Queen of Shadows

A land of towering mountains—the Staghorns—spread before them, with valleys and rivers and hills; a land of untamed, wild beauty.

Terrasen.

He lifted his brows at her silent demand for information. I’m not going to tell you.

She glowered at him. Buzzard.

The Fae Prince caught her eye. Are you all right?

She nodded. I didn’t think saying good-bye would be so hard. And with everything that’s to come—

We’ll face it together. To whatever end.

“But … There are things that won’t change. I will always be your friend.”

“It was like dying a little every day. It was like being alive, too. It was joy so complete it was pain. It destroyed me and unmade me and forged me. I hated it, because I knew I couldn’t escape it, and knew it would forever change me. And that witchling … I loved her, too. I loved her in a way I cannot describe—other than to tell you that it was the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt, greater than rage, than lust, than magic.”

“To a new world,” the Queen of Terrasen said.

The King of Adarlan lifted his glass, such endless shadows dancing in his eyes, but—there. A glimmer of life. “To freedom.”

“What do I do?”

She had to swallow before she said, “You light up the darkness.”

“You make me want to live, too, Aelin Galathynius,” he said. “Not exist—but live.”

She growled when he tried to set her on the toilet itself, and he left with his hands upraised, his eyes dancing as if to say Can you blame me for trying? You might very well fall into it instead.

He laughed once more at the profanities in her eyes,

Kaltain just squeezed Elide’s fingers. “You find Celaena Sardothien. Give her this. No one else. No one else. Tell her that you can open any door, if you have the key. And tell her to remember her promise to me—to punish them all. When she asks why, tell her I said that they would not let me bring the cloak she gave me, but I kept a piece of it. To remember that promise she made. To remember to repay her for a warm cloak in a cold dungeon.”