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Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir of fire, beloved of Mala Light-Bringer, and rightful Queen of Terrasen,
Black for death; black for his two Wyrdkeys; black for the Valg demons he was now using to build himself an unstoppable army.
Aelin swaggered the last few steps to the banquette and paused in front of it, crossing her arms as she beheld Arobynn Hamel, the King of the Assassins and her former master, smiling up at her.
Actually, I believe the title our esteemed friends in the empire now like to use is ‘fire-breathing bitch-queen.’”
By the time the copper thudded on the table, the wyvern glinting in the dim light, Aelin Galathynius was ready for bloodshed.
“Should I not kill the people who kidnap and beat my friends?” Aelin said softly. “Am I not supposed to react with violence when I receive notes threatening to kill my friends? Am I not supposed to gut the self-serving prick who had my beloved friend assassinated?”
“If I’d come here on the king’s orders, Nesryn Faliq, you’d have been dead minutes ago.”
Lysandra held her gaze. “Archer’s dead.” “Because I gutted him,” Aelin said sweetly.
“Should you decide not to fulfill your end of the bargain … you’ll find out very quickly, Celaena darling, how deadly this city can be for those on the run—even fire-breathing bitch-queens.”
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.
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.
She was a whirling cloud of death, a queen of shadows, and these men were already carrion.
Her scent hit him. For a second, he could only breathe it deep into his lungs, his Fae instincts roaring that this was his family, this was his queen, this was Aelin. He would have known her even if he were blind. Even if there was another scent entwined with hers. Staggeringly powerful and ancient and—male. Interesting.
“I’m making my professional assessment,” she said, keeping pace beside him. “As an assassin, queen, or pit-brawler?”
Rowan was the most powerful full-blooded Fae male alive. And his scent was all over her. Yet she had no gods-damned idea.
“Who is that?” Nesryn asked. Aedion smiled. “Rowan.”
“When you shift, will your hawk form be plucked, then?”
Prince Rowan wants formalities, I can grovel, but he doesn’t look like someone who particularly cares.” With a flicker of amusement in his green eyes, the Fae Prince said, “Whatever my queen wants.”
While they’d been in Wendlyn, it had taken him a while to realize she was beautiful. Months, actually, to really notice it. And for these past few weeks, against his better judgment, he’d thought often about that face—especially that smart-ass mouth.
If Lorcan is going to murder me in my sleep, I might as well look good.”
That gods-damned nightgown. Shit. He was in such deep, unending shit.
A girl who was not afraid to sleep against a wyvern, who had enough common sense to tell when danger might be approaching … Perhaps that blood really did run blue.
“I’d be jealous of a shape-shifter. Shifting into any form I please would come in rather handy.” She considered it. “A shape-shifter would make a powerful ally. And an even more entertaining friend.”
“Let’s go hunt ourselves a pretty little demon.”
“But for ten years, until I came here, I endured Vernon because of her. Because of the hope that she got away, and my mother’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain. I thought that one day, Aelin would come to save me—would remember I existed and rescue me from that tower.”
“Thank you for the oil,” he added. “My skin was a little dry.”
He would probably have been even more scandalized to learn I’m not wearing any undergarments beneath this dress
Queen of the Assassins sounds so nice, doesn’t it?”
“I want to take my time with you—to learn … every inch of you. And this apartment has very, very thin walls. I don’t want to have an audience,” he added as he leaned down again, brushing his mouth over the cut at the base of her throat, “when I make you moan, Aelin.”
“Hello, princeling,” she purred.
“Hello, princeling,” she said, her voice bedroom-soft and full of glorious death. “Hello, witchling,” he said.
“But would you bleed red, or black?” “I’ll bleed whatever color you tell me to.”
The Queen of Terrasen had saved her life. Manon didn’t know what to make of it. For she now owed her enemy a life debt. And she had just learned how thoroughly her grandmother and the King of Adarlan intended to destroy them.
Manon gazed westward across the mountains. Hope, Elide had said—hope for a better future. For a home. Not obedience, brutality, discipline. But hope.
“Because that golden-haired witch, Asterin … ,” Aelin said. “She screamed Manon’s name the way I screamed yours.”
“You make me want to live, Rowan. Not survive; not exist. Live.”
WITCH KILLER— THE HUMAN IS STILL INSIDE HIM
Then she smiled with every last shred of courage, of desperation, of hope for the glimmer of that glorious future. “Let’s go rattle the stars.”
“Tell His Majesty that his Champion has returned—and she’s brought him one hell of a prize.”
“I do wonder,” the king mused, leaning back on his throne, “who has been conspiring more: the captain, or you, Champion. Or should I call you Aelin?”
Omg omg olmg
She was fury, she was wrath, she was vengeance.
Aelin extended her hand—a question and an offer and a promise. “To a better future,” she said. “You came back,” he said, as if that were an answer. They joined hands. So the world ended. And the next one began.
But she kept that wall of flame burning—for the Royal Theater. And the flower girls at the market. For the slaves and the courtesans and the Faliq family. For the city that had offered her joy and pain, death and rebirth, for the city that had given her music, Aelin kept that wall of fire burning bright.
“My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius,” she said. “And I am the Queen of Terrasen.”
The King of Adarlan was dead. Destroyed by Aelin Galathynius. She had shattered his glass castle, used her fire to spare the city from a deadly wave of glass, and declared Dorian Havilliard King of Adarlan. The Witch Killer had done it.
She was a Blackbeak; she was no one’s slave. No one’s prize horse to breed. Neither was Elide.
“You find Celaena Sardothien. Give her this. No one else. No one else. Tell her that you can open any door, if you have the key. And tell her to remember her promise to me—to punish them all. When she asks why, tell her I said that they would not let me bring the cloak she gave me, but I kept a piece of it. To remember that promise she made. To remember to repay her for a warm cloak in a cold dungeon.”
Punish them all. She burned the cradles. She burned the monsters within. She burned the men and their demon princes. And then she burned the witches, who looked at her with gratitude in their eyes and embraced the dark flame.
“You make me want to live, too, Aelin Galathynius,” he said. “Not exist—but live.”
“There is no one else I’d want guarding my back. If my people cannot see the worth of a woman who sold herself into slavery for the sake of a child, who defended my court with no thought for her own life, then they are not my people. And they can burn in hell.”
