Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

“Drain the life out of you, feed on you, until they make a show of executing you?” “It’s not a joke,” she snapped. Her dreams were haunted by the roaming hands of those Valg princes as they fed on her. And every time she would awaken with a scream on her lips, reaching for a Fae warrior who wasn’t there to remind her that they’d made it, they’d survived.

You should have gotten Dorian and Sorscha out the day the king butchered those slaves. Did you learn nothing from Nehemia’s death? Did you somehow think you could win with your honor intact, without sacrificing something? You shouldn’t have left him; how could you let him face the king alone? How could you, how could you, how could you?

“Perhaps we’re better off without magic. Perhaps magic doesn’t exactly make things fair amongst us mere mortals.” “Fair? You think that any part of this is fair?” “Magic makes people dangerous.” “Magic has saved your life a few times now, if I recall correctly.” “Yes,” he breathed, “you and Dorian both—and I’m grateful, I am. But where are the checks against your kind? Iron? Not much of a deterrent, is it? Once magic is free, who is to stop the monsters from coming out again? Who is to stop you?” A spear of ice shot through her heart. Monster.

Dickhead

The place that had never quite been filled again since that day she’d shattered the clock. Maybe—maybe she’d also stopped in that moment. Stopped living and started just … surviving. Raging. And maybe it had taken until this spring, when she had been sprawled on the ground while three Valg princes fed on her, when she had at last burned through that pain and darkness, for the clock to start again.

Monster. And yet … For her friends, for her family, she would gladly be a monster. For Rowan, for Dorian, for Nehemia, she would debase and degrade and ruin herself. She knew they would have done the same for her.

a cool breeze sweeping in from where the roof had been ripped half off thanks to Sorrel’s bull. To keep the wyverns from feeling less caged—and so Abraxos could watch the stars, as he liked to do.

That night, I was supposed to begin training, and I cried so hard I made myself sick. But Lysandra—she cleaned me up. She told me that there was a way out, but it would hurt, and I would not be the same. I couldn’t run, because she had tried running a few times when she was my age, and they had found her and beat her where no one could see.” She had never known—never wondered. All those times she had sneered at and mocked Lysandra while they’d grown up … Evangeline continued, “I said I’d do anything to get out of what the other girls had told me about. So she told me to trust her—and then gave me these. She started shouting loud enough for the others to come running. They thought she cut me out of anger, and said she’d done it to keep me from being a threat. And she let them believe it. Clarisse was so mad that she beat Lysandra in the courtyard, but Lysandra didn’t cry—not once. And when the healer said my face couldn’t be fixed, Clarisse made Lysandra buy me for the amount I would have cost if I had been a full courtesan, like her.” Aelin had no words. Evangeline said, “That’s why she’s still working for Clarisse, why she’s still not free and won’t be for a while. I thought you should know.”

And for a moment, she wondered how another young woman’s life would have been different if she had stopped to talk to her—really talk to Kaltain Rompier, instead of dismissing her as a vapid courtier. What would have happened if Nehemia had tried to see past Kaltain’s mask, too.

“We’re such refined, genteel ladies.” “Please,” Lysandra said, waving a manicured hand, “you and I are nothing but wild beasts wearing human skins. Don’t even try to deny it.”

“Touch him,” Chaol said, “and I’ll make sure those bastards down there find Aedion.” Nesryn silently turned to them, slackening her bow. It was the only card he had to play, even if it made him a bastard as well. The wrath Chaol found in Aelin’s eyes was world-ending. “You bring my court into this, Chaol,” Aelin said with lethal softness, “and I don’t care what you were to me, or what you have done to help me. You betray them, you hurt them, and I don’t care how long it takes, or how far you go: I’ll burn you and your gods-damned kingdom to ash. Then you’ll learn just how much of a monster I can be.”

Bastard 😡

“When you shatter the chains of this world and forge the next, remember that art is as vital as food to a kingdom. Without it, a kingdom is nothing, and will be forgotten by time. I have amassed enough money in my miserable life to not need any more—so you will understand me clearly when I say that wherever you set your throne, no matter how long it takes, I will come to you, and I will bring music and dancing.”

It was time. One breath—another. She was the heir of fire. She was fire, and light, and ash, and embers. She was Aelin Fireheart, and she bowed for no one and nothing, save the crown that was hers by blood and survival and triumph.

