Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5) by Sarah J. Maas

Lorcan broke from the lion, blood streaming down his arm, his leg, panting. But the wolf had vanished into nothing. Where was it, where was it—

It appeared out of thin air, as if it had stepped through an invisible bridge, ten feet from Lorcan.

Not an attack. An execution.

Elide cleared a gap between two mounds of land, icy grass slicing into her palms, something crunching in her leg—

The wolf leaped for Lorcan’s vulnerable back, eyes glazed with bloodlust, teeth shining.

Elide surged up the little hill, time spinning out beneath her.

No no no no no no.

Vicious white fangs neared Lorcan’s spine.

Lorcan heard her then, heard the shuddering sob as she threw herself into him.

His dark eyes flared in what looked like terror as she slammed into his unprotected back.

As he noticed the death blow not coming from the lion at his front, but the wolf whose jaws closed around her arm instead of Lorcan’s neck.

She could have sworn the wolf’s eyes flared in horror as it tried to pull back the physical blow, as a dark, hard shield slammed into her, stealing her breath with its unflinching solidity—

Blood and pain and bone and grass and bellowing fury.

The world tilted as she and Lorcan went down, her body thrown over his, the wolf’s jaws wrenching out of her arm.

She curled over Lorcan, waiting for the wolf and mountain lion to end it, to take her neck in their jaws and crunch down.

No attack came. Silence cleaved the world.

Lorcan flipped her over, his breathing ragged, his face bloody and pale as he took in her face, her arm. “ElideElideElide—”

She couldn’t draw breath, couldn’t see around the sensation that her arm was mere shredded flesh and splintered bone—

Lorcan grabbed her face before she could look and snapped, “Why did you do that? Why?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He lifted his head, his snarl so vicious it echoed in her bones, made the pain in her arm surge violently enough that she whimpered.

He growled to the lion and the wolf, his shield a swirling, obsidian wind around them, “You’re dead. You’re both dead—”

Elide shifted her head enough to see the white wolf staring at them. At Lorcan. See the wolf change in a flash of light into the most beautiful man she’d ever beheld. His golden-brown face tightened as he took in her arm. Her arm, her arm—

“Lorcan, we were ordered,” said an unfamiliar, gentle male voice from where the lion, too, had transformed into a Fae male.

“Damn your orders to hell, you stupid bastard—”

The wolf-warrior hissed, chest heaving, “We can’t fight against the command much longer, Lorcan—”

“Put the shield down,” the calmer one said. “I can heal the girl. Let her get away.”

“I’ll kill you both,” Lorcan swore. “I’ll kill you—”

Elide looked at her arm.

There was a piece missing. From her forearm. There was blood gushing into the burnt remnants of grass. White bone jutting out—

Maybe she started screaming or sobbing or silently shaking.

“Don’t look,” Lorcan snapped, squeezing her face again to draw her eyes to his own. His face was lined with such wrath she barely recognized it, but he made no move against the males.

His power was drained. He’d nearly wiped it out shielding against Aelin’s flame and whoever had borne that other magic on the field. This shield … this was all Lorcan had left.

And if he lowered it so they could heal her … they’d kill him. He had warned them of the attack, and they’d still kill him.

Aelin—where was Aelin—

The world was blackening at the edges, her body begging to submit rather than endure the pain that reordered everything in her life.

Lorcan tensed as if sensing the oblivion that threatened. “You heal her,” he said to the gentle-eyed male, “and then we continue—”

“No,” she got out. Not for this, not for her—

Lorcan’s onyx eyes were unreadable as he scanned her face. And then he said quietly, “I wanted to go to Perranth with you.”

Lorcan dropped the shield.





It was not a hard choice. And it did not frighten him. Not nearly as much as the fatal wound in her arm did.

Fenrys had hit an artery. She’d bleed out in minutes.

Lorcan had been born from and gifted with darkness. Returning to it was not a difficult task.

But letting that glimmering, lovely light before him die out … In his ancient, bitter bones, he could not accept it.

She had been forgotten—by everyone and everything. And still she had hoped. And still she had been kind to him.

And still she had offered him a glimpse of peace in the time he’d known her.

She had offered him a home.

He knew Fenrys wouldn’t be able to fight Maeve’s kill order. Knew Gavriel would stay true to his word and heal her, but Fenrys couldn’t hold out against the blood oath’s command.

He knew the bastard would regret it. Knew the wolf had been horrified the moment Elide had jumped between them.

Lorcan let go of his shield, praying she wouldn’t watch when the bloodletting started. When he and Fenrys went claw-to-claw and fang-to-fang. He’d last against the warrior. Until Gavriel joined back in.

The shield vanished, and Gavriel was instantly kneeling, reaching with his broad hands for her arm. Pain paralyzed her, but she tried telling Lorcan to run, to put the shield back up—