فصل 54

Chapter 54

Trumpets announced his arrival. Trumpets and silence as the people of Orynth crowded the steep streets winding up to the white palace that watched over them all. It was the first sunny day in weeks—the snow on the cobblestone streets melting quickly, though the wind still had a final bite of winter to it, enough so that the King of Adarlan and his entire massive party were bundled in furs that covered their regalia.

Their gold and crimson flags, however, flapped in the crisp wind, the golden poles shining as brightly as the armor of their bearers, who trotted at the head of the party. She watched them approach from one of the balconies off the throne room, Aedion at her side running a constant commentary about the state of their horses, armor, weapons—about the King of Adarlan himself, who rode near the front on a great black warhorse. There was a pony beside him, bearing a smaller figure. “His sniveling son,” Aedion told her.

The whole castle was miserably quiet. Everyone was dashing around, but silently, tensely. Her father had been on edge at breakfast, her mother distracted, the whole court snarly and wearing far more weapons than usual. Only her uncle seemed the same—only Orlon had smiled at her today, said she looked very pretty in her blue dress and golden crown, and tugged one of her freshly pressed curls. No one had told her anything about this visit, but she knew it was important, because even Aedion was wearing clean clothes, a crown, and a new dagger, which he’d taken to tossing in the air.

“Aedion, Aelin,” someone hissed from inside the throne room—Lady Marion, her mother’s dearest friend and handmaiden. “On the dais, now.” Behind the lovely lady peeked a night-black head of hair and onyx eyes—Elide, her daughter. The girl was too quiet and breakable for her to bother with usually. And Lady Marion, her nursemaid, coddled her own daughter endlessly.

“Rat’s balls,” Aedion cursed, and Marion went red with anger, but did not reprimand. Proof enough that today was different—dangerous, even.

Her stomach shifted. But she followed Lady Marion inside, Aedion at her heels as always, and preched on her little throne set beside her father’s. Aedion took up his place flanking her, shoulders back and head high, already her protector and warrior.

The whole of Orynth was silent as the King of Adarlan entered their mountain home.

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She hated the King of Adarlan.

He did not smile—not when he stalked into the throne room to greet her uncle and parents, not when he introduced his eldest son, Crown Prince Dorian Havilliard, and not when they came to the great hall for the largest feast she’d ever seen. He’d only looked at her twice so far: once during that initial meeting, when he’d stared at her long and hard enough that her father had demanded to know what he found so interesting about his daughter, and their whole court had tensed. But she hadn’t broken his dark stare. She hated his scarred, brutish face and furs. Hated the way he ignored his dark-haired son, who stood like a pretty doll beside him, his manners so elegant and graceful, his pale hands like little birds as they moved.

The second time the king had looked at her had been at this table, where she now sat a few seats down, flanked by Lady Marion on the side closest to the king and Aedion on the other. There were daggers on Lady Marion’s legs beneath her dress—she knew because she kept bumping into them. Lord Cal, Marion’s husband, sat beside his wife, the steel on him gleaming.

Elide, along with all the other children, had been sent upstairs. Only she and Aedion—and Prince Dorian—were allowed here. Aedion puffed with pride and barely restrained temper when the King of Adarlan viewed her a second time, as if he could see through to her bones. Then the king was swept into conversation with her parents and uncle and all the lords and ladies of the court who had placed themselves around the royal family.

She had always known her court took no chances, not with her and not with her parents or uncle. Even now, she noticed the eyes of her father’s closest friends darting to the windows and doorways as they maintained conversation with those around them.

The rest of the hall was filled with the party from Adarlan and the outer circles of Orlon’s court, along with key merchants from the city who wanted to make ties with Adarlan. Or something like that. But her attention was on the prince across from her, who seemed utterly ignored by his father and his own court, shoved down near the end with her and Aedion.

