Aelin closed her hand around Rowan’s.
A door flung open between them. A door back to himself, to her.
His fingers locked around hers.
Aelin let out a low laugh. “I may have no magic,” she said, “but my mate does.”
Waiting to strike from the other side of that dark doorway, Rowan hauled Aelin to her feet as their powers, their souls, fused.
The force of Rowan’s magic hit her, ancient and raging. Ice and wind turned to searing flame.
Her heart sang, roaring, at the power that flowed from Rowan and into her. At her side, her mate held fast. Unbreakable.
Rowan smiled—fierce and feral and wicked. A crown of flame, twin to her own, appeared atop his head.
As one, they looked to Maeve.
Maeve hissed, her dark power massing again. “Rowan Whitethorn does not have the brute power that you once did.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t,” Lorcan said from a step behind them, his eyes clear and free, “but together, we do.” He glanced to Aelin, a hand rising to the angry red burn marring his chest.
“And beyond us,” Aelin said, sketching a mark through the snow with the blood she’d spilled—her blood, and Rowan’s—“I think they have plenty, too.”
Light flared at their feet, and Maeve’s power surged—but too late.
The portal opened. Exactly as the Wyrdmarks in the books Chaol and Yrene had brought from the southern continent had promised.
Precisely to where Aelin had intended. Where she had glimpsed as she’d tumbled back through the Wyrdgate. Where she and Rowan had ventured days ago, testing this very portal.
The forest glen was silvered in the moonlight, the snows thick. Strange, old trees—older than even those in Oakwald. Trees that could only be found north of Terrasen, in the hinterlands beyond.
But it was not the trees that made Maeve halt. No, it was the teeming mass of people, their armor and weapons glinting beneath their heavy furs. Amongst them, large as horses, wolves growled. Wolves with riders.
Down the battlefield, portal after portal opened. Right where Rowan and the cadre had drawn them in their own blood as they fought. All to be opened upon this spell. This command. And beyond each portal, that teeming mass of people could be seen. The army.
“I heard you planned to come here, you see,” Aelin said to Maeve, Rowan’s power a symphony in her blood. “Heard you planned to bring the kharankui-princesses with you.” She smiled. “So I thought to bring some friends of my own.”
The first of the figures beyond the portal emerged, riding a great silver wolf. And even with the furs over her heavy armor, the female’s arched ears could be seen.
“The Fae who dwelled in Terrasen were not wiped out so thoroughly,” Aelin said. Lorcan began grinning. “They found a new home—with the Wolf Tribe.” For those were humans also riding those wolves. As all the myths had claimed. “And did you know that while many of them came here with Brannon, there was an entire clan of Fae who arrived from the southern continent? Fleeing you, I think. All of them, actually, don’t really like you, I’m sorry to say.”
More and more Fae and wolf-riders stepped toward the portal, weapons out. Beyond them, stretching into the distance, their host flowed.
Maeve backed away a step. Just one.
“But you know who they hate even more?” Aelin pointed with Goldryn toward the battlefield. “Those spiders. Nesryn Faliq told me all about how their ancestors battled them in the southern continent. How they fled you when you tried to keep their healers chained, and then wound up having to battle your little friends. And when they came to Terrasen, they still remembered. Some of the truth was lost, grew muddled, but they remembered. They taught their offspring. Trained them.”
The Fae and their wolves beyond the portals now fixed their sights on the kharankui hybrids at last emerging onto the plain.
“I told them I’d deal with you myself,” Aelin said, and Rowan chuckled, “but the spiders … Oh, the spiders are all theirs. I think they’ve been waiting a while for it, actually. The Ironteeth witches, too. Apparently, the Yellowlegs weren’t very kind to those trapped in their animal forms these ten years.”
Aelin let out a flare of light. The only signal she needed to give.
For a people who had asked for only one thing when Aelin had begged them to fight, to join this last battle: to return home. To return to Orynth after a decade of hiding.
Her flame danced over the battlefield. And the lost Fae of Terrasen, the fabled Wolf Tribe who had welcomed and protected them at their sides, charged through the portals. Right into Morath’s unsuspecting ranks.
