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.
So the world ended.
And the next one began.
They were infinite.
They were the beginning and the ending; they were eternity.
The king standing before them gaped as the shield of flame died out to reveal Aelin and Dorian, hand in hand, glowing like newborn gods as their magic entwined.
“You’re mine,” the man raged. He became darkness; folded himself into the power he carried, as if he were nothing but malice on a dark wind.
He struck them, swallowed them.
But they held tighter to each other, past and present and future; flickering between an ancient hall in a mountain castle perched above Orynth, a bridge suspended between glass towers, and another place, perfect and strange, where they had been crafted from stardust and light.
A wall of night knocked them back. But they could not be contained.
The darkness paused for breath.
They erupted.
Rowan blinked against the sunlight as it poured from beyond Aedion.
Soldiers had infiltrated the sewers again, even after Lysandra had saved their sorry asses. Lorcan had rushed back, bloodied, and told them the way out was barred, and whatever way Lysandra had gotten in was now overrun.