He ate so beautifully, she thought, watching him cut into his roast chicken. Not a drop moved out of place, not a scrap fell on the table. She had decent manners, while Aedion was hopeless, his plate littered with bones and crumbs scattered everywhere, even some on her own dress. She’d kicked him for it, but his attention was too focused on the royals down the table.

So both she and the Crown Prince were to be ignored, then. She looked at the boy again, who was around her age, she supposed. His skin was from the winter, his blue-black hair neatly trimmed; his sapphire eyes lifted from his plate to meet hers.

“You eat like a fine lady,” she told him.

His lips thinned and color stained his ivory cheeks. Across from her, Quinn, her uncle’s Captain of the Guard, choked on his water.

The prince glanced at his father—still busy with her uncle—before replying. Not for approval, but in fear. “I eat like a prince,” Dorian said quietly.

“You do not need to cut your bread with a fork and knife,” she said. A faint pounding started in her head, followed by a flickering warmth, but she ignored it. The hall was hot, as they’d shut all the windows for some reason.

“Here in the North,” she went on as the prince’s knife and fork remained where they were on his dinner roll, “you need not be so formal. We don’t put on airs.” Hen, one of Quinn’s men, coughed pointedly from a few seats down. She could almost hear him saying, Says the little lady with her hair pressed into careful curls and wearing her new dress that she threatened to skin us over if we got dirty.

She gave Hen an equally pointed look, then returned her attention to the foreign prince. He’d already looked down at his food again, as if he expected to be neglected for the rest of the night. And he looked lonely enough that she said, “If you like, you could be my friend.” Not one of the men around them said anything, or coughed.

Dorian lifted his chin. “I have a friend. He is to be Lord of Anielle someday, and the fiercest warrior in the land.” She doubted Aedion would like that claim, but her cousin remained focused down the table. She wished she’d kept her mouth closed. Even this useless foreign prince had friends. The pounding in her head increased, and she took a drink of her water. Water—always water to cool her insides.

Reaching for her glass, however, sent spikes of red-hot pain through her head, and she winced. “Princess?” Quinn said, always the first to notice.

She blinked, black spots forming. But the pain stopped.

No, not a stop, but a pause. A pause, then—

Right between her eyes, it ached and pressed at her head, trying to get in. She rubbed her brows. Her throat closed up, and she reached for the water, thinking of coolness, of calm and cold, exactly as her tutors and the court had told her. But the magic was churning in her gut—burning up. Each pulse of pain in her head made it worse.

“Princess,” Quinn said again. She got to her feet, legs wobbling. The blackness in her vision grew with each blow from the pain, and she swayed. Distantly, as if she were underwater, she heard Lady Marion say her name, reach for her, but she wanted her mother’s cool touch.

Her mother turned in her seat, face drawn, her golden earrings catching in the light. She stretched out an arm, beckoning. “What is it, Fireheart?” “I don’t feel well,” she said, barely able to get the words out. She gripped her mother’s velvet-clad arm, for comfort and to keep her buckling knees from giving out.

“What feels wrong?” her mother asked, even as she put a hand to her forehead. A flicker of worry, then a glance back at her father, who watched from beside the King of Adarlan. “She’s burning up,” she said softly. Lady Marion was suddenly behind her, and her mother looked up to say, “Have the healer go to her room.” Marion was gone in an instant, hurrying to a side door.

She didn’t need a healer, and she gripped her mother’s arm to tell her as much. Yet no words would come out as the magic surged and burned. Her mother hissed and jerked back—smoke rising from her dress, from where she had gripped her. “Aelin.” Her head gave a throb—a blast of pain, and then …

A wriggling, squirming inside her head.

A worm of darkness, pushing its way in. Her magic roiled, thrashing, trying to get it out, to burn it up, to save them both, but—“Aelin.” “Get it out,” she rasped, pushing at her temples as she backed away from the table. Two of the foreign lords grabbed Dorian from the table and swept him from the room.

Her magic bucked like a stallion as the worm wriggled farther in. “Get it out.”

“Aelin.” Her father was on his feet now, hand on his sword. Half the others were standing too, but she flung out a hand—to keep them away, to warn them.

