Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass) (48 page)

Aelin waited.

Rolfe shrugged. “I made it back here, finding friendly ships using the map the stranger had inked there. A gift from a god—or so I thought. But it wasn’t until I saw the black sheets over my cottage’s windows that I began to worry. And it wasn’t until I learned that my mother and sister had used their little money to hire a skiff to go looking for me—and that the skiff had returned to harbor but they had not—that I realized the price I’d handed over. That’s what the sea claimed. What
he
claimed. And it made me soulless enough that I loosed myself upon this city, this archipelago.” Rolfe’s green eyes were as merciless as the Sea God who had gifted and damned him. “That was the price of my power. What shall yours be, Aelin Galathynius?”

She didn’t reply to him before storming out. Though Deanna’s voice had echoed in her mind.

The Queen Who Was Promised
.

Now, standing on that empty beach and monitoring the glimmering
expanse of the sea as the last of the sun vanished, Rowan said beside her, “Did you willingly use the key?”

No hint of judgment, of condemnation. Just curiosity—and concern.

Aelin rasped, “No. I don’t know what happened. One minute it was us … then
she
came.” She rubbed at her chest, avoiding the touch of the golden chain against it. Her throat tightened as she took in that spot on his own chest, right between his pectorals. Where her fist had been aimed.

“How could you?” she breathed, a tremor running through her. “How could you put yourself in front of me like that?”

Rowan took a step closer but no farther. The crashing of waves and cries of gulls heading home for the night filled the space between them. “If you had destroyed that city, it would have destroyed
you
, and any sort of hope at an alliance.”

Shaking began in her hands, spreading to her arms, her chest, her knees. Flame and ash curled on her tongue. “If I had killed you,” she hissed, but choked on the words, unable to finish the thought, the idea of it. Her throat burned, and she squeezed her eyes shut, warm flames rippling around her. “I thought I’d found the bottom of my power,” she admitted, magic already overflowing, so soon, too soon after she’d emptied herself. “I thought what I found in Wendlyn was the bottom. I had no idea it was all just an … antechamber.”

Aelin lifted her hands, opening her eyes to find her fingers wreathed in flame. Darkness spread over the world. Through the veil of gold and blue and red, she looked at her prince. She raised her burning hands helplessly between them. “
She stole me
—she
took
me. And I could feel her—feel her consciousness. It was like she was a spider, waiting in a web for
decades
, knowing I’d one day be strong and stupid enough to use my magic and the key together. I might as well have rung the dinner bell.” Her fire burned hotter, brighter, and she let it build and rise and flicker.

A wry, bitter smile. “It seems she wants us to make finding this Lock a priority, if you were given the message
twice.
”

Indeed. “Isn’t it enough to contend with Erawan and Maeve, to do the bidding of Brannon and Elena? Now I have to face the gods breathing down my neck about it as well?”

“Perhaps it was a warning—perhaps Deanna wished to show you how a not-so-friendly god might use you if you’re not careful.”

“She enjoyed every rutting second of it. She
wanted
to see what my power might do, what she could do with my body, with the key.” Her flames burned hotter, shredding through her clothes until they were ash, until she was naked and clothed in only her own fire. “And what she called me—the Queen Who Was Promised. Promised when? To whom? To do what? I’ve never heard that phrase in my life, not even before Terrasen fell.”

“We’ll figure it out.” And that was that.

“How can you be so …
fine
with this?” Embers sprayed from her like a swarm of fireflies.

Rowan’s mouth tightened. “Trust me, Aelin, I am anything but
fine
with the idea that you are fair game to those immortal bastards. I am anything but
fine
with the idea that you could be taken from me like that. If I could, I would hunt Deanna down and pay her back for it.”

“She’s the Goddess of the Hunt. You might be at a disadvantage.” Her flames eased a bit.

A half smile. “She’s a haughty immortal. She’s bound to slip up. And besides … ” A shrug. “I have her sister on my side.” He angled his head, studying her fire, her face. “Perhaps that’s why Mala appeared to me that morning, why she gave me her blessing.”

“Because you’re the only one arrogant and insane enough to hunt a goddess?”

