? I’m still figuring it out, too. So if I’m going to give you the space you deserve to sort yourself out, then you can damn well give it to me.”
It was the horror of that thought that made her focus on what she could grasp—namely the pine-and-snow smell of Rowan. She pulled that smell into her lungs, pulled it down deep and clung to it as though it were a lifeline tossed into a stormy sea.
“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.
“Has your heart melted?” “No.” “No,” her grandmother sneered. “No, it cannot melt, because you do not have a heart, Manon. We are not born with them, and we are glad of it.”
Wind was tearing at her face, her arms, her stomach, roaring her name. But there was eternity and calm in his eyes, a promise of such sweet darkness, and she could not look away. It would be a blessed relief to let go. She need only surrender to the dark, just as he asked. Take it, she wanted to say, tried to say. Take everything.
He didn’t back away again as she approached and said with every ember left in her shredded heart, “I claim you, Rowan Whitethorn. I don’t care what you say and how much you protest. I claim you as my friend.”
Far up the hill, as if they had come racing down from the mountains and had not stopped for food or water or sleep, were a towering man, a massive bird, and three of the largest predators she had ever seen. Five in all. Answering their friend’s desperate call for aid.
And though she knew he could read the words on her face, she said, “To whatever end?” He nodded, and she joined hands with him, blood to blood and soul to soul, his other arm coming around to grip her tightly. Their hands clasped between them, he whispered into her ear, “I claim you, too, Aelin Galathynius.”
When Dorian had spoken, it hadn’t been a prince who looked at him. It had been a king.
She was the heir of ash and fire, and she would bow to no one.
Aelin of the Wildfire. Aelin Fireheart. Aelin Light-Bringer.
He’d known, since the moment he figured out who she was, that while Celaena would always pick him, Aelin would not. And it would not be Celaena Sardothien who returned to this continent. It would take time, he knew—for it to stop hurting, to let go. But the pain wouldn’t last forever.
She was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius—and she would not be afraid.