Maeve had gone deathly pale. Paled further as magic sparked and surged and those spider-hybrids went down, their shrieks of surprise silenced under Asterion blades.
Yet Rowan’s hand tightened on Aelin’s, and she peered up at her mate. But his eyes were on Fenrys. On the dark power Maeve still had wrapped around him.
The male remained sprawled in the snow, his tears silent and unending. His face a bloodied ruin.
Through the roar of Rowan’s power, Aelin felt for the threads leading from her heart, her soul.
Look at me. Her silent command echoed down the blood oath—to Fenrys.
Look at me.
“I suppose you think you can now finish me off in some grand fashion,” Maeve said to her and Rowan, that dark power swelling. “You, who I have wronged the most.”
Look at me.
His shredded face leaking blood, Fenrys looked, his eyes blindly turning toward hers. And clearing—just slightly.
Aelin blinked four times. I am here, I am with you.
No reply.
“Do you understand what a Valg queen is?” Maeve asked them, triumph on her face despite the long-lost Fae and wolf-riders charging onto the battlefield beyond them. “I am as vast and eternal as the sea. Erawan and his brothers sought me for my power.” Her magic flowed around her in an unholy aura. “You believe yourself to be a God-Killer, Aelin Galathynius? What were they but vain creatures locked into this world? What were they but things your human mind cannot comprehend?” She lifted her arms. “I am a god.”
Aelin blinked again at Fenrys, Rowan’s power gathering within her veins, readying for the first and likely final strike they’d be able to land, Lorcan’s power rallying beside theirs. Yet over and over, Aelin blinked to Fenrys, to those half-vacant eyes.
I am here, I am with you.
I am here, I am with you.
A queen had said that to him. In their secret, silent language. During the unspeakable hours of torment, they had said that to each other.
Not alone.
He had not been alone then, and neither had she.
The veranda in Doranelle and bloodied snows outside Orynth blended and flashed.
I am here, I am with you.
Maeve stood there. Before Aelin and Rowan, burning with power. Before Lorcan, his dark gifts a shadow around him. Fae—so many Fae and wolves, some riding them—pouring on to the battlefield through holes in the air.
It had worked, then. Their mad plan, to be enacted when all went to hell, when they had nothing left.
Yet Maeve’s power swelled.
Aelin’s eyes remained upon him, anchoring him. Pulling him from that bloodied veranda. To a body trembling in pain. A face that burned and throbbed.
I am here, I am with you.
And Fenrys found himself blinking back. Just once.
Yes.
And when Aelin’s eyes moved again, he understood.
Aelin looked to Rowan. Found her mate already smiling at her. Aware of what likely awaited them. “Together,” she said quietly. Rowan’s thumb brushed against hers. In love and farewell.
And then they erupted.
Flame, white-hot and blinding, roared toward Maeve.
But the dark queen had been waiting. Twin waves of darkness arched and cascaded for them.
Only to be halted by a shield of black wind. Beaten aside.
<
br /> Aelin and Rowan struck again, fast as an asp. Arrows and spears of flame that had Maeve conceding a step. Then another.
Lorcan battered her from the side, forcing Maeve to retreat another step.
“I’d say,” Aelin panted, speaking above the glorious roar of magic through her, the unbreakable song of her and Rowan, “that you haven’t wronged us the most at all.”
Like alternating punches, Lorcan struck with them. Fire, then midnight death.
Maeve’s dark brows narrowed.
Aelin flung out a wall of flame that pushed Maeve back another step. “But him—oh, he has a score to settle with you.”
Maeve’s eyes went wide, and she made to turn. But not fast enough.
Not fast enough at all as Fenrys vanished from where he knelt, and reappeared—right behind Maeve.
Goldryn burned bright as he plunged it through her back.
Into the dark heart within.
CHAPTER 115
Maeve’s dark blood leaked onto the snow as she fell to her knees, fingers scrabbling at the burning sword stuck through her chest.
