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"Tell that to your soldiers," Fenrys snarled, standing, too

"I did not mean it that way," Hasar snipped, and aas indeed stark on her face

Rowan leaned against the battleht to keep the lethal stea toward the ar away

Solid hands slid under his ar him up between thean to lower Still the fire burned

Rowan’s head pounded, hisfilled his

Then roaring turned to lapping, rapids into eddies

Until the wall of fla the waters down and down and down Letting them seep into the cracks of the earth

Rowan’s knees buckled, but he held on to his h for the steam to lessen For it, too, to be calthe view of the queen in its center

Then silence Utter silence

Fire flickered through the low

Rowan spat blood onto the battlelass in his throat

The glowing fla past Until there was only a slim pillar of fire, veiled in the mist-shrouded plain

Not a pillar of fire

But Aelin

Glohite-hot As if she had given herself so wholly to the flaer someone whispered down the battle her into nothing but a glowing effigy

The silence turned reverent

A gentle wind from the north swept down The veil of lowed fro on a phantom wind

"Mala’s Heir," Yrene breathed

Down on the plain, Elide and Lorcan had halted

The wind pushed awaythe land beyond Aelin

And where that ed toward the to the darkness and the fla back

For three months, she had burrowed so deep inside her power that she had plundered undiscovered depths While Maeve and Cairn had worked on her, she had delved Never letting theathered to her, day by day by day

A death blow One to wipe a dark queen from the earth forever

She’d kept that power coiled in herself even after she’d been freed froled to keep it down these weeks, the strain enormous Soering arrogance had been her key to ignoring it

Yet when she had seen that wave, when she had seen Elide and Lorcan choosing death together, when she had seen the arht save Terrasen, she’d known She’d felt the fire sleeping under this city, and knew they had come here for a reason

She had come here for this reason

A river still flowed fro toward the lake

Nothinghand before her as blessed, cooling eertips, the glow faded

As if she were forged anew, forged back into her body

Back into Aelin