Page 396 of Kingdom of Ash

“I’d say,” Aelin panted, speaking above the glorious roar of magic through her, the unbreakable song of her and Rowan, “that you haven’t wronged us the most at all.”

Like alternating punches, Lorcan struck with them. Fire, then midnight death.

Maeve’s dark brows narrowed.

Aelin flung out a wall of flame that pushed Maeve back another step. “But him—oh, he has a score to settle with you.”

Maeve’s eyes went wide, and she made to turn. But not fast enough.

Not fast enough at all as Fenrys vanished from where he knelt, and reappeared—right behind Maeve.

Goldryn burned bright as he plunged it through her back.

Into the dark heart within.

CHAPTER 115

Maeve’s dark blood leaked onto the snow as she fell to her knees, fingers scrabbling at the burning sword stuck through her chest.

Fenrys stepped around her, leaving the sword where he’d impaled her as he walked to Aelin’s side.

Embers swirling around her and Rowan, Aelin approached the queen.

Baring her teeth, Maeve hissed as she tried and failed to pry free the blade. “Take it out.”

Aelin only looked to Lorcan. “Anything to say?”

Lorcan smiled grimly, surveying the Fae and wolf-riders wreaking havoc on the spiders. “Long live the queen.” The Faerie Queen of the West.

Maeve snarled, and it was not the sound of a Fae or human. But Valg. Pure, undiluted Valg.

“Well, look who stopped pretending,” Aelin said.

“I will go anywhere you choose to banish me to,” Maeve seethed. “Just take it out.”

“Anywhere?” Aelin asked, and let go of Rowan’s hand.

The lack of his magic, his strength, hit her like plunging into an ice-cold lake.

But she had plenty of her own.

Not magic, never again as it had been, but a strength greater, deeper than that.

Fireheart, her mother had called her.

Not for her power. The name had never once been about her power.

Maeve hissed again, clawing at the blade.

Wreathing her fingers in flame, Aelin offered her hand to Maeve. “You came here to escape a husband you did not love. A world you did not love.”

Maeve paused, studying Aelin’s hand. The new calluses on it. She winced—winced in pain at the blade shredding her heart but not killing her. “Yes,” Maeve breathed.

“And you love this world. You love Erilea.”

Maeve’s dark eyes scanned Aelin, then Rowan and Lorcan, before she answered. “Yes. In the way that I can love anything.”

Aelin kept her hand outstretched. The unspoken offer in it. “And if I choose to banish you, you will go wherever it is we decide. And never bother us again, or any other.”

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