Rowan shucked off his boots, tossing them onto the dry sand behind him. “Because I’m the only one arrogant and insane enough to ask Mala Fire-Bringer to let me stay with the woman I love.”

Her flames turned to pure gold at the words—at that word. But she said, “Perhaps you’re just the only one arrogant and insane enough to love
me
.”

That unreadable mask cracked. “This new depth to your power, Aelin, changes nothing. What Deanna did changes nothing. You are still young; your power is still growing. And if this new well of power gives us even the slightest advantage against Erawan, then thank the rutting darkness for it. But you and I will learn to manage your power together. You do not face this alone; you do not decide that you are unlovable because you have powers that can save
and
destroy. If you start to resent that power…” He shook his head. “I do not think we will win this war if you start down that road.”

Aelin strode into the lapping waves and sank to her knees in the surf, steam rising around her in great plumes. “Sometimes,” she admitted over the hissing water, “I wish someone else could fight this war.”

Rowan stepped into the bubbling surf, his magic shielding against the heat of her. “Ah,” he said, kneeling beside her as she still gazed out over the dark sea, “but who else would be able to get under Erawan’s skin? Never underestimate the power of that insufferable swagger.”

She chuckled, starting to feel the cool kiss of the water on her naked body. “As far as memory serves, Prince, it was that insufferable swagger that won your cranky, immortal heart.”

Rowan leaned into the thin veil of flame now melting into night-sweet air and nipped her lower lip. A sharp, wicked bite. “There’s my Fireheart.”

Aelin let him pivot her in the surf and sand to face him fully, let him slide his mouth along her jaw, the curve of her cheekbone, the point of her Fae ear.“These,” he said, nibbling at her earlobe, “have been tempting me for months.” His tongue traced the delicate tip, and her back arched. The strong hands at her hips tightened. “Sometimes, you’d be sleeping beside me at Mistward, and it’d take all my concentration
not
to lean over and bite them. Bite you all over.”

“Hmmm,” she said, tipping back her head to grant him access to her neck.

Rowan obliged her silent demand, pressing kisses and soft, growling
nips to her throat. “I’ve never taken a woman on a beach,” he purred against her skin, sucking gently on the space between her neck and shoulder. “And look at that—we’re far from any sort of … collateral.” One hand drifted from her hip to caress the scars on her back, the other sliding to cup her backside, drawing her fully against him.

Aelin spread her hands over his chest, tugging his white shirt over his head. Warm waves crashed against them, but Rowan held her fast—unmovable, unshakable.

Aelin remembered herself enough to say, “Someone might come looking for us.”

Rowan huffed a laugh against her neck. “Something tells me,” he said, his breath skittering along her skin, “you might not mind if we were discovered. If someone saw how thoroughly I plan to worship you.”

She felt the words dangling there, felt herself dangling there, off the edge of the cliff. She swallowed. But Rowan had caught her each time she had fallen—first, when she had plummeted into that abyss of despair and grief; second, when that castle had shattered and she had plunged to the earth. And now this time, this third time … She was not afraid.

Aelin met Rowan’s stare and said clearly and baldly and without a speckle of doubt, “I love you. I am in love with you, Rowan. I have been for a while. And I know there are limits to what you can give me, and I know you might need time—”

His lips crushed into hers, and he said onto her mouth, dropping words more precious than rubies and emeralds and sapphires into her heart, her soul, “I love you. There is no limit to what I can give to you, no time I need. Even when this world is a forgotten whisper of dust between the stars, I will love you.”

Aelin didn’t know when she started crying, when her body began shaking with the force of it. She had never said such words—to anyone. Never let herself be that vulnerable, never felt this burning and unending
thing
, so consuming she might die from the force of it.

Rowan pulled back, wiping away her tears with his thumbs, one after another. He said softly, barely audible over the crashing waves around them, “Fireheart.”

She sniffed back tears. “Buzzard.”

He roared a laugh and she let him lay her down on the sand with a gentleness near reverence. His sculpted chest heaved slightly as he ran an eye over her bare body. “You … are so beautiful.”

She knew he didn’t just mean the skin and curves and bones.

