Сара Маас - Kingdom of Ash

It missed Maeve by an inch, the Valg queen twisting aside before the blade buried itself deep in the snow, steaming where it landed. Still burning.

It was all Aelin needed.

She lashed out, flame spearing into the world.

But not for Maeve.

It slammed into Rowan, into Fenrys and Lorcan. Struck their shoulders, hard and deep.

Burning them. Branding them.

Aelin was dead. She was dead, and he had failed her.

“You are a lesser male,” Lyria said, still studying the gate where Aelin’s body swayed. “You deserved this. After what was done to me, you deserved this.”

Aelin was dead.

He did not wish to live in this world. Not for a heartbeat longer.

Aelin was dead. And he—

His shoulder twinged. And then it burned .

As if someone had pressed a brand to it. A red-hot poker.

A flame.

He looked down, but beheld no wound.

Lyria continued on, “You bring only suffering to those you love.”

The words were distant. Secondary to that burning wound.

It singed him again, a phantom wound, a memory—

Not a memory. Not a memory, but a lifeline thrown into the dark. Into an illusion.

An anchor.

As he had once anchored her, hauling her from a Valg prince’s grip.

Aelin.

His hands curled at his sides. Aelin, who had known suffering as he did. Who had been shown peaceful lives and still chosen him, exactly as he was, for what they had both endured. Illusions—those had been illusions.

Rowan gritted his teeth. Felt the thing wrapped around his mind. Holding him captive.

He let out a low snarl.

She had done this—done it before. Torn into his mind. Twisted and taken from him this most vital thing. Aelin .

He would not let her take it again.

Lorcan roared at the brand that shredded through his senses, through Elide’s mocking words, through the image of Perranth, the home he wanted so badly and might never see.

Roared, and the world rippled. Became snow and darkness and battle.

And Maeve. Poised before them, her pale face livid.

Her power lunged for him, a striking panther—

Elide now lay in a grand, opulent bed, her withered hand reaching for his. An aged hand, riddled with marks, the delicate blue veins intertwining like the many rivers around Doranelle.

And her face … Her dark eyes were filmy, her wrinkles deep. Her thinned hair white as snow.

“This is a truth you cannot outrun,” she said, her voice a croak. “A sword above our heads.”

Her deathbed. That’s what this was. And the hand he brushed against hers—it remained young. He remained young.

Bile coated his throat. “Please.” He put a hand to his chest, as if it’d stop the relentless cracking.

Faint, throbbing pain answered back.

Elide’s breaths rasped against his ears. He couldn’t watch this, couldn’t—

He dug his hand harder into his chest. To the pain there.

Life—life was pain. Pain, and joy. Joy because of the pain.

He saw it in Elide’s face. In every line and age mark. In every white hair. A life lived—together. The pain of parting because of how wonderful it had been.

The darkness beyond thinned. Lorcan dug his hand into the burning wound in his shoulder.

Elide let out a hacking cough that wrecked him, yet he took it into his heart, every bit of it. All that the future might offer.

It did not frighten him.

Again and again, Connall died. Over and over.

Connall lay on the floor of the veranda, his blood leaking toward the misty river far below.

His fate—it should have been his fate.

If he walked over the edge of the veranda, into that roaring river, would anyone mark his passing? If he leaped, his brother in his arms, would the river make a quick end for him?

He didn’t deserve a quick end. He deserved a slow, brutal bloodletting.

His punishment, his just reward for what he’d done to his brother. The life he’d allowed to be set in his shadow, had always known remained in his shadow and hadn’t tried, not really, to share the light.

A burn, violent and unflinching, tore through him. As if someone had shoved his shoulder into a furnace.

He deserved it. He welcomed it into his heart.

He hoped it would destroy him.

Pain. The thing she had dreaded inflicting upon them most, had fought and fought to keep them from.

The scent of their burned flesh stung her nostrils, and Maeve let out a low laugh. “Was that a shield, Aelin? Or were you trying to put them out of their misery?”

As he kneeled beside her, Rowan’s hand twitched at whatever horror he beheld, right over the edge of his discarded hatchet.

Pine and snow and the coppery tang of blood blended, rising to meet her as his palm sliced open with the force of that twitch.

“We can keep at this, you know,” Maeve went on. “Until Orynth lies in ruin.”

Rowan stared sightlessly ahead, his palm leaking blood onto the snow.

His fingers curled. Slightly.

A beckoning gesture, too small for Maeve to note. For anyone to note—except for her. Except for the silent language between them, the way their bodies had spoken to each other from the moment they’d met in that dusty alley in Varese.

A small act of defiance. As he had once defied Maeve before her throne in Doranelle.

Fenrys sobbed again, and Maeve glanced toward him.

Aelin slid her hand along Rowan’s hatchet, the pain a whisper through her body.

Her mate trembled, fighting the mind that had invaded his once more.

“What a waste,” Maeve said, turning back to them. “For these fine males to leave my service, only to wind up bound to a queen with hardly more than a few drops of power to her name.”

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.