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“Because she is dead!” She screamed the last word so loudly it burned in her throat. “Because she is dead, and I am left with my worthless life!” He merely stared at her with that animal stillness. When she walked away, he didn’t come after her.
Skinwalkers are on the prowl, Rowan had warned that first day they’d trained, searching for human pelts to bring back to their caves.
He was right. The magic hadn’t swarmed her the moment she’d shifted, and even in the explosion that had spread out in every direction, she’d had enough control to preserve herself. Not a single hair had burned. “Why was it different this time?” he pressed. “Because I didn’t want you to die to save me,” she admitted. “Would you have shifted to save yourself?” “Your opinion of me is pretty much identical to my own, so you know the answer.”
He unfastened his cloak. “Because I said so, that’s why.” And she might have told him it was the worst gods-damned reason she had ever
heard, and that he was an arrogant prick, had he not tossed her his cloak—dry and warm. Then he dropped his jacket in her lap, too. When he turned to go back to the fortress, she followed him.
Titus growled a territorial warning at the bait beast again, so loud she could feel it in every bone. Instead, the bait beast, small as he was, was gazing at her with something like rage and determination. Emotion, she might have called it. Hunger, but not for her. No, she realized as the beast lifted its black gaze to Titus, letting out a low snarl in response. Not submissive in the least, that sound. A threat—a promise. The bait beast wanted a shot at Titus. Allies. If only for this moment.
The bait beast thrashed, but couldn’t get free. Manon knew she should run. Others were shouting. She had been born without sympathy or mercy or kindness. She didn’t care which one of them lived or died, so long as she escaped. But that current was still flowing, flowing toward the fight, not away from it. And she owed the bait beast a life debt. So Manon did the most foolish thing she’d ever done in her long, wicked life.
The wyvern blinked at her, Titus’s blood still dripping from his cracked and broken teeth, and Manon had the feeling that he had come to the same decision. Perhaps he had known long before tonight, and his fight with Titus hadn’t been so much about survival as it had been a challenge to claim her. As his rider. As his mistress. As his
She’d use every moment until the War Games to train him. When she and her Thirteen were crowned victors, she’d make each and every one of the witches who doubted her, her grandmother included, curse themselves for fools. 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.
Dorian was on his feet so fast the chair rocked behind him, and had her face between his hands a heartbeat after that. “Yes,” he breathed, and kissed her. It was fast—but her face was flushed, and her eyes wide as he pulled back. His own eyes were wide, gods be damned, and he was still rubbing his thumb against her soft cheek. Still contemplating going back for more, because that hadn’t been nearly enough.
Was that why he’d told her about the body? Bastard—bastard for manipulating her, for making her pull double duty in the kitchen.
But his face was unreadable as he said, “Let it be a blade, Aelin. If you cannot find the peace, then at least hone the anger that guides you to the shift. Embrace and control it—it is not your enemy.”
She could die for love of this speed, this surety in her bones. How had she been afraid of this body for so long? Even her soul felt looser. As if it had been locked up and buried and was only now starting to shake free. Not joy, perhaps not ever, but a glimmer of what she had been before grief had decimated her so thoroughly.
Her mother had called her Fireheart.
She leaned against the stone wall of the narrow landing, a hand on her thundering heart. It was the smart thing to do, the right thing to do. She had survived this long, and would only survive the road ahead if she continued to be unnoticed, reliable, quiet. But she didn’t want to be unnoticed—not with him, not forever. He made her want to laugh and sing and shake the world with her voice. The door swung open, and she found him standing in the doorway, solemn and wary. Maybe there could be no future, no hope of anything more, but just looking at him standing there, in this moment, she wanted
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she grabbed the lapels of his tunic, pulled his face down to hers, and kissed him fiercely.
Saying those last words made a sharp, quick panic rise up in her, an aching pain that had her throat closing. “You left me,” she repeated. Maybe it was only out of blind terror at the abyss opening up again around her, but she whispered, “I have no one left. No one.”
Elentiya. Elentiya. Spirit that cannot be broken
“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.”
It had been ten years—ten long years since she had heard her mother’s voice. But she heard it then over the force of her weeping, as clear as if she knelt beside her. Fireheart—why do you cry? “Because I am lost,” she whispered onto the earth. “And I do not know the way.”
