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

Rowan twisted toward her from where he’d been carefully opening a sarcophagus. She doubted an ordinary man would be able to shift the stone lid. “Some of them even date their confessions. I just saw one from seven hundred years ago.”

“Makes you seem young, doesn’t it?”

He gave her a wry smile. She quickly looked away.

The bone floor clicked as he stepped toward her. “Aelin.”

She swallowed hard, staring at a carved bone near her head. I killed a man for sport when I was twenty and never told anyone where I buried him. I kept his finger bone in a drawer.

Dated nine hundred years ago.

Nine hundred—

Aelin studied the darkness beyond. If the Shadow Market dated back to Gavin, then this place had to have been built before it—or around the same time.

The god of truth …

She drew Damaris from across her back, and Rowan tensed. “What is it?”

She examined the flawless blade. “The Sword of Truth. That’s what they called Damaris. Legend said the bearer—Gavin—could see the truth when he wielded it.”

“And?”

“Mala blessed Brannon, and she blessed Goldryn.” She peered into the gloom. “What if there was a god of truth—a Sin-Eater? What if he blessed Gavin, and this sword?”

Rowan now stared toward the ancient blackness. “You think Gavin used this temple.”

Aelin weighed the mighty sword in her hands. “What sins did you confess to, Gavin?” she whispered into the dark.





Deep into the tunnels they went, so far that when Aedion’s triumphant cry of “Found it!” reached Aelin and Rowan, she could barely hear it. And barely cared.

Not when she stood before the back wall—the wall behind the altar of what had no doubt been the original temple. Here the bones were nearly crumbling with age, the writing almost impossible to read.

The wall behind the altar was of pure stone—white marble—and carved in Wyrdmarks.

And in the center was a giant rendering of the Eye of Elena.

Cold. It was so cold in here that their breath clouded in front of them, mingling.

“Whoever this god of truth was,” Rowan murmured, as if trying not to be overheard by the dead, “he was not a benevolent sort of deity.”

No; with a temple built from the bones of murderers and thieves and worse, she doubted this god had been a particular favorite. No wonder he’d been forgotten.

Aelin stepped up to the stone.

Damaris turned icy in her hand—so frigid her fingers splayed, and she dropped the sword on the altar floor and backed away. Its clang against the bones was like thunder.

Rowan was instantly at her side, his swords out.

The stone wall before them groaned.

It began shifting, the symbols rotating, altering themselves. From the flicker of her memory she heard the words: It is only with the Eye that one can see rightly.

“Honestly,” Aelin said as the wall at last stopped rearranging itself from the proximity of the sword. A new, intricate array of Wyrdmarks had formed. “I don’t know why these coincidences keep surprising me.”

“Can you read it?” Rowan asked. Aedion called their names, and Rowan called back, telling them both to come.

Aelin stared up at the carvings. “It might take me some time.”

“Do it. I don’t think it was chance that we found this place.”

Aelin shook off her shiver. No—nothing was ever chance. Not when it came to Elena and the Wyrdkeys. So she loosed a breath and began.

“It’s … it’s about Elena and Gavin,” she said. “The first panel here”—she pointed to a stretch of symbols—“describes them as the first King and Queen of Adarlan, how they were mated. Then … then it jumps back. To the war.”

Footsteps sounded and light flickered as Aedion and Chaol reached them. Chaol whistled.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Aedion said. He frowned at the giant rendering of the Eye, and then at the one around Aelin’s neck.

“Get comfortable,” she said.

Aelin read a few more lines, deciphering and decoding. So hard—the Wyrdmarks were so damn hard to read. “It describes the demon wars with the Valg that had been left here after the First War. And …” She read the line again. “And the Valg this time were led …” Her blood chilled. “By one of the three kings—the king who remained trapped here after the gate was sealed. It says that to look upon a king—to look upon a Valg king was to gaze into …” She shook her head. “Madness? Despair? I don’t know that symbol. He could take any form, but he appeared to them now as a handsome man with golden eyes. The eyes of the Valg kings.”

She scanned the next panel. “They did not know his true name, so they called him Erawan, the Dark King.”

Aedion said, “Then Elena and Gavin battled him, your magic necklace saved their asses, and Elena called him by his true name, distracting him enough for Gavin to slay him.”

“Yes, yes,” Aelin said, waving a hand. “But—no.”

“No?” Chaol said.

Aelin read further, and her heart skipped a beat. “What is it?” Rowan demanded, as if his Fae ears had noted her heart’s stutter.

She swallowed hard, running a shaking finger under a line of symbols. “This … this is Gavin’s confessional. From his deathbed.”