Complete submission to her indeed. “Then I go north.”
“And I’m supposed to sit on my ass for the next gods know how many months?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re not exactly inconspicuous, Rowan. If your tattoos don’t attract attention, then the hair, the ears, the teeth . . .”
“I have another form, you know.”
“And, just like I said, magic doesn’t work there anymore. You’d be trapped in that form. Though I do hear that Rifthold rats are particularly delicious, if you want to eat them for months.”
He glared at her, then scanned the ship—even though she knew he’d snuck out of their room at the inn last night to inspect it already. “We’re stronger together than apart.”
“If I’d known you would be such a pain in the ass, I never would have let you swear that oath.”
“Aelin.” At least he wasn’t calling her “Majesty” or “My Lady.” “Either as yourself or as Celaena, they will try to find you and kill you. They are probably already tracking you down. We could go to Varese right now and approach your mother’s mortal kin, the Ashryvers. They might have a plan.”
“My chance at success in getting the Wyrdkey out of Rifthold lies in stealth as Celaena.”
“Please,” he said.
But she merely lifted her chin. “I am going, Rowan. I will gather the rest of my court—our court—and then we will raise the greatest army the world has ever witnessed. I will call in every favor, every debt owed to Celaena Sardothien, to my parents, to my bloodline. And then . . .” She looked toward the sea, toward home. “And then I am going to rattle the stars.” She put her arms around him—a promise. “Soon. I will send for you soon, when the time is right. Until then, try to make yourself useful.” He shook his head, but gripped her in a bone-crushing embrace.
He pulled back far enough to look at her. “Perhaps I’ll go help repair Mistward.”
She nodded. “You never told me,” she said, “what you were praying to Mala for that morning before we entered Doranelle.”
For a moment, it looked like he wouldn’t tell her. But then he quietly said, “I prayed for two things. I asked her to ensure you survived the encounter with Maeve—to guide you and give you the strength you needed.”
That strange, comforting warmth, that presence that had reassured her . . . the setting sun kissed her cheeks as if in confirmation, and a shiver went down her spine. “And the second?”
“It was a selfish wish, and a fool’s hope.” She read the rest of it in his eyes. But it came true.
“Dangerous, for a prince of ice and wind to pray to the Fire-Bringer,” she managed to say.
Rowan shrugged, a secret smile on his face as he wiped away the tear that escaped down her cheek. “For some reason, Mala likes me, and agreed that you and I make a formidable pair.”
But she didn’t want to know—didn’t want to think about the Sun Goddess and her agenda as she flung herself on Rowan, breathing in his scent, memorizing the feel of him. The first member of her court—the court that would change the world. The court that would rebuild it. Together.
She boarded the boat as night fell, herded into the galley with the other passengers to keep them from learning the route through the reef. With little fuss they set sail, and when they were at last allowed out of the galley, she emerged onto the deck to find dark, open ocean around them. A white-tailed hawk still flew overhead, and it swooped low to brush its star-silvered wing against her cheek in farewell before it turned back with a sharp cry.
In the moonless light, she traced the scar on her palm, the oath to Nehemia.
She would retrieve the first Wyrdkey from Arobynn and track down the others, and then find a way to put the Wyrdkeys back in their Gate. She would free magic and destroy the king and save her people. No matter the odds, no matter how long it took, no matter how far she had to go.
She lifted her face to the stars. She was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir of two mighty bloodlines, protector of a once-glorious people, and Queen of Terrasen.
She was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius—and she would not be afraid.