Blue flame shot out. Two people dove in time to avoid it, but everyone was on their feet as the vacated seats went up in flames.

The worm would latch into her mind and never let go.

She grabbed at her head, her magic screaming, so loud it could shatter the world. And then she was burning, a living column of turquoise flame, sobbing as the dark worm continued its work and the walls of her mind began to give.

Above her own voice, above the shouting in the hall, she heard her father’s bellow—a command to her mother, who was on her knees, hands outstretched toward her in supplication. “Do it, Evalin!” The pillar of flame grew hotter, hot enough that people were fleeing now.

Her mother’s eyes met her own, full of pleading and pain.

Then water—a wall of water crashing down on her, slamming her to the stones, flowing down her throat, into her eyes, choking her.

Drowning her. Until there was no air for her flame, only water and its freezing embrace.

The King of Adarlan looked at her for a third time—and smiled.

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The Valg princes enjoyed that memory, that terror and pain. And as they paused to savor it, Celaena understood. The King of Adarlan had used his power on her that night. Her parents could not have known that the person responsible for that dark worm, which had vanished as soon as she’d lost consciousness, was the man sitting beside them.

There was another one of them now—a fourth prince, living inside Narrok, who said, “The soldiers have almost taken the tunnel. Be ready to move soon.” She could feel him hovering over her, observing. “You’ve found me a prize that will interest our liege. Do not waste her. Sips only.” She tried to summon horror—tried to feel anything at the thought of where they would take her, what they would do to her. But she could feel nothing as the princes murmured their understanding, and the memory tumbled onward.

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Her mother thought it was an attack from Maeve, a vicious reminder of whatever debt she owed, to make them look vulnerable. In the hours afterward, as she’d lain in the ice-cold bath adjacent to her bedroom, she had used her Fae ears to overhear her parents and their court debating it from the sitting room of their suite.

It had to be Maeve. No one else could do anything like that, or know that such a demonstration—in front of the King of Adarlan, who already loathed magic—would be detrimental.

She did not want to talk, even once she was again capable of walking and speaking and acting like a princess. Insisting some normalcy might help, her mother made her go to a tea the next afternoon with Prince Dorian, carefully guarded and monitored, with Aedion sitting between them. And when Dorian’s flawless manners faltered and he knocked over the teapot, spilling on her new dress, she’d made a good show of having Aedion threaten to pummel him.

But she didn’t care about the prince, or the tea, or the dress. She could barely walk back to her room, and that night she dreamt of the maggot invading her mind, waking with screams and flames in her mouth.

At dawn, her parents took her out of the castle, headed for their manor two days away. Their foreign visitors might have caused too much stress, the healer said. She suggested Lady Marion take her, but her parents insisted they go. Her uncle approved. The King of Adarlan, it seemed, would not stay in the castle with her magic running rampant, either.

Aedion remained in Orynth, her parents promising he would be sent for when she was settled again. But she knew it was for his safety. Lady Marion went with them, leaving her husband and Elide at the palace—for their safety, too.

A monster, that was what she was. A monster who had to be contained and monitored.

Her parents argued the first two nights at the manor, and Lady Marion kept her company, reading to her, brushing her hair, telling her stories of her home in Perranth. Marion had been a laundress in the palace from her childhood. But when Evalin arrived, they had become friends—mostly because the princess had stained her new husband’s favorite shirt with ink and wanted to get it cleaned before he noticed.

Evalin soon made Marion her lady-in-waiting, and then Lord Lochan had returned from a rotation on the southern border. Handsome Cal Lochan, who somehow became the dirtiest man in the castle and constantly needed Marion’s advice on how to remove various stains. Who one day asked a bastard-born servant to be his wife—and not just wife, but Lady of Perranth, the second-largest territory in Terrasen. Two years later, she had borne him Elide, heir of Perranth.

