Page 332 of Kingdom of Ash

Aelin said to them, “Leave her be, and go.”

“Aelin,please,” Elena said, weeping now.

Aelin smiled. “You bought me that extra time. So I might live. Let me buy this for you.”

Elena covered her face with her hands and wept.

The gods looked among themselves. Then Deanna moved, graceful as a stag through a wood.

Aelin loosed a breath, bowing over her knees, as the goddess approached Elena.

No one but herself. She would allow no one but herself to be sacrificed in this final task.

Deanna laid her hands on either side of Elena’s face. “I had hoped for this.”

Then she pressed her hands together, Elena’s head clasped between them.

A flare of light from Mala, in warning and pain, as Elena’s eyes went wide. As Deanna squeezed.

And then Elena ruptured. Into a thousand shimmering pieces that faded as they fell.

Aelin’s scream died in her throat, her body unable to rise as Deanna wiped her ghostly hands, and said, “We do not make bargains with mortals. Not any longer. Keep Erawan, if that is what you wish.”

Then the goddess strode through the archway into her own world.

Aelin stared at the empty place where Elena had been only heartbeats before.

Nothing remained.

Not even a shimmering ember to send back into the Afterworld, to the mate left behind.

Nothing at all.

CHAPTER 98

It was breaking apart.

The mating bond.

Bowed over his knees, Rowan panted, a hand on his chest as the bond frayed.

He clung to it, wrapped his magic, his soul around it, as if it might keep her, wherever she was, from going to a place he could not follow.

He did not accept it. Would never accept this fate. Never.

Distantly, he heard Dorian and Chaol debating something. He didn’t care.

The mating bond was breaking.

And there was nothing he could do but hold on.

One by one, the gods strode through the archway into their own world. Some sneered down at her as they passed.

They would not take Erawan.

Would not … would not doanything.

Her chest was hollow, her soul gutted out, and yet this …

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