Still, Manon led Abraxos out through the gates and to their usual takeoff spot. They had a long way to fly today and tomorrow—all the way to the edge of the Ruhnn Mountains.
To find spidersilk. And the legendary Stygian spiders, large as horses and deadlier than poison, who wove it.
She’d awoken that morning feeling . . . clear. The grief and pain were still there, writhing inside her, but for the first time in a long while, she felt as though she could see. As though she could breathe.
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.”
Chaol closed his eyes for a moment. “A part of me will always love her. But I had to get her out of this castle. Because it was too dangerous, and she was . . . what she was becoming . . .” “She was not becoming anything different from what she always was and always had the capacity to be. You just finally saw everything. And once you saw that other part of her . . . ,” Dorian said quietly. It had taken him until now, until Sorscha, to understand what that meant. “You cannot pick and choose what parts of her to love.” He pitied Chaol, he realized. His heart hurt for his friend, for all that
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And he knew, deep down, that she had not blinked at his magic but rather understood that burden, and that fear. She had not walked away or wished him to be anything but what he was. I’ll come back for you
Aedion said, “When your men have died around you, when you have seen your women unforgivably hurt, when you have watched droves of orphaned children starve to death in the streets of your city, then you can talk to me about sparing innocent lives. Until then, the fact remains, Captain, that you have not picked a side because you are still a boy, and you are still afraid. Not of losing innocent lives, but of losing whatever dream it is you’re clinging to. Your prince has moved on, my queen has moved on. But you have not. And it will cost you in the end.”
Curled as she was against her knees, he could see the whole expanse of ruined flesh, each scar from the lashings. “Who did that to you?” It would have been easy to lie, but she was so tired, and he had saved her useless hide. So she said, “A lot of people. I spent some time in the Salt Mines of Endovier.” He was so still that she wondered if he’d stopped breathing. “How long?” he asked after a moment. She braced herself for the pity, but his face was so carefully blank—no, not blank. Calm with lethal rage.
There would be more time to tell him of what happened next—of the Wyrdkeys and Elena and Nehemia and how she had become so broken and useless. She yawned, and Rowan rubbed his eyes, his other hand still in hers. But he didn’t let go. And when she awoke before dawn, warm and safe and rested, Rowan was still holding her hand, clasped to his chest. Something molten rushed through her, pouring over every crack and fracture still left gaping and open. Not to hurt or mar—but to weld. To forge.
“You are one of the Thirteen,” she said to him. “From now until the Darkness cleaves us apart. You are mine, and I am yours. Let’s show them why.”
But these days . . . she didn’t know what she needed. What she wanted. If she felt like admitting it, she actually didn’t have the faintest clue who the hell she was anymore. All she knew was that whatever and whoever climbed out of that abyss of despair and grief would not be the same person who had plummeted in. And maybe that was a good thing.
Working with him was so effortless. There was no judgment, no need to explain herself. She knew no one would ever replace Nehemia, and she never wanted anyone to, but Rowan made her feel . . . better. As if she could finally breathe after months of suffocating. Yet now
And when she grasped the dagger, its weight lighter than she remembered, Rowan looked into her eyes, into the very core of her, and said, “Fireheart.”
“I claim you, Rowan Whitethorn. I don’t care what you say and how much you protest. I claim you as my friend.”
This was the least she owed those murdered in Endovier and Calaculla—the least she could do, after so long. A monster to destroy monsters.
A game that had begun at the dawn of time, when a demon race had forged the Wyrdkeys and used them to break into this world, and Maeve had used their power to banish them. But some demons had remained trapped in Erilea and waged a second war centuries later, when Elena fought against them. What of the others, who had been sent back to their realm? What if the King of Adarlan, in learning of the keys, had also learned where to find them? Where to . . . harness them? Oh gods. “You are the Valg,” she breathed. The three things inside those mortal bodies smiled. “We are princes of our realm.” “And
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Rowan was screaming as the creature pulled her into its arms. As she stopped fighting. As her flames winked out and darkness swallowed her whole.