She loved Marion’s stories, and it was those stories she clung to in the quiet and tension of the next few days, when winter still gripped the world and made the manor groan.

The house was creaking in the brisk winds the night her mother walked into her bedroom—far less grand than the one in the palace, but still lovely. They only summered here, as the house was too drafty for winter, and the roads too perilous. The fact that they’d come … “Still not asleep?” her mother asked. Lady Marion rose from beside the bed. After a few warm words, Marion left, smiling at them both.

Her mother curled up on the mattress, drawing her in close. “I’m sorry,” her mother whispered onto her head. For the nightmares had also been of drowning—of icy water closing over her head. “I am so sorry, Fireheart.” She buried her face in her mother’s chest, savoring the warmth.

“Are you still frightened of sleeping?”

She nodded, clinging tighter.

“I have a gift, then.” When she didn’t move, her mother said, “Don’t you wish to see it?” She shook her head. She didn’t want a gift.

“But this will protect you from harm—this will keep you safe always.”

She lifted her head to find her mother smiling as she removed the golden chain and heavy, round medallion from beneath her nightgown and held it out to her.

She looked at the amulet, then at her mother, eyes wide.

The Amulet of Orynth. The heirloom honored above all others of their house. Its round disk was the size of her palm, and on its cerulean front, a white stag had been carved of horn—horn gifted from the Lord of the Forest. Between his curling antlers was a burning crown of gold, the immortal star that watched over them and pointed the way home to Terrasen. She knew every inch of the amulet, had run her fingers over it countless times and memorized the shape of the symbols etched into the back—words in a strange language that no one could remember.

“Father gave this to you when you were in Wendlyn. To protect you.”

The smile remained. “And before that, his uncle gave it to him when he came of age. It is a gift meant to be given to people in our family—to those who need its guidance.” She was too stunned to object as her mother slipped the chain over her head and arranged the amulet down her front. It hung almost to her navel, a warm, heavy weight. “Never take it off. Never lose it.” Her mother kissed her brow. “Wear it, and know that you are loved, Fireheart—that you are safe, and it is the strength of this”—she placed a hand on her heart—“that matters. Wherever you go, Aelin,” she whispered, “no matter how far, this will lead you home.” Images

She had lost the Amulet of Orynth. Lost it that very same night.

She could not bear it. She tried begging the Valg princes to put her out of her misery and drain her into nothing, but she had no voice here.

Hours after her mother had given her the Amulet of Orynth, a storm had struck.

It was a storm of unnatural darkness, and in it she felt that wriggling, horrific thing pushing against her mind again. Her parents remained unconscious along with everyone else in the manor, even though a strange smell coated the air.

She had clutched the amulet to her chest when she awoke to the pure dark and the thunder—clutched it and prayed to every god she knew. But the amulet had not given her strength or courage, and she had slunk to her parents’ room, as black as her own, save for the window flapping in the gusting wind and rain.

The rain had soaked everything, but—but they had to be exhausted from dealing with her, and from the anxiety they tried to hide. So she shut the window for them, and carefully crawled into their damp bed so that she did not wake them. They didn’t reach for her, didn’t ask what was wrong, and the bed was so cold—colder than her own, and reeking of copper and iron, and that scent that did not sit well with her.

It was to that scent that she awoke when the maid screamed.

Lady Marion rushed in, eyes wide but clear. She did not look at her dead friends, but went straight to the bed and leaned across Evalin’s corpse. The lady-in-waiting was small and delicately boned, but she somehow lifted her away from her parents, holding her tightly as she rushed from the room. The few servants at the manor were in a panic, some racing for help that was at least a day away—some fleeing.

Lady Marion stayed.

Marion stayed and drew a bath, helping her peel away the cold, bloody nightgown. They did not talk, did not try. Lady Marion bathed her, and when she was clean and dry, she carried her down to the cold kitchen. Marion sat her at the long table, bundled in a blanket, and set about building the hearth fire.

She had not spoken today. There were no sounds or words left in her, anyway.

