Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass) (44 page)

Rowan had the knife a heartbeat later, and the scent of his blood filled her nose, set her senses on edge. But she extended her bloodied palm.

Her magic swirled into the world with it, crackling in her veins, her ears. She reined in the urge to tap her foot on the ground, to roll her shoulders.

“Slow,” Rowan repeated, as if sensing the hair-trigger that her power was now on, “and steady.” His shackled arm slid around her waist to hold her to him. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

She lifted her head to study his face, the harsh planes and the curving tattoo. He leaned in to brush a kiss to her mouth. And as his lips met hers, he joined their bleeding palms.

Magic jolted through her, ancient and wicked and cunning, and she arched against him, knees buckling as his cataclysmic power roared into her.

All anyone on deck saw, she knew, was two lovers embracing.

But Aelin tunneled down, down, down into her power, felt him doing the same with his, felt every ounce of ice and wind and lightning go slamming from him into her. And when it reached her, the core of his power yielded to her own, melted and became embers and wildfire. Became the molten heart of the earth, shaping the world and birthing new lands.

Deeper and deeper, she went.

Aelin had a vague sense of the ship rocking beneath them, felt the faint bite of the iron as it rejected her magic, felt the presence of Fenrys and Gavriel flickering around them like candles.

It had been months since she’d drawn from so deep in the abyss of her power.

During the time she’d trained with Rowan in Wendlyn, her power’s limit had been self-imposed. And then that day with the Valg, she’d broken through it—had discovered an entire hidden level beneath. She had drawn from it when she’d encircled Doranelle with her power, had taken a whole day to tunnel that far, to draw up what she needed.

Aelin had begun this descent three days ago.

She’d expected it to stop after the first day. To hit that bottom she’d sensed once before.

She had not.

And now … now with Rowan’s power joining hers…

Rowan’s arm still held her tightly against him, and she had the distant, murky sensation of his coat scratching lightly against her face, of the hardness of the weapons strapped beneath, the scent of him washing over her, soothing her.

She was a stone plunked into the sea of her power—their power.

Down

and

down

and

down

There—there was the bottom. The ash-lined bottom, the pit of a dormant crater.

Only the feeling of her own feet against the wood deck kept her from sinking into that ash, learning what might slumber beneath it.

Her magic whispered to start digging through that ash and silt. But Rowan’s grip tightened on her waist. “Easy,” he murmured in her ear. “Easy.”

Still more of his power flowed into her, wind and ice churning with her power, eddying into a maelstrom.

“Close now,” Rolfe warned from nearby—from another world.

“Aim for the middle of the fleet,” Rowan ordered her. “Send the flanking ships scattering onto the reef.” Where they’d founder, leaving
any survivors to be picked off with arrows shot by Fenrys and Rolfe’s men. Rowan had to be alert, then—watching the approaching force.

She could feel them—feel her magic’s hackles rise in response to the blackness gathering beyond the horizon of her consciousness.

“Almost in range,” Rolfe called.

She began pulling up, dragging the abyss of flame and embers with her.

“Steady,” Rowan murmured.

Higher, higher, Aelin rose, back toward the sea and sunlight.

Here
, that sunlight seemed to beckon.
To me
.

Her magic surged for it, for that voice.

“
Now!
” Rolfe barked.

And like a feral beast freed of its leash, her magic erupted.

She’d been doing well as Rowan had handed over his power to her.

She’d balked and bobbed a few times, but … she had the descent under control.

Even if her power … the well had gone deeper than before. It was easy to forget she was still growing—that her power would mature with her.

And when Rolfe shouted,
Now!
Rowan knew he had forgotten to his detriment.

A pillar of flame that did not burn erupted from Aelin, slamming into the sky, turning the world into red and orange and gold.

Aelin was ripped from his arms with the force of it, and Rowan grabbed her hand in a crushing grip, refusing to let her break that line of contact. Men around them stumbled back, falling onto their asses as they gawked upward in terror and wonder.

Higher, that column of flame swirled, a maelstrom of death and life and rebirth.

“Holy gods,” Fenrys whispered behind him.

Still Aelin’s magic poured into the world. Still she burned hotter, wilder.

Her teeth were gritted, her head arched back as she panted, eyes shut.

“Aelin,” Rowan warned. The pillar of flame began expanding, laced now with blue and turquoise. Flame that could melt bone, crack the earth.

Too much. He had given her too much, and she had delved too deep into her power—

Through the flames encasing them, Rowan glimpsed the frantic enemy fleet, now hurling themselves into motion to flee, to get out of range.

Aelin’s ongoing display was not for them.

Because there was no escape, not with the power she’d dragged up with her.

The display was for the others, for the city watching them.

For the world to know she was no mere princess playing with pretty embers.

“Aelin,” Rowan said again, trying to tug on that bond between them.

But there was nothing.

Only the gaping maw of some immortal, ancient beast. A beast that had opened an eye, a beast that spoke in the tongue of a thousand worlds.

Ice flooded his veins. She was wearing the Wyrdkey.

