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October 30 - December 22, 2024
The head laundress, a haughty bull, snorted and said she hadn’t seen Elide, and perhaps the cripple had gotten what was coming to her. Manon left her screaming on the floor, four lines gouged across her face.
They released Elide to grab their weapons, and she sagged to the floor. Manon just said, “You’re already dead men.”
Regret. It had been regret she’d felt that night she’d killed the Crochan. Regret and guilt and shame, for acting on blind obedience, for being a coward when the Crochan had held her head high and spoken truth.
“How long has it been since you destroyed the demon inside that collar, Kaltain?” A low, broken laugh. “A while.” “Does the duke know?” “My dark liege sees what he wants to see.”
“What is that?” Manon asked, sniffing subtly. Kaltain just squeezed Elide’s fingers. “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.”
She was a wolf. She was death, devourer of worlds.
Lysandra vomited black blood all over him. Rowan didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe as Lysandra, panting, gaped at Lorcan, and at the blood on his neck and chest. Slowly, too slowly, Lorcan looked down at himself.
Her arms draped around him, she pressed her face into his neck as he carried her toward the bed, and breathed in his scent. When he made to set her down, she held on to him, a silent request. So Rowan sat on the bed, holding her in his lap as he stretched out his legs and settled into the rows of pillows. For a moment, they said nothing.
He shifted his arm so he could brush her hair back. His fingers lingered along her jaw. “You make me want to live, too, Aelin Galathynius,” he said. “Not exist—but live.” He cupped her cheek, and took a steadying breath—as if he’d thought about every word these past three days, over and over again. “I spent centuries wandering the world, from empires to kingdoms to wastelands, never settling, never stopping—not for one moment. I was always looking toward the horizon, always wondering what waited across the next ocean, over the next mountain. But I think … I think that whole time, all those
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The kiss was slow—thorough. As if they had all the time in the world. As if they were the only ones in it.
“There is no one who deserves it more,” Aelin said, grabbing her friend’s hand and putting the ring on her finger. “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.”
“To a new world,” the Queen of Terrasen said. The King of Adarlan lifted his glass, such endless shadows dancing in his eyes, but—there. A glimmer of life. “To freedom.”
“It was like dying a little every day. It was like being alive, too. It was joy so complete it was pain. It destroyed me and unmade me and forged me. I hated it, because I knew I couldn’t escape it, and knew it would forever change me. And that witchling … I loved her, too. I loved her in a way I cannot describe—other than to tell you that it was the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt, greater than rage, than lust, than magic.”
“I’m surprised you’re not giving me the ‘Obedience. Discipline. Brutality’ speech.” Made into monsters. “Things are changing,” Manon said. “Good,” Asterin said. “We’re immortals. Things should change, and often, or they’ll get boring.” Manon lifted her brows, and her Second grinned. Manon shook her head and grinned back.
The king looked at her pointed ears, the elongated canines, and lifted a brow. “You look good, Majesty.”
But as they rode out of Rifthold, that city that had been her home and her hell and her salvation, as she memorized each street and building and face and shop, each smell and the coolness of the river breeze, she didn’t see one slave. Didn’t hear one whip. And as they passed by the domed Royal Theater, there was music—beautiful, exquisite music—playing within.
Changing winds—a changing world. Perhaps a changing Thirteen, too. And herself. She didn’t know what to make of it. But Manon hoped they’d all survive it. She hoped.
Sometimes when no one was watching, he’d sneak up behind her and nuzzle her neck or tug at her earlobe with his teeth, or just slide his arms around her and hold her against him, breathing her in.
Terrasen. And the smell—of pine and snow … How had she never realized that Rowan’s scent was of Terrasen, of home? Rowan came close enough to graze her shoulder and murmured, “I feel as if I’ve been looking for this place my entire life.”
Aelin ran a hand over the rough rock, and the sun-warmed stone tingled as if in greeting. Then she stepped beyond the stone. And at long last, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was home.
Because for Terrasen, for Erilea, Elena would walk into the eternal darkness lurking across the valley to buy them all a chance. Elena sent up a final prayer on a pillar of smoke rising from the valley floor that the unborn, faraway scions of this night, heirs to a burden that would doom or save Erilea, would forgive her for what she was about to do.
But—there. Like some thread in a great tapestry had snagged, her body locked up.
Especially whenever Aedion and Lysandra got so sick of their silent, heated glances that the two made up flimsy excuses to get Aelin and Rowan out of sight and scent for a while:
Aelin broke the kiss, breathing ragged, satisfied to find Rowan’s own chest rising and falling in an uneven rhythm. So new—this thing between them was still so new, so … raw. Utterly consuming. The desire was only the start of it. Rowan made her magic sing. And maybe that was the carranam bond between them, but … her magic wanted to dance with his. And from the frost sparkling in his eyes, she knew his own demanded the same.
