Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass #0.1–0.5, 1–7)

by Sarah J. Maas

“I can’t tell if I should be ashamed of wanting to hold you on this day, or grateful that, despite what happened before now, it somehow brought me to you.”

“But I once heard that in the high court of Terrasen, when the nobility died, they sang their laments in the language of the Fae.”

To escape death, she’d become death.

Celaena Sardothien was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and rightful Queen of Terrasen.

Enemy. Lover. Queen.

It’s your body’s way of telling you not to do that again.” “Because of the iron in our blood pushing against the magic?” “That’s how our enemies will sometimes try to fight against us if they don’t have magic—iron everything.”

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.

“There is nothing that I can give you. Nothing I want to give you. You are not owed an explanation for what I do outside of training. I don’t care what you have been through or what you want to do with your life. The sooner you can sort out your whining and self-pity, the sooner I can be rid of you. You are nothing to me, and I do not care.”

She had never been in control. Even as Celaena, control had been an illusion. Other masters had held her reins. “You are the keeper of your own fate,” Rowan said

Amaroth. The other outpost, and Murtaugh’s other possible origin point for their spell. Due north from Noll. Both the same distance from Rifthold. Three towers of black stone, all three points making an equilateral triangle. It had to be part of the spell, then.

“It’s hard to explain,” Rowan went on. “I’ve only ever seen it used a handful of times on killing fields. When you’re drained, your carranam can yield their power to you, as long as you’re compatible and actively sharing a blood connection.”

Carranum

After a long while he murmured, “I have no doubt that you’ll be able to free the slaves from the labor camps some day. No matter what name you use.” Her eyes burned behind their lids, but she leaned into his touch some more, even going so far as to put a hand on his broad chest, savoring the steady, assured heartbeat pounding beneath. “Thank you for looking after me,” she said. He grunted—acceptance or dismissal, she didn’t know. Sleep tugged at her, and she followed it into oblivion.

Rowan and Celaena

“I claim you, Rowan Whitethorn. I don’t care what you say and how much you protest. I claim you as my friend.”

Evalin soon made Marion her lady-in-waiting, and then Lord Lochan had returned from a rotation on the southern border. Handsome Cal Lochan, who somehow became the dirtiest man in the castle and constantly needed Marion’s advice on how to remove various stains. Who one day asked a bastard-born servant to be his wife—and not just wife, but Lady of Perranth, the second-largest territory in Terrasen. Two years later, she had borne him Elide, heir of Perranth.

Marrion backstory

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.

So she was not afraid of that crushing black, not with the warrior holding her, not with the courage that having one true friend offered—a friend who made living not so awful after all, not if she were with 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.”

“You make me want to live, too, Aelin Galathynius,” he said. “Not exist—but live.”

“What was it like?” Manon asked quietly. “To love.” For love was what it had been—what Asterin perhaps alone of all the Ironteeth witches had felt, had learned. “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.” A soft smile. “I’m surprised you’re not giving me the ‘Obedience. Discipline. Brutality’ speech.”

“You want to sling insults at me, Darrow, then go ahead,” Aelin hissed, her nose almost touching his. “But you insult my own again, and I won’t miss next time.”

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.”

And he knew her fiery soul: she would do it. Consider marriage to a foreign prince or lord. 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.

Her grandmother took a step, smiling as she crooned, “You are a Crochan. The last of their royal bloodline with the death of your sister at your own hand. You are a Crochan Queen.”

“The world,” Aelin said, “will be saved and remade by the dreamers, Rolfe.”

Her limpid, dark eyes rose to his face. And for a moment, he could see the woman she’d become—was already becoming. Someone who, regardless of where she’d been born, any queen would prize at her side.

love. That day … when Rowan had looked into her eyes as he drank her blood … she’d started to realize what it was. That the feeling that passed between them, so powerful there was no language to describe it … It was not mere friendship, but something born of and strengthened by it.

mates?!

“I would have fought for the rest of my life to find a way to return to you again.

“I love you. There is no limit to what I can give to you, no time I need. Even when this world is a forgotten whisper of dust between the stars, I will love you.”

“Why do you think you burn so brightly? It is not just Brannon’s blood that is in your veins. But Mala’s.”

Fae have given up their immortality to bind their lives to that of their mortal mates.”

This—him … Would it ever stop—the wanting? The need to not only be near him, but to have him so deep in her she felt their souls twining, their magic dancing

She whispered onto his mouth, “I’ll always find a way back to you.”

“I’m not getting in the middle of that disaster, don’t worry. Though I wouldn’t let those iron teeth near my favorite part if I were him.” Aedion grinned as Lysandra tipped her head back and laughed.

“My father never sent me to train. And there is no Briarcliff, or Briarcliff Hall. There hasn’t been for five years.” A dozen questions sprung up, but Celaena kept her mouth shut, letting Ansel speak. “I was twelve,” Ansel said, “when Lord Loch took several territories around Briarcliff, and then demanded we yield to him as well—that we bow to him as High King of the Wastes. My father refused. He said there was one tyrant already conquering everything east of the mountains—he didn’t want one in the west, too.” Celaena’s blood went cold as she braced herself for what she was certain was coming. “Two weeks later, Lord Loch marched into our land with his men, seizing our villages, our livelihood, our people. And when he got to Briarcliff Hall …” Ansel drew a shuddering breath. “When he arrived at Briarcliff Hall, I was in the kitchen. I saw them from the window and hid in a cupboard as Loch walked in. My sister and father were upstairs, and Loch stayed in the kitchen as his men brought them down and … I didn’t dare make a sound as Lord Loch made my father watch as he …” She stumbled, but forced it out, spitting it as if it were poison. “My father begged on his hands and knees, but Loch still made my father watch as he slit my sister’s throat, then his. And I just hid there, even as they killed our servants, too. I hid there and did nothing. “And when they were gone, I took my father’s sword from his corpse and ran. I ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore, at the foothills ...

Ansel's background

“If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it—to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger. But Ansel let her pain become hate, and let it consume her until she became something else entirely—a person I don’t think she ever wished to be.”

The silent masters words

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Because I love you!” Her mouth fell open. “I love you,” he repeated, shaking her again. “I have for years. And he hurt you and made me watch because he’s always known how I felt, too. But if I asked you to pick, you’d choose Arobynn, and I. Can’t. Take. It.”

he’d known how much she’d craved those words. But he hadn’t spoken them until he needed to use them as weapons. And now that she had Sam, Sam who said those words without expecting anything in return, Sam who loved her for reasons she would never understand …

Sams loveeeee

“You want to hear something ridiculous? Whenever I’m scared out of my wits, I tell myself: My name is Sam Cortland … and I will not be afraid. I’ve been doing it for years.”

She would tuck Sam into her heart, a bright light for her to take out whenever things were darkest. And then she would remember how it had felt to be loved, when the world had held nothing but possibility. No matter what they did to her, they could never take that away. She would not break.