Freya's wings were tired, so tired. She was not accustomed to carrying dead weight in such quantities, the healers she saved. She clutched them with her great talons tightly, for fear they would fall.
Only her Fae strength kept her going, but it would not last.
When she had gathered them all and dropped them on their asses, nearer to the gate than before, she returned to the group of leaders, stood high above.
She didn't shift merely perching on the wall next to them, no one spoke. Their eyes fixed in fear on the horizon, she followed their gaze and saw huge black galloping horse, carrying a tiny looking rider. With her predatory vision, she could just see the weak ankle and brown hair flapping in the wind. Elide.
"Lorcan's down there." Chaol whispered, by way of explanation.
Princess Hasar said quietly, "That girl is a fool. The bravest I've ever seen, but a fool nonetheless."
Shit. Shit.
Wonderful, brave Elide, who'd walked alone into Doranelle to find her queen, now riding furiously away from the masses of retreating soldiers, towards the weakening dam. For Lorcan.
Suddenly the horse stopped, rider slipping off its back, into a mountainous pile of Valg bodies.
Even at a distance Freya heard Lorcan's bellow of pain as Elide helped him hoist himself onto the saddle.
Then the horse began to move, at a pace she'd never seen before, even while struggling under Lorcan and Elide's weight, that horse flew, thundering across the plains, just reaching the furthest lines of panicked retreating soldiers when a great BOOM cracked through the air.
The dam had broken.
A wall of water, large as a mountain, broke free.
And rushed towards the city, the plain, the unwavering horse.
"They're not going to make it," Fenrys hissed, his voice cracking.
Yrene began muttering prayers to Silba, for a painless death.
Freya was not looking at them, the cadre who watched in agony the last moments of their commander and the Lady of Perranth.
Freya was looking at Aelin.
Aelin was looking at her.
Dark eyes met turquoise, and both flashed with gold, with determination.
The young queen nodded at the Fae owl, who let out a screeching cry that pieced the ears of all those present, as Aelin jumped of the battlements, free falling for seconds, before Freya caught her in her talons, dropping through the skies to the earth, right in the path of the tidal wave.
Faintly, Freya could hear the roars of Fenry and Rowan, as the endless wall of water surged towards them, she shifted next to Aelin, standing tall.
They all saw them then, the golden queen and her dark shadow stood behind.
Cracks formed in the earth, the keep shaking not from the wave, it came from Aelin herself.
Rowan swore filthily in desperation and realisation, "She's been spiralling down into her power, for three months."
Holy gods. Holy rutting gods.
A towering pillar of flame shot up into the air, the likes of it never seen before.
And when it hit the wall of water roaring towards them, when they collided-
"GET DOWN!" Rowan bellowed over the screaming waters, "GET DOWN NOW!"
They did dropping to the floor.
Fire erupted.
Cobalt fire, a raging soul of a flame.
A tidal wave of it.
Where water met fire, where a thousand years of confinement met three months of it, the world exploded.
Blistering steam, capable of melting flesh to bone, shot across the plain. They braced, Rowan throwing out a weakened shield of wind.
But nothing came.
For as light had erupted, so darkness then did so behind it.
A solid wall of writhing power matching the blue flame before it, rose to shield the great city from destruction.
Still the waters came breaking against flame that did not waver, forced up into the skies but shadows that did not either.
The fire that was meant for Maeve, and the darkness that had come from her, joined to save the great army.
Nobody could speak, or move. They just stared.
"Power like that is no blessing." Hasar said rising from the floor.
Furious Fenrys snarled at her, "Tell that to your soldiers."
"I did not mean it that way," she snapped back.
A minute passed, and then another.
The wave began to lower, still the walls of power remained. The water's roaring turned to lapping, to nothing.
The shields lowered.
Then silence. Utter silence.
The mist filled the plain, shrouding the flames, but a pillar of fire remained, stood next to a dark effigy, her dark power writhing around her.
The Fire-Bringer.
And her Shadow.
Someone whispered, along the battlements.
The silence turned reverent.
~
She knew Maeve would know now of her treachery, but when that beautiful woman had looked at her with helplessness on her face, so like the expression she'd worn just weeks before in the iron prison. This time she'd do something. This time she'd save them all.
A tiny concealed tether in her had snapped when her power erupted, gods she'd never unleashed it like that, like it had been stifled somehow.
She'd poured her magic into the air, ignoring the steep plummeting down into the dark well inside her, too fast, too fast, she'd not been spiralling down into it like Aelin.
But Freya's power was different, not like a deep burning pit of fire, more like a deep gaping hole filled with endless amounts of darkness, waiting to be unleashed. It was channelling it that took her strength, funnelling it for good.
So she did.
Until she couldn't any longer, allowing herself to become enveloped with it. Into oblivion.
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Maeve's Daughter ~ Throne of Glass
FanfictionWhat if the lone white owl at Maeve's side was not just a Fae healer, protecting her from the Valg Kings.. What if it was her daughter too? What dark powers might she possess, and who will she use them for? "I loved you, even when you didn't know...
