“Slip? I don’t know what you fools were talking about down there, but from where I was standing, it looked like you lost your gods-damned mind and were about to fire on my town.”
Rowan, leaning against the edge of a nearby table, explained, “Magic is a living thing. When you are that deep in it, remembering yourself, your purpose, is an effort. That my queen did so before it was too late is a feat in itself.”
Rolfe wasn’t impressed. “It looks to me like you were a little girl playing with power too big for you to handle, and only your prince jumping in your path made you decide not to slaughter my innocent people.”
Aelin closed her eyes for a heartbeat, the image of Rowan leaping in front of that fist of moonfire flashing before her. When she opened her eyes, she let the crackling assuredness fade into something frozen and hard. “It looks to me,” she said, “like the Pirate Lord of Skull’s Bay and long-lost Mycenian heir has just allied with a young queen so powerful she can decimate cities if she wishes. It looks to me like you have made yourself untouchable with that alliance, and any fool who seeks to harm you, usurp you, will have me to contend with. So I suggest you salvage what you can of your precious ship, mourn the dozen men I take full responsibility for losing and whose families I will compensate accordingly, and shut your rutting mouth.”
She turned toward the door, exhaustion and rage nipping at her bones.
Rolfe said to her back, “Do you want to know what the cost of this map was?”
She halted, Rowan glancing between them, face unreadable.
She smirked over her shoulder. “Your soul?”
Rolfe let out a hoarse laugh. “Yes—in a way. When I was sixteen, I was barely more than a slave on one of these festering ships, my Mycenian heritage just a one-way ticket to a beating.” He laid a tattooed hand on the Thresher’s lettering. “Every coin I earned came back here—to my mother and sister. And one day the ship I was on got caught in a storm. The captain was a haughty bastard, refused to find safe harbor, and the ship was destroyed. Most of the crew drowned. I drifted for a day, washed up on an island at the edge of the archipelago, and awoke to find a man staring down at me. I asked if I was dead, and he laughed and inquired what I wanted for myself. I was so delirious I told him that I wanted to be captain—I wanted to be Pirate Lord of Skull’s Bay and make the arrogant fools like the captain who had killed my friends bow before me. I thought I was dreaming when he explained that if he were to grant me the skills to do it, there would be a price. What I valued most in the world, he would have. I said I’d pay it—whatever it was. I had no belongings, no wealth, no people anyway. A few coppers would be nothing. He smiled before he vanished into sea mist. I awoke with the ink on my hands.”
Aelin waited.
Rolfe shrugged. “I made it back here, finding friendly ships using the map the stranger had inked there. A gift from a god—or so I thought. But it wasn’t until I saw the black sheets over my cottage’s windows that I began to worry. And it wasn’t until I learned that my mother and sister had used their little money to hire a skiff to go looking for me—and that the skiff had returned to harbor but they had not—that I realized the price I’d handed over. That’s what the sea claimed. What he claimed. And it made me soulless enough that I loosed myself upon this city, this archipelago.” Rolfe’s green eyes were as merciless as the Sea God who had gifted and damned him. “That was the price of my power. What shall yours be, Aelin Galathynius?”
She didn’t reply to him before storming out. Though Deanna’s voice had echoed in her mind.
The Queen Who Was Promised.
Now, standing on that empty beach and monitoring the glimmering expanse of the sea as the last of the sun vanished, Rowan said beside her, “Did you willingly use the key?”
No hint of judgment, of condemnation. Just curiosity—and concern.
Aelin rasped, “No. I don’t know what happened. One minute it was us … then she came.” She rubbed at her chest, avoiding the touch of the golden chain against it. Her throat tightened as she took in that spot on his own chest, right between his pectorals. Where her fist had been aimed.
“How could you?” she breathed, a tremor running through her. “How could you put yourself in front of me like that?”
Rowan took a step closer but no farther. The crashing of waves and cries of gulls heading home for the night filled the space between them. “If you had destroyed that city, it would have destroyed you, and any sort of hope at an alliance.”
Shaking began in her hands, spreading to her arms, her chest, her knees. Flame and ash curled on her tongue. “If I had killed you,” she hissed, but choked on the words, unable to finish the thought, the idea of it. Her throat burned, and she squeezed her eyes shut, warm flames rippling around her. “I thought I’d found the bottom of my power,” she admitted, magic already overflowing, so soon, too soon after she’d emptied herself. “I thought what I found in Wendlyn was the bottom. I had no idea it was all just an … antechamber.”
Aelin lifted her hands, opening her eyes to find her fingers wreathed in flame. Darkness spread over the world. Through the veil of gold and blue and red, she looked at her prince. She raised her burning hands helplessly between them. “She stole me—she took me. And I could feel her—feel her consciousness. It was like she was a spider, waiting in a web for decades, knowing I’d one day be strong and stupid enough to use my magic and the key together. I might as well have rung the dinner bell.” Her fire burned hotter, brighter, and she let it build and rise and flicker.
A wry, bitter smile. “It seems she wants us to make finding this Lock a priority, if you were given the message twice.”
Indeed. “Isn’t it enough to contend with Erawan and Maeve, to do the bidding of Brannon and Elena? Now I have to face the gods breathing down my neck about it as well?”
