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

by Sarah J. Maas

She had lied to him. Deceived him so thoroughly that any moment between them, any conversation … he didn’t know what had been real. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to know if she’d meant any of it, when he’d so stupidly left everything laid out before her.

Okay Chaol 2.0 🙄

He’d believed this was his last hunt.

Is it an ick for anyone else that he calls it a hunt??

They wouldn’t be here long. Just as they had not lingered in any of the cities they’d swept through, or the forests or mountains or lowlands. Kingdom after kingdom, the relentless pace set by a prince who seemed barely able to remember to speak, let alone feed himself.

Poor Rowan :(

She would never forget the sight of him crawling after Maeve once the queen had severed the blood oath. Crawling after Maeve like a shunned lover, like a broken dog desperate for its master. Aelin had been brutalized, their very location betrayed by Lorcan to Maeve, and still he tried to follow. Right through the sand still wet with Aelin’s blood.

Uhhhh yeah? Bc Lorcan sucks butt lol. Once a jealous ass, always a jealous ass.

They had no idea those gods were nothing but beings from another world. That any help the gods offered, any help Elide had ever received from that small voice at her shoulder, had been with one goal in mind: to return home. Pawns—that’s all Elide and Aelin and the others were to them.

SELFISH!! Every single one of them!!!

One blink for yes. Two for no. Three for Are you all right? Four for I am here, I am with you. Five for This is real, you are awake.

“How shall we play tonight, Aelin?” She hated the sound of her name on his tongue. Her lip curled back from her teeth. Fast as an asp, Cairn gripped her throat hard enough to bruise. “Such rage, even now.”

Manon surveyed the two Shadows carefully stalking through the camp. Perhaps no longer Shadows, but rather the two faces of the moon. One dark, one light.

“You will know when you are truly ready. Remain at this camp, if you can convince your companions. The path will find you here.”

Is being cryptic all these gods know?!

Dorian dared a step forward. “Am I human?” Gavin’s sapphire eyes softened—just barely. “I’m not the person who can answer that.” And then the king was gone.

Aww ma poor dorry :(

He didn’t know why he bothered. He hadn’t forgotten her words that day on the beach. I hope you spend the rest of your miserable, immortal life suffering. I hope you spend it alone. I hope you live with regret and guilt in your heart and never find a way to endure it. Her vow, her curse, whatever it had been, had held true. Every word of it.

Yrene nestled into his side, her arm going around his waist. “I need to check on the supplies. I’ll get Borte to fly me over to Hasar’s ship.” Arcas, the fierce ruk rider’s mount, was still dozing where he slept on the stern. “You might have to wait awhile for that.” Indeed, they’d both learned these weeks not to disturb either ruk or rider while they were sleeping. Gods help them if Borte and Aelin ever met.

She didn’t tell the Healer on High that she wasn’t entirely sure how much longer she’d be a help—not yet. Hadn’t whispered a word of that doubt to anyone, even Chaol. Yrene’s hand drifted across her abdomen and lingered.

YRENEEEEEEE?! NOW IS NOT THE TIME

“Shall I tell you what I spied a mere fifty miles south of here? Who I saw, Blackbeak?” Manon stiffened. “Crochans,” the spider said, then sighed deeply. Hungrily. Manon blinked. Just once. The Thirteen had gone equally still. Asterin asked, “You’ve seen the Crochans?” The spider’s massive head bobbed in a nod before she sighed again. “The Crochans always tasted of what I imagine summer wine to be like. What chocolate, as you call it, would taste like.”

Things from legends—that’s who surrounded him. The witches, the spider … He might as well have been a character in one of the books he’d lent Aelin last fall. Though none of them had ever endured such a yawning pit inside them.

Rough hands gripped her, Cairn shouting, raging shrieks of You little bitch, but she didn’t hear them. Not as a trickle of blood snaked down Maeve’s cheek. Black blood. As dark as night. As dark as the eyes that the queen fixed on her, a hand rising to her cheek. Aelin’s legs slackened, and she didn’t fight the guards heaving her away. A blink, and the blood flowed red. Its scent as coppery as her own. A trick of the light. A hallucination, another dream—

AELIN OPEN YOUR EYES! THAT WAS NOT A TRICK OF THE MIND?!

With the angle of his head as he brought the blade up, the Valg grunt didn’t spy his oncoming death until her jaws were around his exposed neck. Hours into this battle, it was instinct to clamp down, flesh splitting like a piece of ripe fruit. She was moving again before he hit the earth, spitting his throat onto the mud, leaving the advancing Bane to decapitate his corpse. How far away that courtesan’s life in Rifthold now seemed. Despite the death around her, she couldn’t say she missed it.

She shrewdly looked him over. As if weighing the man within. “It was real, Aedion,” she said. “All of it. I don’t care if you believe me or not. But it was real for me.” He couldn’t bear to hear it. “I have a meeting,” he lied, and stepped around her. “Go slither off somewhere else.” Hurt flashed in her eyes, quickly hidden. He was the worst sort of bastard for it.

