Aedion stepped in front of Rowan, useless as it would be. They’d kill Rowan once he was dead, anyway. But at least he’d go down fighting, defending his brother. At least he would have that.
People were still screaming on the street above—shrieking with blind terror, the sounds of their panic growing closer, louder.
“Steady,” the commander said to the swordsmen.
Aedion took a breath—one of his last, he realized. Rowan straightened as best he could, stalwart against the death that now beckoned, and Aedion could have sworn the prince whispered Aelin’s name. More shouting from the soldiers in the back; some in the front turning to see what the panic was about behind them.
Aedion didn’t care. Not with a row of swords before them, gleaming like the teeth of some mighty beast.
The commander’s hand came down.
And was ripped clean off by a ghost leopard.
For Evangeline, for her freedom, for her future.
Where Lysandra lunged, slashing with claws and fangs, soldiers died.
She’d made it halfway across the city before she got out of that carriage. She told Evangeline to take it all the way to the Faliqs’ country house, to be a good girl and stay safe. Lysandra had sprinted two blocks toward the castle, not caring if she had little to offer them in their fight, when the wind slammed into her and a wild song sparkled in her blood.
Then she shed her human skin, that mortal cage, and ran, tracking the scents of her friends.
The soldiers in the sewer were screaming as she tore into them— a death for every day in hell, a death for the childhood taken from her and from Evangeline. She was fury, she was wrath, she was vengeance.
Aedion and Rowan were backed up against the cave-in, their faces bloody and gaping as she leaped upon the back of a sentry and shredded his spine clean out of his skin.
Oh, she liked this body.
More soldiers rushed into the sewers and Lysandra whirled toward them, giving herself wholly to the beast whose form she wore. She became death incarnate.
When there were none left, when blood soaked her pale fur—blood that tasted vile—she paused at last.
“The palace,” Rowan gasped from where he’d slumped against the stones, Aedion pressing a hand to a wound in the Fae warrior’s leg. Rowan pointed to the open sewer behind them, littered with gore. “To the queen.”
An order and a plea.
Lysandra nodded her furry head, that disgusting blood leaking from her maw, black gore in her fangs, and bolted back the way she’d come.
People screamed at the ghost leopard that shot down the street, sleek as an arrow, dodging whinnying horses and carriages.
The glass castle loomed, half shrouded by the smoking ruins of the clock tower, and light—fire—exploded between its turrets. Aelin.
Aelin was still alive, and fighting like hell.
The iron gates of the castle appeared ahead, strung with reeking corpses.
Fire and darkness slammed into each other atop the castle, and people fell silent as they pointed. Lysandra raced for the gates, and the crowd spied her at last, scrambling and bleating to get out of her way. They cleared a path right to the open entrance.
Revealing thirty Valg guards armed with crossbows lined up in front of it, ready to fire.
They all trained their weapons on her.
Thirty guards with bolts—and beyond them, an open path to the castle. To Aelin.
Lysandra leaped. The closest guard fired a clean, spiraling shot right for her chest.
She knew, with that leopard’s senses, that it would hit home.
Yet Lysandra did not slow. She did not stop.
For Evangeline. For her future. For her freedom. For the friends who had come for her.
The bolt neared her heart.
And was knocked from the air by an arrow.
Lysandra landed on the guard’s face and shredded it with her claws.
There was only one sharpshooter with that sort of aim.
Lysandra loosed a roar, and became a storm of death upon the guards nearest her while arrows rained on the rest.
When Lysandra dared look, it was in time to see Nesryn Faliq draw another arrow atop the neighboring rooftop, flanked by her rebels, and fire it clean through the eye of the final guard between Lysandra and the castle.
“Go!” Nesryn shouted over the panicking crowd.
Flame and night warred in the highest spires, and the earth shuddered.
Lysandra was already running up the sloped, curving path between the trees.Nothing but the grass and the trees and the wind.
Nothing but this sleek, powerful body, her shape-shifter’s heart burning, glowing, singing with each step, each curve she took, fluid and swift and free.
Faster and faster, every movement of that leopard’s body a joy, even as her queen battled for her kingdom and their world high, high above.
76
Aelin panted, fighting against the throbbing in her head.
