Talk. Talk about what had been haunting her these months. Haunting every thought, every dream, every breath. Talk.
My bowels turned watery.
Twenty-seven was ideal age to make the Drop, they’d decided together, after years of mercilessly judging the various immortals who marked their lives by centuries and millennia. Read before any prominent lines or wrinkles are Gray hairs. They merely said to anyone who inquired, What’s the point of being a mortal basses if we have sagging tits?
We do not look back, Chaol. It helps no one and nothing to look back. We can only go on.
He had been hunting for her since the moment she was taken from him. His mate.
See for yourself.” And then, breaking from between the peaks, they appeared.
Talks like a lady, acts like a thug.
But you know what I told them? I said that they didn’t stand a chance in hell... Because I am going to marry you,” he promised her. “One day, I am going to marry you. I’ll be generous and let you pick when, even if it’s ten years from now. Or twenty. But one day, you are going to be my wife.
Alone, yet surrounded by thousands.
They key was not to panic-panic made you stupid. Panic got you killed.
To the north, the forested foothills flowed to the towering wall of the Cambrian Mountains. To the west, the plain rolled into farmland, endless and open, to the sea. And in the east, past the waterfall, the grassy plain yielded to ancient forests, more mountains beyond them. His mountains. The place he’d once called home, where that mountain house had stood until it had been burned. Where he’d buried Lyria and had one day expected to be laid to rest himself.
For a moment, I saw that set of paints Elain had once bought me with the extra money she’d saved. The red, yellow, and blue I’d savored, used to paint that dresser in our cottage. I had not painted in years at that point, had not dared spend the money on myself... But Elain had.
Father, brother, lover – he’d never really declared himself any of them.
He saw her face each time he closed his eyes. She haunted his thoughts, made him wish to do grand and wonderful things in her name, made him want to be a man who deserved to wear a crown.
Mile after mile, across the darkening world, the call went out, ceaseless and unending as the eternal flame that passed from hearth to hearth. “Fly, fly, fly!” they shouted. “To the queen! To war!” Far and wide, through snow and storm and peril, the Crochans flew.
I see you inherited your father’s temper,” Darrow sneered. “Is this how you plan to rule? When you don’t like someone, you’ll threaten them?
Evangeline staggered to the balcony rail, as if she might see that building amid the sea of chaos by the city walls. She had never had a brother, or a father. She hadn’t yet decided which one she would like Aedion to be.
That’s enough,” I said.
He had lost her. And she would never, in a thousand lifetimes, let him in again.
Men didn’t build more armies and forge more weapons without having plans to use them.