“Perhaps it was a warning—perhaps Deanna wished to show you how a not-so-friendly god might use you if you’re not careful.”
“She enjoyed every rutting second of it. She wanted to see what my power might do, what she could do with my body, with the key.” Her flames burned hotter, shredding through her clothes until they were ash, until she was naked and clothed in only her own fire. “And what she called me—the Queen Who Was Promised. Promised when? To whom? To do what? I’ve never heard that phrase in my life, not even before Terrasen fell.”
“We’ll figure it out.” And that was that.
“How can you be so … fine with this?” Embers sprayed from her like a swarm of fireflies.
Rowan’s mouth tightened. “Trust me, Aelin, I am anything but fine with the idea that you are fair game to those immortal bastards. I am anything but fine with the idea that you could be taken from me like that. If I could, I would hunt Deanna down and pay her back for it.”
“She’s the Goddess of the Hunt. You might be at a disadvantage.” Her flames eased a bit.
A half smile. “She’s a haughty immortal. She’s bound to slip up. And besides … ” A shrug. “I have her sister on my side.” He angled his head, studying her fire, her face. “Perhaps that’s why Mala appeared to me that morning, why she gave me her blessing.”
“Because you’re the only one arrogant and insane enough to hunt a goddess?”
Rowan shucked off his boots, tossing them onto the dry sand behind him. “Because I’m the only one arrogant and insane enough to ask Mala Fire-Bringer to let me stay with the woman I love.”
Her flames turned to pure gold at the words—at that word. But she said, “Perhaps you’re just the only one arrogant and insane enough to love me.”
That unreadable mask cracked. “This new depth to your power, Aelin, changes nothing. What Deanna did changes nothing. You are still young; your power is still growing. And if this new well of power gives us even the slightest advantage against Erawan, then thank the rutting darkness for it. But you and I will learn to manage your power together. You do not face this alone; you do not decide that you are unlovable because you have powers that can save and destroy. If you start to resent that power…” He shook his head. “I do not think we will win this war if you start down that road.”
Aelin strode into the lapping waves and sank to her knees in the surf, steam rising around her in great plumes. “Sometimes,” she admitted over the hissing water, “I wish someone else could fight this war.”
Rowan stepped into the bubbling surf, his magic shielding against the heat of her. “Ah,” he said, kneeling beside her as she still gazed out over the dark sea, “but who else would be able to get under Erawan’s skin? Never underestimate the power of that insufferable swagger.”
She chuckled, starting to feel the cool kiss of the water on her naked body. “As far as memory serves, Prince, it was that insufferable swagger that won your cranky, immortal heart.”
Rowan leaned into the thin veil of flame now melting into night-sweet air and nipped her lower lip. A sharp, wicked bite. “There’s my Fireheart.”
Aelin let him pivot her in the surf and sand to face him fully, let him slide his mouth along her jaw, the curve of her cheekbone, the point of her Fae ear.“These,” he said, nibbling at her earlobe, “have been tempting me for months.” His tongue traced the delicate tip, and her back arched. The strong hands at her hips tightened. “Sometimes, you’d be sleeping beside me at Mistward, and it’d take all my concentration not to lean over and bite them. Bite you all over.”
“Hmmm,” she said, tipping back her head to grant him access to her neck.
Rowan obliged her silent demand, pressing kisses and soft, growling nips to her throat. “I’ve never taken a woman on a beach,” he purred against her skin, sucking gently on the space between her neck and shoulder. “And look at that—we’re far from any sort of … collateral.” One hand drifted from her hip to caress the scars on her back, the other sliding to cup her backside, drawing her fully against him.
Aelin spread her hands over his chest, tugging his white shirt over his head. Warm waves crashed against them, but Rowan held her fast—unmovable, unshakable.
Aelin remembered herself enough to say, “Someone might come looking for us.”
Rowan huffed a laugh against her neck. “Something tells me,” he said, his breath skittering along her skin, “you might not mind if we were discovered. If someone saw how thoroughly I plan to worship you.”
She felt the words dangling there, felt herself dangling there, off the edge of the cliff. She swallowed. But Rowan had caught her each time she had fallen—first, when she had plummeted into that abyss of despair and grief; second, when that castle had shattered and she had plunged to the earth. And now this time, this third time … She was not afraid.
Aelin met Rowan’s stare and said clearly and baldly and without a speckle of doubt, “I love you. I am in love with you, Rowan. I have been for a while. And I know there are limits to what you can give me, and I know you might need time—”
His lips crushed into hers, and he said onto her mouth, dropping words more precious than rubies and emeralds and sapphires into her heart, her soul, “I love you. There is no limit to what I can give to you, no time I need. Even when this world is a forgotten whisper of dust between the stars, I will love you.”
Aelin didn’t know when she started crying, when her body began shaking with the force of it. She had never said such words—to anyone. Never let herself be that vulnerable, never felt this burning and unending thing, so consuming she might die from the force of it.
Rowan pulled back, wiping away her tears with his thumbs, one after another. He said softly, barely audible over the crashing waves around them, “Fireheart.”
She sniffed back tears. “Buzzard.”
He roared a laugh and she let him lay her down on the sand with a gentleness near reverence. His sculpted chest heaved slightly as he ran an eye over her bare body. “You … are so beautiful.”