Even disguised as an aristo man, there was wicked, vicious triumph in her turquoise-and-gold eyes. Behind them, across the hall, the dancers shattered their roses on the floor, and Aedion grinned at his queen as the entire world went to hell.

“Dorian,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “You are Dorian.” Seconds—she had seconds left to give him.

“Hello, Aedion.” Hearing his name on her tongue snapped something loose, and he had to close his eyes, his body barking in pain as it shook with the force of the tears trying to get out of him. When he’d mastered himself, he said hoarsely, “Thank you for your spectacular rescue. Let’s never do it again.” She snorted, her eyes lined with silver. “You’re exactly the way I dreamed you’d be.”

“And here we go.” She looked at the ceiling and sighed loudly. “A minute of pleasant conversation, and then the territorial Fae bullshit comes raging out.” “I waited an extra thirty seconds.” Her mouth quirked to the side. “I honestly thought you’d last ten.”

Aelin was laughing as she cried, and the male was just holding her, his hooded head buried in her neck. As if he were breathing her in. “Who is that?” Nesryn asked. Aedion smiled. “Rowan.”

Neither male broke their stare as they neared. Territorial nonsense. Aelin squeezed Rowan’s side hard enough that he hissed and pinched her shoulder right back. Fae warriors: invaluable in a fight—and raging pains in her ass at all other times.

She plucked up a green vial of bath salts and another of bath oil and dumped in generous amounts of each, turning the rushing water milky and opaque. “I will, when you’re soaking in the bath and don’t smell like a vagrant.”

Gods, he took up the entire bathtub. She mutely handed him her favorite lavender-scented soap, which he sniffed at, sighed in resignation, and then began using.

Stop it 🥹

He didn’t object as she took up a place at the head of the tub and dumped some of the tonic into his short hair. The sweet, night-filled scent of jasmine floated up, caressing and kissing her. Even Rowan breathed it in as she scrubbed the tonic into his scalp. “I could still probably braid this,” she mused. “Very teensy-tiny braids, so—” He growled, but leaned back against the tub, his eyes closed. “You’re no better than a house cat,” she said, massaging his head. He let out a low noise in his throat that might very well have been a purr. Washing his hair was intimate—a privilege she doubted he’d ever allowed many people; something she’d never done for anyone else. But lines had always been blurred for them, and neither of them had particularly cared. He’d seen every bare inch of her several times, and she’d seen most of him. They’d shared a bed for months. On top of that, they were carranam. He’d let her inside his power, past his inner barriers, to where half a thought from her could have shattered his mind. So washing his hair, touching him … it was an intimacy, but it was essential, too.

Aelin tried not to look too jolted by the sight of him with the towel wrapped around his hips, at the tan and muscled body that gleamed with the oils of the bath, at the scars crisscrossing it like the stripes of a great cat. Even Common Sense was at a loss for words.

The two princes stared at each other, one gold and one silver, one her twin and one her soul-bonded. There was nothing friendly in the stares, nothing human—two Fae males locked in some unspoken dominance battle. She leaned against the sink. “If you’re going to have a pissing contest, can you at least do it on the roof?” Rowan looked at her, brows high. But it was Aedion who said, “She says we’re no better than dogs, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually believes we’d piss on her furniture.”

Slowly, Aedion lifted his gaze to meet the prince’s. The sheer dominance in that stare was like being hit in the face with a stone. Aedion held it. Like hell he’d back down; like hell he’d yield. And there would be a yielding—somewhere, at some point. Probably when Aedion took that blood oath. Aelin clicked her tongue at Rowan. “Stop doing that alpha-male nonsense. Once was enough.” Rowan didn’t so much as blink. “I’m not doing anything.” But the prince’s mouth quirked into a smile, as if saying to Aedion, You think you can take me, cub? Aedion grinned. Any place, any time, Prince. Aelin muttered, “Insufferable,” and gave Rowan a playful shove in the arm. He didn’t move an inch. “Are you actually going to get into a pissing contest with every person we meet?

