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

by Sarah J. Maas

If her mother had broken a promise … if her mother had kept her from Maeve, it had been for a damn good reason. A reason that tickled at the edges of Celaena’s mind, a blur of memory.

What Maeve didn’t understand, what she could never understand, was just how much that little princess in Terrasen had damned them a decade ago, even worse than Maeve herself had. She had damned them all, and then left the world to burn into ash and dust.

“Oh, eat all you like,” Emrys said. “There’s nothing more satisfying to a cook than seeing someone enjoy his food.”

Uncorrupted by a wicked empire, by years of brutality and slavery and bloodshed. She could almost see the three souls in the kitchen lined up beside each other: theirs bright and clear, hers a flickering black flame. Do not let that light go out. Nehemia’s last words to her that night in the tunnels. Celaena pushed around the food on her plate. She’d never known anyone whose life hadn’t been overshadowed by Adarlan. She could barely remember her brief years before the continent had been enslaved, when Terrasen had still been free. She could not remember what it was like to be free.

It had been five hundred years since all three Clans had assembled. There had been over twenty thousand of them at one point. Now only three thousand remained, and that was a generous estimate. All that was left of a once-mighty kingdom.

Manon treated her body as she would any other weapon: she kept it clean and honed and ready at any time to defend and destroy. But even her training couldn’t keep her from being out of breath when she reached the atrium by the black bridge that connected the Omega to the Northern Fang. She hated the expanse of stone without even touching it. It smelled wrong. It smelled like those two prisoners she’d seen with the duke. In fact, this whole place reeked like that. The scent wasn’t natural; it didn’t belong in this world.

“Wipe that smarmy, lying smile off your face.” His voice was as dead as his eyes, but it had a razor-sharp bite behind it. She kept her smarmy, lying smile. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stepped toward her, the canines coming out this time. “Here’s your first lesson, girl: cut the horseshit. I don’t feel like dealing with it, and I’m probably the only one who doesn’t give a damn about how angry and vicious and awful you are underneath.” “I don’t think you particularly want to see how angry and vicious and awful I am underneath.”

She lay still, watching the churning clouds above. Waiting for him to finish the words she couldn’t hear, waiting for a blow she was fairly certain she wouldn’t feel. “Get up,” he said suddenly, and the world was bright and wide as he stood. “Get up.” Get up. Chaol had said that to her once, when pain and fear and grief had shoved her over an edge. But the edge she’d gone over the night Nehemia had died, the night she’d gutted Archer, the day she’d told Chaol the horrible truth … Chaol had helped shove her over that edge. She was still on the fall down. There was no getting up, because there was no bottom.

For Nehemia, she had to try, had to try— But when she reached in, toward the place in her chest where that monster dwelled, she found only cobwebs and ashes.

“That was not a wight, Princess.” He flicked his attention toward the trees beyond her. She might have roared about using specifics to escape his bargain to bring her to Doranelle, but when his eyes met hers again, he seemed to say, That thing should not have been there. Then what in hell was it, you stupid bastard? she silently shot back.

Before the heir could reply, Manon stalked across the room. Asterin gave Iskra a mocking bow of the head, followed by identical gestures from the rest of her Thirteen, but Iskra remained staring at Manon, simmering. Manon plunked down at her table to find her grandmother smiling faintly. And when all of Manon’s twelve sentinels were seated around her, Thirteen from now until the Darkness embraced them, Manon allowed herself a smile, too.

“We are the Thirteen, from now until the Darkness claims us.” She said it quietly, but knew all could hear her. “Let’s remind them why.”

“Long ago,” Emrys began, his voice weaving between the drumming rain and grumbling thunder and crackling fire, “when there was no mortal king on Wendlyn’s throne, the faeries still walked among us. Some were good and fair, some were prone to little mischiefs, and some were fouler and darker than the blackest night.”

