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Aelin disappeared into a dip in the earth, and when she emerged, the Lion ran at her side, a golden shield around her. Not close to her—but in the air around them. Unable to fully touch her with the iron mask, the chains draped around her torso. The iron gauntlets on her hands.
KOA - officially crying
He opened his mouth, to shout what, he didn’t know, but a cry pierced the blue sky. The sob that came out of Aelin at the hawk’s bellow of fury cracked Lorcan’s chest.
KOA - I am ended
Aelin let out another sob, and then moaned, “Fenrys.”
KOA - please
“Take her to the glen.” A jerk of his chin to Gavriel. “You’re with me.”
KOA - go get him
Then Cairn beheld the frozen rage in Rowan’s eyes. Understood what he intended to do with that sharp, sharp knife. A dark stain spread across the front of Cairn’s pants.
KOA - LMAOOOO
She tugged at one of the metal gauntlets. It didn’t budge. She tugged again. The gauntlet didn’t so much as shift. “Take it off.”
KOA - please I’m screaming
“Take it off,” she breathed, lips curling back from her teeth. “Take it off. ”
KOA - my heart I can’t
The queen dropped to her knees, bowing over them, and clawed at the mask. It didn’t so much as move.
KOA - this hurts so much
Aelin ripped at the immovable mask, either unaware or uncaring of the prince before her. Her consort, husband, and mate. “Aelin.”
KOA - no no no
Aelin sobbed, her body shuddering with the force of it. “Take it off. ” Rowan’s eyes flickered, panic and heartbreak and longing shining there. “I will. But you have to be still, Fireheart. Just for a few moments.” “Take it off. ” The sobs ebbed, tricking into something broken and raw. Rowan ran his thumbs over her wrists, over those iron shackles. As if it were nothing but her skin. Slowly, her shaking eased.
KOA - I just can’t okay my heart is too sore
Elide blurted, scrambling for anything to banish that emptiness, “Was there ever a key? Did you see them using a key?” Two blinks. As if that meant something.
KOA - this is actually what’s done it. Aelin and Fenrys are just everything
Aside from a bruise along her ribs, there was nothing. Not a mark. Not a callus. Not a single scar. The ones Elide had marked in those days before Aelin had been taken were gone. As if someone had wiped them away.
KOA - I’m just non stop sobbing
Encased in flame, Aelin walked to Fenrys. The white wolf did not stir. Sorrow softened her face, even with that quiet distance. Sorrow, and gratitude.
KOA - I’m shaken to my core
Aelin knelt beside Fenrys, and her flame enveloped them both. The fire gave way to a reddish-gold aura, a shield that he knew would melt the flesh of anyone who tried to cross. It flowed and rippled around them, a bubble of coppery air, and through it, Rowan watched as she ran a hand down the wolf’s battered side.
KOA - the tenderness hurts
Fenrys cracked open an eye. Agony filled it—agony and yet something like relief, and joy, at the sight of her bare face. And exhaustion.
KOA - they have my heart
For Fenrys’s loyalty, for his sacrifice, there was no greater reward she could offer. To keep him from death, there was no other way to save him. Only this. Only the blood oath.
KOA - he deserves it more than anyone else
Aelin curled on her side next to him, flames encompassing them both. Rowan couldn’t move. None of them moved. Aelin mouthed a short, curt word. Fenrys did not respond. She spoke again, that queen’s face unfaltering. Live.
KOA - stop it I am such a mess it hurts
She was staring at nothing. Fenrys nudged her shoulder with his furry head. She ran an idle hand through the wolf’s white coat. Rowan’s heart clenched.
KOA - my heart also clenched
“But were you to succeed,” Glennis pressed, “who would you wish to be?” He didn’t know. Couldn’t conjure an image beyond empty darkness.
KOA - Dorian not knowing who he wants to be is genuinely so valid like bro just got magic and became king and he’s like 21
But Manon knelt on the festering earth, unsheathed her iron nails, and began digging. Yanking off her gloves, Asterin lowered herself to the ground nearby. Then Sorrel and Vesta. Then the rest of the Thirteen.
