Then she pressed her hands together, Elena’s head clasped between them.
A flare of light from Mala, in warning and pain, as Elena’s eyes went wide. As Deanna squeezed.
And then Elena ruptured. Into a thousand shimmering pieces that faded as they fell.
Aelin’s scream died in her throat, her body unable to rise as Deanna wiped her ghostly hands, and said, “We do not make bargains with mortals. Not any longer. Keep Erawan, if that is what you wish.”
Then the goddess strode through the archway into her own world.
Aelin stared at the empty place where Elena had been only heartbeats before.
Nothing remained.
Not even a shimmering ember to send back into the Afterworld, to the mate left behind.
Nothing at all.
CHAPTER 98
It was breaking apart.
The mating bond.
Bowed over his knees, Rowan panted, a hand on his chest as the bond frayed.
He clung to it, wrapped his magic, his soul around it, as if it might keep her, wherever she was, from going to a place he could not follow.
He did not accept it. Would never accept this fate. Never.
Distantly, he heard Dorian and Chaol debating something. He didn’t care.
The mating bond was breaking.
And there was nothing he could do but hold on.
One by one, the gods strode through the archway into their own world. Some sneered down at her as they passed.
They would not take Erawan.
Would not … would not do anything.
Her chest was hollow, her soul gutted out, and yet this …
And yet this …
Aelin clawed at the mist-shrouded ground-that-was-not-ground as the last of them vanished. Until only one remained.
A pillar of light and flame. Shining in the mists.
Mala lingered on the threshold of her world.
As if she remembered.
As if she remembered Elena, and Brannon, and who knelt before her. Blood of her blood. The recipient of her power. Her Heir.
“Seal the gate, Fire-Bringer,” Mala said softly.
But the Lady of Light still hesitated.
And from far away, Aelin heard another woman’s voice.
Make sure that they’re punished someday. Every last one of them.
They will be, she’d sworn to Kaltain.
They had lied. Had betrayed Elena and Erilea, as they had believed themselves betrayed.
Their green sun-drenched world rippled away ahead.
Groaning, Aelin climbed to her feet.
She was no lamb to slaughter. No sacrifice on an altar of the greater good.
And she was not done yet.
Aelin met Mala’s burning stare.
“Do it,” Mala said quietly.
Aelin looked past her, toward that pristine world they had sought to return to for so long. And realized that Mala knew—saw the thoughts in her own head.
“Aren’t you going to stop me?”
Mala only held out a hand.
In it lay a kernel of white-hot power. A fallen star.
“Take it. One last gift to my bloodline.” She could have sworn Mala smiled. “For what you offered on her behalf. For fighting for her. For all of them.”
Aelin staggered the few steps to the goddess, to the power she offered in her hand.
“I remember,” Mala said softly, and the words were joy and pain and love. “I remember.”
Aelin took the kernel of power from her palm.
It was the sunrise contained in a seed.
“When it is done, seal the gate and think of home. The marks will guide you.”
Aelin blinked, the only sign of confusion she could convey as that power filled and filled and filled her, melding into the broken spots, the empty places.
Mala held out her hand again, and an image formed within it. Of the tattoo across Aelin’s back.
The new tattoo, of spread wings, the story of her and Rowan written in the Old Language amongst the feathers.
A flick of Mala’s fingers and symbols rose from it. Hidden within the words, the feathers.
Wyrdmarks.
Rowan had hidden Wyrdmarks in her tattoo.
Had inked Wyrdmarks all over it.
“A map home,” Mala said, the image fading. “To him.”
He’d suspected, somehow. That it might come to this. Had asked her to teach him so he might make this gamble.
And when Aelin looked behind her, to the archway into her own world, she indeed could … feel them. As if the Wyrdmarks he’d secretly inked onto her were a rope. A tether home.
A lifeline into eternity.
One last deceit.
Another voice whispered past then, a fragment of memory, spoken on a rooftop in Rifthold. What if we go on, only to more pain and despair?
Then it is not the end.
That power flowed and flowed into Aelin. Her lips curved upward.
It was not the end. And she was not finished.
But they were.
“To a better world,” Mala said, and walked through the doorway into her own.
A better world.
A world with no gods. No masters of fate.
A world of freedom.
Aelin approached the archway to the gods’ realm. To where Mala now walked across the shimmering grass, little more than a shaft of sunlight herself.
The Lady of Light halted—and lifted an arm in farewell.
Aelin smiled and bowed.
Far out, striding over the hills, the gods paused.
Aelin’s smile turned into a grin. Wicked and raging.
It did not falter as she found the world she sought. As she dipped into that eternal, terrible power.
She had been a slave and a pawn once before. She would never be so again.
Not for them. Never for them.
The gods began shouting, running toward her, as Aelin ripped open a hole in their sky.
