Aelin had to swallow before she could answer. “She showed me what might have been—if there had been no Erawan, if Elena had dealt with him properly and banished him. If there had been no Lyria, none of that pain or despair you endured. She showed me Terrasen as it would have been today, with my father as king, and my childhood happy, and …” Her lips wobbled. “When I turned twenty, you came with a delegation of Fae to Terrasen, to make amends for the rift between my mother and Maeve. And you and I took one look at each other in my father’s throne room, and we knew.”

She didn’t fight the stinging in her eyes. “I wanted to believe that was the true world. That this was the nightmare from which I’d awaken. I wanted to believe that there was a place where you and I had never known this suffering and loss, where we’d take one look at each other and know we were mates. Maeve told me she could make it so. If I gave her the keys, she’d make it all possible.” She wiped at her cheek, at the tear that escaped down it. “She spun me realities where you were dead, where you’d been killed by Erawan and only in handing over the keys to her would I be able to avenge you. But those realities made me … I stopped being useful to her when she told me you were gone. She couldn’t get me to talk, to think. Yet in the ones where you and I met, where things were as they should have been … that was when I came the closest.”

His swallow was audible. “What stopped you?”

She wiped at her face again. “The male I fell in love with was you. It was you, who knew pain as I did, and who walked with me through it, back to the light. Maeve didn’t understand that. That even if she could create that perfect world, it wouldn’t be you with me. And I’d never trade that, trade this. Not for anything.”

He extended his hand. An offer and invitation.

Aelin laid hers atop his, and his callused fingers squeezed gently. “I wanted it to be you,” he breathed, closing his eyes. “For months and months, even in Wendlyn, I wondered why you weren’t my mate instead. It tore me up, wondering it, but I still did.” He opened his eyes, and they burned like green fire. “All this time, I wanted it to be you.”

She lowered her gaze, but he hooked a thumb and forefinger around her chin and lifted her face.

“I know you are tired, Fireheart. I know that the burden on your shoulders is more than anyone should endure.” He took their joined hands and laid them on his heart. “But we’ll face this together. Erawan, the Lock, all of it. We’ll face it together. And when we are done, when you Settle, we will have a thousand years together. Longer.”

A small sound came out of her. “Elena said the Lock requires—”

“We’ll face it together,” he swore again. “And if the cost of it truly is you, then we’ll pay it together. As one soul in two bodies.”

Her heart strained to the point of cleaving. “Terrasen needs a king.”

“I have no intention of ruling Terrasen without you. Aedion can have the job.”

She scanned his face. He meant every word.

He brushed the hair from her face, his other hand still clasping hers to his chest, where his heart pounded a steady, unfaltering rhythm. “Even if I had my choice of any dream-realities, any perfect illusions, I would still choose you, too.”

She felt the truth of his words echo into the unbreakable thing that bound their very souls, and tilted her face up toward his. But he made no move beyond it.

She frowned. “Why aren’t you kissing me?”

“I thought you might want to be asked first.”

“That never stopped you before.”

“This first time, I wanted to make sure you were … ready.” After Cairn and Maeve. After months of having no choices whatsoever.

She smiled despite that truth. “I’m ready to be kissed again, Prince.”

He let out a dark chuckle and muttered, “Thank the gods,” before he lowered his mouth to hers.

The kiss was gentle—light. Letting her decide how to guide it. So she did.

Sliding her arms around Rowan’s neck, Aelin pressed herself against him, arching into his touch as his hands roamed along her back. Yet his mouth remained featherlight on hers. Sweet, exploratory kisses. He’d do it all night, if that was what she wished.

Mate. He was her mate, and she was finally allowed to call him such, to let him be such—

The thought snapped something. Aelin nipped at his bottom lip, scraping a canine against it.

The gesture snapped something in him, too.

With a growl, Rowan swept her into his arms, never tearing his mouth from hers as he carried her to the bed and set her down gently. Off came their boots, their jackets and shirts and pants. And then he was with her, the strength and heat of him pouring into her bare skin.

She couldn’t touch him fast enough, feel enough of him against her. Even when his mouth roved down her neck, licking over that spot where his claiming marks had been. Even when he roamed farther, worshipping her breasts as she arched up into each lick and suckle. Even when he knelt between her legs, his shoulders spreading her thighs wide, and tasted her, over and over, until she was writhing beneath him.

But something primal in her went quiet and still as Rowan rose over her again, and their eyes locked.

