Amren smiled slightly—at me, at Varian. “I watched them for so many eons. Humans—in my world, there were humans, too. And I watched them love, and hate—wage senseless war and find precious peace. Watched them build lives, build worlds. I was … I was never allowed such things. I had not been designed that way, had not been ordered to do so. So I watched. And that day I came here … it was the first selfish thing I had done. For a long, long while I thought it was punishment for disobeying my Father’s orders, for wanting. I thought this world was some hell he’d locked me into for disobedience.”
Amren swallowed.
“But I think … I wonder if my Father knew. If he saw how I watched them love and hate and build, and opened that rip in the world not as punishment … but as a gift.” Her eyes gleamed. “For it has been a gift. This time—with you. With all of you. It has been a gift.”
“Amren,” Varian said, and sank onto his knees. “I am begging you—”
“Tell the High Lord,” she said softly, “to leave out a cup for me.”
I did not think I had it in my heart for another ounce of sorrow. I gripped the Cauldron a little harder my throat thick. “I will.”
She looked to Varian, a wry smile on her red mouth. “I watched them most—the humans who loved. I never understood it—how it happened. Why it happened.” She paused a step away from the Cauldron. “I think I might have learned with you, though. Perhaps that was a last gift, too.”
Varian’s face twisted with anguish. But he made no further move to stop her.
She turned to me. And spoke the words into my head—the spell I must think and feel and do. I nodded.
“When I am free,” Amren said to us, “do not run. It will attract my attention.”
She lifted a steady hand toward my arm.
“I am glad we met, Feyre.”
I smiled at her, bowing my head. “Me too, Amren. Me too.”
Amren grabbed my wrist. And swung herself into the Cauldron.
I fought. I fought with every breath to get through the spell, my arm half-submerged in the Cauldron as Amren went under the dark water that had filled it. I said the words with my tongue, said them with my heart and blood and bones. Screamed them.
Her hand vanished from my arm, melting away like dew under the morning sun.
The spell ended, shuddering out of me, and I snapped back, losing my hold on the Cauldron. Varian caught me before I fell, and gripped me hard as we gazed at the black mass of the Cauldron, the still surface.
He breathed, “Is she—”
It started far, far beneath us. As if she had gone to the earth’s core.
I let Varian haul me a few steps away as the ripple thundered up through the ground, spearing for us, the Cauldron.
We had only enough time to throw ourselves behind the nearest rock when it hit us.
The Cauldron shattered into three pieces, peeling apart like a blossoming flower—and then she came.
She exploded from that mortal shell, light blinding us. Light and fire.
She was roaring—in victory and rage and pain.
And I could have sworn I saw great, burning wings, each feather a simmering ember, spread wide. Could have sworn a crown of incandescent light floated just above her flaming hair.
She paused. The thing that was inside Amren paused.
Looked at us—at the battlefield and all of our friends, our family still fighting on it.
As if to say, I remember you.
And then she was gone.
She spread those wings, flame and light rippling to encompass her, no more than a burning behemoth that swept down upon Hybern’s armies.
They began running.
Amren came down on them like a hammer, raining fire and brimstone.
She swept through them, burning them, drinking in their death. Some died at the mere whisper of her passing.
I heard Rhys bellowing—and the sound was the same as hers. Victory and rage and pain. And warning. A warning not to run from her.
Bit by bit, she destroyed that endless Hybern army. Bit by bit, she wiped away their taint, their threat. The suffering they had brought.
She shattered through that Hybern commander, poised to strike Helion a deathblow. Shattered through that commander as if he were made of glass. She left only ashes behind.
But that power—it was fading. Vanishing ember by ember.
Yet Amren went to the sea, where my father and Vassa’s army battled alongside Miryam’s people. Entire boats full of Hybern soldiers fell still after she passed.
As if she had inhaled the life right out of them. Even while her own life sputtered out.
Amren reached the final boat—the very last ship of our enemy—and was no more than a flame on the breeze.
And when that ship, too, fell silent …
There was only light. Bright, clean light, dancing on the waves.