YOU DONT DESERVE LYSANDRA, AEDION. 😡

Evalin’s face blazed with the fierceness of the women who had come before them, all the way back to the Faerie Queen whose eyes they both bore. You do not yield.

But the dark-haired Crochan who’d first intercepted them stormed at Manon, her sword out. “You did this.” Dorian gripped Damaris, but made no move to draw it. Not while Manon didn’t back down. “Saved your asses? Yes, I’d say we did.” The witch seethed. “You led them here.” “Bronwen,” Glennis warned, wiping blue blood from her face. The young witch—Bronwen—bristled. “You think it mere coincidence that they arrive, and then we’re attacked?” “They fought with us, not against us,” Glennis said. She turned to Manon. “Do you swear it?” Manon’s golden eyes glowed in the firelight. “I swear it. I did not lead them here.” Glennis nodded, but Dorian stared at Manon. Damaris had gone cold as ice. So cold the golden hilt bit into his skin.

Dorian didn’t feel like saying he wasn’t entirely sure what manner of king he wished to be, should he live long enough to reclaim his throne. Anyone and anything but his father seemed like a good place to start.

“It was strange, mortal king, to find that I had a new place within me with the return of magic. To find that something new had taken root.” Her small hand drifted to her middle, just above her navel. “A little seed of power. I will the shift, think of what I wish to be, and the change starts within here first. Always, the heat comes from here.” The spider settled her stare on him. “If you wish to be something, king-with-no-crown, then be it. That is the secret to the shifting. Be what you wish.”

“No self-righteous speeches?” “This is war,” he said simply. “We’re past that sort of thing.” And it wouldn’t matter, would it, when his eternal soul would be the asking price to staunch so much of the slaughter? He’d already had it wrecked enough. If crossing line after line would spare any others from harm, he’d do it. He didn’t know what manner of king that made him.

And when they were a few days away from the outer limits of the city, they had laid their trap for Maeve. What he knew the queen might not be able to resist coming to retrieve herself: Wyrdstone collars.

Oh my god Rowan 🤦🏼‍♀️

Karsyn spoke at last. “Your wyvern seems like more of a dog than anything.”

Hims the bestest boy ever!!

Close. So close to that tent. He would signal Lorcan and Gavriel in a moment. When he was close enough to need the diversion for the way out.

ROWAN HURRY THE HELL UP! I DONT WANT TO LOSE FENRYS

The fool didn’t realize who he faced. What he faced. That it wasn’t a fire-breathing queen bound in iron who charged at him, but an assassin. With a twist, arms lifting, Aelin met that sword head-on. Just as she’d planned. The male’s sword fell short of his intended target, but hit precisely where she wished. In the center of the chains that bound her hands. Iron snapped. Then the male’s sword was in her freed hands. Then his throat was spraying blood. Aelin whirled, slamming into the other soldiers who stood between her and freedom. Even as he ran for her, Lorcan could only gape at what unfolded. She struck before they knew where to turn. Slash, duck, lunge. She got her other hand on one of their daggers. Then it was over. Then there was nothing between her and the camp entrance but the six guards drawing their weapons—

Fire breathing bitch baddass queen !!!!!!

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.

A pale, spindly hand rose over a moss-speckled boulder and curled. Come. Rowan asked, voice like granite, “You wish us to follow you?” Again, the hand made the motion. Come. Gavriel murmured, “They know this forest better than even we do.” “And you trust them?” Lorcan demanded. Rowan’s eyes settled on Aelin. “They saved her life once.” That night Erawan’s assassin had returned for Aelin. “They will do so again now.”

Silent and unseen, they passed through the trees and rocks and streams of the ancient forest. Rowan kept a step behind Aelin and Fenrys, Gavriel and Elide at the head of their party, Lorcan at the rear, as they followed the Little Folk.

A vision of old, striding through the trees, the queen and the wolf.

Who do you wish to be? There, like the seed of power that Cyrene had stolen, it lay—the little snarl in his magic. Not a snarl, but a knot—a knot in a tapestry. One that he might weave. One he might fashion into something if he dared. Who do you wish to be? he asked the barely woven tapestry within himself. Let the threads and knots take form, crafting the picture within his mind. Starting small. Glennis chuckled. “Your eyes are green now, king.”

Night was full overhead by the time Dorian managed to slip away. By the time he found an empty clearing, drew the marks, and plunged Damaris into earth shining with his own blood. His summons was answered quickly this time. Yet it was not Gavin who emerged, shimmering, from the night air. 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.

KALTAIN. YOU BEAUTIFUL WOMAN WUT IS U DOIN HERE?!

But Manon’s lip curled back from her teeth. Her golden eyes glowed like embers. “When, exactly, were you going to inform me that you were about to retrieve the third Wyrdkey?”

Girllllll. I love you, but you have NO room to be upset about secrets.