“It was those wicked faeries,” Emrys went on, the words resonating in every crack and crevice, “that you always had to watch for on the ancient roads, or in the woods, or on nights like this, when you can hear the wind moaning your name.”

She had no stories to tell. All the legends of Terrasen were lost to her, and only fragments were strewn through her memories like rubble.

“Explain, Aedion,” the old man said softly, but not weakly. Aedion smiled broadly as he yanked the black ring off his finger. “The day the king presented me with the Sword of Orynth, he also offered me a ring. Thanks to my heritage, my senses are … sharper. I thought the ring smelled strange—and knew only a fool would accept that kind of gift from him. So I had a replica made. The real one I chucked into the sea. But I always wondered what it did,” he mused, tossing the ring with one hand and catching it. “It seems the captain knows. And disapproves.”

Regardless of how shattered she’d been when she left, Celaena was safe now. She was away from Adarlan. But Dorian, with his magic, with the threat he secretly posed, was not. Aedion took a readying breath to kill him. Keeping Dorian protected was all he had left, all that had ever really mattered. If these rebels did indeed know something—anything—about magic that might help to free it, if he could use Aedion to get that information … It was a gamble—the biggest gamble he’d ever made. Aedion raised his sword. With a silent prayer for forgiveness, Chaol looked straight at Aedion. “Aelin is alive.”

Aedion Ashryver had been called Wolf, general, prince, traitor, and murderer. And he was all of those things, and more. Liar, deceiver, and trickster were his particular favorites—the titles only those closest to him knew.

But Titus was hesitating, his eyes lifted behind her, above her, to— Darkness embrace her. She’d forgotten about the bait beast. The creature chained behind her, so close she could smell the carrion on his breath. Titus’s stare was a command for the bait beast to stand down. To let him eat Manon. Manon dared a glance over her shoulder, to the sword in the shadows, so close to the chained anchor of the bait beast. She might have risked it if the beast wasn’t there, if he wasn’t looking dead at her, looking at her like she was— Not prey.

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. Again, Manon felt that ebb and flow in the world, that invisible current that some called Fate and some called the loom of the Three-Faced Goddess. Titus roared his final threat. Manon twisted to her feet and ran. Every step made stars flash, and the ground shook as Titus barreled after her, willing to tear through the bait beast to kill her if necessary. Manon scooped up her sword and whirled, bringing it down upon the thick, rusted chain with every bit of strength left in her. Wind-Cleaver, they called her blade. Now they would call it Iron-Cleaver. The chain snapped free as Titus leapt for her.

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.

Manon stood absolutely still. Slowly, the bait beast lifted its head from the carcass, Titus’s blood dripping from his maw. Their eyes met. People were shouting at her to run, and the gate groaned open, but Manon stared into those black eyes, one of them horribly scarred but intact. He took a step, then another toward her. Manon held her ground. It was impossible. Impossible. Titus was twice his size, twice his weight, and had years of training. The bait beast had trounced him—not because he was bigger or stronger, but because he wanted it more. Titus had been a brute and a killer, yet this wyvern before her … he was a warrior. Men were rushing in with spears and swords and whips, and the bait beast growled. Manon held up a hand. And again, the world stopped. Manon, eyes still upon the beast, said, “He’s mine.”

Manon named her wyvern Abraxos, after the ancient serpent who held the world between his coils at the behest of the Three-Faced Goddess.

Aelin Galathynius had spent a year in that labor camp. A queen of their continent had been a slave, and would bear the scars of it forever. Perhaps that entitled her, and Aedion, and even Chaol who loved her, to conspire to deceive and betray his father.

The Yellowlegs Matron had been here for a reason. Aedion was willing to bet good money that whatever monstrosities or weapons the king was creating, they would see them soon enough, perhaps with the witches in tow. Men didn’t build more armies and forge more weapons without having plans to use them. And they certainly didn’t hand out bits of mind-controlling jewelry unless they wanted absolute dominion. But he would face what was coming just as he had every other trial in his life: precisely, unyieldingly, and with lethal efficiency.

