Aelin closed her eyes, shutting out the queen above her, the mask, the chains, the iron box.
Not real.
This was not real.
Wasn’t it?
“I know you’re tired,” Maeve went on, gently, coaxingly. “You gave and gave and gave, and it was still not enough. It will never be enough for them, will it?”
It wouldn’t. Nothing she had ever done, or would do, would be enough. Even if she saved Terrasen, saved Erilea, she’d still need to give more, do more. The weight of it already crushed her.
“Cairn,” Maeve said.
Strolling footsteps sounded nearby. Scuffing on stone.
Tremors shook her, uncontrollable and unsummoned. She knew that gait, knew—
Cairn’s hateful, sneering face appeared beside Maeve’s, the two of them studying her. “How shall we start, Majesty?”
He’d spoken the words to her already. They had done this dance so many times.
Bile coated her throat. She couldn’t stop shaking. She knew what he’d do, how he’d begin. Would never stop feeling it, the whisper of the pain.
Cairn ran a hand over the rim of the coffin. “I broke some part of you, didn’t I?”
I name you Elentiya, “Spirit That Could Not Be Broken.”
Aelin traced her metal-encrusted fingers over her palm. Where a scar should be. Where it still remained. Would always remain, even if she could not see it.
Nehemia—Nehemia, who had given everything for Eyllwe. And yet …
And yet, Nehemia had still felt the weight of her choices. Still wished to be free of her burdens.
It had not made her weak. Not in the slightest.
Cairn surveyed her chained body, assessing where he would begin. His breathing sharpened in anticipatory delight.
Her hands curled into fists. Iron groaned.
Spirit that could not be broken.
You do not yield.
She would endure it again, if asked. She would do it. Every brutal hour and bit of agony.
And it would hurt, and she would scream, but she’d face it. Survive against it.
Arobynn had not broken her. Neither had Endovier.
She would not allow this waste of existence to do so now.
Her shaking eased, her body going still. Waiting.
Maeve blinked at her. Just once.
Aelin sucked in a breath—sharp and cool.
She did not want it to be over. Any of it.
Cairn faded into the wind. Then the chains vanished with him.
Aelin sat up in the coffin. Maeve backed away all of a step.
Aelin surveyed the illusion, so artfully wrought. The stone chamber, with its braziers and hook from the ceiling. The stone altar. The open door and roar of the river beyond.
She made herself look. To face down that place of pain and despair. It would always leave a mark, a stain on her, but she would not let it define her.
Hers was not a story of darkness.
This would not be the story. She would fold it into herself, this place, this fear, but it would not be the whole story. It would not be her story.
“How,” Maeve simply asked.
Aelin knew a world and a battlefield raged beyond them. But she let herself linger in the stone chamber. Climbed from the iron coffin.
Maeve only stared at her.
“You should have known better,” Aelin said, the lingering embers within her shining bright. “You, who feared captivity and did all this to avoid it. You should have known better than to trap me. Should have known I’d find a way.”
“How,” Maeve asked again. “How did you not break?”
“Because I am not afraid,” Aelin said. “Your fear of Erawan and his brothers drove you, destroyed you. If there was ever anything worthwhile to destroy.”
Maeve hissed, and Aelin chuckled. “And then there was your fear of Brannon. Of me. Look what it brought about.” She gestured to the room around them, the world beyond it. “This is all you’ll have left of Doranelle. This illusion.”
Maeve’s power rumbled through the room.
Aelin’s lips pulled back from her teeth. “You hurt my mate. Hurt the woman you tricked him into thinking was his mate. Killed her, and broke him.”
Maeve smiled slightly. “Yes, and I enjoyed every moment of it.”
Aelin answered the queen’s smile with one of her own. “Did you forget what I told you on that beach in Eyllwe?”
When Maeve merely blinked at her again, Aelin attacked.
Blasting with a shield of fire, she drove Maeve to the side—and launched a spear of blue flame.
Maeve dodged the assault with a wall of dark power, but Aelin went on the offensive, striking again and again and again. Those words she’d snarled to Maeve in Eyllwe rang between them: I will kill you.
And she would. For what Maeve had done, to her, to Rowan and Lyria, to Fenrys and Connall and so many others, she’d wipe her from memory.
Half a thought and Goldryn was again in her hand, the blade singing with flame.
Even if it took her last breaths, she’d go down swinging for this.
Maeve met her each blow, and they burned and raged through the room.
The altar cracked. Melted away.
The hook from the ceiling dissolved into molten ore that hissed upon the stones.
She blasted away the spot where Fenrys had sat, chained by invisible bonds.
Again and again, the last embers of her fire rallying, sweat beading on her brow, Aelin struck at Maeve.
The iron coffin heated, glowing red. Only here, in this illusion, might it do so.
Maeve had thought to trap her once more.
But the queen would not be the one walking away this time.
Aelin pivoted, driving Maeve back. Toward the smoldering coffin.
Step by step, she pushed her toward it. Herded her.
Darkness fanned through the room, blocking the rain of fiery arrows that shot for Maeve, and the queen dared to glance over a shoulder to the red-hot fate that awaited her.
Maeve’s face went whiter than death.
Aelin rasped a laugh, and angled Goldryn, gathering her power one last time.
But a flicker of motion caught her eye—to the right.
Elide.
Elide stood there, terror written over her features. She reached a hand for Aelin in warning, “Watch—”
Maeve sent a whip of black for the Lady of Perranth.
No—
Aelin lunged, fire leaping for Elide, to block that fatal blow.
She realized her mistake within a heartbeat. Realized it as her hands passed through Elide’s body, and her friend disappeared.
An illusion. She had fallen for an illusion, and had left herself open, vulnerable—
Aelin twisted back toward Maeve, flames rising again, but too late.
Hands of shadow wrapped around her throat. Immovable. Eternal.
Aelin arched, gasping for any bit of air as those hands squeezed and squeezed—
The chamber melted away. The stones beneath her became mud and snow, the roar of the river replaced by the din of battle. They flashed between one heartbeat and the next, between illusion and truth. Warm air for bitter wind, life for sure death.
Aelin wreathed her hands in flame, ripping at the shadow lashed around her throat.
Maeve stood before her, robes billowing as she panted. “Here is what shall happen, Aelin Galathynius.”
Plumes of shadow shot for her, snapping and tearing, and no flame, no amount of sheer will could keep them at bay. Not as they tightened, wrenching away any breath to scream.
Her fire guttered.
“You will swear the blood oath to me. And then you and I will fix this mess you’ve made. You, and the King of Adarlan will fix what you have done. You may be Fire-Bringer no longer, but you will still have your uses.”
A wind kissed with snow brushed past her. No.
Another flash of light behind Aelin, and Maeve paused.
The shadows squeezed, and Aelin arched again, a soundless scream breaking through her.
“You may be asking yourself why I’d ever think you’d agree to it. What I might have against you.” A low laugh. “The very things that you seek to protect—that’s what I shall destroy, should you defy me. What is most precious to you. And when I have finished doing that, you will kneel.”
No, no—
Darkness pulsed from Maeve, and Aelin’s vision wavered.
A wave of ice-kissed wind blasted it back.
Just enough for her to get a breath down. To lift her head and see the tattooed hand that now stretched down for her. Reaching for her—an offer to rise. Rowan.