Fenrys stepped around her, leaving the sword where he’d impaled her as he walked to Aelin’s side.
Embers swirling around her and Rowan, Aelin approached the queen.
Baring her teeth, Maeve hissed as she tried and failed to pry free the blade. “Take it out.”
Aelin only looked to Lorcan. “Anything to say?”
Lorcan smiled grimly, surveying the Fae and wolf-riders wreaking havoc on the spiders. “Long live the queen.” The Faerie Queen of the West.
Maeve snarled, and it was not the sound of a Fae or human. But Valg. Pure, undiluted Valg.
“Well, look who stopped pretending,” Aelin said.
“I will go anywhere you choose to banish me to,” Maeve seethed. “Just take it out.”
“Anywhere?” Aelin asked, and let go of Rowan’s hand.
The lack of his magic, his strength, hit her like plunging into an ice-cold lake.
But she had plenty of her own.
Not magic, never again as it had been, but a strength greater, deeper than that.
Fireheart, her mother had called her.
Not for her power. The name had never once been about her power.
Maeve hissed again, clawing at the blade.
Wreathing her fingers in flame, Aelin offered her hand to Maeve. “You came here to escape a husband you did not love. A world you did not love.”
Maeve paused, studying Aelin’s hand. The new calluses on it. She winced—winced in pain at the blade shredding her heart but not killing her. “Yes,” Maeve breathed.
“And you love this world. You love Erilea.”
Maeve’s dark eyes scanned Aelin, then Rowan and Lorcan, before she answered. “Yes. In the way that I can love anything.”
Aelin kept her hand outstretched. The unspoken offer in it. “And if I choose to banish you, you will go wherever it is we decide. And never bother us again, or any other.”
“Yes,” Maeve snapped, grimacing at the immortal blade piercing her heart. The queen bowed her head, panting, and took Aelin’s outstretched hand.
Aelin drew close. Just as she slid something onto Maeve’s finger.
And whispered in Maeve’s ear, “Then go to hell.”
Maeve reared back, but too late.
Too late, as the golden ring—Silba’s ring, Athril’s ring—shone on her pale hand.
Aelin backed to Rowan’s side as Maeve began to scream.
Screaming and screaming toward the dark sky, toward the stars.
Maeve had wanted the ring not for protection against Valg. No, she was Valg. She’d wanted it so that no other might have it.
Yet when Elide had given it to Aelin, it had not been to destroy a Valg queen. But to keep Aelin safe. And Maeve would never know it—that gift and power: friendship.
What Aelin knew had kept the queen before her from becoming a mirror. What had saved her, and this kingdom.
Maeve thrashed, Goldryn burning, twin to the light on her finger.
Immunity from the Valg. And poison to them.
Maeve shrieked, the sound loud enough to shake the world.
They only stood amongst the falling snow, faces unmoved, and watched her.
Witnessed this death for all those she had destroyed.
Maeve contorted, clawing at herself. Her pale skin began to flake away like old paint.
Revealing bits of the creature beneath the glamour. The skin she’d created for herself.
Aelin only looked to Rowan, to Lorcan and Fenrys, a silent question in her eyes.
Rowan and Lorcan nodded. Fenrys blinked once, his mauled face still bleeding.
So Aelin approached the screaming queen, the creature beneath. Walked behind her and yanked out Goldryn.
Maeve sagged to the snow and mud, but the ring continued to rip her apart from within.
Maeve lifted dark, hateful eyes as Aelin raised Goldryn.
Aelin only smiled down at her. “We’ll pretend my last words to you were something worthy of a song.”
She swung the burning sword.
Maeve’s mouth was still open in a scream as her head tumbled to the snow.
Black blood sprayed, and Aelin moved again, stabbing Goldryn through Maeve’s skull. Into the earth beneath.
“Burn her,” Lorcan rasped.
Rowan’s hand, warm and strong, found Aelin’s again.
And when she looked up at him, there were tears on his face.
Not at the dead Valg queen before them. Or even at what Aelin had done.
No, her prince, her husband, her mate, gazed to the south. To the battlefield.
