Page 383 of Kingdom of Ash

Hers was not a story of darkness.

This would not be the story. She would fold it into herself, this place, this fear, but it would not be the whole story. It would not beherstory.

“How,” Maeve simply asked.

Aelin knew a world and a battlefield raged beyond them. But she let herself linger in the stone chamber. Climbed from the iron coffin.

Maeve only stared at her.

“You should have known better,” Aelin said, the lingering embers within her shining bright. “You, who feared captivity and did all this to avoid it. You should have known better than to trap me. Should have known I’d find a way.”

“How,” Maeve asked again. “How did you not break?”

“Because I am not afraid,” Aelin said. “Your fear of Erawan and hisbrothers drove you, destroyed you. If there was ever anything worthwhile to destroy.”

Maeve hissed, and Aelin chuckled. “And then there was your fear of Brannon. Of me. Look what it brought about.” She gestured to the room around them, the world beyond it. “This is all you’ll have left of Doranelle. This illusion.”

Maeve’s power rumbled through the room.

Aelin’s lips pulled back from her teeth. “You hurt my mate. Hurt the woman you tricked him into thinking was his mate. Killed her, and broke him.”

Maeve smiled slightly. “Yes, and I enjoyed every moment of it.”

Aelin answered the queen’s smile with one of her own. “Did you forget what I told you on that beach in Eyllwe?”

When Maeve merely blinked at her again, Aelin attacked.

Blasting with a shield of fire, she drove Maeve to the side—and launched a spear of blue flame.

Maeve dodged the assault with a wall of dark power, but Aelin went on the offensive, striking again and again and again. Those words she’d snarled to Maeve in Eyllwe rang between them:I will kill you.

And she would. For what Maeve had done, to her, to Rowan and Lyria, to Fenrys and Connall and so many others, she’d wipe her from memory.

Half a thought and Goldryn was again in her hand, the blade singing with flame.

Even if it took her last breaths, she’d go down swinging for this.

Maeve met her each blow, and they burned and raged through the room.

The altar cracked. Melted away.

The hook from the ceiling dissolved into molten ore that hissed upon the stones.

She blasted away the spot where Fenrys had sat, chained by invisible bonds.

Again and again, the last embers of her fire rallying, sweat beading on her brow, Aelin struck at Maeve.

The iron coffin heated, glowing red. Only here, in this illusion, might it do so.

Maeve had thought to trap her once more.

But the queen would not be the one walking away this time.

Aelin pivoted, driving Maeve back. Toward the smoldering coffin.

Step by step, she pushed her toward it. Herded her.

Darkness fanned through the room, blocking the rain of fiery arrows that shot for Maeve, and the queen dared to glance over a shoulder to the red-hot fate that awaited her.

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