“I’m sorry, Aedion,” Murtaugh said softly. “Some minor lords escaped, and even managed to hold onto their lands and keep them thriving.” Aedion knew and hated most of them—self-serving pigs. Murtaugh went on. “Vernon Lochan survived, but only because he was already the king’s puppet, and after Cal was executed, Vernon seized his brother’s mantle as Lord of Perranth. You know what happened to Lady Marion. But we never learned what happened to Elide.” Elide—Lord Cal and Lady Marion’s daughter and heir, almost a year younger than Aelin. If she were alive, she would be at least seventeen by now. “Lots of children vanished in the initial weeks,” Murtaugh finished. Aedion didn’t want to think about those too-small graves.

“When she returns,” Aedion said quietly, “what she will do to the King of Adarlan will make the slaughtering ten years ago look merciful.” And in his heart, Aedion hoped he spoke true.

“What was this place, anyway?” Only slabs of broken stone remained to show where the temple had stood. A few oblong stones—pillars—were tossed about as if a hand had scattered them, and several stones grouped together indicated what had once been a road. Rowan dogged her steps, a thundercloud closing in around her as she examined a cluster of white stones. “The Sun Goddess’s temple.” Mala, Lady of Light, Learning, and Fire. “You’ve been bringing me here because you think it might help with mastering my powers—my shifting?” A vague nod. She put a hand on one of the massive stones. If she felt like admitting it, she could almost sense the echoes of the power that had dwelled here long ago, a delicious heat kissing its way up her neck, down her spine, as if some piece of that goddess were still curled up in the corner. It explained why today, in the sun, the temple felt different. Why her magic was jumpy. Mala, Sun Goddess and Light-Bringer, was sister and eternal rival to Deanna, Keeper of the Moon.

She could feel him forming a question, but she started moving again, examining the stones. As she dusted the block off, an image emerged of a stag with a glowing star between its antlers, so like the one in Terrasen. She’d heard Emrys tell the story of the sun stags, who held an immortal flame between their massive antlers and who had once been stolen from a temple in this land … “Is this where the stags were kept—before this place was destroyed?” “I don’t know. This temple wasn’t destroyed; it was abandoned when the Fae moved to Doranelle, and then ruined by time and weather.” “Emrys’s stories said destroyed, not abandoned.”

She didn’t want to know more—didn’t want to know how many had made it, and whether he had been one of the few who argued to save their western brethren. So she moved away from the carving of the mythical stag, instantly cold as she severed contact with the delightful heat living within the stone. Part of her could have sworn that ancient, strange power was sad to see her go.

This was her apartment. Whether she accepted or hated her past, she’d decorated the dining table in Terrasen’s royal colors—green and silver. The table and the stag figurine atop the mantel were the only shreds of proof that she might remember. Might care. Everything else was comfortable, tasteful, as if the apartment were for lounging and nights by the fire. And there were so many books—on shelves, on the tables by the couch, stacked beside the large armchair before the curtained floor-to-ceiling window spanning the entire length of the great room.

Aedion spread out a map on the low table between them and put a callused finger on Orynth. “There were two waves of birds. The first went north-northwest.” He traced a vague line. “From the tower, I could see far enough that I knew many of them had come from the south—most of the birds near us didn’t move much. But then the second wave shoved all of them to the north and east, like something from the center of the land threw them that way.” Chaol pointed to Perranth, the second-largest city in Terrasen. “From here?” “Farther south.” Aedion knocked Chaol’s hand out of the way. “Endovier or even lower.”

Not two waves when magic vanished in the desert, but three. The first swept down from the north. The merchant had been with the Lord of Xandria in his fortress high above the city and had seen a faint tremor that made the red sand dance. The second came from the southwest, barreling right toward them like a sandstorm. The final pulse came from the same inland source Aedion remembered. Seconds later, magic was gone, and people were screaming in the streets, and the Lord of Xandria got the order, a week later, to put down all the known or registered magic-wielders in his city. Then the screaming had become different.

