“Tell that to your soldiers,” Fenrys snarled, standing, too.
“I did not mean it that way,” Hasar snipped, and awe was indeed stark on her face.
Rowan leaned against the battlements, panting hard as he fought to keep the lethal steam from flowing toward the army. As he cooled and sent it whisking away.
Solid hands slid under his arms, and then Fenrys and Gavriel were there, propping him up between them.
A minute passed. Then another.
The wave began to lower. Still the fire burned.
Rowan’s head pounded, his mouth going dry.
Time slipped from him. A coppery tang filled his mouth.
The wave lowered farther, raging waters quieting.
Then roaring turned to lapping, rapids into eddies.
Until the wall of flame began to lower, too. Tracking the waters down and down and down. Letting them seep into the cracks of the earth.
Rowan’s knees buckled, but he held on to his magic long enough for the steam to lessen. For it, too, to be calmed.
It filled the plain, turning the world into drifting mist. Blocking the view of the queen in its center.
Then silence. Utter silence.
Fire flickered through the mist, blue turning to gold and red. A muted, throbbing glow.
Rowan spat blood onto the battlement stones, his breath like shards of glass in his throat.
The glowing flames shrank, steam rippling past. Until there was only a slim pillar of fire, veiled in the mist-shrouded plain.
Not a pillar of fire.
But Aelin.
Glowing white-hot. As if she had given herself so wholly to the flame that she had become fire herself.
The Fire-Bringer someone whispered down the battlements.
The mist rippled and billowed, casting her into nothing but a glowing effigy.
The silence turned reverent.
A gentle wind from the north swept down. The veil of mist pulled back, and there she was.
She glowed from within. Glowed golden, tendrils of her hair floating on a phantom wind.
“Mala’s Heir,” Yrene breathed.
Down on the plain, Elide and Lorcan had halted.
The wind pushed away more of the drifting mist, clearing the land beyond Aelin.
And where that mighty, lethal wave had loomed, where death had charged toward them, nothing remained at all.
For three months, she had sung to the darkness and the flame, and they had sung back.
For three months, she had burrowed so deep inside her power that she had plundered undiscovered depths. While Maeve and Cairn had worked on her, she had delved. Never letting them know what she mined, what she gathered to her, day by day by day.
A death blow. One to wipe a dark queen from the earth forever.
She’d kept that power coiled in herself even after she’d been freed from the irons. Had struggled to keep it down these weeks, the strain enormous. Some days, it had been easier to barely speak. Some days, swaggering arrogance had been her key to ignoring it.
Yet when she had seen that wave, when she had seen Elide and Lorcan choosing death together, when she had seen the army that might save Terrasen, she’d known. She’d felt the fire sleeping under this city, and knew they had come here for a reason.
She had come here for this reason.
A river still flowed from the dam, harmless and small, wending toward the lake.
Nothing more.
Aelin lifted a glowing hand before her as blessed, cooling emptiness filled her at last.
Slowly, starting from her fingertips, the glow faded.
As if she were forged anew, forged back into her body.
Back into Aelin.
Clarity, sharp and crystal clear, filled its wake. As if she could see again, breathe again.
Inch by inch, the golden glow faded into skin and bone. Into a woman once more.
Already, a white-tailed hawk launched skyward.
But as the last of the glow faded, disappearing out through her toes, Aelin fell to her knees.
Fell to her knees in the utter silence of the world, and curled onto her side.
She had the vague sense of strong, familiar arms scooping her up. Of being carried onto a broad feathery back, still in those arms.
Of soaring through the skies, the last of the mist rippling away into the afternoon sun.
And then sweet darkness.
CHAPTER 62
The Crochans did not scatter to the winds.
As one, the Thirteen and the Crochans flew to the southwest, toward the outer reaches of the Fangs. To another secret camp, since the location of the other was well and truly compromised. Farther from Terrasen, but closer to Morath, at least.
A small comfort, Dorian thought, when they found a secure place to camp for the night. The wyverns might have been able to keep going, but the Crochans on their brooms could not fly for so long. They’d flown until darkness had nearly blinded them all, landing only after the Shadows and Crochans had agreed on a secure place to stay.
Watches were set, both on the ground and in the sky. If the two surviving Matrons were to retaliate for their humiliating defeat, it would be now. The Crochans and Asterin had spent much of their time today laying misleading tracks, but only time would tell if they’d escaped.
The night was frigid enough that they took the time to erect tents, the wyverns huddling together against one of the rocky overhangs. And though no fires would have been wiser, the cold threatened to be so lethal that Glennis had taken the sacred flame from the glass orb where it was held while traveling and ignited her fire. Others had followed suit, and while glamours would be in place to hide the camp, the fires, from enemy eyes, Dorian couldn’t entirely forget that the Ironteeth Matrons had found them regardless.
They hadn’t spoken of where they were going next. What they would do. If they would part ways at last, or remain as one united group.
Manon had not asked or pushed them for an alliance, to go to war. Hadn’t demanded to know where they flew, such was their dire need to get far from their camp this morning.
But tomorrow, Dorian thought as he slid under the blankets of his bedroll, a lick of flame of his own making warming the space, tomorrow would force them to confront a few things.
Bone-tired, chilled despite the magic that warmed him, Dorian slumped his head against the roll of supplies he used for a pillow.
Sleep had almost dragged him under when a burst of cold slithered into the tent, then vanished. He knew who it was before she sat beside his bedroll, and when he opened his eyes, he found Manon with her knees drawn up, arms braced atop them.
She stared into the dimness of his tent, the space illumined with silvery light from the glowing stars on her brow.
“You don’t have to wear it all the time,” he said. “We’re allowed to take them off.”
Golden eyes slid toward him. “I’ve never seen you wear a crown.”
“The past few months haven’t provided much access to the royal collection.” He sat up. “And I hate wearing them anyway. They dig mercilessly into my head.”
A hint of a smile. “This is not so heavy.”
“Since it seems made of light itself, I’d imagine not.” Though that crown would weigh heavily in other ways, he knew.
“So you’re talking to me,” she said, not bothering to segue gracefully.
“I talked to you before.”
“Is it because I am now queen?”
“You were queen prior to today.”
Her golden eyes narrowed, scanning him for the answer she sought. Dorian let her do it, and returned the favor. Her breathing was steady, her posture at ease for once.
“I thought it would be more satisfying. To see her run.” Her grandmother. “When you killed your father, what did you feel?”
“Rage. Hate.” He didn’t balk from the truth in his words, the ugliness.
She chewed on her lower lip, no sign of those iron teeth. A rare, silent admission of doubt. “Do you think I should have killed her?”
“Some might say yes. But humiliating her like that,” he said, considering, “might weaken her and the Ironteeth forces more than her death. Killing her might have rallied the Ironteeth against you.”
“I killed the Yellowlegs Matron.”
“You killed her, spared the Blueblood witch, and your grandmother fled. That’s a demoralizing defeat. Had you killed them all, even killed just your grandmother and the Yellowlegs Matron, it could have turned their deaths into noble sacrifices on behalf of the Ironteeth Clans.”