Right into a world she had seen only once. Had accidentally opened a portal into one night in a stone castle. Distant, baying howls cracked from the bleak gray expanse.
A portal into a hell-realm. A door now thrown open.
Aelin was still smiling when she closed the archway into the gods’ world.
And left them to it, the sounds of their outraged, frightened screams ringing out.
There was still one last task to seal the gate forever.
Aelin unfurled her palm, studying the Lock she had forged. She let it float into the heart of this misty, door-filled space.
She was not afraid. Not as she opened her other palm, and power poured forth.
Mala’s final gift. And defiance.
The force of a thousand exploding suns ruptured from Aelin’s palm.
Lock. Close. Seal.
She willed it, willed it, and willed it. Willed it to close as she offered over her power.
But not that last bit of self.
The debt has already been paid enough.
A map home, a map inked in the words of universes, would lead the way.
More and more and more. But not all.
She would not give it up. Her innermost self.
She would not surrender.
They would not take this lingering kernel of her.
She would not yield it.
Light flowed through the Lock, fracturing like a prism, shooting to all those infinite doorways.
Closing and sealing and shutting. An archway to everywhere now sealing.
They would not destroy her. They would not be allowed to take this.
Come back to me.
More and more and more, Mala’s last power funneling out of her and into the Lock.
They would not win. They couldn’t take it—couldn’t have her.
She refused.
She was screaming now. Screaming and roaring her defiance.
A beam of light shot to the archway behind her. Beginning to seal it, too.
>
She would live. She would live, and they could all go to hell.
A better world. With no gods, no fates.
A world of their own making.
Aelin bellowed and bellowed, the sound ringing out across all worlds.
They would not beat her. They would not get to take this, this most essential kernel of self. Of soul.
Once upon a time, in a land long since burned to ash, there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom.…
Her kingdom. Her home. She would see it again.
It was not over.
Behind her, the archway slowly sealed.
The odds were slim; the odds were insurmountable. She had not been destined to escape this—to reach this point and still be breathing.
Aelin’s hand drifted to her heart and rested there.
It is the strength of this that matters, her mother had said, long ago. Wherever you go, Aelin, no matter how far, this will lead you home.
No matter where she was.
No matter how far.
Even if it took her beyond all known worlds.
Aelin’s fingers curled, palm pressing into the pounding heart beneath. This will lead you home.
The archway to Erilea inched closed.
World-walker. Wayfarer.
Others had done it before. She would find a way, too. A way home.
No longer the Queen Who Was Promised. But the Queen Who Walked Between Worlds.
She would not go quietly.
She was not afraid.
So Aelin ripped out her power. Ripped out a chunk of what Mala had given her, a force to level a world, and flung it toward the Lock.
The final bit. The last bit.
And then Aelin leaped through the gate.
CHAPTER 99
She was falling.
Falling and being thrown.
The Wyrdgate sealed behind her, and yet she was not home.
As it closed, all worlds overlapped.
And she now fell through them.
One after another after another. Worlds of water, worlds of ice, worlds of darkness.
She slammed through them, faster than a shooting star, faster than light.
Home.
She had to find home—
Worlds of lights, worlds of towers that stretched to the skies, worlds of silence.
So many.
There were so many worlds, all of them miraculous, all of them so precious and perfect that even as she fell through them, her heart broke to see them.
Home. The way home—
She fumbled for the tether, the bond in her soul. Inked into her flesh.
Come back to me.
Aelin plunged through world after world after world.
Too fast.
She would hit her own world too fast, and miss it completely.
But she could not slow. Could not stop.
Tumbling, flipping over herself, she passed through them one by one by one by one by one.
It is the strength of this that matters. Wherever you go, Aelin, no matter how far, this will lead you home.
Aelin roared, a spark of self flashing through the sky.
The tether grew stronger. Tighter. Reeling her in.
Too fast. She had to slow—
She plummeted into the last of herself, into what remained, grappling for any sort of power to slow her racing.
She passed through a world where a great city had been built along the curve of a river, the buildings impossibly tall and glimmering with lights.
Passed through a world of rain and green and wind.
Roaring, she tried to slow.
She passed through a world of oceans with no land to be seen.
Close. Home was so close she could nearly smell the pine and snow. If she missed it, if she passed by it—
She passed through a world of snowcapped mountains under shining stars. Passed over one of those mountains, where a winged male stood beside a heavily pregnant female, gazing at those very stars. Fae.
They were Fae, but this was not her world.
She flung out a hand, as if she might signal them, as if they might somehow help her when she was nothing but an invisible speck of power—
The winged male, beautiful beyond reason, snapped his head toward her as she arced across his starry sky.
He lifted a hand, as if in greeting.
A blast of dark power, like a gentle summer night, slammed into her.
Not to attack—but to slow her down.
A wall, a shield, that she tore and plunged through.
But it slowed her. That winged male’s power slowed her, just enough.
