I ate in silence, listening to the rustle of his clothes being donned, trying to think of ice baths, of infected wounds, of toe fungus – anything but his naked body, so close... and the bed I was sitting on.
And when she grasped the dagger, its weight lighter than she remembered, Rowan looked into her eyes, into the very core of her, and said, “Fireheart.
He supposed any lick of self-consciousness had been flayed from her under the whips of Endovier. Even though he’d tattooed over the bulk of the scars on her back, their ridges remained. The nightmares, too – when she’d still startle awake and light a candle to drive away the blackness they’d shoved her into, the memory of the lightless pits they’d used for punishment. His Fireheart, shut in the dark.
I wished my human heart had been changed with the rest of me, made into immortal marble. Instead of the shredded bit of blackness that it now was, leaking its ichor into me. Tamlin.
Fury didn’t stop her prep. “Bryce was a ghost for a long while, Hunt. She pretended she wasn’t, but she was.” The helicopter finally pulled into the air. “You brought her back to life.
We come to honor a friend.
I felt, more than saw, my sister go still as he approached. Her throat bobbed. “Are you just going to hold that chicken all night?” Cassian asked me from the table. Scowling, I stomped toward him, plunking the platter onto the wooden surface. “I spat in it,” I said sweetly. “Makes it all the more delicious,” Cassian crooned, smiling right back. Rhys snickered, drinking deeply from his wine. But I strode to my seat – nestled between Amren and Mor – in time to see Elain say to Azriel, “Hello.
No – she wasn’t human at all. Celaena was Fae.
Perhaps there was an unstoppable magic inherent in music and art.
If she could keep breathing, she wouldn’t fall apart.
She couldn’t bring herself to care, because those moment she spent brawling were the few moments she felt like herself again.
Not forever,′ he said onto my mouth. And though I knew it was a lie, I put my arms around his neck and kissed him.
The man closest to the king didn’t bother glancing around. His sapphire eyes went right to Manon, and stayed there. He would have been beautiful were it not for the dark collar around his throat and the utter coldness in his perfect face. He smiled at Manon as though he knew the taste of her blood.
They’d walked this dark path together back to the light. He would not let the road end here.
She was not ashamed of the truth before her. She was not afraid. Manon’s grandmother led the attack, her maneuvers the deadliest. It was from her that the first slice of pain appeared. A rip of iron nails through Manon’s shoulder. But Manon swung her sword, again and again, iron on steel ringing out across the icy peaks. No, she was not afraid at all.
It was an effort not to peek over her shoulder. Don’t you even dare, a voice hissed in her head.
The words were casual, but that was panic in his eyes. Not – not the controlling fear Tamlin had once succumbed to, but... genuine terror of not knowing where I was, i I needed help. Just as I would want to know where he was, if he needed help, if he vanished when our enemies surrounded us.
We’re not going to hell, Aelin,” he said. “But wherever we go, we’ll go together.
He brushed his lips against hers. “I love you,” he breathed against her mouth. “And from today onward, I want to never be separated from you. Wherever you go, I go. Even if that means going to Hell itself, wherever you are, that’s where I want to be. Forever.” Celaena.
A queen – a queen who bowed to no one, a queen who had faced them all down and triumphed. A queen who owned her body, her life, her destiny, and never apologized for it.