Her uncle, still wearing the antler crown long since burned to ash: “Better that you had died with us than shame us, degrade our memory, betray our people.”

   Their voices swirled together. “Traitor. Murderer. Liar. Thief. Coward.” Again and again, worming in just as the King of Adarlan’s power had wriggled in her mind like a maggot.

   The king hadn’t done it merely to cause a disruption and hurt her. He had also done it to separate her family, to get them out of the castle—to take the blame away from Adarlan and make it look like an outside attack.

   She had blamed herself for dragging them to the manor ­house to be butchered. But the king had planned it all, every minute detail. Except for the mistake of leaving her alive—­perhaps because the power of the amulet did indeed save her.

   “Come with us,” her family whispered. “Come with us into the ageless dark.”

   They reached for her, faces shadowed and twisted. Yet—­yet even those faces, so warped with hatred . . . she still loved them—­even if they loathed her, even if it ached; loved them until their hissing faded, until they vanished like smoke, leaving only Aelin lying beside her, as she had been all along.

   She looked at Aelin’s face—­the face she’d once worn—­and at her still outstretched hand, so small and unscarred. The darkness of the Valg princes flickered.

   There was solid ground beneath her. Moss and grass. Not hell—earth. The earth on which her kingdom lay, green and mountainous and as unyielding as its people. Her people.

   Her people, waiting for ten years, but no longer.

   She could see the snow-­capped Staghorns, the wild tangle of Oakwald at their feet, and . . . and Orynth, that city of light and learning, once a pillar of strength—­and her home.

   It would be both again.

   She would not let that light go out.

   She would fill the world with it, with her light—­her gift. She would light up the darkness, so brightly that all who ­were lost or wounded or broken would find their way to it, a beacon for those who still dwelled in that abyss. It would not take a monster to destroy a monster—­but light, light to drive out darkness.

   She was not afraid.

   She would remake the world—­remake it for them, those she had loved with this glorious, burning heart; a world so brilliant and prosperous that when she saw them again in the Afterworld, she would not be ashamed. She would build it for her people, who had survived this long, and whom she would not abandon. She would make for them a kingdom such as there had never been, even if it took until her last breath.

   She was their queen, and she could offer them nothing less.

   Aelin Galathynius smiled at her, hand still outreached. “Get up,” the princess said.

   Celaena reached across the earth between them and brushed her fingers against Aelin’s.

   And arose.

   55

   The barrier fell.

   But the darkness did not advance over the ward-­stones, and Rowan, who had been restrained by Gavriel and Lorcan in the grass outside the fortress, knew why.

   The creatures and Narrok had captured a prize far greater than the demi-­Fae. The joy of feeding on her was something they planned to relish for a long, long while. Everything ­else was secondary—­as if they’d forgotten to continue advancing, swept up in the frenzy of feasting.

   Behind them, the fighting continued, as it had for the past twenty minutes. Wind and ice ­were of no use against the darkness, though Rowan had hurled both against it the moment the barrier fell. Again and again, anything to pierce that eternal black and see what was left of the princess. Even as he started hearing a soft, warm female voice, beckoning to him from the darkness—­that voice he had spent centuries forgetting, which now tore him to shreds.

   “Rowan,” Gavriel murmured, tightening his grip on Rowan’s arm. Rain had begun pouring. “We are needed inside.”

   “No,” he snarled. He knew Aelin was alive, because during all these weeks that they had been breathing each other’s scents, they had become bonded. She was alive, but could be in any level of torment or decay. That was why Gavriel and Lorcan ­were holding him back. If they didn’t, he would run for the darkness, where Lyria beckoned.

   But for Aelin, he had tried to break free.

   “Rowan, the others—”

   “No.”

   Lorcan swore over the roar of the torrential rain. “She is dead, you fool, or close enough to it. You can still save other lives.”

   They began hauling him to his feet, away from her. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll rip your head from your body,” he snarled at Lorcan, the commander who had offered him a company of warriors when he had nothing and no one left.

   Gavriel flicked his eyes to Lorcan in some silent conversation. Rowan tensed, preparing to fling them off. They would knock him unconscious sooner than allow him into that dark, where Lyria’s beckoning had now turned to screaming for mercy. It ­wasn’t real. It ­wasn’t real.

   But Aelin was real, and was being drained of life with every moment they held him ­here. All he needed to get them unconscious was for Gavriel to drop his magical shield—­which he’d had up against Rowan’s own power from the moment he’d pinned him. He had to get into that dark, had to find her. “Let go,” he growled again.

   A rumbling shook the earth, and they froze. Beneath them some huge power was surging—­a behemoth rising from the deep.

   They turned toward the darkness. And Rowan could have sworn that a golden light arced through it, then disappeared.

   “That’s impossible,” Gavriel breathed. “She burned out.”

   Rowan didn’t dare blink. Her burnouts had always been self-­imposed, some inner barrier composed of fear and a lingering desire for normalcy that kept her from accepting the true depth of her power.

   The creatures fed on despair and pain and terror. But what if—­what if the victim let go of those fears? What if the victim walked through them—­embraced them?

   As if in answer, flame erupted from the wall of darkness.

   The fire unfurled, filling the rainy night, vibrant as a red opal. Lorcan swore, and Gavriel threw up additional shields of his own magic. Rowan didn’t bother.

   They did not fight him as he shrugged off their grip, surging to his feet. The flame didn’t singe a hair on his head. It flowed above and past him, glorious and immortal and unbreakable.

   And there, beyond the stones, standing between two of those creatures, was Aelin, a strange mark glowing on her brow. Her hair flowed around her, shorter now and bright like her fire. And her eyes—­though they ­were red-­rimmed, the gold in her eyes was a living flame.