Even as their power melded, and she burned Maeve into ash and memory, Rowan stared toward the battlefield.
Where line after line after line of Valg soldiers fell to their knees mid-fight with the Fae and wolves and Darghan cavalry.
Where the ruks flapped in amazement as ilken tumbled from the skies, like they had been struck dead.
Far out, several shrill screams rent the air—then fell silent.
An entire army, midbattle, midblow, collapsing.
It rippled outward, that collapsing, the stillness. Until all of Morath’s host lay unmoving. Until the Ironteeth fighting above realized what was happening and veered southward, fleeing from the rukhin and witches who now gave chase.
Until the dark shadow surrounding that fallen army drifted away on the wind, too.
Aelin knew for certain then. Where Erawan had gone.
Who had brought him down at last.
So Aelin wrenched her sword free of the pile of ashes that had been Maeve. She lifted it high to the night sky, to the stars, and let her cry of victory fill the world. Let the name she shouted ring out, the soldiers on the field, in the city, taking up the call until all of Orynth was singing with it. Until it reached the shining stars of the Lord of the North gleaming above them, no longer needed to guide her way home.
Yrene.
Yrene.
Yrene.
CHAPTER 116
Chaol awoke to warm, delicate hands stroking over his brow, his jaw.
He knew that touch. Would know it if he were blind.
One moment, he’d been fighting his way down the battlements. The next—oblivion. As if whatever surge of power had gone through Yrene had not only weakened his spine, but his consciousness.
“I don’t know whether to start yelling or crying,” he said, groaning as he opened his eyes and found Yrene kneeling before him. A heartbeat had him assessing their surroundings: some sort of stairwell, where he’d been sprawled over the lowest steps near a landing. An archway open to the frigid night revealed a starry, clear sky beyond. No wyverns in it.
And cheering. Victorious, wild cheering.
Not one bone drum. Not one snarl or roar.
And Yrene, still stroking his face, was smiling at him. Tears in her eyes.
“Feel free to yell all you like,” she said, some of
those tears slipping free.
But Chaol just gaped at her as it hit him what, exactly, had happened. Why that surge of power had happened.
What this remarkable woman before him had done.
For they were calling her name. The army, the people of Orynth were calling her name.
He was glad he was sitting down.
Even if it did not surprise him one bit that Yrene had done the impossible.
Chaol slid his arms around her waist and buried his face in her neck. “It’s over, then,” he said against her skin, unable to stop the shaking that took over, the mix of relief and joy and lingering, phantom terror.
Yrene just ran her hands through his hair, down his back, and he felt her smile. “It’s over.”
Yet the woman he held, the child growing within her …
Erawan might have been over, his threat and army with it. And Maeve with it, too.
But life, Chaol realized—life was just beginning.
Nesryn didn’t believe it. The enemy had just … collapsed. Even the kharankui-hybrids.
It was as unlikely as the Fae and wolves who had simply appeared through holes in the world. A missing army, who had wasted no time launching themselves at Morath. As if they knew precisely where and how to strike. As if they had been summoned from the ancient myths of the North.
Nesryn alit on the blood-soaked city walls, watching the rukhin and allied witches chase the Ironteeth toward the horizon. She would have been with them, were it not for the claw-marks surrounding Salkhi’s eye. For the blood.
She had barely the breath to scream for a healer as she dismounted.
Barely the breath to unsaddle the ruk, murmuring to the bird as she did. So much blood, the gouging lines from the ilken sentry deep. No sheen of poison, but—
“Are you hurt?” Sartaq. The prince’s eyes were wide, his face bloodied, as he scanned her from head to toe. Behind him, Kadara panted on the battlements, her feathers as bloody as her rider.
Sartaq gripped her shoulders. “Are you hurt?” She’d never seen such panic in his face.
Nesryn only pointed to the now-still enemy, unable to find the words.
But others did. One word, one name, over and over. Yrene.
Healers raced up the battlements, aiming for both ruks, and Nesryn allowed herself to slide her arms around Sartaq’s waist. To press her face against his armored chest.
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