Page 124 of Kingdom of Ash

Her magic rumbled, pressing against her blood, squeezing her bones.Out, it howled.Out.

Soon, she promised.

Now. It thrashed. Her hands trembled, curling, as if she could keep it in.

So she turned away, aiming not toward the trough but the lake beyond.

The air stirred behind her, and she felt him following. When Rowan gleaned where she intended to bathe, he warned, “That water is barely above freezing, Aelin.”

She just dropped the cloak onto the black stones and stepped into the water.

Steam hissed, wafting around her in billowing clouds. She kept going, embracing the water’s bite with each step, even if it failed to pierce the heat of her.

The water was clear, though the gloom veiled the bottom that sloped away as she dove under the frigid surface.

The water was silent. Cool, and welcome, and calm.

So Aelin loosened the leash—only a fraction.

Flame leapt out, devoured by the frigid water. Consumed by it.

It pulled away that pressure, that endless fog of heat. Soothed and chilled until thoughts took form.

With each stroke beneath the surface, out into the darkness, she could feel it again. Herself. Or whatever was left of it.

Aelin. She was Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius, and she was Queen of Terrasen.

More magic rippled out, but she held her grip. Not all—not yet.

She had been captured by Maeve, tortured by her. Tortured by Cairn, her sentinel. But she had escaped, and her mate had come for her. Had found her, just as they had found each other despite centuries of bloodshed and loss and war.

Aelin. She was Aelin, and this was not some illusion, but the real world.

Aelin.

She swam out into the lake, and Rowan followed the jutting lip of stone along the shore’s edge.

She dropped beneath the surface, letting herself sink and sink and sink, toes grasping only open, cool water, straining for a bottom that did not arrive.

Down into the dark, the cold.

The ancient, icy water pulled away the flame and heat and strain. Pulled and sucked and waved it off.

Cooled that burning core of her until she took form, a blade red-hot from the fire plunged into water.

Aelin. That’s who she was.

That lake water had never seen sunlight, had flowed from the dark, cold heart of the mountains themselves. It would kill even the most hardened of Fae warriors within minutes.

Yet there was Aelin, swimming as if it were a sun-warmed forest pool.

She treaded water, dipping her head back every now and then to scrub at her hair.

He hadn’t realized that she was burning so hotly until she’d stepped into the frigid lake and steam had risen.

Silently, she’d dove in, swimming beneath the surface, the water so clear he could see every stroke of her faintly glowing body. As if the water had peeled away the skin of the woman and revealed the blazing soul beneath.

But that glow faded with each passing breath she emerged to take, dimming further each time she plunged beneath the surface.

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