After Empire of Storms

Chapter 18

The room erupted in flame. 

Aelin reached into her carranam's core of magic, reaching ash-stained fingers into the solid ice and wind that fueled her mate's power. Where some might look in and see nothing, Aelin stretched down and down into the swirling eddies of power and caressed every last drop that she pulled to the surface.

The cache of magic, as familiar as her own, sprawled on beneath her. And so Aelin exploded past each level of ice, breaking through Rowan's prepared magic as she turned back towards the stone throne. 

It melted without a hint of resistance. 

The dark queen was nowhere in sight. She had been destroyed so thoroughly that there were no remains-- or a second, much darker option, that the queen had manged to escape yet again. 

At the thought Aelin grabbed more power and released hell within the room. 

Distantly, she felt four battering rams of power break through the flames. But the power let her flame wash over the shields, rather than fight and undoubtedly lose against the queen's rage.

She lost herself in the flames. The power was controlling her as much as she was controlling it. She had gone for too long without releasing the magic, and now it exploded from her in a torrential wave. Solid hands gripped her own, and she felt herself leaning into the muscular figure behind her.

The Queen of Terrasen lifted her burning gaze from the empty room in front of her and gathered the flames. The tendrils seemed to pause and slowly reverse their actions as the power coiled back into the queen...into the crown of flame resting on her brow. 

Flames condensed upon the young woman's head, and a twin crown of blue flame resting on the male supporting her shattered form. The queen's crown was topped with the bastard's mark. The mark of Brannon. It hung between her brows, glowing blue as if blessed by Mala herself.

Aelin leaned into the smell of home as she felt the darkness reaching its claws back towards her. Her name was being called distantly, and Aelin saw more than felt her body lowered towards the ground. 

"Aelin," The same voice interrupted the encroaching darkness. "Please." 

The stone ceiling above her was obstructed by two green orbs, one surrounded by curling black strands that disappeared beneath the male's blood-stained leathers. 

And as her last consciousness fled away, Aelin managed to mouth one word. 

Rowan.   

* * * * * 

Rowan panted as the flames licked over his skin. A soft caress of warmth, but never burning. He could feel his queen using his magic, the small female who he had hunted to the ends of the earth. Who he had waited for months...years...centuries to find, even when he did not know of it. 

He had recoiled at the thought of hurting his mate, of adding another scar to her collection. But still he had sliced her palm over the cross of scars that would never fade. Over the cross that marked the promises and loss that she had suffered. And he marked his palm with the same cross before joining with the female he had found at last.

And as that power burned bright on his brow, Rowan allowed himself a moment of hope-- of relief. His Fireheart was here, and he would not let her leave again. 

The flames decreased, and Rowan lowered his wife to the ground as her power began to flicker, her own crown shaking with every beat of her heart.