Improper indeed. He didn’t know how improper she could be. She opened the top drawer of the oak dresser. And slowly smiled. Rowan was in bed by the time she strutted toward the bathroom. She heard, rather than saw, him jolt upright, the mattress groaning as he barked, “What in hell is that?” She kept going toward the bathroom, refusing to apologize or look down at the pink, delicate, very short lace nightgown. When she emerged, face washed and clean, Rowan was sitting up, arms crossed over his bare chest. “You forgot the bottom part.” She merely blew out the candles in the room one by one. His eyes tracked her the entire time. “There is no bottom part,” she said, flinging back the covers on her side. “It’s starting to get so hot, and I hate sweating when I sleep. Plus, you’re practically a furnace. So it’s either this or I sleep naked. You can sleep in the bathtub if you have a problem with it.” His growl rattled the room. “You’ve made your point.”

She chuckled. Aelin: one, Rowan: zero. She was still smiling when he asked, “Are all your nightclothes like that?” “So curious about my negligees, Prince. Whatever would the others say? Maybe you should issue a decree to clarify.” He growled, and she grinned into her pillow. “Yes, I have more, don’t worry. If Lorcan is going to murder me in my sleep, I might as well look good.” “Vain until the bitter end.” She pushed back against the thought of Lorcan, of what Maeve might want, and said, “Is there a specific color you’d like me to wear? If I’m going to scandalize you, I should at least do it in something you like.” “You’re a menace.”

“How much longer—until you’re free of your debts?” “I still have a great deal to pay off, so—a while.” Lysandra paced a few steps, and then caught herself. “Clarisse keeps adding money as Evangeline grows, claiming that someone so beautiful would have made her double, triple what she originally told me.” “That’s despicable.” “What can I do?” Lysandra held up her wrist, where the tattoo had been inked. “She’ll hunt me until the day I die, and I can’t run with Evangeline.” “I could dig Clarisse a grave no one would ever discover,” Aelin said. And meant it. Lysandra knew she meant it, too. “Not yet—not now.” “You say the word, and it’s done.” Lysandra’s smile was a thing of savage, dark beauty.

She punched him in the bicep—hurting herself more than him. “Just because you’re older and stronger doesn’t mean you’re entitled to order me around.” “It’s exactly because of those things that I can do whatever I please.” She let out a high-pitched sound and went to pinch his side, and he grabbed her hand, squeezing it tightly, dragging her a step closer to him. She tilted her head back to look at him. For a moment, alone in that warehouse with nothing but the crates keeping them company, she allowed herself to take in his face, those green eyes, the strong jaw. Immortal. Unyielding. Blooded with power. “Brute.” “Brat.”

She was sprawled across the bed when he emerged, his jaw clenched. She hadn’t even bothered to wear one of those ridiculous nightgowns. She must have been exhausted enough not to bother with anything other than that oversized shirt. His shirt, he noticed with no small amount of male satisfaction.

Beloved—not just by her, but by many. Sam. Her Sam. For a moment, she stared at that stretch of grass, at the white stone. For a moment she could see that beautiful face grinning at her, yelling at her, loving her. She opened her fist of pebbles and picked out the three loveliest—two for the years since he’d been taken from her, one for what they’d been together. Carefully, she placed them at the apex of the headstone’s curve. Then she sat down against the stone, tucking her feet beneath her, and rested her head against the smooth, cool rock. “Hello, Sam,” she breathed onto the river breeze.

“I miss you,” she said. “Every day, I miss you. And I wonder what you would have made of all this. Made of me. I think—I think you would have been a wonderful king. I think they would have liked you more than me, actually.” Her throat tightened. “I never told you—how I felt. But I loved you, and I think a part of me might always love you. Maybe you were my mate, and I never knew it. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about that. Maybe I’ll see you again in the Afterworld, and then I’ll know for sure. But until then … until then I’ll miss you, and I’ll wish you were here.”

“You, I don’t know,” Arobynn mused, having to lift his head to see Rowan’s face. He made a show of looking Rowan over. “It’s been an age since I saw one of the Fae. I don’t remember them being quite so large.” Rowan moved deeper into the entry hall, every step laced with power and death, coming to a stop at her side. “You can call me Rowan. That’s all you need to know.” He cocked his head to the side, a predator assessing prey. “Thank you for the oil,” he added. “My skin was a little dry.” Arobynn blinked—as much surprise as he’d show. It took her a moment to process what Rowan had said, and to realize that the almond smell hadn’t just been coming from her. He’d worn it, too.