She was too stunned to object as her mother slipped the chain over her head and arranged the amulet down her front. It hung almost to her navel, a warm, heavy weight. “Never take it off. Never lose it.” Her mother kissed her brow. “Wear it, and know that you are loved, Fireheart—that you are safe, and it is the strength of this”—she placed a hand on her heart—“that matters. Wherever you go, Aelin,” she whispered, “no matter how far, this will lead you home.”
She would fill the world with it, with her light—her gift. She would light up the darkness, so brightly that all who were lost or wounded or broken would find their way to it, a beacon for those who still dwelled in that abyss. It would not take a monster to destroy a monster—but light, light to drive out darkness. She was not afraid. She would remake the world—remake it for them, those she had loved with this glorious, burning heart; a world so brilliant and prosperous that when she saw them again in the Afterworld,
she would not be ashamed. She would build it for her people, who had survived this long, and whom she would not abandon. She would make for them a kingdom such as there had never been, even if it took until her last breath. She was their queen, and she could offer them nothing less. Aelin Galathynius smiled at her, hand still outreached. “Get up,” the princess said. Celaena reached across the earth between them and brushed her fingers against Aelin’s. And arose.
“We’re all risking something.” There was so little of the friend he’d grown up with. The prince glanced at his pocket watch. “I need to go.” Dorian stalked to the stairs, and there was no fear in his face, no doubt, as he said, “You gave me the truth today, so I’ll share mine: even if it meant us being friends again, I don’t think I would want to go back to how it was before—who I was before. And this . . .” He jerked his chin toward the scattered crystals and the bowl of water. “I think this is a good change, too. Don’t fear it.” Dorian left,
So she steeled herself. “I have never told anyone this story. No one in the world knows it. But it’s mine,” she said, blinking past the burning in her eyes, “and it’s time for me to tell it.” Rowan leaned back on the rock, bracing his palms behind him. “Once upon a time,” she said to him, to the world, to herself, “in a land long since burned to ash, there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom . . . very much.” And then she told him of the princess whose heart had burned with wildfire, of the mighty kingdom in the north, of its downfall and of the sacrifice of Lady Marion. It was a long
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she reminded herself of her plan and of what she needed to accomplish before she left this city. She was as much a queen as Maeve. She was the sovereign of a strong people and a mighty kingdom. She was the heir of ash and fire, and she would bow to no one.
With this power—with the keys she’d attained—what she had created for them, the armies she had made to drive out their enemies, the crops she had grown, the shadows she had chased away . . . these things were nothing short of a miracle. She was more than human, more than queen. Aelin. Beloved. Immortal. Blessed. Aelin. Aelin of the Wildfire. Aelin Fireheart. Aelin Light-Bringer. Aelin. She raised her arms, tipping back her head to the sunlight, and their cries made the entirety of the White Palace tremble. On her brow, a mark—the sacred mark of Brannon’s line—glowed blue. She smiled at the
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Three lines of text scrolled over her three largest scars, the story of her love and loss now written on her: one line for her parents and uncle; one line for Lady Marion; and one line for her court and her people. On the smaller, shorter scars, were the stories of Nehemia and of Sam. Her beloved dead. No longer would they be locked away in her heart. No longer would she be ashamed.
“No.” Chaol thought he had not heard it, the word that cleaved through the air just before the guard’s sword did. One blow from that mighty sword. That was all it took to sever Sorscha’s head. The scream that erupted out of Dorian was the worst sound that Chaol had ever heard. Worse even than the wet, heavy thud of her head hitting the red marble. Aedion began roaring—roaring and cursing at the king, thrashing against his chains, but the guards hauled him away, and Chaol was too stunned to do anything other than watch the rest of Sorscha’s body topple to the ground. And then Dorian, still
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He looked at his friend, perhaps for the last time, and said what he had always known, from the moment they’d met, when he’d understood that the prince was his brother in soul. “I love you.” Dorian merely nodded, eyes still blazing, and lifted his hands again toward his father. Brother. Friend. King.
She lifted her face to the stars. She was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir of two mighty bloodlines, protector of a once-glorious people, and Queen of Terrasen. She was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius—and she would not be afraid.
Celaena Sardothien
“Perhaps if you hadn’t been reading all night, you wouldn’t be so exhausted,”
