The gods stilled. Deanna hissed, “A bargain? You dare to ask for a bargain?”

“I would hear it,” said one whose voice was kind and loving.

The thing in her arm writhed, and Aelin willed it to reveal what they sought.

The portal to their realm. Sunlight over a rolling green country nearly blinded her. They whirled toward it, some sighing at the sight.

But Aelin said, “A trade. Before you fulfill your end.”

Words were distant, so difficult and pained. But she forced them out.

The gods halted. Aelin only looked at Elena. Smiled softly.

“You have sworn to take Erawan with you. To destroy him,” Aelin said, and the one with a voice like death faced her. As if remembering they had indeed promised such an outrageous thing.

“I would like to trade,” she said again. And managed to point, with that arm that held all of eternity within it. “Erawan’s soul for Elena’s.”

Mala turned toward her now. And stared.

Aelin said into their silence, “Leave Erawan to Erilea. But in exchange, leave Elena. Let her soul remain in the Afterworld with those she loves.”

“Aelin,” Elena whispered, and tears like silver flowed down her cheeks.

Aelin smiled at the ancient queen. “The debt has been paid enough.”

She had wanted them to debate it—her friends. Had asked for a vote on the gate not just to ease the burden of the choice, but to hear it from them, to hear them say that they could defeat Erawan on their own. That Yrene Towers might stand a chance to destroy him.

So she could make this bargain, this trade, and not seal their doom entirely.

“Don’t do it,” Elena begged. Begged all those cold, impassive gods. “Don’t agree to it.”

Aelin said to them, “Leave her be, and go.”

“Aelin, please,” Elena said, weeping now.

Aelin smiled. “You bought me that extra time. So I might live. Let me buy this for you.”

Elena covered her face with her hands and wept.

The gods looked among themselves. Then Deanna moved, graceful as a stag through a wood.

Aelin loosed a breath, bowing over her knees, as the goddess approached Elena.

No one but herself. She would allow no one but herself to be sacrificed in this final task.

Deanna laid her hands on either side of Elena’s face. “I had hoped for this.”

Then she pressed her hands together, Elena’s head clasped between them.

A flare of light from Mala, in warning and pain, as Elena’s eyes went wide. As Deanna squeezed.

And then Elena ruptured. Into a thousand shimmering pieces that faded as they fell.

Aelin’s scream died in her throat, her body unable to rise as Deanna wiped her ghostly hands, and said, “We do not make bargains with mortals. Not any longer. Keep Erawan, if that is what you wish.”

Then the goddess strode through the archway into her own world.

Aelin stared at the empty place where Elena had been only heartbeats before.

Nothing remained.

Not even a shimmering ember to send back into the Afterworld, to the mate left behind.

Nothing at all.

CHAPTER 98

It was breaking apart.

The mating bond.

Bowed over his knees, Rowan panted, a hand on his chest as the bond frayed.

He clung to it, wrapped his magic, his soul around it, as if it might keep her, wherever she was, from going to a place he could not follow.

He did not accept it. Would never accept this fate. Never.

Distantly, he heard Dorian and Chaol debating something. He didn’t care.

The mating bond was breaking.

And there was nothing he could do but hold on.

One by one, the gods strode through the archway into their own world. Some sneered down at her as they passed.

They would not take Erawan.

Would not … would not do anything.

Her chest was hollow, her soul gutted out, and yet this …

And yet this …

Aelin clawed at the mist-shrouded ground-that-was-not-ground as the last of them vanished. Until only one remained.

A pillar of light and flame. Shining in the mists.

Mala lingered on the threshold of her world.

As if she remembered.

As if she remembered Elena, and Brannon, and who knelt before her. Blood of her blood. The recipient of her power. Her Heir.

“Seal the gate, Fire-Bringer,” Mala said softly.

But the Lady of Light still hesitated.

And from far away, Aelin heard another woman’s voice.

Make sure that they’re punished someday. Every last one of them.

They will be, she’d sworn to Kaltain.

They had lied. Had betrayed Elena and Erilea, as they had believed themselves betrayed.

Their green sun-drenched world rippled away ahead.

Groaning, Aelin climbed to her feet.

She was no lamb to slaughter. No sacrifice on an altar of the greater good.

And she was not done yet.

Aelin met Mala’s burning stare.

“Do it,” Mala said quietly.

Aelin looked past her, toward that pristine world they had sought to return to for so long. And realized that Mala knew—saw the thoughts in her own head.

“Aren’t you going to stop me?”

Mala only held out a hand.

In it lay a kernel of white-hot power. A fallen star.

“Take it. One last gift to my bloodline.” She could have sworn Mala smiled. “For what you offered on her behalf. For fighting for her. For all of them.”

Aelin staggered the few steps to the goddess, to the power she offered in her hand.

“I remember,” Mala said softly, and the words were joy and pain and love. “I remember.”

Aelin took the kernel of power from her palm.

It was the sunrise contained in a seed.

“When it is done, seal the gate and think of home. The marks will guide you.”

Aelin blinked, the only sign of confusion she could convey as that power filled and filled and filled her, melding into the broken spots, the empty places.

Mala held out her hand again, and an image formed within it. Of the tattoo across Aelin’s back.

The new tattoo, of spread wings, the story of her and Rowan written in the Old Language amongst the feathers.

A flick of Mala’s fingers and symbols rose from it. Hidden within the words, the feathers.

Wyrdmarks.

Rowan had hidden Wyrdmarks in her tattoo.

Had inked Wyrdmarks all over it.

“A map home,” Mala said, the image fading. “To him.”

He’d suspected, somehow. That it might come to this. Had asked her to teach him so he might make this gamble.

And when Aelin looked behind her, to the archway into her own world, she indeed could … feel them. As if the Wyrdmarks he’d secretly inked onto her were a rope. A tether home.

A lifeline into eternity.

One last deceit.

Another voice whispered past then, a fragment of memory, spoken on a rooftop in Rifthold. What if we go on, only to more pain and despair?

Then it is not the end.

That power flowed and flowed into Aelin. Her lips curved upward.

It was not the end. And she was not finished.

But they were.

“To a better world,” Mala said, and walked through the doorway into her own.

A better world.

A world with no gods. No masters of fate.

A world of freedom.

Aelin approached the archway to the gods’ realm. To where Mala now walked across the shimmering grass, little more than a shaft of sunlight herself.

The Lady of Light halted—and lifted an arm in farewell.

Aelin smiled and bowed.

Far out, striding over the hills, the gods paused.

Aelin’s smile turned into a grin. Wicked and raging.

It did not falter as she found the world she sought. As she dipped into that eternal, terrible power.

She had been a slave and a pawn once before. She would never be so again.

Not for them. Never for them.

The gods began shouting, running toward her, as Aelin ripped open a hole in their sky.

Right into a world she had seen only once. Had accidentally opened a portal into one night in a stone castle. Distant, baying howls cracked from the bleak gray expanse.

A portal into a hell-realm. A door now thrown open.

Aelin was still smiling when she closed the archway into the gods’ world.