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white-tailed hawk that had been perched atop a nearby chimney all morning, waiting to snatch up its next meal.
Rowen
One plan, however insane and unlikely, to free the enslaved kingdom: find and obliterate the Wyrdkeys the King of Adarlan had used to build his terrible empire. She’d gladly destroy herself to carry it out.
Wendlyn. A land of myths and monsters—of legends and nightmares made flesh.
She took some small satisfaction in knowing she smelled horrific, but it wasn’t that smell he was reading. No, it was the scent that marked her as her—the smell of her lineage and blood and what and who she was.
You will always be my enemy. Celaena had screamed those words at Chaol the night Nehemia had died. Screamed it with ten years’ worth of conviction and hatred, a decade spent holding the world’s greatest secret so deep within her that she’d become another person entirely. Because Celaena was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and rightful Queen of Terrasen.
They were Celaena’s eyes. Ashryver eyes. A stunning turquoise with a core of gold as bright as their hair. Their hair—even the shade of it was the same.
“Perhaps I’ll be your whore someday, too.” “If you’re still alive by then,” Dorian purred.
“Wrong kind of witch.”
“Hello, Aelin Galathynius.”
The Queen of the Fae remained silent, her long fingers moon-white and folded in the lap of her violet gown, a white barn owl perched on the back of her chair. She didn’t bother with a crown, and Celaena supposed she didn’t need one. Every creature on earth would know who she was—what she was—even if they were blind and deaf. 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. Pushing, testing, tasting—
“I wish you to become who you were born to be. To become queen.”
Faster than she could sense, faster than anything had a right to be, he punched her.
You didn’t need a weapon at all when you were born one.
“So you either have to be very important or very unlucky to have Rowan training you to enter Doranelle.” Damned was more like it,
Mate—not husband. The Fae had mates: an unbreakable bond, deeper than marriage, that lasted beyond death.
Manon treated her body as she would any other weapon: she kept it clean and honed and ready at any time to defend and destroy.
“I also heard there’s talk that the Yellowlegs need all the help they can get in the sparring room. But I suppose any army needs its supply drivers.”
“We are the Thirteen, from now until the Darkness claims us.”
when she’d said 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.
“Do you want the answer that will keep you asleep at night, or the one that might ensure you never sleep again?”
“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,”
“Aelin is alive.”
Aelin, whom he had loved, who should have been his queen, and to whom he would have one day sworn the blood oath.
“The people you love are just weapons that will be used against you.”
“Surprise,” she hissed. The world erupted in blue wildfire.
The bait beast had trounced him—not because he was bigger or stronger, but because he wanted it more. Titus had been a brute and a killer, yet this wyvern before her … he was a warrior.
Manon, eyes still upon the beast, said, “He’s mine.”
Manon named her wyvern Abraxos, after the ancient serpent who held the world between his coils at the behest of the Three-Faced Goddess.
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.
“When she returns,” Aedion said quietly, “what she will do to the King of Adarlan will make the slaughtering ten years ago look merciful.”
“Your scent says that you don’t want to be approached. The males smell it more than the females, and have been staying the hell away. They don’t want their faces clawed off.”
“I am Manon Blackbeak, heir to the Blackbeak Clan, and you are mine.
“Once all that is done,” she said, smiling faintly at her wyvern, “you and I are going to learn how to fly. And then we’ll stain this kingdom red.”
“See what you want, Aelin, and seize it. Don’t ask for it; don’t wish for it. Take it.”
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.
Her mother had called her Fireheart. But to her court, to her people, she would one day be Queen. To them, she was the heir to two mighty bloodlines, and to a tremendous power that would keep them safe and raise their kingdom to even greater heights. A power that was a gift—or a weapon.
she has told me that her dearest friends are characters in books.”
“I see her slipping away, bit by bit, because you shove her down when she so desperately needs someone to help her back up.”
“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.”
“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.”
“You can control your power in human form—keep it dormant. But the moment you switch, the moment you get agitated or angry or afraid, the moment you remember how much your power scares you, your magic rises up to protect you. It doesn’t understand that you are the source of those feelings, not some external threat. When there is an outside threat, when you forget to fear your power long enough, you have control. Or some control.”
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.”
“You cannot pick and choose what parts of her to love.”
Afraid to play with fire, Princess?
“No, it cannot melt, because you do not have a heart,
“I have …” Aedion’s teeth gleamed in the light. “I have been forced to do many, many things. Depraved, despicable things. Yet nothing made me feel as filthy as I did today, thanking that man for murdering my people.”
The next morning, by royal decree, the theater was shut down. No one saw those musicians or their conductor again.
“You have experience—you are needed here. You are the only person who can give the demi-Fae a chance of surviving; you are trusted and respected. So I am staying. Because you are needed, and because I will follow you to whatever end.”
