Queen of Shadows

He would probably have been even more scandalized to learn I’m not wearing any undergarments beneath this dress.

The table rattled as Rowan’s knee banged into it.

“Backs straight, shoulders back, necks uplifted. You are light, you are air, you are grace. Do not disappoint me.”

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.”