As two figures took form at its head.
And walked, unhindered, toward the city walls, darkness swarming around them.
Erawan. The golden-haired young man. She’d know it if she were blind.
A dark-haired, pale-skinned woman strode at his side, robes billowing around her on a phantom
wind.
“Maeve,” Lysandra breathed.
People began screaming then. In terror and despair.
Maeve and Erawan had come. To personally oversee Orynth’s fall.
They stalked toward the city gates, the darkness behind them gathering, the army at their backs
swelling. Pincers clicked within that darkness. Creatures who could devour life, joy.
Oh gods.
“Lord Darrow,” Elide cut in, sharp and commanding. “Is there a way out of the city? Some sort of
back door through the mountains that the children and elderly could take?”
Darrow dragged his eyes from the approaching Valg king and queen.
It was helplessness and despair that filled them. That broke his voice as he said, “No route that
will allow them to escape in time.”
“Tell me where it is,” Lysandra ordered. “So they might try, at least.” She grabbed for the girl’s
arm. “So Evangeline might try to run.”
A defeat. What had seemed like a triumphant victory was about to become an absolute defeat. A
butchering.
Led by Maeve and Erawan, now a mere hundred yards from the city walls.
Only ancient stone and iron stood between them and Orynth.
Darrow hesitated. In shock. The old man was in shock.
But Evangeline pointed a finger. Out toward the gates, toward Maeve and Erawan. “Look.”
And there she was.
In the deepening blues of descending night, amid the snow beginning to fall, Aelin Galathynius had
appeared before the sealed southern gate.
Had appeared before Erawan and Maeve.
Her unbound hair billowed in the wind like a golden banner, a last ray of light with the dying of
the day.
Silence fell. Even the screaming stopped as all turned toward the gate.
But Aelin did not balk. Did not run from the Valg queen and king who halted as if in delight at thelone figure who dared face them.
Lysandra let out a strangled sob. “She—she has no magic left.” The shifter’s voice broke. “She has
nothing left.”
Still Aelin lifted her sword.
Flames ran down the blade.
One flame against the darkness gathered.
One flame to light the night.
Aelin raised her shield, and flames encircled it, too.
Burning bright, burning undaunted. A vision of old, reborn once more.
The cry went down the castle battlements, through the city, along the walls.
The queen had come home at last.
The queen had come to hold the gate.
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