Aelin vanished from his world without a whisper.
And there it was.
There it was, the pine and the snow, the snaking spine of the mountains up her continent, the tangle of Oakwald to the right, the Wastes to the left. A land of many peoples, many beings.
She saw them all, familiar and foreign, fighting and at peace, in sprawling cities or hidden deep within the wilds. So many people, revealed to her. Erilea.
She threw herself into it. Grabbed the tether and bellowed as she hauled herself toward it. Down it.
Home.
Home.
Home.
It was not the end. She was not finished.
She willed herself, willed the world to halt. Just as the Wyrdgate slammed shut with a thunderous crack, all other doors with it.
And Aelin plunged back into her own body.
The Wyrdmarks faded into the rocky ground as the sun rose over Endovier.
Rowan was on his knees before Aelin, readying for her last breaths, for the end that he hoped would somehow take him, too.
He’d make it his end. When she went, he’d go.
But then he’d felt it. As the sun rose, he’d felt it, that surge down the frayed mating bond.
A blast of heat and light that welded the broken strands.
He didn’t dare to breathe. To hope.
Even as Aelin collapsed to her knees where the Wyrdmarks had been.
Rowan was instantly there, reaching for her limp body.
A heartbeat echoed in his ears, into his own soul.
And that was her chest, rising and falling. And those were her eyes, opening slowly.
The scent of Dorian’s and Chaol’s tears replaced the salt of Endovier as Aelin stared up at Rowan and smiled.
Rowan held her to his chest and wept in the light of the rising sun.
A weak hand landed on his back, running over the tattoo he’d inked. As if tracing the symbols he’d hidden there, in a desperate, wild hope. “I came back,” she rasped.
She was warm, but … cold, somehow. A stranger in her own body.
Aelin sat up, groaning at the ache along her bones.
“What happened?” Dorian asked, held upright by the arm Chaol had around his waist.
Aelin cupped her palms before her. A small lick of flame appeared within them.
Nothing more.
She looked at Rowan, then Chaol, and Dorian, their faces so haggard in the rising light of day.
“It’s gone,” she said quietly. “The power.” She turned her hands, the flame rolling over them. “Only an ember remains.”
They didn’t speak.
But Aelin smiled. Smiled at the lack of that well within her, that churning sea of fire. And what did remain—a significant gift, yes, but nothing beyond the ordinary.
All that remained of what Mala had given her, in thanks for Elena.
But—
Aelin reached inward, toward that place inside her soul.
She put a hand to her chest. Put a hand there and felt the heart beating within.
The Fae heart. The cost.
She had given all of herself. Had given up her life.
The human life. Her mortality. Burned away, turned to nothing but dust between worlds.
There would be no more shifting. Only this body, this form.
She told them so. And told them what
had occurred.
And when she was done, when Rowan remained holding her, Aelin held out her hand once more, just to see.
Perhaps it had been a final gift of Mala’s, too. To preserve this piece of her that now formed in her hand—this droplet of water.
Her mother’s gift.
What Aelin had saved until the end, had not wanted to part with until the very last dregs of her were given to the Lock, to the Wyrdgate.
Aelin held out her other hand, and the kernel of flame sputtered to life within it.
An ordinary gift. A Fire-Bringer no more.
But Aelin all the same.
CHAPTER 100
A prodding kick from Kyllian had Aedion awake before dawn.
He groaned as he stretched out on the cot in the Great Hall, the space still dim. Countless other soldiers slumbered around him, their heavy breathing filling the room.
He squinted at the small lantern that Kyllian held above him.
“It’s time,” Kyllian said, his eyes weary and red-rimmed.
They’d all looked better. Been better.
But they were still alive. A week after the Thirteen had sacrificed themselves and pushed back Morath’s tide, they were alive. The witches’ lives had bought them a full day of rest. One day, and then Morath had marched on Orynth’s walls again.
Aedion slung the heavy fur cloak he’d been using for a blanket over his shoulders, wincing at the throbbing ache in his left arm. A careless wound, when he’d taken his attention off his shield for a moment and a Valg foot soldier had managed to slice him.
But at least he wasn’t limping. And at least the wound the Valg prince had given him had healed.
Slinging his shield over that same shoulder, he scooped up his sword and belted it at his waist as he picked his way through the labyrinth of sleeping, exhausted bodies. A nod to Kyllian had the man striding for the city walls.
But Aedion turned left upon leaving the Great Hall, aiming for the north tower.
It was a lonely, cold walk to the room he sought. As if the entire castle were a tomb.
He knocked lightly on the wooden door near the top of the tower, and it immediately opened and shut, Lysandra slipping into the hall before Evangeline could stir in her bed.
In the flickering light of Aedion’s candle, the shadows etched on Lysandra’s face from a week of fighting from sunup to sundown were starker, deeper. “Ready?” he asked softly, turning back down the stairs.
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