One of the few remaining servants burst in, shouting to the empty house that King Orlon was dead, too. Murdered in his bed just like— Lady Marion was out of the kitchen with her teeth bared before the man could enter. She didn’t listen to gentle Marion slapping him, ordering him to get out and find help—find real help and not useless news.

Murdered. Her family was—dead. There was no coming back from death, and her parents … What had the servants done with their … their … Shaking hit her so hard the blanket tumbled away. She couldn’t stop her teeth from clacking. It was a miracle she stayed in the chair.

It couldn’t be true. This was another nightmare, and she would awaken to her father stroking her hair, her mother smiling, awaken in Orynth, and— The warm weight of the blanket wrapped around her again, and Lady Marion scooped her into her lap, rocking. “I know. I’m not going to leave—I’m going to stay with you until help comes. They’ll be here tomorrow. Lord Lochan, Captain Quinn, your Aedion—they’re all going to be here tomorrow. Maybe even by dawn.” But Lady Marion was shaking, too. “I know,” she kept saying, weeping quietly. “I know.” The fire died down, along with Marion’s crying. They held on to each other, rooted to that kitchen chair. They waited for the dawn, and for the others who would help, somehow.

A clopping issued from outside—faint, but the world was so silent that they heard the lone horse. It was still dark. Lady Marion scanned the kitchen windows, listening to the horse slowly circling, until— They were under the table in a flash, Marion pressing her into the freezing floor, covering her with her delicate body. The horse headed toward the darkened front of the house.

The front, because—because the kitchen light might suggest to whoever it was that someone was inside. The front was better for sneaking in … to finish what had begun the night before.

“Aelin,” Marion whispered, and small, strong hands found her face, forcing her to look at the white-as-snow features, the bloodred lips. “Aelin, listen to me.” Though Marion was breathing quickly, her voice was even. “You are going to run for the river. Do you remember the way to the footbridge?” The narrow rope and wood bridge across the ravine and the rushing River Florine below. She nodded.

“Good girl. Make for the bridge, and cross it. Do you remember the empty farm down the road? Find a place to hide there—and do not come out, do not let yourself be seen by anyone except someone you recognize. Not even if they say they’re a friend. Wait for the court—they will find you.” She was shaking again. But Marion gripped her shoulders. “I am going to buy you what time I can, Aelin. No matter what you hear, no matter what you see, don’t look back, and don’t stop until you find a place to hide.” She shook her head, silent tears finding their way out at last. The front door groaned—a quick movement.

Lady Marion reached for the dagger in her boot. It glinted in the dim light. “When I say run, you run, Aelin. Do you understand?” She didn’t want to, not at all, but she nodded.

Lady Marion brushed a kiss to her brow. “Tell my Elide…” Her voice broke. “Tell my Elide that I love her very much.” A soft thud of approaching footsteps from the front of the house. Lady Marion dragged her from under the table and eased open the kitchen door only wide enough for her to squeeze through.

“Run now,” Lady Marion said, and shoved her into the night.

The door shut behind her, and then there was only the cold, dark air and the trees that led toward the path to the bridge. She staggered into a run. Her legs were leaden, her bare feet tearing on the ground. But she made it to the trees—just as there was a crash from the house.

She gripped a trunk, her knees buckling. Through the open window, she could see Lady Marion standing before a hooded, towering man, her daggers out but trembling. “You will not find her.” The man said something that had Marion backing to the door—not to run, but to block it.

She was so small, her nursemaid. So small against him. “She is a child,” Marion bellowed. She had never heard her scream like that—with rage and disgust and despair. Marion raised her daggers, precisely how her husband had shown her again and again.

She should help, not cower in the trees. She had learned to hold a knife and a small sword. She should help.

The man lunged for Marion, but she darted out of the way—and then leapt on him, slicing and tearing and biting.

And then something broke—something broke so fundamentally she knew there was no coming back from it, either for her or Lady Marion—as the man grabbed the woman and threw her against the edge of the table. A crack of bone, then the arc of his blade going for her stunned form—for her head. Red sprayed.

