Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)(108)

She could hardly hear him, as if she were underwater. There was a pounding in her now—edged with pain. It was a knife that sliced into her mind and her body with each pulse. She couldn’t look at him—didn’t dare take her attention from the fire.

“Let the fires burn on their own,” Rowan ordered. She could have sworn she heard something like fear in his voice. It was an effort of will, and pain spiked down the tendons in her neck, but she looked at him. His nostrils flared. “Aelin, stop right now.”

She tried to speak, but her throat was raw, burning. She couldn’t move her body.

“Let go.” She tried to tell him she couldn’t, but it hurt. She was an anvil and the pain was a hammer, striking again and again. “If you don’t let go, you are going to burn out completely.”

Was this the end of her magic, then? A few hours tending fires? Such a relief—such a blessed relief, if it were true.

“You are on the verge of roasting yourself from the inside out,” Rowan snarled.

She blinked, and her eyes ached as if she had sand in them. Agony lashed down her spine, so hard she fell to the grass. Light flared—not from her or Rowan, but from the fires surging. People yelled, the music faltered. The grass hissed beneath her hands, smoking. She groaned, fumbling inside for the three tethers to the fires. But she was a maze, a labyrinth, the strings all tangled, and—

“I’m sorry,” Rowan hissed, swearing again, and the air vanished.

She tried to groan, to move, but she had no air. No air for that inner fire. Blackness swept in.

Oblivion.

Then she was gasping, arcing off the grass, the fires now crackling naturally and Rowan hovering over her. “Breathe. Breathe.”

Though he’d snapped her tethers to the fires, she was still burning.

Not burning on the outside, where even the grass had stopped smoldering.

She was burning up from within. Each breath sent fire down her lungs, her veins. She could not speak or move.

She had shoved herself over some boundary—hadn’t heard the warning signs to turn back—and she was burning alive beneath her skin.

She shook with tearless, panicked sobs. It hurt—it was endless and eternal and there was no dark part of her where she could flee to escape the flames. Death would be a mercy, a cold, black haven.

She didn’t know Rowan had left until he came sprinting back, two females in tow. One of them said, “Can you stand to carry her? There aren’t any water-wielders here, and we need to get her into cold water. Now.”

She didn’t hear what else was said, heard nothing but the pounding-pounding of that forge under her skin. There was a grunt and a hiss, and then she was in Rowan’s arms, bouncing against his chest as he hurtled through the woods. Every step sent splinters of red-hot pain through her. Though his arms were ice cold, a frigid wind pressing on her, she was adrift in a sea of fire.

Hell—this was what the dark god’s underworld felt like. This was what awaited her when she took her last breath.

It was the horror of that thought that made her focus on what she could grasp—namely the pine-and-snow smell of Rowan. She pulled that smell into her lungs, pulled it down deep and clung to it as though it were a lifeline tossed into a stormy sea. She didn’t know how long it took, but her grasp on him was weakening, each pulse of fiery pain fraying it.

But then it was darker than the woods, and the sounds echoed louder, and they took stairs, and then—“Get her into the water.”

She was lowered into the water in the sunken stone tub, then steam brushed her face. Someone swore. “Freeze it, Prince,” the second voice commanded. “Now.”

There was a moment of blissful cold, but then the fire surged, and—

“Get her out!” Strong hands yanked at her, and she had the vague sense of hearing bubbling.

She had boiled the water in that tub. Almost boiled herself. She was in another tub a moment later, the ice forming again—then melting. Melting, and—“Breathe,” Rowan said by her ear, kneeling at the head of the tub. “Let it go—let it get out of you.”

Steam rose, but she took a breath. “Good,” Rowan panted. Ice formed again. Melted.

She was sweating, heat pulsing against her skin like a drum. She did not want to die like this. She took another breath.

Like the ebb and flow of the tide, the bath froze, then melted, froze, then melted, slower each time. And each time, the cold soaked into her a bit more, numbing her, urging her body to relax.

Ice and fire. Frost and embers. Locked in a battle, pushing and pulling. Beneath it, she could almost taste Rowan’s steel will slamming against her magic—a will that refused to let the fire burn her into nothing.

Her body ached, but now the pain was mortal. Her cheeks were still aflame, but the water went cold, then lukewarm, then warm and—stayed that way. Warm, not hot.

“We need to get those clothes off her,” one of the females said. Celaena lost track of time as two small sets of hands eased up her head and then stripped off her sodden clothes. Without them, she was almost weightless in the water. She didn’t care if Rowan saw—didn’t think there was an inch of a woman’s body he hadn’t already explored anyway. She lay there, eyes shut, face tilted toward the ceiling.

After a while, Rowan said, “Just answer yes or no. That’s all you have to do.” She managed a slight nod, though she winced as pain shot down her neck and shoulders. “Are you in danger of flaring up again?”