She’d been in love with him for a while now. Longer than she wanted to admit.
“Fireheart,” he said onto her mouth. “Buzzard,” she murmured onto his.
Rowan laughed again—and Aelin thought she might never get sick of it, that laugh. That smile.
Two dreams long believed lost, she realized as the northern wind ruffled her hair. That she would do anything—ruin herself, sell herself—to protect.
And Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen, knew the time would soon come to prove just how much she’d bleed for Erilea.
And perhaps something like fear went through Manon. At the Matron’s accusation—and the line her Thirteen were drawing. Had drawn for some time now.
And with the fiery queen now gone, Dorian Havilliard and his city were defenseless. It mattered little to her. It was war. Fight this war, and go home to the Wastes at the end of it. Even if this man, this demon king, might very well renege on his word.
But Aelin had promised herself, months and months ago, that she would not pretend to be anything but what she was. She had crawled through darkness and blood and despair—she had survived.
“What a waste of a life that was,” Darrow spat. “A princess actually dedicated to her people, who fought until her last breath for—” “One more word,” Rowan said softly, “and I don’t care how many lords support you or what your laws are. One more word about that, and I will gut you before you can get up from that chair. Understand?”
Rowan’s grin was fierce, wicked. He leaned in, grazing his mouth against hers. “I have no plans to let him keep that throne, either, Aelin.”
“When you find me again, we will have that night. I don’t care where, or who is around.” He pressed a kiss to her neck and said onto her rain-slick skin, “You are my Fireheart.”
And through the rain and fire and ice, through the dark and lightning and thunder, a word flickered into her head, an answer and a challenge and a truth she immediately denied, ignored. Not for herself, but for him—for him—
Aelin met Murtaugh’s stare. “I do not know you, Lord, but you were loyal to my uncle—to my family these long years.” She slid a dagger free of a hidden sheath along her thigh. They flinched as she sliced into her palm. Even Aedion started. Aelin clenched her bloodied palm into a fist, holding it in the air between them. “Because of that loyalty, you will understand what blood promises mean to me when I say if that girl comes to harm, physical or otherwise, I do not care what laws exist, what rules I will break.” Lysandra had now turned to them, her shifter senses detecting blood. “If
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Aelin said, “I promise you that no matter how far I go, no matter the cost, when you call for my aid, I will come. I promise you on my blood, on my family’s name, that I will not turn my back on Terrasen as you have turned your back on me. I promise you, Darrow, that when the day comes and you crawl for my help, I will put my kingdom before my pride and not kill you for this. I think the true punishment will be seeing me on the throne for the rest of your miserable life.”
Again, that mighty wind blasted the castle, shoving back any approaching forces, setting the stones groaning. A wind that smelled of pine and snow—a familiar, strange scent. Ancient and clever and cruel.
Rowan blasted through them with half a thought, wood splintering and impaling the lavish furniture, the art on the walls. Baubles and valuables shattered. “Sorry,” Rowan said to the king—not sounding like it at all.
Only once, at the city that had forged and broken and sheltered his queen.
Even if this thing between them … even if he knew it was not mere lust, or even just love. This thing between them, the force of it, could devour the world. And if they picked it, picked them, it might very well cause the end of it.
Manon Blackbeak landed in Morath more than ready to start slitting throats.
It had bloomed in fields and across mountains throughout the kingdom the day Brannon set foot on this continent. And for centuries afterward, if a solitary blossom was ever found, the current sovereign was deemed blessed, the kingdom truly at peace.
“You taught Aelin.” Again, silence. Then, “Aelin is my heart. I taught her what I knew, and it worked because our magics understood each other deep down—just as our souls did.
He knew even now part of her remained with the girl, just as part of Aelin remained with Rowan. He wondered if he’d ever feel it—that degree of love.
“Get the hell out of my temple.” The soldiers blinked. One of the townsfolk behind them began weeping as a crown of fire appeared atop Aelin’s hair.
As if she were blowing out a candle, Aelin exhaled a breath toward the man. First the commander went quiet. As if every thought, every feeling had halted. Then his body seemed to stiffen, like he’d been turned to stone. And for a heartbeat, Aedion thought the man had been turned to stone as his skin, his Adarlanian uniform, turned varying shades of gray. But as the sea breeze brushed past, and the man simply fell apart into nothing but ashes, Aedion realized with no small amount of shock what she had done. She’d burned him alive. From the inside out. Someone screamed.
The sunlight gilded the balcony as Asterin whispered, so softly that only Manon could hear, “Bring my body back to the cabin.” Something in Manon’s chest broke—broke so violently that she wondered if it was possible for no one to have heard it.
Manon looked to the Thirteen, standing around Asterin in a half circle. One by one, they lifted two fingers to their brows. A murmur went through the crowd. The gesture not to honor a High Witch. But a Witch-Queen.