“
Aelin
.” But Rowan felt it then. Felt that bottom of her power crack open as if the beast within that Wyrdkey stomped its foot, and ash and crusted rock crumbled away beneath it.

And revealed a roiling, molten core of magic beneath it.

As if it were the fiery heart of Mala herself.

Aelin plunged into that power. Bathed in it.

Rowan tried to move, tried to scream at her to stop—

But Rolfe, eyes wide with what could only be terror and awe, roared at her, “
Open fire!
”

She heard that. And as violently as it had pierced the sky, that pillar of fire shot down, shot back into
her
, coiling and wrapping inside her, fusing into a kernel of power so hot it sizzled into him, searing his very soul—

The flames winked out at the same second she reached into Rowan with burning hands and
tore
the last remnants of his power from him.

Just as she ripped her hand from his. Just as her power and the Wyrdkey between her breasts merged.

Rowan collapsed to his knees, and there was a crack inside his head, as if thunder cleaved through him.

As Aelin opened her eyes, he realized it wasn’t thunder—but the sound of a door slamming open.

Her face turned expressionless. Cold as the gaps between the stars. And her eyes…

Turquoise burned bright … around a core of silver. No hint of gold to be found.

“That’s not Aelin,” Fenrys breathed.

A faint smile blossomed on her full mouth, born of cruelty and arrogance, and she examined the iron chain wrapped around her wrist.

The iron melted away, molten ore sizzling through the wooden deck and into the dark below. The creature that stared out through Aelin’s eyes furled her fingers into a fist. Light leaked through her clenched fingers.

Cold white light. Tendrils flickered—silver flame…

“Get away,” Gavriel warned him.
“Get away and don’t look
.”

Gavriel was indeed on his knees, head bowed and eyes averted. Fenrys followed suit.

For what gazed at the dark fleet assembled, what had filled his beloved’s body … He knew. Some primal, intrinsic part of him knew.

“Deanna,” Rowan whispered. She flicked her eyes to him in question and confirmation.

And she said to him, in a voice that was deep and hollow, young and old, “Every key has a lock. Tell the Queen Who Was Promised to
retrieve it soon, for all the allies in the world shall make no difference if she does not wield the Lock, if she does not put those keys back with it. Tell her flame and iron, together bound, merge into silver to learn what must be found. A mere step is all it shall take.” Then she looked away again.

And Rowan realized what the power in her hand was. Realized that the flame she would unleash would be so cold it burned, realized it was the cold of the stars, the cold of stolen light.

Not wildfire—but moonfire.

One moment she was there. And then she was not.

And then she was shoved aside, locked into a box with no key, and the power was not hers, her body was not hers, her name was not hers.

And she could feel the Other there, filling her, laughing silently as she marveled at the heat of the sun on her face, at the damp sea breeze coating her lips with salt, at the pain of the hand now healed of its wound.

So long—it had been so long since the Other had felt such things, felt them
wholly
and not as something in between and diluted.

And those flames—
her
flames and her beloved’s magic … they belonged to the Other now.

To a goddess who had walked through the temporary gate hanging between her breasts and seized her body as if it were a mask to wear.

She had no words, for she had no voice, no self,
nothing
—

And she could only watch as if through a window as she felt the goddess, who had perhaps not protected her but
hunted
her the entirety of her life, for this moment, this opportunity, examine the dark fleet ahead.

So easy to destroy it.

But more life glimmered—
behind
. More life to obliterate, to hear their dying cries with her own ears, to witness firsthand what it was to cease to be in a way the goddess never could…

She watched as her own hand, wreathed in pulsing white flame, began to move from where it had been aimed toward the dark fleet.

Toward the unprotected city at the heart of the bay.

Time slowed and stretched as her body pivoted toward that town, as her own arm lifted, her fist aimed toward the heart of it. There were people on the docks, the scions of a lost clan, some running from the display of fire she’d unleashed moments ago. Her fingers began to unfurl.

“No!”

The word was a roar, a plea, and silver and green flashed in her vision.

A name. A name clanged through her as he hurled himself in the path of that fist, that moonfire, not just to save those innocents in the city, but to spare
her
soul from the agony if she destroyed them all—

Rowan. And as his face became clear, his tattoo stark in the sun, as that fist full of unimaginable power now opened toward
his
heart—

There was no force in any world that could keep her contained.

And Aelin Galathynius remembered her own name as she shattered through the cage that goddess had shoved her into, as she grabbed that goddess by the damned
throat
and hurled her
out, out, out
through that gaping hole where she had infiltrated her, and sealed it—

Aelin snapped into her body, her power.

Fire like ice, fire stolen from the stars—

Rowan’s hair was still moving as he slammed into a stop before her uncoiling fist.

Time launched again, full and fast and unrelenting. Aelin had only enough of it to throw herself sideways, to angle that now-open fist away from him, point it
anywhere
but at him—

The ship beneath her, the center and left flank of the dark fleet beyond her, and the outer edge of the island behind it blew apart in a storm of fire and ice.

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