Too soon; too much power too soon. She hadn’t had time to draw it up the safe way, spiraling slowly to its depths.
Shifting into her Fae form hadn’t helped—it had only made the Valg smell worse.
Dorian was on his knees, clawing at his hand, where the ring kept glowing, branding his flesh.
He sent darkness snapping for her again and again—and each time, she slammed it away with a wall of flame.
But her blood was heating.
“Try, Dorian,” she begged, her tongue like paper in her parched mouth.
“I will kill you, you Fae bitch.”
A low laugh sounded behind her.
Aelin half turned—not daring to put her back to either of them, even if it meant exposing herself to the open fall.
The King of Adarlan stood in the open doorway at the other end of the bridge.
Chaol—
“Such a noble effort from the captain. To try to buy you time so you might save my son.”
She’d tried—tried, but—
“Punish her,” the demon hissed from the other end of the bridge.
“Patience.” But the king stiffened as he took in the gold ring burning on Dorian’s hand. That harsh, brutal face tightened. “What have you done?”
Dorian thrashed, shuddering, and let out a scream that set her Fae ears ringing.
Aelin drew her father’s sword. “You killed Chaol,” she said, the words hollow.
“The boy didn’t even land a single blow.” He smirked at the Sword of Orynth. “I doubt you will, either.”
Dorian went silent.
Aelin snarled, “You killed him.”
The king approached, his footfalls thudding on the glass bridge.
“My one regret,” the king said to her, “is that I did not get to take my time.”
She backed up a step—just one.
The king drew Nothung. “I’ll take my time with you, though.”
Aelin lifted her sword in both hands.
Then—
“What did you say?”
Dorian.
The voice was hoarse, broken.
The king and Aelin both turned toward the prince.
But Dorian’s eyes were on his father, and they were burning like stars. “What did you say. About Chaol.”
The king snapped. “Silence.”
“Did you kill him.” Not a question.
Aelin’s lips began trembling, and she tunneled down, down, down inside herself.
“And if I did?” the king said, brows high.
“Did you kill Chaol?”
The light at Dorian’s hand burned and burned—
But the collar remained around his neck.
“You,” the king snapped—and Aelin realized he meant her just as a spear of darkness shot for her so fast, too fast—
The darkness shattered against a wall of ice.
Dorian.
His name was Dorian.
Dorian Havilliard, and he was the Crown Prince of Adarlan.
And Celaena Sardothien—Aelin Galathynius, his friend … she had come back for him.
She faced him, an ancient sword in her hands.
“Dorian?” she breathed.
The demon inside him was screaming and pleading, ripping at him, trying to bargain.
A wave of black slammed into the shield of ice he’d thrown up between the princess and his father. Soon—soon the king would break through it.
Dorian lifted his hands to the Wyrdstone collar—cold, smooth, thrumming.
Don’t, the demon shrieked. Don’t!
There were tears running down Aelin’s face as Dorian gripped the black stone encircling his throat.
And, bellowing his grief, his rage, his pain, he snapped the collar from his neck.
77
The Wyrdstone collar broke in two—severing along a hairline fracture where the ring’s power had sliced through.
Dorian was panting, and blood was running from his nose, but—
“Aelin,” he gasped out, and the voice was his. It was him.
She ran, sheathing the Sword of Orynth, reaching his side as the wall of ice exploded beneath a hammer of darkness.
The king’s power surged for them, and Aelin flung out a single hand. A shield of fire blasted into existence, and the darkness was shoved back.
“Neither of you are leaving here alive,” the king said, his rough voice slithering through the fire.
Dorian sagged against her, and Aelin slipped a hand around his waist to hold him up.
Pain flickered in her gut, and a throbbing began in her blood. She couldn’t hold out, not so unprepared, even as the sun held at its peak, as if Mala herself willed it to linger just a little longer to amplify the gifts she’d already showered on a Princess of Terrasen.
“Dorian,” Aelin said, pain lancing down her spine as burnout neared.
He turned his head, an eye still on the wall of flickering flames. Such pain, and grief, and rage in those eyes. Yet, somehow, beneath it all—a spark of spirit. Of hope.
Aelin extended her hand—a question and an offer and a promise.
“To a better future,” she said.
“You came back,” he said, as if that were an answer.
They joined hands.