KOA - she is trying
For hours, Manon and the Thirteen knelt in the blood-soaked earth and dug the grave.
KOA - morbid
Dorian’s magic flared, rallying to strike, as the figure took form. As Kaltain Rompier, clad in an onyx gown and dark hair unbound, smiled sadly at him.
KOA - KALTAIN
“I never thought to summon you,” he admitted. “You, who knew Morath’s true horrors. I didn’t realize …” He let the words trail off as he rose to his feet.
KOA - she is so underrated
Who do you wish to be? “Someone worthy of my friends,” he said into the quiet night. “A king worthy of his kingdom.” For a heartbeat, snow-white hair and golden eyes flashed into his mind. “Happy,”
KOA - this breaks my heart
exhausted soldiers trickled past Lysandra as she trudged between them, wearing the form of a horse. She’d allowed a young man onto her back when she’d spied his guts nearly hanging out of his rent armor. For long miles, his leaking blood had warmed her sides as he lay sprawled over her. The warm trickle had long stopped. Frozen. So had he. She hadn’t the heart to dislodge him, to leave his dead body on the field to be trampled. His blood had frozen him to her anyway.
KOA - my heart aches for her rn
Then the prince growled softly, “Your plan was bullshit.” She said nothing, and couldn’t stop her shoulders from curving inward.
KOA - I am an Aedion Stan but this is cringe
“Is he alive?” Cold rage flickered across Rowan’s eyes. “No.” Dead. Cairn was dead. The tautness in her body eased—just slightly. Her flame, too, banked. “How?” No remorse dimmed his face. “You once told me at Mistward that if I ever took a whip to you, then you’d skin me alive.” His eyes didn’t stray from hers as he said with lethal quiet, “I took it upon myself to bestow that fate on Cairn on your behalf. And when I was done, I took the liberty of removing his head from his body, then burning what remained.” A pause, a ripple of doubt. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you the chance to do it
...more
KOA - I would have done the same babes
“I didn’t break,” she said quietly. His heart cracked at the words. “I didn’t tell them anything.” She didn’t say it for praise, to boast. But rather to tell him, her consort, of where they stood in this war. What their enemies might know. “I knew you wouldn’t,” he managed to say.
KOA - this is so rough
Then she asked softly, “How long?” It took the entirety of his three centuries of training to keep the devastation, the agony for her, from his face. “Two months, three days, and seven hours.”
KOA - TOO LONG
He’d done it for her. She knew it. He’d summoned Maeve’s armada because he’d believed they were about to be destroyed by Melisande’s fleet. He’d done it for her, just as he’d dropped the shield around them that day Fenrys had ripped a chunk out of her arm, in exchange for Gavriel’s healing her.
KOA - Lorcan loves Elide in a toxic way
Aelin didn’t wait for the boat to cease rocking before she grabbed a lantern and leaped onto the river-smooth ground. Rowan swore, jumping after her. “Stay here,” he warned whoever remained on the boat.
KOA - queens jump out of moving boats
“I came here, didn’t I?” “For whom, exactly? Rowan? Aelin?” “For both of them. And for you.” There. Let it be laid before them.
KOA - “and for you” Lorcan is just a baby boy
forget about you, to let you go—” “I don’t care about me! I didn’t care about me on that beach!” “Well, I do.” His growled words echoed across the water and stone, and he lowered his voice. Worse things than wights might come sniffing down here. “I cared about you on that beach. And your queen did, too.”
KOA - STOP I AM SICK TO MY STOMACH OVER THIS
Aelin’s lips curved in a hint of a smile. She blinked at Fenrys—three times. Fenrys blinked once in answer. A code. They’d made up some silent code to communicate when he’d been ordered to remain in his wolf form.
KOA - I’m actually crying
A small sigh broke from Fenrys before he folded Aelin into his arms, a shudder rippling through him. Rowan couldn’t see her face, perhaps didn’t need to, as her hands gripped Fenrys’s jacket, so tightly they were white-knuckled.