She would never forget this room. It still haunted her dreams. The table was empty, but she could see him there, broken and almost unrecognizable, the scent of gloriella clinging to his body. Sam had been tortured in ways she hadn’t even known until she read Wesley’s letter. The worst of it had been requested by Arobynn. Requested, as punishment for Sam’s loving her—punishment for tampering with Arobynn’s belongings.

I would pay good money to see seventeen-year-old Aelin meet seventeen-year-old Rowan. His green eyes glittered. Arobynn was still talking. Seventeen-year-old Rowan wouldn’t have known what to do with you. He could barely speak to females outside his family. Liar—I don’t believe that for a second. It’s true. You would have scandalized him with your nightclothes—even with that dress you have on. She sucked on her teeth. He would probably have been even more scandalized to learn I’m not wearing any undergarments beneath this dress. The table rattled as Rowan’s knee banged into it.

You can’t be serious, Rowan seemed to say. Did you see any place where this dress might hide them? Every line and wrinkle would show. Rowan shook his head subtly, his eyes dancing with a light that she’d only recently come to glimpse—and cherish. Do you delight in shocking me? She couldn’t stop her smile. How else am I supposed to keep a cranky immortal entertained?

You wicked, clever fox. And here you were, thinking the red hair was just for vanity. I shall never doubt again.

“I need to hide this.” There was a loose floorboard in her closet under which she stashed money, weapons, and jewelry. It would be good enough for now. And Aedion wouldn’t question it, since she couldn’t risk wearing the damn thing in public anyway, even under her clothes—not until she was back in Terrasen. She stared down at the amulet. “So do it,” he said. “I don’t want to touch it.” “If it was that easy to trigger, your ancestors would have figured out what it was.” “You pick it up,” she said, frowning. He just gave her a look. She bent down, willing her mind blank while she lifted the amulet off the table. Rowan stiffened as if bracing himself, despite his reassurance.

The almighty Fae warrior and Fireheart queen everyone

“It feels wrong,” she said, “to still wish that there had been some other way.” She took an uneven breath, the air clouding in front of her. “He was a bad man,” she whispered. “He was going to enslave me to his will, use me to take over Terrasen, maybe make himself king—maybe sire my—” She shuddered so violently that light shimmered off the gold in her dress. “But he also … I also owe him my life. All this time I thought it would be a relief, a joy to end him. But all I feel is hollow. And tired.” She was like ice when he slid an arm around her, folding her into his side. Just this once—just this once, he would let himself hold her. If he’d been asked to put down Maeve, and one of his cadre had done it instead—if Lorcan had done it—he would have felt the same. She twisted slightly to peer up at him, and though she tried to hide it, he could see the fear in her gaze, and the guilt. “I

“I want you to sell those. And burn this dress.” “As you wish,” he said, pocketing the combs. “Such a pity, though. Your enemies would have fallen to their knees if they ever saw you in it.” He’d almost fallen to his knees when he’d first seen her earlier tonight. She huffed a laugh that might have been a sob and wrapped her arms around his waist as if trying to steal his warmth. Her sodden hair tumbled down, the scent of her—jasmine and lemon verbena and crackling embers—rising above the smell of almonds to caress his nose, his senses. Rowan stood with his queen in the rain, breathing in her scent, and let her steal his warmth for as long as she needed.

She lifted a hand to cup Rowan’s face. So smooth, his skin, the bones beneath strong and elegant. She waited for him to pull back, but he just stared at her—stared into her in that way he always did. Friends, but more. So much more, and she’d known it longer than she wanted to admit. Carefully, she stroked her thumb across his cheekbone, his face slick with the rain. It hit her like a stone—the wanting. She was a fool to have dodged it, denied it, even when a part of her had screamed it every morning that she’d blindly reached for the empty half of the bed. She lifted her other hand to his face and his eyes locked onto hers, his breathing ragged as she traced the lines of the tattoo along his temple. His hands tightened slightly on her waist, his thumbs grazing the bottom of her ribcage. It was an effort not to arch into his touch. “Rowan,” she breathed, his name a plea and a prayer. She slid her fingers down the side of his tattooed cheek, and—

