Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(188)

The words hit her like stones. “The Queen Who Was Promised,” Aelin said. “But not to the world. To the gods—to the keys.”

To pay the price. To be their sacrifice in order to seal the keys in the gate at last.

Deanna’s appearance hadn’t been only to tell her how to use the mirror, but to remind her that she belonged to them. Had a debt owed to them.

Aelin said too quietly, “I didn’t survive that night in the Florine River because of pure luck, did I?”

Elena shook her head. “We did not—”

“No,” Aelin snapped. “Show me.”

Elena’s throat bobbed. But then the mists turned dark and colored, and the very air around them became laced with frost.

Breaking branches, ragged breath punctuated with gasping sobs, light footsteps crashing through bramble and brush. A horse’s thunderous gait, closing in—

Aelin made herself stand still when that familiar, frozen wood appeared, exactly as she remembered it. As she appeared, so small and young, white nightgown torn and muddy, hair wild, eyes bright with terror and grief so profound it had broken her entirely. Frantic to reach the roaring river beyond, the bridge—

There were the posts, and the forest on the other side. Her sanctuary—

Manon swore softly as Aelin Galathynius flung herself through the bridge posts, realized the bridge had been cut … and plummeted into the raging, half-frozen river below.

She had forgotten how far that fall was. How violent the black river was, the white rapids illuminated by the icy moon overhead.

The image shifted, and then it was dark, and silent, and they were being tumbled, over and over as the river tossed her in its wrath.

“There was so much death,” Elena whispered as they watched Aelin being thrown and twisted and dragged down by the river. The cold was crushing.

“So much death, and so many lights extinguished,” Elena said, voice breaking. “You were so small. And you fought … you fought so hard.”

And there she was, clawing at the water, kicking and thrashing, trying to get to the surface, to the air, and she could feel her lungs begin to seize, feel the pressure building—

Then light flickered from the Amulet of Orynth hanging around her neck, greenish symbols fizzing like bubbles around her.

Elena slid to her knees, watching that amulet glow beneath the water. “They wanted me to take you, right then. You had the Amulet of Orynth, everyone thought you were dead, and the enemy was distracted with the slaughter. I could take you, help you track down the other two keys. I was allowed to help you—to do that much. And once we got the other two, I was to force you to forge the Lock anew. To use every last drop of you to make that Lock, summon the gate, put the keys back into it, send them home, and end it all. You had enough power, even then. It’d kill you to do it, but you were likely dead anyway. So they let me form a body, to get you.”

Elena took a shuddering breath as a figure plunged into the water. A silver-haired, beautiful woman in an ancient dress. She grabbed Aelin around the waist, hauling her up, up, up.

They hit the surface of the river, and it was dark and loud and wild, and it was all she could do to grab the log Elena shoved her onto, to dig her nails into the soaked wood and cling to it while she was carried downriver, deep into the night.

“I hesitated,” Elena breathed. “You clung to that log with all your strength. Everything had been taken from you—everything—and yet you still fought. You did not yield. And they told me to hurry, because even then their power to hold me in that solid body was fading. They said to just take you and go, but … I hesitated. I waited until you got to that riverbank.”

Mud and reeds and trees looming overhead, snow still patching the steep hill of the bank.

Aelin watched herself crawl up that riverbank, inch by painful inch, and she felt the phantom, icy mud beneath her nails, felt her broken, frozen body as it slumped onto the earth and shuddered, over and over.

As lethal cold gripped her while Elena hauled herself onto the bank beside her.

As Elena lunged for her, screaming her name, cold and shock setting in …

“I thought the danger would be drowning,” Elena whispered. “I didn’t realize being out in the cold for so long …”

Her lips had gone blue. Aelin watched her own small chest rise, fall, rise …

Then stop moving all together.

“You died,” Elena whispered. “Right there, you died. You had fought so hard, and I failed you. And in that moment, I didn’t care that I’d again failed the gods, or my promise to make it right, or any of it. All I could think …” Tears ran down Elena’s face. “All I could think was how unfair it was. You had not even lived, you had not even been given a chance … And all those people, who had wished and waited for a better world … You would not be there to give it to them.”

Oh gods.

“Elena,” Aelin breathed.

The Queen of Adarlan sobbed into her hands, even as her former self shook Aelin, over and over. Trying to wake her, trying to revive the small body that had given out.

Elena’s voice broke. “I could not allow it. I could not endure it. Not for the gods’ sake, but—but for your own.”

Light flared at Elena’s hand, then down her arm, then along her whole body. Fire. She wrapped herself around Aelin, the heat melting the snow around them, drying her ice-crusted hair.