She knew enough about death to understand that once a head was severed like that, it was over. Knew that Lady Marion, who had loved her husband and daughter so much, was gone. Knew that this—this was called sacrifice.

She ran. Ran through the barren trees, the brush ripping her clothes, her hair, shredding and biting. The man didn’t bother to be quiet as he flung open the kitchen door, mounted his horse, and galloped after her. The hoofbeats were so powerful they seemed to echo through the forest—the horse had to be a monster.

She tripped over a root and slammed into the earth. In the distance, the melting river was roaring. So close, but—her ankle gave a bolt of agony. Stuck—she was stuck in the mud and roots. She yanked at the roots that held her, wood ripping her nails, and when that did nothing, she clawed at the muddy ground. Her fingers burned.

A sword whined as it was drawn from its sheath, and the ground reverberated with the pounding hooves of the horse. Closer, closer it came.

A sacrifice—it had been a sacrifice, and now it would be in vain.

More than death, that was what she hated most—the wasted sacrifice of Lady Marion. She clawed at the ground and yanked at the roots, and then— Tiny eyes in the dark, small fingers at the roots, heaving them up, up. Her foot slipped free and she was up again, unable to thank the Little Folk who had already vanished, unable to do anything but run, limping now. The man was so close, the bracken cracking behind, but she knew the way. She had come through here so many times that the darkness was no obstacle.

She only had to make it to the bridge. His horse could not pass, and she was fast enough to outrun him. The Little Folk might help her again. She only had to make it to the bridge.

A break in the trees—and the river’s roar grew overpowering. She was so close now. She felt and heard, rather than saw, his horse break through the trees behind her, the whoosh of his sword as he lifted it, preparing to cleave her head right there.

There were the twin posts, faint on the moonless night. The bridge. She had made it, and now she had only yards, now a few feet, now— The breath of his horse was hot on her neck as she flung herself between the two posts of the bridge, making a leap onto the wood planks.

Making a leap onto thin air.

She had not missed it—no, those were the posts and—

He had cut the bridge.

It was her only thought as she plummeted, so fast she had no time to scream before she hit the icy water and was pulled under.

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That.

That moment Lady Marion had chosen a desperate hope for her kingdom over herself, over her husband and the daughter who would wait and wait for a return that would never come.

That was the moment that had broken everything Aelin Galathynius was and had promised to be.

Celaena was lying on the ground—on the bottom of the world, on the bottom of hell.

That was the moment she could not face—had not faced.

For even then, she had known the enormity of that sacrifice.

There was more, after the moment she’d hit the water. But those memories were hazy, a mix of ice and black water and strange light, and then she knew nothing more until Arobynn was crouched over her on the reedy riverbank, somewhere far away. She awoke in a strange bed in a cold keep, the Amulet of Orynth lost to the river. Whatever magic it had, whatever protection, had been used up that night.

Then the process of taking her fear and guilt and despair and twisting them into something new. Then the hate—the hate that had rebuilt her, the rage that had fueled her, smothering the memories she buried in a grave within her heart and never let out.

She had taken Lady Marion’s sacrifice and become a monster, almost as bad as the one who had murdered Lady Marion and her own family.

That was why she could not, did not, go home.

She had never looked for the death tolls in those initial weeks of slaughter, or the years afterward. But she knew Lord Lochan had been executed. Quinn and his men. And so many of those children … such bright lights, all hers to protect. And she had failed.

Celaena clung to the ground.

It was what she had not been able to tell Chaol, or Dorian, or Elena: that when Nehemia arranged for her own death so it would spur her into action, that sacrifice … that worthless sacrifice … She could not let go of the ground. There was nothing beneath it, nowhere else to go, nowhere to outrun this truth.