He dropped her hands as if they were on fire, stepping away, those green eyes flat and dull in a way she hadn’t seen for some time now. Her throat closed up even before he said, “Don’t do that. Don’t—touch me like that.” There was a roaring in her ears, a burning in her face, and she swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

Don’t touch me like that. A clear line in the sand. A line—because he was three hundred years old, and immortal, and had lost his flawless mate, and she was … She was young and inexperienced and his carranam and queen, and he wanted nothing more than that. If she hadn’t been so foolish, so stupidly unaware, maybe she would have realized that, understood that though she’d seen his eyes shine with hunger—hunger for her—it didn’t mean he wanted to act on it. Didn’t mean he might not hate himself for it. Oh, gods. What had she done?

At dinner, she’d seen the expression flash across his face when he caught Aelin and Rowan smiling at each other. All of Arobynn’s jabs and stories had failed to find their mark tonight because Aelin had been too lost in Rowan to hear. She wondered whether the queen knew. Rowan did. Aedion did. And Arobynn did. He had understood that with Rowan, she was no longer afraid of him; with Rowan, Arobynn was now utterly unnecessary. Irrelevant.

Lightning gleamed on the blade, a flicker of quicksilver. For Wesley. For Sam. For Aelin. And for herself. For the child she’d been, for the seventeen-year-old on her Bidding night, for the woman she’d become, her heart in shreds, her invisible wound still bleeding. It was so very easy to sit up and slice the knife across Arobynn’s throat.

Celaena Sardothien—that was who she’d been then, and who she’d become today. He hated it. Hated that he couldn’t reach her when she was that person. Hated that he’d snapped at her last night, had panicked at the touch of her hands. Now she’d shut him out entirely. This person she’d become today had no kindness, no joy.

“She snuck into the bank—all those times that she slipped out in the middle of the night. And used all those daytime meetings with the Master of the Bank to get a better sense of the layout, where things were kept.” This woman, this queen of his … A familiar thrill raced through his blood. “You burned the originals?” She didn’t even look at him. “Clarisse would have been a very rich woman, and Tern would have become King of the Assassins. And you know what I would have received? The Amulet of Orynth. That was all he left me.” “That was how you knew he truly had it—and where he kept it,” Rowan said. “From reading the will.” She shrugged again, dismissing the shock and admiration he couldn’t keep from his face. Dismissing him.

Aelin peered down at her former master, her face blank save for a slight tightening around her mouth. “I hope the dark god finds a special place for you in his realm,” she said, and a shiver went down Rowan’s spine at the midnight caress in her tone.

He supposed any lick of self-consciousness had been flayed from her under the whips of Endovier. Even though he’d tattooed over the bulk of the scars on her back, their ridges remained. The nightmares, too—when she’d still startle awake and light a candle to drive away the blackness they’d shoved her into, the memory of the lightless pits they’d used for punishment. His Fireheart, shut in the dark. He owed the overseers of Endovier a visit.

He needed to sort this out—needed to get her to just look at him again, so he could try to explain that he hadn’t been prepared. Having her touch the tattoo that told the story of what he’d done and how he’d lost Lyria … He hadn’t been ready for what he felt in that moment. The desire hadn’t been what shook him at all. It was just … Aelin had driven him insane these past few weeks, and yet he hadn’t considered what it would be like to have her look at him with interest. It wasn’t at all the way it had been with the lovers he’d taken in the past: even when he’d cared for them, he hadn’t really cared. Being with them had never made him think of that flower market. Never made him remember that he was alive and touching another woman while Lyria—Lyria was dead. Slaughtered. And Aelin … If he went down that road, and if something happened to her … His chest seized at the thought. So he needed to sort it out—needed to sort himself out, too, no matter what he wanted from her. Even if it was agony.

“What Nelly doesn’t know yet is that the opium monger was actually caught two days ago. Killed on sight by the king’s men. You know, I do think Arobynn sometimes had no idea whether he really wanted to help me or not.” It had been his casual mention of it at dinner that had set her thinking, planning. Rowan murmured, “So his supply in the catacombs is now unguarded.” She peered into the gloom below. “Finders keepers,” she said, and jumped.

Brilliant sneaky woman 😈