Aelin took a step forward. One step, as if in a daze.She loosed a shuddering breath, and a small, whimpering noise came out of her - a sob. And then she was sprinting down the alley, flying as though the winds themselves pushed at her heels.She flung herself on the male, crashing into him hard enough that anyone else might have gone rocking back into the stone wall. But the male grabbed her to him, his massive arms wrapping around her tightly and lifting her up. Nesryn made to approach, but Aedion stopped her with a hand on her arm.Aelin was laughing as she cried, and the male was just holding her, his hooded head buried in her neck. As if he were breathing her in."Who is that?" Nesryn asked.Aedion smiled. "Rowan.

Where is Aelin. Where is my wife?

Aelin would likely laughed to see him now. The man who had stumbled out of her room after she’d declared that her cycle had arrived. Now sitting in this fine room, mostly naked and not giving a shit about it.

Having Aelin help him the first time had been awkward enough that he couldn’t even go until she started singing a bawdy tune at the top of her lungs and turned on the sink faucet, all the while helping him stand over the toilet.

Are you ashamed of what I've done?" she dared to ask. His brow creased. "Why would you ever think that?"She couldn't quite look him in the eye as she ran a finger down the blanket. "Are you?"Aedion was silent long enough that she lifted her head - but found him gazing toward the door, as though he could see through it, across the city, to the captain. When he turned to her, his handsome face was open - soft in a way she doubted many ever saw. "Never," he said. "I could never be ashamed of you.

They’d been forged of the same ore, two sides of the same golden, scarred coin. She’d know it when she spied him atop the execution plataform. She couldn’t explain it. No one could understand that instant bond, that soul-deep assurance and rightness, unless they, too, had experienced it. But she owned no explanations to anyone - not about Aedion.

They joined hands.So the world ended.And the next one began.

She would fill the world with it, with her light-her gift. She would light up the darkness, so brightly that all who were lost or wounded or broken would find their way to it, a beacon for those who still dwelled in that abyss. It would not take a monster to destroy a monster-but light, light to drive out the darkness.She was not afraid.

Ten years of shadows, but no longer. Light up the darkness, Magesty.

Ten years of shadows, but no longer. Light up the darkness, Majesty.

We'd better eat before we raise hell." - Aelin Ashrvyer Galathynius

Aedion touched her shoulder. "Welcome home, Aelin."A land of towering mountains-the Stagehorns-spread before them, with valleys and rivers and hills; a land of untamed, wild beauty.Terrasen.And the smell-of pine and snow.. How had she never realized that Rowan's scent was of Terrasen, of home? Rowan came close enough to graze her shoulder and murmured, "I feel as if I've been looking for this place my entire life.

You could rattle the stars,' she whispered. 'You could do anything, if only you dared.

That sounds a lot like, ’ I have more secrets that I’m going to spring on you whenever I feel like stopping your heart dead in your chest.

Aelin hissed, "Need I remind you Captain, that you went to Endovier and did not blink at the slaves and the mass graves? Need I remind you that I was starved and chained and you let Duke Perrington force me to the ground at Dorian's feet while you did nothing? And now you have the nerve to accuse me of not caring, when many of the people in this city have profited off the blood and misery of the very people you ignored?

Where will we go?""I hear hell is particularly nice at this time of year.