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

Chaol struggled, and she dug her nails in farther. He stiffened. A trickle of blood leaked down his neck and onto his tunic.

Oh, gods. Think—think, think, think.

The Wing Leader shifted those burnt-gold eyes to Rowan.

“Your kind,” the Wing Leader mused, “I have not seen for a time.”

“Let the man go,” Rowan said.

Manon’s smile revealed a row of flesh-shredding iron teeth, far, far too close to Chaol’s neck. “I don’t take orders from Fae bastards.”

“Let him go,” Rowan said too softly. “Or it will be the last mistake you make, Wing Leader.”

In the field behind them, the wyverns were stirring, their tails lashing, wings shifting.

The white-haired witch peered at Chaol, whose breathing had turned ragged. “The king is not too far down the road. Perhaps I should hand you over to him.” The cuts on her cheeks, scabbed in blue, were like brutal war paint. “He’ll be furious to learn you stole his prisoner from me. Maybe you’ll appease him, boy.”

Aelin and Rowan shared all of one look before she stepped up to his side, drawing Goldryn. “If you want a prize to give to the king,” Aelin said, “then take me.”

“Don’t,” Chaol gasped out.

The witch and all twelve of her sentinels now fixed their immortal, deadly attention on Aelin.

Aelin dropped Goldryn into the grass and lifted her hands. Aedion snarled in warning.

“Why should I bother?” the Wing Leader said. “Perhaps we’ll take you all to the king.”

Aedion’s sword lifted slightly. “You can try.”

Aelin carefully approached the witch, her hands still up. “You enter into a fight with us, and you and your companions will die.”

The Wing Leader looked her up and down. “Who are you.” An order—not a question.

“Aelin Galathynius.”

Surprise—and perhaps something else, something Aelin couldn’t identify—sparked in the Wing Leader’s golden eyes. “The Queen of Terrasen.”

Aelin bowed, not daring to take her attention off the witch. “At your service.”

Only three feet separated her from the Blackbeak heir.

The witch sliced a glance at Chaol, and then at Aedion and Rowan. “Your court?”

“What’s it to you?”

The Wing Leader studied Aedion again. “Your brother?”

“My cousin, Aedion. Almost as pretty as me, wouldn’t you say?”

The witch didn’t smile.

But Aelin was now near enough, so close that the spatters of Chaol’s blood lay in the grass before the tip of her boots.





The Queen of Terrasen.

Elide’s hope had not been misplaced.

Even if the young queen was now toeing the dirt and grass, unable to keep still while she bargained for the man’s life.

Behind her, the Fae warrior observed every flicker of movement.

He’d be the deadly one—the one to look out for.

It had been fifty years since she’d fought a Fae warrior. Bedded him, then fought him. He’d left the bones of her arm in pieces.

She’d just left him in pieces.

But he had been young, and arrogant, and barely trained.

This male … He might very well be capable of killing at least a few of her Thirteen if she so much as harmed a hair on the queen’s head. And then there was the golden-haired one—as large as the Fae male, but possessing his cousin’s bright arrogance and honed wildness. He might be problematic, if left alive too long.

The queen kept fidgeting her foot in the grass. She couldn’t be more than twenty. And yet, she moved like a warrior, too—or she had, until the incessant shifting around. But she halted the movement, as if realizing that it gave away her nerves, her inexperience. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction for Manon to detect the queen’s true level of fear. “Well, Wing Leader?”

Would the king put a collar around her fair neck, as he had the prince’s? Or would he kill her? It made no difference. She would be a prize the king would welcome.

Manon shoved away the captain, sending him stumbling toward the queen. Aelin reached out with an arm, nudging him to the side—behind her. Manon and the queen stared at each other.

No fear in her eyes—in her pretty, mortal face.

None.

It’d be more trouble than it was worth.

Manon had bigger things to consider, anyway. Her grandmother approved. Approved of the breeding, the breaking of the witches.

Manon needed to get into the sky, needed to lose herself in cloud and wind for a few hours. Days. Weeks.

“I have no interest in prisoners or battling today,” Manon said.

The Queen of Terrasen gave her a grin. “Good.”

Manon turned away, barking at her Thirteen to get to their mounts.

“I suppose,” the queen went on, “that makes you smarter than Baba Yellowlegs.”

Manon stopped, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing of the grass or sky or trees.

Asterin whirled. “What do you know of Baba Yellowlegs?”

The queen gave a low chuckle, despite the warning growl from the Fae warrior.

Slowly, Manon looked over her shoulder.

The queen tugged apart the lapels of her tunic, revealing a necklace of thin scars as the wind shifted.

The scent—iron and stone and pure hatred—hit Manon like a rock to the face. Every Ironteeth witch knew the scent that forever lingered on those scars: Witch Killer.