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Rowan s to overthrow Maeve’s throne? Any other surprises I should know about?"

Her s the same beside her "There are no more" At his raised brows, she added, "I swear it on my throne There are no uttered "I don’t knohether to be relieved"

"Everything I know, you know All the cards are on the table now"

With the various arathered, with the Lock, with all of it

"Do you think you could do it again?" he asked "Draw up that much power?"

"I don’t know I don’t think so It required being … contained With the irons"

A shadow darkened his face, and he rolled onto his side, propping up his head "I’ve never seen anything like it"

"You never will again" It was the truth

"If the cost of that lad not to"

Aelin ran a hand down the powerfulin the rip of fabric just above his knee "I didn’t feel you get this wound through the e of the new scar A trophy fro stare Did Maeve somehow break that part of it? That part of us?

"No," he breathed, and stroked the hair from her brow "I’ve realized that the bond only conveys the pain of the gravest wounds"

She touched the spot on his shoulder where Asterin Blackbeak’s arrow had pierced hio The moment she’d knohat he was to her

"It hy I didn’t knoas happening to you on the beach," Rowan said roughly Because the whipping, brutal and unbearable as it had been, hadn’t brought her to the brink of death Only into an iron coffin

She scowled "If you’re about to tell rapple with--about what happened these lance at him, and she kneell aware of what still clouded her soul

And because he was the only person who saw everything she was and did not walk away from it, Aelin said, "I wanted that fire to be for Maeve"

"I know" Such si

"I wanted it tobreath "To wipe it all away" Every htmare and lie

"It will take a while, Aelin To face it, work through it"

"I don’t have a while"

His jaw tensed "That re Not as she adranted her the space to think, to speak

"I want it to be over and done with," she said hoarsely "This war, the gods and the Wyrdgate and the Lock All of it" She rubbed her te stain that no fire ht, and then I want it to be over"

She’d wanted it to be over since she’d learned the true cost of forging the Lock anew Had wanted it to be over with each of Cairn’s lashes on the beach in Eyllwe And all he’d done to her afterward Whatever it ht end, she wanted it to be over

She didn’t knoho and what itan’s host goes north Then ill return to Terrasen and crush Erawan’s arht her hands to his mouth for a swift kiss "And then, after all that, we’ll see about this da will filled his every breath, the air around theh for both of them Tucked away his words, his vow, all those promises between them and extended her palic--the drop of water her iven her Mab’s bloodline

A tiny ball of water took form in her hand Over the calluses she’d so carefully rebuilt