Boots crunched in hay, and then he was knee to knee before her. Aedion. There was nothing kind on his face. No pity or warmth. For a long minute, they only stared at each other. Then the prince growled softly, “Your plan was bullshit.” She said nothing, and couldn’t stop her shoulders from curving inward. “Your plan was bullshit,” he breathed, his eyes sparking. “How could you ever be her, wear her skin, and think to get away with it? How could you ever think you’d get around the fact that our armies are counting on you to burn the enemy to ashes, and all you can do is run away and emerge as some beast instead?”

Don’t make me come in this book and beat your ass mister. I don’t see you coming up with any amazing plans?!

She rose to her feet, legs sturdier than they’d been. A thought had the bubble of flame expanding as she crossed the few feet toward the sleeping prince. She peered down at his face, handsome and yet unyielding. His eyes opened, meeting hers as if he’d known where to find her even in sleep.

“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 yourself.”

“The land above is crawling with soldiers and spies. Going beneath them is the only way.” Elide stepped forward. “I will go.” She cut a cold glance toward Lorcan. “You can take your chances above, if you’re so disbelieving.” Lorcan’s jaw tightened, and a small part of Rowan relished seeing the delicate Lady of Perranth fillet the centuries-hardened warrior with a few words.

Elide is superior and I love her very much.

“We’ll be escorted,” Aelin answered. “And if they abandon us?” Lorcan challenged. Aelin leveled unfazed eyes upon him. “Then you’ll have to find a way out, I suppose.” A hint—just a spark—of temper belied those calm words.

Fenrys and Elide both sat as seemingly far from Lorcan as they could get, Gavriel a golden, long-suffering buffer between them.

Slowly, deeply, Aelin bowed to them. Rowan could have sworn all those tiny heads lowered in answer. A pair of bony grayish hands rose above a nearby rock, something glittering held between them, and set the object on the stone. Rowan went still. A crown of silver and pearl and diamond gleamed there, fashioned into upswept swan’s wings. “The Crown of Mab,” Gavriel breathed. But Fenrys looked away, toward the looming dark, his tail curling around him.

LAUREN CALLED IT!!

Sitting in silence as the boat was pulled through the gloom, she felt the weight of those stares. Their dread. Felt them wondering just how broken she was. You do not yield. She knew that had been true—that it had been her mother’s voice who had spoken and none other. So she would not yield to this. What had been done. What remained. For the companions around her, to lift their despair, their fear, she wouldn’t yield.

Spoken like a true queen.

She’d fight for it, claw her way back to it, who she’d been before. Remember to swagger and grin and wink. She’d fight against that lingering stain on her soul, fight to ignore it. Would use this journey into the dark to piece herself back together—just enough to make it convincing. Even if this fractured darkness now dwelled within her, even if speech was difficult, she would show them what they wished to see. An unbroken Fire-Bringer. Aelin of the Wildfire.

:( But we don’t want you to have to fake it til you make it

“I fought it with everything I had. And it was not enough. If she’d ordered me to slit your throat, I would have.

I don’t think you would’ve.. but what do I know of mates 🤷🏼‍♀️

“I gave you the blood oath to save your life,” she said. “But if you do not want it, Fenrys, I … we can find some way to free you—” “I want it,” Fenrys said, no trace of his usual swaggering humor. He glanced to Rowan, and bowed his head. “It is my honor to serve this court. And serve you,”

A sea of stars—that’s what the cave had become. Beauty. There was still beauty in this world. Stars could still glow, still burn bright, even buried under the earth. Aelin breathed in the cool cave air, the blue light. Let it flow through her. Rattle the stars. She’d promised to do that. Had done so much toward it, yet more remained.

Beauty remained—and she would fight for it. Needed to fight.

“You’re my mate,” he said, the words near-guttural. He nudged at her entrance, and she shifted her hips to draw him in, but he remained where he was. Withholding what she ached for until he heard what he needed. Aelin tipped back her head, baring her neck to him. “You’re my mate.” Her words were a breathless rush. “And I am yours.” Rowan thrust into her in a mighty stroke as he plunged his teeth into the side of her neck.

Fenrys just turned to the queen. “If I tell you he’s a prick and a miserable bastard to be around, will it change your mind?” Lorcan snarled, but Aelin snorted. “Isn’t that why we love Lorcan, though?” She gave him a smile that told Lorcan she remembered every detail of their initial encounters in Rifthold—when he’d shoved her face-first into a brick wall. Aelin said to Fenrys, “We’ll only invite him to Orynth on holidays.” “So he can ruin the festivities?” Fenrys scowled. “I, for one, cherish my holidays. I don’t need a misanthrope raining on them.”

So Lorcan took the queen’s arm in his hands and drank. The taste of her—jasmine, lemon verbena, and crackling embers—filled his mouth. Filled his soul, as something burned and settled within him. An ember of warmth. Like a piece of that raging magic had come to rest inside his very soul.