“You’re my mate,” he said, the words near-guttural. He nudged at her entrance, and she shifted her hips to draw him in, but he remained where he was. Withholding what she ached for until he heard what he needed.

Aelin tipped back her head, baring her neck to him. “You’re my mate.” Her words were a breathless rush. “And I am yours.”

Rowan thrust into her in a mighty stroke as he plunged his teeth into the side of her neck.

She cried out at the claiming, release already barreling along her spine, but he began moving. Moving, while his teeth remained in her, and she moaned with each drive of his hips, the sheer size of him a decadence she would never be able to get enough of. She dragged her nails down his muscled back, then lower, feeling every powerful stroke of him into her.

Rowan withdrew his teeth from her neck, and Aelin claimed his mouth in a savage kiss, her blood a coppery tang on his tongue.

He went wild at that, hoisting her hips to angle himself deeper, harder. The world might have been burning around them for all she cared, all he cared, too.

“Together, Aelin,” he promised, and she heard the rest of the words in every place their bodies joined. Together they would face this, together they would find a way.

Release crested within her once more, a shimmering brightness.

And just when it broke, Aelin sank her teeth into Rowan’s neck, claiming him as he’d claimed her.

His blood, powerful and wind-kissed, filled her mouth, her soul, and Rowan roared as release shattered through him, too.

For long minutes, they lay tangled in each other.

Together we’ll find a way, their mingling breaths, the crashing sea, seemed to echo. Together.

CHAPTER 42

Lorcan was given the last watch of the night, which allowed him to witness the sunrise over the now-distant horizon.

Would he ever see it again—Wendlyn, Doranelle, any of that eastern land?

Perhaps not, considering what they sailed to in the west, and the immortal army Maeve had no doubt set on their heels. Perhaps they were all doomed to limited sunrises.

The others roused, venturing onto the deck to learn what the morning brought. Nothing, he almost told them from where he stood by the prow. Water and sun and a whole lot of nothing.

Fenrys spotted him and bared his teeth. Lorcan gave him a mocking smile.

Yes, that fight would come later. He’d welcome it, the chance to ease the tightness from his bones, to let Fenrys tear into him a bit.

He wouldn’t kill the wolf, though. Fenrys might try to kill him, but Lorcan wouldn’t do it. Not after what Fenrys had endured—what he’d managed to do.

Elide emerged from belowdecks, hair braided and smooth. As if she’d been up before the dawn. She barely looked his way, though he knew she was well aware of his location. Lorcan blocked out the hollow pang in his chest.

But Aelin spied him, and there was more clarity in her face than there’d been these past few days as she stalked for where he stood. More of that swagger in her gait, too.

The sleeves of her white shirt had been rolled to the elbow, her hair braided back. Goldryn and a long knife hung from her belt. Ready for training. Primed for it, judging by the bristling energy that buzzed around her.

Lorcan met her halfway, descending the small stairs.

Whitethorn lingered nearby, also dressed for sparring, the wariness in his eyes telling Lorcan enough: the prince had no idea what this was about.

But the young queen crossed her arms. “Do you plan to sail with us to Terrasen?”

An unnecessary question for dawn, and in the middle of the sea. “Yes.”

“And you plan to join us in this war?”

“I’m certainly not going there to enjoy the weather.”

Amusement glittered in her eyes, though her face remained grim. “Then this is how it’s going to work.”

Lorcan waited for the list of orders and demands, but the queen was only watching him, that amusement fading into something steel-hardened.

“You were Maeve’s second-in-command,” she said, and Elide turned their way. “And now that you aren’t, it leaves you as a powerful Fae male whose allegiances I don’t know or really trust. Not when Maeve’s army is likely on the move toward the continent at this very moment. So I can’t have you in my kingdom, or traveling with us, when you might very well sell information to get back into Maeve’s good graces, can I?”

He opened his mouth, bristling at the haughty tone, but Aelin went on. “So I’ll make you an offer, Lorcan Salvaterre.” She tapped her bare forearm. “Swear the blood oath to me, and I’ll let you roam wherever you wish.”

Fenrys cursed behind them, but Lorcan barely heard it over the roaring in his head.

“And what, exactly,” he managed to say, “do I get out of it?”

Aelin’s eyes slid over her shoulder. To where Elide watched, mouth agape. When the queen met Lorcan’s gaze again, a touch of sympathy had softened the steely arrogance. “You will be allowed into Terrasen. That is what you will get. Where you choose to live within Terrasen’s borders will not be my decision.”

Not her decision, or his. But that of the dark-haired female gawking at them.