But Aelin still smiled, humming. “I know,” she said, lifting her arms above her head, setting the Amulet of Orynth onto a safe, high part of the beach. Her fingers dug into the soft sand as she arched her back in a slow stretch.

Rowan tracked every movement, every flicker of muscle and skin. When his gaze lingered on her breasts, gleaming with seawater, his expression turned ravenous.

Then his gaze slid lower. Lower. And when it lingered on the apex of her thighs and his eyes glazed, Aelin said to him, “Are you going to stand there gawking all night?”

Rowan’s mouth parted slightly, his breathing shallow, his body already showing her precisely where this was going to end.

A phantom wind hissed through the palms, whispered over the sand. Her magic tingled as she felt, more than saw, Rowan’s shield fall into place around them. She sent her own power tracing over it, knocking and tapping at the shield in sparks of flame.

Rowan’s canines gleamed. “Nothing is getting past that shield. And nothing is going to hurt me, either.”

Something tight in her chest eased. “Is it that different? With someone like me.”

“I don’t know,” Rowan admitted. Again, his eyes slid along her body, as if he could see through skin to her burning heart beneath. “I’ve never been with … an equal. I’ve never allowed myself to be that unleashed.”

For every bit of power she threw at him, he’d throw back at her. She braced herself on her elbows, lifting her mouth to the new scar on his shoulder, the wound small and jagged—as broad as an arrowhead. She kissed it once, twice.

Rowan’s body was so tense above hers she thought his muscles would snap. But his hands were gentle as they drifted to her back, stroking her scars and the tattoos he’d inked over them.

The waves tickled and caressed her, and he made to settle over her, but she lifted a hand to his chest—halting him dead. She smiled against his mouth. “If we’re equals, then I don’t understand why you’re still half clothed.”

She didn’t give him the chance to explain as she traced her tongue over the seam of his lips, as her fingers unlatched the buckle of his worn sword belt. She wasn’t sure he was breathing.

And just to see what he’d do, she palmed him through his pants.

Rowan barked a curse.

She laughed quietly, kissed his newest scar again, and dragged a finger down lazily, indolently, holding his gaze for every single inch she touched.

And when Aelin laid her palm flat on him again, she said, “You are mine.”

Rowan’s breathing started again, jagged and savage as the waves breaking around them. She flicked open the top button of his pants. “I’m yours,” he ground out.

Another button popped free. “And you love me,” she said. Not a question.

“To whatever end,” he breathed.

She popped the third and final button free, and he let go of her to toss his pants into the sand nearby, taking his undershorts with them. Her mouth went dry as she took in the sight of him.

Rowan had been bred and honed for battle, and every inch of him was pure-blooded warrior.

He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Hers—he was
hers
, and—

“You are mine,” Rowan breathed, and she felt the claiming in her bones, her soul.

“I am yours,” she answered.

“And you love me.” Such hope and quiet joy in his eyes, beneath all that fierceness.

“To whatever end.” For too long—for too long had he been alone and wandering. No longer.

Rowan kissed her again. Slow. Soft. A hand slid up the plane of her torso while he lowered himself over her, his hips nestling against hers. She gasped a bit at the touch, gasped a bit more as his knuckle grazed the heavy, aching underside of her breast. As he leaned down to kiss the other.

His teeth grazed over her nipple, and her eyes drifted closed, a moan slipping out of her.

Oh, gods. Oh, burning, rutting gods. Rowan knew what he was doing; he really gods-damned did.

His tongue flicked against her nipple, and her head tipped back, her fingers digging into his shoulders, urging him to take more, take
harder
.

Rowan growled his approval, her breast still in his mouth, on his tongue, his hand making lazy strokes from her ribs down her waist, down her thighs, then back up. She arched in silent demand—

A phantom touch, like the northern wind given form, flicked over her bare breast.

Aelin burst into flames.

Rowan laughed darkly at the reds and golds and blues that erupted around them, illumining the palms that towered over the edge of the beach, the waves breaking behind him. She might have panicked, might have been mortified, had he not lifted his mouth to hers, had those phantom hands of ice-kissed wind not kept working her breasts, had his own hand not continued stroking, closer and closer to where she needed
him. “You’re magnificent,” he murmured onto her lips, his tongue sliding into her mouth.