Behind them, the fighting continued, as it had for the past twenty minutes. Wind and ice were of no use against the darkness, though Rowan had hurled both against it the moment the barrier fell. Again and again, anything to pierce that eternal black and see what was left of the princess. Even as he started hearing a soft, warm female voice, beckoning to him from the darkness—that voice he had spent centuries forgetting, which now tore him to shreds.
“Rowan,” Gavriel murmured, tightening his grip on Rowan’s arm. Rain had begun pouring. “We are needed inside.”
“No,” he snarled. He knew Aelin was alive, because during all these weeks that they had been breathing each other’s scents, they had become bonded. She was alive, but could be in any level of torment or decay. That was why Gavriel and Lorcan were holding him back. If they didn’t, he would run for the darkness, where Lyria beckoned.
But for Aelin, he had tried to break free.
“Rowan, the others—”
“No.”
Lorcan swore over the roar of the torrential rain. “She is dead, you fool, or close enough to it. You can still save other lives.”
They began hauling him to his feet, away from her. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll rip your head from your body,” he snarled at Lorcan, the commander who had offered him a company of warriors when he had nothing and no one left.
Gavriel flicked his eyes to Lorcan in some silent conversation. Rowan tensed, preparing to fling them off. They would knock him unconscious sooner than allow him into that dark, where Lyria’s beckoning had now turned to screaming for mercy. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.
But Aelin was real, and was being drained of life with every moment they held him here. All he needed to get them unconscious was for Gavriel to drop his magical shield—which he’d had up against Rowan’s own power from the moment he’d pinned him. He had to get into that dark, had to find her. “Let go,” he growled again.
A rumbling shook the earth, and they froze. Beneath them some huge power was surging—a behemoth rising from the deep.
They turned toward the darkness. And Rowan could have sworn that a golden light arced through it, then disappeared.
“That’s impossible,” Gavriel breathed. “She burned out.”
Rowan didn’t dare blink. Her burnouts had always been self-imposed, some inner barrier composed of fear and a lingering desire for normalcy that kept her from accepting the true depth of her power.
The creatures fed on despair and pain and terror. But what if—what if the victim let go of those fears? What if the victim walked through them—embraced them?
As if in answer, flame erupted from the wall of darkness.
The fire unfurled, filling the rainy night, vibrant as a red opal. Lorcan swore, and Gavriel threw up additional shields of his own magic. Rowan didn’t bother.
They did not fight him as he shrugged off their grip, surging to his feet. The flame didn’t singe a hair on his head. It flowed above and past him, glorious and immortal and unbreakable.
And there, beyond the stones, standing between two of those creatures, was Aelin, a strange mark glowing on her brow. Her hair flowed around her, shorter now and bright like her fire. And her eyes—though they were red-rimmed, the gold in her eyes was a living flame.
The two creatures lunged for her, the darkness sweeping in around them.
Rowan ran all of one step before she flung out her arms, grabbing the creatures by their flawless faces—her palms over their open mouths as she exhaled sharply.