Queen of Shadows

“That’s enough,” Dorian said.

Aelin’s heart stumbled. “Erawan is free,” she breathed. And not only free—Erawan was Perrington. The Dark King himself had manhandled her, lived in this castle with her—and had never known, by luck or Fate or Elena’s own protection, that she was here. She had never known, either—never detected it on him. Gods above, Erawan had forced her to bow that day in Endovier and neither of them had scented or marked what the other was.

The king nodded, setting his tears splattering on his tunic. “The Eye—you could have sealed him back in with the Eye …”

The look on the king’s face when she’d revealed the necklace … He’d been seeing a tool not of destruction, but of salvation.

Aelin said, “How is it possible he’s been inside Perrington all this time and no one noticed?”

“He can hide inside a body like a snail in its shell. But cloaking his presence also stifles his own abilities to scent others—like you. And now you are back—all the players in the unfinished game. The Galathynius line—and the Havilliard, which he has hated so fiercely all this time. Why he targeted my family, and yours.”

“You butchered my kingdom,” she managed to say. That night her parents died, there had been that smell in the room … The scent of the Valg. “You slaughtered millions.”

“I tried to stop it.” The king braced a hand on the bridge, as if to keep from collapsing under the weight of the shame now coating his words. “They could find you based on your magic alone, and wanted the strongest of you for themselves. And when you were born …” His craggy features crumpled as he again addressed Dorian. “You were so strong—so precious. I couldn’t let them take you. I wrested control away for just long enough.”

“To do what,” Dorian said hoarsely.

Aelin glanced at the smoke wafting toward the river far beyond. “To order the towers built,” she said, “and use that spell to banish magic.” And now that they had freed magic … the magic-wielders would be sniffed out by every Valg demon in Erilea.

The king gasped a shuddering breath. “But he didn’t know how I’d done it. He thought the magic vanished as punishment from our gods and knew nothing of why the towers were built. All this time I used my strength to keep the knowledge of it away from him—from them. All my strength—so I could not fight the demon, stop it when … when it did those things. I kept that knowledge safe.”

“He’s a liar,” Dorian said, turning on his heel. There was no mercy in his voice. “I still wound up able to use my magic—it didn’t protect me at all. He’ll say anything.”

The wicked will tell us anything to haunt our thoughts long after, Nehemia had warned her.

“I didn’t know,” the king pleaded. “Using my blood in the spell must have made my line immune. It was a mistake. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. My boy—Dorian—”

“You don’t get to call him that,” Aelin snapped. “You came to my home and murdered my family.”

“I came to find you. I came to have you burn it out of me!” the king sobbed. “Aelin of the Wildfire. I tried to get you to do it. But your mother knocked you unconscious before you could kill me, and the demon … The demon became devoted to wiping out your line after that, so no fire could ever cleanse him from me.”

Aelin’s blood turned to ice. No—no, it couldn’t be true, couldn’t be right.

“All of it was to find you,” the king said to her. “So you could save me—so you could end me at last. Please. Do it.” The king was weeping now, and his body seemed to waste away bit by bit, his cheeks hollowing out, his hands thinning.

As if his life force and the demon prince inside him had indeed been bonded—and one could not exist without the other.

“Chaol is alive,” the king murmured through his emaciated hands, lowering them to reveal red-rimmed eyes, already milky with age. “Broken, but I didn’t make the kill. There was—a light around him. I left him alive.”

A sob ripped from her throat. She had hoped, had tried to give him a shot at survival—

“You are a liar,” Dorian said again, his voice cold. So cold. “And you deserve this.” Light sparked at Dorian’s fingertips.

Aelin mouthed his name, trying to reel herself back in, gather her wits. The demon inside the king had hunted her not because of the threat Terrasen posed—but for the fire in her veins. The fire that could end them both.

She lifted a hand as Dorian stepped toward his father. They had to ask more, learn more—

The Crown Prince tipped his head back to the sky and roared, and it was the battle cry of a god.

Then the glass castle shattered.

79

The bridge exploded from beneath her, and the world turned into shards of flying glass.

Aelin plummeted into open air, towers crashing down around her.

She flung out her magic in a cocoon, burning through the glass as she fell and fell and fell.

People were screaming—screaming as Dorian brought the castle down for Chaol, for Sorscha, and sent a tidal wave of glass rushing toward the city lying below.

Down and down Aelin went, the ground surging up, the buildings around her rupturing, the light so bright on all the fragments—

Aelin pulled out every last drop of her magic as the castle collapsed, the lethal wave of glass cascading toward Rifthold.

Wildfire raced for the gates, raced against the wind, against death.

And as the wave of glass crested the iron gates, shredding through the corpses tied there as if they were paper, a wall of fire erupted before it, shooting sky-high, spreading wide. Halting it.

A wind shoved against her, brutal and unforgiving, her bones groaning as it pushed her up, not down. She didn’t care—not when she yielded the entirety of her magic, the entirety of her being, to holding the barrier of flame now shielding Rifthold. A few more seconds, then she could die.

The wind tore at her, and it sounded like it was roaring her name.

Wave after wave of glass and debris slammed into her wildfire.

But she kept that wall of flame burning—for the Royal Theater. And the flower girls at the market. For the slaves and the courtesans and the Faliq family. For the city that had offered her joy and pain, death and rebirth, for the city that had given her music, Aelin kept that wall of fire burning bright.

There was blood raining down among the glass—blood that sizzled on her little cocoon of flame, reeking of darkness and pain.

The wind kept blowing until it swept that dark blood away.

Still Aelin held the shield around the city, held on to the final promise she’d made to Chaol.

I’ll make it count.

She held on until the ground rose up to meet her—

And she landed softly in the grass.

Then darkness slammed into the back of her head.

The world was so bright.

Aelin Galathynius groaned as she pushed herself onto her elbows, the small hill of grass beneath her untouched and vibrant. Only a moment—she’d been out for only a moment.

She raised her head, her skull throbbing as she shoved her unbound hair from her eyes and looked at what she had done.

What Dorian had done.

The glass castle was gone.

Only the stone castle remained, its gray stones warming under the midday sun.

And where a cascade of glass and debris should have destroyed a city, a massive, opaque wall glittered.

A wall of glass, its upper lip curved as if it indeed had been a cresting wave.

The glass castle was gone. The king was dead. And Dorian—

Aelin scrambled up, her arms buckling under her. There, not three feet away, was Dorian, sprawled on the grass, eyes closed.

But his chest was rising and falling.

Beside him, as if some benevolent god had indeed been looking after them, lay Chaol.

His face was bloody, but he breathed. No other wounds that she could detect.

She began shaking. She wondered if he had noticed when she’d slipped the real Eye of Elena into his pocket as she’d fled the throne room.

The scent of pine and snow hit her, and she realized how they had survived the fall.