She didn’t know how long she lay on the bottom of wherever this was, but eventually the Valg princes started up again, barely more than shadows of thought and malice as they stalked from memory to memory as if sampling platters at a feast. Little bites—sips. They did not even look her way, for they had won. And she was glad of it. Let them do what they wanted, let Narrok carry her back to Adarlan and throw her at the king’s feet.

There was a scrape and crunch of shoes, then a small, smooth hand slid toward her. But it was not Chaol or Sam or Nehemia who lay across from her, watching her with those sad turquoise eyes.

Her cheek against the moss, the young princess she had been—Aelin Galathynius—reached a hand for her. “Get up,” she said softly.

Celaena shook her head.

Aelin strained for her, bridging that rift in the foundation of the world. “Get up.” A promise—a promise for a better life, a better world.

The Valg princes paused.

She had wasted her life, wasted Marion’s sacrifice. Those slaves had been butchered because she had failed—because she had not been there in time.

“Get up,” someone said beyond the young princess. Sam. Sam, standing just beyond where she could see, smiling faintly.

“Get up,” said another voice—a woman’s. Nehemia.

“Get up.” Two voices together—her mother and father, faces grave but eyes bright. Her uncle was beside them, the crown of Terrasen on his silver hair. “Get up,” he told her gently.

One by one, like shadows emerging from the mist, they appeared. The faces of the people she had loved with her heart of wildfire.

And then there was Lady Marion, smiling beside her husband. “Get up,” she whispered, her voice full of that hope for the world, and for the daughter she would never seen again.

A tremor in the darkness.

Aelin still lay before her, hand still reaching. The Valg princes turned.

As the demon princes moved, her mother stepped toward her, face and hair and build so like her own. “You are a disappointment,” she hissed.

Her father crossed his muscular arms. “You are everything I hated about the world.” Her uncle, still wearing the antler crown long since burned to ash: “Better that you had died with us than shame us, degrade our memory, betray our people.” Their voices swirled together. “Traitor. Murderer. Liar. Thief. Coward.” Again and again, worming in just as the King of Adarlan’s power had wriggled in her mind like a maggot.

The king hadn’t done it merely to cause a disruption and hurt her. He had also done it to separate her family, to get them out of the castle—to take the blame away from Adarlan and make it look like an outside attack.

She had blamed herself for dragging them to the manor house to be butchered. But the king had planned it all, every minute detail. Except for the mistake of leaving her alive—perhaps because the power of the amulet did indeed save her.

“Come with us,” her family whispered. “Come with us into the ageless dark.”

They reached for her, faces shadowed and twisted. Yet—yet even those faces, so warped with hatred … she still loved them—even if they loathed her, even if it ached; loved them until their hissing faded, until they vanished like smoke, leaving only Aelin lying beside her, as she had been all along.

She looked at Aelin’s face—the face she’d once worn—and at her still outstretched hand, so small and unscarred. The darkness of the Valg princes flickered.

There was solid ground beneath her. Moss and grass. Not hell—earth. The earth on which her kingdom lay, green and mountainous and as unyielding as its people. Her people.

Her people, waiting for ten years, but no longer.

She could see the snow-capped Staghorns, the wild tangle of Oakwald at their feet, and … and Orynth, that city of light and learning, once a pillar of strength—and her home.

It would be both again.

She would not let that light go out.

She would fill the world with it, with her light—her gift. She would light up the darkness, so brightly that all who were lost or wounded or broken would find their way to it, a beacon for those who still dwelled in that abyss. It would not take a monster to destroy a monster—but light, light to drive out darkness.

She was not afraid.

She would remake the world—remake it for them, those she had loved with this glorious, burning heart; a world so brilliant and prosperous that when she saw them again in the Afterworld, she would not be ashamed. She would build it for her people, who had survived this long, and whom she would not abandon. She would make for them a kingdom such as there had never been, even if it took until her last breath.

She was their queen, and she could offer them nothing less.

Aelin Galathynius smiled at her, hand still outreached. “Get up,” the princess said.

Celaena reached across the earth between them and brushed her fingers against Aelin’s.

And arose.