One of them cracked the whip, so close to Abraxos that he flinched away. Another snapped it near his tail—twice. Then Abraxos lunged, with both neck and tail. The three handlers scrambled, barely out of reach of his snapping teeth. Enough. “Your men have cowards’ hearts,” she said, giving the overseer a withering look as she stalked across the dirt floor. The overseer grabbed for her, but she slashed with iron-tipped fingers and sliced his hand open. He cursed, but Manon kept walking, licking his blood off her nails. She almost spat it out. Vile. The blood tasted rotten, as if it had curdled or festered inside a corpse for days. She glanced at the blood on the rest of her hand. It was too dark for human blood. If witches had indeed been killing these men, why had no one reported this? She bit down the questions. She would think about it another time. Maybe drag the overseer into a forgotten corner and open him up to see what was decaying inside him.

However the king had bred these beasts, Abraxos had somehow been born different. Smaller, but smarter. Or perhaps the others didn’t ever need to think. Cared for and trained, they did what they were told. But Abraxos had learned to survive, and perhaps that had opened his mind. He could understand her words—her expressions. And if he could comprehend those things … he could possibly teach the other mounts of the Thirteen. It was a small edge, but an edge that could make them Wing Leader—and make them invincible against the king’s enemies.

“I am going to put this saddle on you,” she said, still cupping that snout. He shifted, but Manon grabbed on tight, forcing him to look at her. “You want out of this shithole? Then you’ll let me put this saddle on you to check the fit. And when we’re done, you’re going to let me look at your tail. Those human bastards cut off your spikes, so I’m going to build some for you. Iron ones. Like mine,” she said, and flashed her iron nails for him to see. “And fangs, too,” she added, baring her iron teeth. “It’s going to hurt, and you’re going to want to kill the men who put them in, but you’re going to let them do it, because if you don’t, then you will rot down here for the rest of your life. Understand?” A long, hot huff of air into her hands. “Once all that is done,” she said, smiling faintly at her wyvern, “you and I are going to learn how to fly. And then we’ll stain this kingdom red.”

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. Rowan raced beside her, but made no move to grab her. No, Rowan was … playing. He threw a glance at her, breathing hard but evenly. And it might have been the sun through the canopy, but she could have sworn that she saw his eyes alight with a glimmer of that same, feral contentment. She could have sworn he was smiling.

“And what of your father?” Chaol said, if only to shift conversation away from the hole in his chest. “I know your mother was kin to—to her, but what of your father’s line?” “My mother never admitted who my father was, even when she was wasting away on her sickbed,” Aedion said flatly. “I don’t know if it was from shame, or because she couldn’t even remember, or to protect me somehow. Once I was brought over here, I didn’t really care. But I’d rather have no father than your father.”

The men paused when they beheld Aedion standing before them, still hooded. The general drew his fighting knives and purred, “None of you are leaving this alley alive.”

Manon rubbed her eyes. “Is it not fresh enough?” He moved to sniff some white-and-yellow flowers. A nightmare. This was a nightmare. “You can’t really like flowers.” Again those dark eyes shifted to her. Blinked once. I most certainly do, he seemed to say.

Abraxos was curled up like a cat on the narrow stretch of flat rock atop the mountain. “Willful, lazy worm.” He didn’t even blink at her.

Higher he flapped, legs tucked beneath him. Manon crouched in her saddle, clinging to his warm hide as he took them up the face of the neighboring mountain. Its peaks rose to meet them like lifted hands, but he wobbled past, beating hard. Manon lifted and fell with him, not taking one breath as they cleared the highest snow-capped peak and Abraxos, in joy or rage or for the hell of it, gripped clawfuls of snow and ice and set them scattering behind, the sun lighting them up like a trail of stars. The sun was blinding as they hit the open sky, and there was nothing around them but clouds as massive as the mountains far below, castles and temples of white and purple and blue. And the cry that Abraxos let out as they entered that hall of clouds, as he leveled out and caught a lightning-fast current carving a pathway through it … She had not understood what it had been like for him to live his entire life underground, chained and beaten and crippled—until then. Until she heard that noise of undiluted, unyielding joy. Until she echoed it, tipping her head back to the clouds around them.

