An anchor.

As he had once anchored her, hauling her from a Valg prince’s grip.

Aelin.

His hands curled at his sides. Aelin, who had known suffering as he did. Who had been shown peaceful lives and still chosen him, exactly as he was, for what they had both endured. Illusions—those had been illusions.

Rowan gritted his teeth. Felt the thing wrapped around his mind. Holding him captive.

He let out a low snarl.

She had done this—done it before. Torn into his mind. Twisted and taken from him this most vital thing. Aelin.

He would not let her take it again.

 

Lorcan roared at the brand that shredded through his senses, through Elide’s mocking words, through the image of Perranth, the home he wanted so badly and might never see.

Roared, and the world rippled. Became snow and darkness and battle.

And Maeve. Poised before them, her pale face livid.

Her power lunged for him, a striking panther—

Elide now lay in a grand, opulent bed, her withered hand reaching for his. An aged hand, riddled with marks, the delicate blue veins intertwining like the many rivers around Doranelle.

And her face … Her dark eyes were filmy, her wrinkles deep. Her thinned hair white as snow.

“This is a truth you cannot outrun,” she said, her voice a croak. “A sword above our heads.”

Her deathbed. That’s what this was. And the hand he brushed against hers—it remained young. He remained young.

Bile coated his throat. “Please.” He put a hand to his chest, as if it’d stop the relentless cracking.

Faint, throbbing pain answered back.

Elide’s breaths rasped against his ears. He couldn’t watch this, couldn’t—

He dug his hand harder into his chest. To the pain there.

Life—life was pain. Pain, and joy. Joy because of the pain.

He saw it in Elide’s face. In every line and age mark. In every white hair. A life lived—together. The pain of parting because of how wonderful it had been.

The darkness beyond thinned. Lorcan dug his hand into the burning wound in his shoulder.

Elide let out a hacking cough that wrecked him, yet he took it into his heart, every bit of it. All that the future might offer.

It did not frighten him.

 

Again and again, Connall died. Over and over.

Connall lay on the floor of the veranda, his blood leaking toward the misty river far below.

His fate—it should have been his fate.

If he walked over the edge of the veranda, into that roaring river, would anyone mark his passing? If he leaped, his brother in his arms, would the river make a quick end for him?

He didn’t deserve a quick end. He deserved a slow, brutal bloodletting.

His punishment, his just reward for what he’d done to his brother. The life he’d allowed to be set in his shadow, had always known remained in his shadow and hadn’t tried, not really, to share the light.

A burn, violent and unflinching, tore through him. As if someone had shoved his shoulder into a furnace.

He deserved it. He welcomed it into his heart.

He hoped it would destroy him.

 

Pain. The thing she had dreaded inflicting upon them most, had fought and fought to keep them from.

The scent of their burned flesh stung her nostrils, and Maeve let out a low laugh. “Was that a shield, Aelin? Or were you trying to put them out of their misery?”

As he kneeled beside her, Rowan’s hand twitched at whatever horror he beheld, right over the edge of his discarded hatchet.

Pine and snow and the coppery tang of blood blended, rising to meet her as his palm sliced open with the force of that twitch.

“We can keep at this, you know,” Maeve went on. “Until Orynth lies in ruin.”

Rowan stared sightlessly ahead, his palm leaking blood onto the snow.

His fingers curled. Slightly.

A beckoning gesture, too small for Maeve to note. For anyone to note—except for her. Except for the silent language between them, the way their bodies had spoken to each other from the moment they’d met in that dusty alley in Varese.

A small act of defiance. As he had once defied Maeve before her throne in Doranelle.

Fenrys sobbed again, and Maeve glanced toward him.

Aelin slid her hand along Rowan’s hatchet, the pain a whisper through her body.

Her mate trembled, fighting the mind that had invaded his once more.

“What a waste,” Maeve said, turning back to them. “For these fine males to leave my service, only to wind up bound to a queen with hardly more than a few drops of power to her name.”

Aelin closed her hand around Rowan’s.

A door flung open between them. A door back to himself, to her.

His fingers locked around hers.

Aelin let out a low laugh. “I may have no magic,” she said, “but my mate does.”

Waiting to strike from the other side of that dark doorway, Rowan hauled Aelin to her feet as their powers, their souls, fused.

The force of Rowan’s magic hit her, ancient and raging. Ice and wind turned to searing flame.

Her heart sang, roaring, at the power that flowed from Rowan and into her. At her side, her mate held fast. Unbreakable.

Rowan smiled—fierce and feral and wicked. A crown of flame, twin to her own, appeared atop his head.

As one, they looked to Maeve.

Maeve hissed, her dark power massing again. “Rowan Whitethorn does not have the brute power that you once did.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t,” Lorcan said from a step behind them, his eyes clear and free, “but together, we do.” He glanced to Aelin, a hand rising to the angry red burn marring his chest.

“And beyond us,” Aelin said, sketching a mark through the snow with the blood she’d spilled—her blood, and Rowan’s—“I think they have plenty, too.”

Light flared at their feet, and Maeve’s power surged—but too late.

The portal opened. Exactly as the Wyrdmarks in the books Chaol and Yrene had brought from the southern continent had promised.

Precisely to where Aelin had intended. Where she had glimpsed as she’d tumbled back through the Wyrdgate. Where she and Rowan had ventured days ago, testing this very portal.

The forest glen was silvered in the moonlight, the snows thick. Strange, old trees—older than even those in Oakwald. Trees that could only be found north of Terrasen, in the hinterlands beyond.

But it was not the trees that made Maeve halt. No, it was the teeming mass of people, their armor and weapons glinting beneath their heavy furs. Amongst them, large as horses, wolves growled. Wolves with riders.

Down the battlefield, portal after portal opened. Right where Rowan and the cadre had drawn them in their own blood as they fought. All to be opened upon this spell. This command. And beyond each portal, that teeming mass of people could be seen. The army.

“I heard you planned to come here, you see,” Aelin said to Maeve, Rowan’s power a symphony in her blood. “Heard you planned to bring the kharankui-princesses with you.” She smiled. “So I thought to bring some friends of my own.”

The first of the figures beyond the portal emerged, riding a great silver wolf. And even with the furs over her heavy armor, the female’s arched ears could be seen.

“The Fae who dwelled in Terrasen were not wiped out so thoroughly,” Aelin said. Lorcan began grinning. “They found a new home—with the Wolf Tribe.” For those were humans also riding those wolves. As all the myths had claimed. “And did you know that while many of them came here with Brannon, there was an entire clan of Fae who arrived from the southern continent? Fleeing you, I think. All of them, actually, don’t really like you, I’m sorry to say.”