Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass #4) by Sarah J. Maas

“I think there’s a long line of people who feel the same way.” She scanned the sewer-turned-charnel-house. “I needed Lorcan’s eyes elsewhere tonight and tomorrow. And I needed to know whether these Wyrdhounds could be killed.”

“Why?” He saw too much.

Slowly, she met his gaze. “Because I’m going to use their beloved sewer entrance to get into the castle—and blow up the clock tower right from under them.”

Rowan let out a low, wicked chuckle. “That’s how you’re going to free magic. Once Lorcan kills the last of the Wyrdhounds, you’re going in.”

“He really should have killed me, considering the world of trouble that’s now hunting him through this city.”

Rowan bared his teeth in a feral smile. “He had it coming.”





Cloaked, armed, and masked, Aelin leaned against the stone wall of the abandoned building while Rowan circled the bound Valg commander in the center of the room.

“You’ve signed your death warrant, you maggots,” the thing inside the guard’s body said.

Aelin clicked her tongue. “You must not be a very good demon to be captured so easily.”

It had been a joke, really. Aelin had picked the smallest patrol led by the mildest of the commanders. She and Rowan had ambushed the patrol just before midnight in a quiet part of the city. She’d barely killed two guards before the rest were dead at Rowan’s hand—and when the commander tried to run, the Fae warrior had caught him within heartbeats.

Rendering him unconscious had been the work of a moment. The hardest part had been dragging his carcass across the slums, into the building, and down into the cellar, where they’d chained him to a chair.

“I’m—not a demon,” the man hissed, as if every word burned him.

Aelin crossed her arms. Rowan, bearing both Goldryn and Damaris, circled the man, a hawk closing in on prey.

“Then what’s the ring for?” she said.

A gasp of breath—human, labored. “To enslave us—corrupt us.”

“And?”

“Come closer, and I might tell you.” His voice changed then, deeper and colder.

“What’s your name?” Rowan asked.

“Your human tongues cannot pronounce our names, or our language,” the demon said.

She mimicked, “Your human tongues cannot pronounce our names. I’ve heard that one before, unfortunately.” Aelin let out a low laugh as the creature inside the man seethed. “What is your name—your real name?”

The man thrashed, a violent jerking motion that made Rowan step closer. She carefully monitored the battle between the two beings inside that body. At last it said, “Stevan.”

“Stevan,” she said. The man’s eyes were clear, fixed on her. “Stevan,” she said again, louder.

“Quiet,” the demon snapped.

“Where are you from, Stevan?”

“Enough of—Melisande.”

“Stevan,” she repeated. It hadn’t worked on the day of Aedion’s escape—it hadn’t been enough then, but now … “Do you have a family, Stevan?”

“Dead. All of them. Just as you will be.” He stiffened, slumped, stiffened, slumped.

“Can you take off the ring?”

“Never,” the thing said.

“Can you come back, Stevan? If the ring is gone?”

A shudder that left his head hanging between his shoulders. “I don’t want to, even if I could.”

“Why?”

“The things—things I did, we did … He liked to watch while I took them, while I ripped them apart.”

Rowan stopped his circling, standing beside her. Despite his mask, she could almost see the look on his face—the disgust and pity.

“Tell me about the Valg princes,” Aelin said.

Both man and demon were silent.

“Tell me about the Valg princes,” she ordered.

“They are darkness, they are glory, they are eternal.”

“Stevan, tell me. Is there one here—in Rifthold?”

“Yes.”

“Whose body is it inhabiting?”

“The Crown Prince’s.”

“Is the prince in there, as you are in there?”

“I never saw him—never spoke to him. If—if it’s a prince inside him … I can’t hold out, can’t stand this thing. If it’s a prince … the prince will have broken him, used and taken him.”

Dorian, Dorian …

The man breathed, “Please,” his voice so empty and soft com- pared to that of the thing inside him. “Please—just end it. I can’t hold it.”

“Liar,” she purred. “You gave yourself to it.”

“No choice,” the man gasped out. “They came to our homes, our families. They said the rings were part of the uniform, so we had to wear them.” A shudder went through him, and something ancient and cold smiled at her. “What are you, woman?” It licked its lips. “Let me taste you. Tell me what you are.”

Aelin studied the black ring on its finger. Cain—once upon a time, months and lifetimes ago, Cain had fought the thing inside him. There had been a day, in the halls of the castle, when he’d looked hounded, hunted. As if, despite the ring …