They sailed over a sea of clouds, and Abraxos dipped his claws in them before tilting to race up a wind-carved column of cloud. Higher and higher, until they reached its peak and he flung out his wings in the freezing, thin sky, stopping the world entirely for a heartbeat. And Manon, because no one was watching, because she did not care, flung out her arms as well and savored the freefall, the wind now a song in her ears, in her shriveled heart.

“Long ago, when there was no mortal king on Wendlyn’s throne, the faeries still walked among us. Some were good and fair, some were prone to little mischiefs, and some were fouler and darker than the blackest night. But they were all of them ruled by Maeve and her two sisters, whom they called Mora and Mab. Cunning Mora, who bore the shape of a great hawk”—that was Rowan’s mighty bloodline—“Fair Mab, who bore the shape of a swan. And the dark Maeve, whose wildness could not be contained by any single form.”

And when Celaena asked, the room falling deathly silent again, if Maeve herself had ever mated, Emrys told her no—though she had come close, at the dawn of time. A warrior, rumor claimed, had stolen her heart with his clever mind and pure soul. But he had died in some long-ago war and lost the ring he’d intended for her, and since then, Maeve had cherished her warriors above all others. They loved her for it—made her a mighty queen whom no one dared challenge.

“You know, it might be better if you just slapped me instead.” “Instead of what?” “Instead of reminding me again and again how rutting worthless and awful and cowardly I am. Believe me, I can do the job well enough on my own. So just hit me, because I’m damned tired of trading insults. And you know what? You didn’t even bother to tell me you’d be unavailable. If you’d said something, I never would have come. I’m sorry I did. But you just left me downstairs.” 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.” She hadn’t realized how much she meant it, how much she needed it not to be true, until now.

There was a faint ringing in her ears that turned into a roar. And beneath it, a sudden wave of numbness, a too-familiar lack of sight or sound or feeling. She didn’t know why it happened, because she had been so dead set on hating him, but … it would have been nice, she supposed. It would have been nice to have one person who knew the absolute truth about her—and didn’t hate her for it. It would have been really, really nice. She walked away without another word. With each step she took back to her room, that flickering light inside of her guttered. And went out.

“Did you know that Evalin Ashryver was my friend? She spent almost a year working in this kitchen—living here with us, fighting to convince your queen that demi-Fae have a place in your realm. She fought for our rights until the very day she departed this kingdom—and the many years after, until she was murdered by those monsters across the sea. So I knew. I knew who her daughter was the moment you brought her into this kitchen. All of us who were here twenty-five years ago recognized her for what she is.” It wasn’t often that he was surprised, but … Rowan just stared. “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.”

But the sound was in her throat and her lungs and her mouth, and when she took a breath, it cracked out. Once she heard it, everything came spilling into the world, until her body ached with the force of it. She vaguely felt the light shifting on the lake. Vaguely felt the sighing wind, warm as it brushed against her damp cheeks. And heard, so soft it was as if she dreamed it, a woman’s voice whispering, Why are you crying, Fireheart? 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.” It was what she had never been able to tell Nehemia—that for ten years, she had been unsure how to find the way home, because there was no home left.

Fire was the reason she’d been banned from the Library of Orynth when she was eight, after accidentally incinerating an entire bookcase of ancient manuscripts when she grew irritated with the Master Scholar lecturing her about decorum. It had been a beautiful, horrible relief to wake up one day not too many months after that and know magic was gone. That she could hold a book—hold what she adored most—and not worry about turning it to ash if she became upset or tired or excited.