KOA - my trauma babies :(
Silently, Rowan grasped her own hand and eased on the emerald ring. “To whatever end,” he whispered. Silver lined her eyes. “To whatever end.” A reminder—and a vow, more sacred than the wedding oaths they’d sworn on that ship. To walk this path together, back from the darkness of the iron coffin. To face what waited in Terrasen, ancient promises to the gods be damned.
KOA - I just want them to be happy
“I’m surprised Sartaq will let his future empress fly against them,” Borte said slyly. The girl had relentlessly teased her these weeks. Nesryn scowled. “Where’s Yeran?” Borte stuck out her tongue, despite the army inching toward them. “Burning in hell, for all I care.”
KOA - love my girlies banter
His father looked at him at last, his face grave. “Your wife is pregnant.” The shock roiled through Chaol like a physical blow. Yrene—Yrene— “A skilled healer she might be, but a deft liar, she is not. Or have you not noticed her hand frequently resting on her stomach, or how green she turns at mealtime?”
KOA - actually lowkey love this interaction not gonna lie
“We will lose this war if I do not go,” he snapped. “How do you not care about that?” “I care,” she hissed. “I care if we lose this war. I care if I fail to rally the Crochans. I care if you go into Morath and do not return, not as something worth living.” He only blinked. Manon spat on the mossy ground. “Now do you wish to tell me that caring is not such a bad thing? Well, this is what comes of it.”
KOA - Manon needs to learn to regulate her emotions. Poor gal
“Fine. But find yourself another tent to sleep in tonight.”
KOA - this hurt??
“Why would it ever hurt me to know the truth that was already in my heart? The truth I hoped for?”
KOA - Rowan is such a sweetie but I can only imagine how terrible he must have felt thinking this when he thought Lyria was his mate
“The male I fell in love with was you. It was you, who knew pain as I did, and who walked with me through it, back to the light. Maeve didn’t understand that. That even if she could create that perfect world, it wouldn’t be you with me. And I’d never trade that, trade this. Not for anything.”
KOA - crying
“So I’ll make you an offer, Lorcan Salvaterre.” She tapped her bare forearm. “Swear the blood oath to me, and I’ll let you roam wherever you wish.”
KOA - GIRL
“I don’t have another choice,” Aelin said quietly, so the others might not hear. “I can’t risk Terrasen.” She still held her arm toward him. “But I would not take something as precious away from you.” “What you don’t realize is that is no longer a possibility.” Again, that hint of a smile and glance over her shoulder toward Elide. “It is.”
KOA - listen it’s very cute of her to do this for Elide and Lorcan but also I would want him in my army
“Welcome to the court,” Aelin said. “Here’s your first and only order: protect Terrasen and its people.” The command settled in him, too, another little spark that glowed down deep.
KOA - WeLcOmE tO tHe CoURt
“Ride with us,” Manon breathed. “Fly with us. Against Morath. Against the people who would keep you from your homeland, your future.” Murmuring broke out again. Manon pushed ahead, “An Ironteeth-Crochan alliance. Perhaps one to break our curse at last.”
KOA - her POWER hurts. Petrah literally gets it tho even if she’s acting like she doesn’t
He just turned to her and blinked three times. Are you all right? A gull’s cry pierced the gray world, and Aelin blinked back twice. No. It was as much as she’d admit. She blinked again, thrice now. Are you all right? Two blinks from him, too. No, they were not all right.
KOA - I need them to be happy
before they were interrupted. By the person Chaol least expected to walk through the flaps.
KOA - HELL YEAH
Lysandra hit the snow, shouting in pain, and Aedion was there, heaving her up, yanking his sword from the ilken’s head and bringing it down upon the sinewy neck. Once. Twice. The ilken’s head tumbled into the snow and mud, the other beast instantly swallowed by the Morath soldiers who had paused to watch. Who now looked upon the queen and her general and charged.
KOA - waited until she was slashed tho *rolls eyes*
No one spoke as tears began sliding down her face. Not at his being here, Chaol realized as he took up his cane and limped toward Aelin.
KOA - wholesome exes
