“Rowan belongs to me,” Maeve hissed. “I can do what I wish with him.”
Celaena looked at the prince, who was standing so stalwart, his eyes dull with pain. Not from the wounds on his back, but from the parting that had been creeping up on them with each step that took them closer to Doranelle.
Slowly, carefully, Celaena pulled the ring from her pocket.
•
It was not Chaol’s ring that she had been clutching these past few days.
It was the simple golden ring that had been left in Goldryn’s scabbard. She had kept it safe all these weeks, asking Emrys to tell story after story about Maeve as she carefully pieced together the truth about her aunt, just for this very moment, for this very task.
Maeve went as still as death while Celaena lifted the ring between two fingers.
“I think you’ve been looking for this for a long time,” Celaena said.
“That does not belong to you.”
“Doesn’t it? I found it, after all. In Goldryn’s scabbard, where Brannon left it after grabbing it off Athril’s corpse—the family ring Athril would have given you someday. And in the thousands of years since then, you never found it, so . . . I suppose it’s mine by chance.” Celaena closed her fist around the ring. “But who would have thought you were so sentimental?”
Maeve’s lips thinned. “Give it to me.”
Celaena barked out a laugh. “I don’t have to give you a damn thing.” Her smile faded. Beside Maeve’s throne, Rowan’s face was unreadable as he turned toward the waterfall.
All of it—all of it for him. For Rowan, who had known exactly what sword he was picking up that day in the mountain cave, who had thrown it to her across the ice as a future bargaining chip—the only protection he could offer her against Maeve, if she was smart enough to figure it out.
She had only realized what he’d done—that he’d known all along—when she’d mentioned the ring to him weeks ago and he’d told her he hoped she found some use for it. He didn’t yet understand that she had no interest in bargaining for power or safety or alliance.
So Celaena said, “I’ll make a trade with you, though.” Maeve’s brows narrowed. Celaena jerked her chin. “Your beloved’s ring—for Rowan’s freedom from his blood oath.”
Rowan stiffened. His friends whipped their heads to her.
“A blood oath is eternal,” Maeve said tightly. Celaena didn’t think his friends were breathing.
“I don’t care. Free him.” Celaena held out the ring again. “Your choice. Free him, or I melt this right here.”
Such a gamble; so many weeks of scheming and planning and secretly hoping. Even now, Rowan did not turn.
Maeve’s eyes remained on the ring. And Celaena understood why—it was why she’d dared try it. After a long silence, Maeve’s dress rustled as she straightened, her face pale and tight. “Very well. I’ve grown rather bored of his company these past few decades, anyway.”
Rowan faced her—slowly, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was hearing. It was Celaena’s gaze, not Maeve’s, that he met, his eyes shining.
“By my blood that flows in you,” Maeve said. “Through no dishonor, through no act of treachery, I hereby free you, Rowan Whitethorn, of your blood oath to me.”
Rowan just stared and stared at her, and Celaena hardly heard the rest, the words Maeve spoke in the Old Language. But Rowan took out a dagger and spilled his own blood on the stones—whatever that meant. She had never heard of a blood oath being broken before, but had risked it regardless. Perhaps not in all the history of the world had one ever been broken honorably. His friends were wide-eyed and silent.
Maeve said, “You are free of me, Prince Rowan Whitethorn.”
That was all Celaena needed to hear before she tossed the ring to Maeve, before Rowan rushed to her, his hands on her cheeks, his brow against her own.
“Aelin,” he murmured, and it wasn’t a reprimand, or a thank-you, but . . . a prayer. “Aelin,” he whispered again, grinning, and kissed her brow before he dropped to both knees before her.
And when he reached for her wrist, she jerked back. “You’re free. You’re free now.”
Behind them, Maeve watched, brows high. But Celaena could not accept this—could not agree to it.
Complete and utter submission, that’s what a blood oath was. He would yield everything to her—his life, any property, any free will.
Rowan’s face was calm, though—steady, assured. Trust me.
I don’t want you enslaved to me. I won’t be that kind of queen.
You have no court—you are defenseless, landless, and without allies. She might let you walk out of here today, but she could come after you tomorrow. She knows how powerful I am—how powerful we are together. It will make her hesitate.
Please don’t do this—I will give you anything else you ask, but not this.
I claim you, Aelin. To whatever end.
She might have continued to silently argue with him, but that strange, feminine warmth that she’d felt at the campsite that morning wrapped around her, as if assuring her it was all right to want this badly enough that it hurt, telling her that she could trust the prince, and more than that—more than anything, she could trust herself. So when Rowan reached for her wrist again, she did not fight him.
“Together, Fireheart,” he said, pushing back the sleeve of her tunic. “We’ll find a way together.” He looked up from her exposed wrist. “A court that will change the world,” he promised.
And then she was nodding—nodding and smiling, too, as he drew the dagger from his boot and offered it to her. “Say it, Aelin.”
Not daring to let her hands shake in fro
nt of Maeve or Rowan’s stunned friends, she took his dagger and held it over her exposed wrist. “Do you promise to serve in my court, Rowan Whitethorn, from now until the day you die?” She did not know the right words or the Old Language, but a blood oath wasn’t about pretty phrases.
“I do. Until my last breath, and the world beyond. To whatever end.”
She would have paused then, asked him again if he really wanted to do this, but Maeve was still there, a shadow lurking behind them. That was why he had done it now, here—so Celaena could not object, could not try to talk him out of it.
It was such a Rowan thing to do, so pigheaded, that she could only grin as she drew the dagger across her wrist, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. She offered her arm to him.
With surprising gentleness, he took her wrist in his hands and lowered his mouth to her skin.
For a heartbeat, something lightning-bright snapped through her and then settled—a thread binding them, tighter and tighter with each pull Rowan took of her blood. Three mouthfuls—his canines pricking against her skin—and then he lifted his head, his lips shining with her blood, his eyes glittering and alive and full of steel.
There were no words to do justice to what passed between them in that moment.
Maeve saved them from trying to remember how to speak as she hissed, “Now that you have insulted me further, get out. All of you.” His friends were gone in an instant, padding off for the shadows, taking those wretched whips with them.
Celaena helped Rowan to his feet, letting him heal the wound on her wrist as his back knitted together. Shoulder to shoulder, they looked at the Fae Queen one last time.
But there was only a white barn owl flapping off into the moonlit night.
•
They hurried out of Doranelle, not stopping until they found a quiet inn in a small, half-forgotten town miles away. Rowan didn’t even dare to swing by his quarters to collect his belongings, and claimed he had nothing worthwhile to take, anyway. His friends did not come after them, did not try to bid them good-bye as they slipped across the bridge and into the night-veiled lands beyond. After hours of running, Celaena tumbled into bed and slept like the dead. But at dawn, she begged Rowan to retrieve his needles and ink from his pack.