The force of Rowan’s magic hit her, ancient and raging. Ice and wind turned to searing flame.
Her heart sang, roaring, at the power that flowed from Rowan and into her. At her side, her mate held fast. Unbreakable.
Rowan smiled—fierce and feral and wicked. A crown of flame, twin to her own, appeared atop his head.
As one, they looked to Maeve.
Maeve hissed, her dark power massing again. “Rowan Whitethorn does not have the brute power that you once did.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t,” Lorcan said from a step behind them, his eyes clear and free, “but together, we do.” He glanced to Aelin, a hand rising to the angry red burn marring his chest.
“And beyond us,” Aelin said, sketching a mark through the snow with the blood she’d spilled—her blood, and Rowan’s—“I think they have plenty, too.”
Light flared at their feet, and Maeve’s power surged—but too late.
The portal opened. Exactly as the Wyrdmarks in the books Chaol and Yrene had brought from the southern continent had promised.
Precisely to where Aelin had intended. Where she had glimpsed as she’d tumbled back through the Wyrdgate. Where she and Rowan had ventured days ago, testing this very portal.
The forest glen was silvered in the moonlight, the snows thick. Strange, old trees—older than even those in Oakwald. Trees that could only be found north of Terrasen, in the hinterlands beyond.
But it was not the trees that made Maeve halt. No, it was the teeming mass of people, their armor and weapons glinting beneath their heavy furs. Amongst them, large as horses, wolves growled. Wolves with riders.
Down the battlefield, portal after portal opened. Right where Rowan and the cadre had drawn them in their own blood as they fought. All to be opened upon this spell. This command. And beyond each portal, that teeming mass of people could be seen. The army.
“I heard you planned to come here, you see,” Aelin said to Maeve, Rowan’s power a symphony in her blood. “Heard you planned to bring the kharankui-princesses with you.” She smiled. “So I thought to bring some friends of my own.”
The first of the figures beyond the portal emerged, riding a great silver wolf. And even with the furs over her heavy armor, the female’s arched ears could be seen.
“The Fae who dwelled in Terrasen were not wiped out so thoroughly,” Aelin said. Lorcan began grinning. “They found a new home—with the Wolf Tribe.” For those were humans also riding those wolves. As all the myths had claimed. “And did you know that while many of them came here with Brannon, there was an entire clan of Fae who arrived from the southern continent? Fleeing you, I think. All of them, actually, don’t really like you, I’m sorry to say.”
More and more Fae and wolf-riders stepped toward the portal, weapons out. Beyond them, stretching into the distance, their host flowed.
Maeve backed away a step. Just one.
“But you know who they hate even more?” Aelin pointed with Goldryn toward the battlefield. “Those spiders. Nesryn Faliq told me all about how their ancestors battled them in the southern continent. How they fled you when you tried to keep their healers chained, and then wound up having to battle your little friends. And when they came to Terrasen, they still remembered. Some of the truth was lost, grew muddled, but they remembered. They taught their offspring. Trained them.”
The Fae and their wolves beyond the portals now fixed their sights on the kharankui hybrids at last emerging onto the plain.
“I told them I’d deal with you myself,” Aelin said, and Rowan chuckled, “but the spiders … Oh, the spiders are all theirs. I think they’ve been waiting a while for it, actually. The Ironteeth witches, too. Apparently, the Yellowlegs weren’t very kind to those trapped in their animal forms these ten years.”
Aelin let out a flare of light. The only signal she needed to give.
For a people who had asked for only one thing when Aelin had begged them to fight, to join this last battle: to return home. To return to Orynth after a decade of hiding.
Her flame danced over the battlefield. And the lost Fae of Terrasen, the fabled Wolf Tribe who had welcomed and protected them at their sides, charged through the portals. Right into Morath’s unsuspecting ranks.
Maeve had gone deathly pale. Paled further as magic sparked and surged and those spider-hybrids went down, their shrieks of surprise silenced under Asterion blades.
Yet Rowan’s hand tightened on Aelin’s, and she peered up at her mate. But his eyes were on Fenrys. On the dark power Maeve still had wrapped around him.
The male remained sprawled in the snow, his tears silent and unending. His face a bloodied ruin.
Through the roar of Rowan’s power, Aelin felt for the threads leading from her heart, her soul.
Look at me. Her silent command echoed down the blood oath—to Fenrys.
Look at me.
“I suppose you think you can now finish me off in some grand fashion,” Maeve said to her and Rowan, that dark power swelling. “You, who I have wronged the most.”
Look at me.
His shredded face leaking blood, Fenrys looked, his eyes blindly turning toward hers. And clearing—just slightly.
Aelin blinked four times. I am here, I am with you.
No reply.
“Do you understand what a Valg queen is?” Maeve asked them, triumph on her face despite the long-lost Fae and wolf-riders charging onto the battlefield beyond them. “I am as vast and eternal as the sea. Erawan and his brothers sought me for my power.” Her magic flowed around her in an unholy aura. “You believe yourself to be a God-Killer, Aelin Galathynius? What were they but vain creatures locked into this world? What were they but things your human mind cannot comprehend?” She lifted her arms. “I am a god.”
Aelin blinked again at Fenrys, Rowan’s power gathering within her veins, readying for the first and likely final strike they’d be able to land, Lorcan’s power rallying beside theirs. Yet over and over, Aelin blinked to Fenrys, to those half-vacant eyes.
I am here, I am with you.
I am here, I am with you.
A queen had said that to him. In their secret, silent language. During the unspeakable hours of torment, they had said that to each other.
Not alone.
He had not been alone then, and neither had she.
The veranda in Doranelle and bloodied snows outside Orynth blended and flashed.
I am here, I am with you.
Maeve stood there. Before Aelin and Rowan, burning with power. Before Lorcan, his dark gifts a shadow around him. Fae—so many Fae and wolves, some riding them—pouring on to the battlefield through holes in the air.
It had worked, then. Their mad plan, to be enacted when all went to hell, when they had nothing left.
Yet Maeve’s power swelled.
Aelin’s eyes remained upon him, anchoring him. Pulling him from that bloodied veranda. To a body trembling in pain. A face that burned and throbbed.
I am here, I am with you.
And Fenrys found himself blinking back. Just once.
Yes.
And when Aelin’s eyes moved again, he understood.
Aelin looked to Rowan. Found her mate already smiling at her. Aware of what likely awaited them. “Together,” she said quietly. Rowan’s thumb brushed against hers. In love and farewell.
And then they erupted.
Flame, white-hot and blinding, roared toward Maeve.
But the dark queen had been waiting. Twin waves of darkness arched and cascaded for them.
Only to be halted by a shield of black wind. Beaten aside.
Aelin and Rowan struck again, fast as an asp. Arrows and spears of flame that had Maeve conceding a step. Then another.
Lorcan battered her from the side, forcing Maeve to retreat another step.
“I’d say,” Aelin panted, speaking above the glorious roar of magic through her, the unbreakable song of her and Rowan, “that you haven’t wronged us the most at all.”
Like alternating punches, Lorcan struck with them. Fire, then midnight death.
Maeve’s dark brows narrowed.
Aelin flung out a wall of flame that pushed Maeve back another step. “But him—oh, he has a score to settle with you.”
Maeve’s eyes went wide, and she made to turn. But not fast enough.
Not fast enough at all as Fenrys vanished from where he knelt, and reappeared—right behind Maeve.