family he had …
“It was worth it,” he said, his smile fading. “You were worth it. All these years, all the waiting. You’re worth it.” He’d known the moment she had looked up at him as she stood before his execution block, defiant and wicked and wild.
“I think that’s the healing tonic talking,” she said, but her throat bobbed as she wiped at her eyes. She lowered her feet to the floor. “Chaol said you’re even meaner than I am most of the time.”
“Chaol is already on his way to being throttled, and you’re not helping.”
She gave that half smile again. “Ren’s in the North—I didn’t get to see him before Chaol convinced him to go there for his own safety.”
“Good,” he managed to say, and patted the bed beside him. Someone had stuffed him into a clean shirt, so he was decent enough, but he managed to haul himself halfway into a sitting position. “Come here.”
She glanced at the bed, at his hand, and he wondered whether he’d crossed some line, assumed some bond between them that no longer existed—until her shoulders slumped and she uncoiled from the chair in a smooth, feline motion before plopping down on the mattress.
Her scent hit him. For a second, he could only breathe it deep into his lungs, his Fae instincts roaring that this was his family, this was his queen, this was Aelin. He would have known her even if he were blind.
Even if there was another scent entwined with hers. Staggeringly powerful and ancient and—male. Interesting.
She plumped up the pillows, and he wondered if she knew how much it meant to him, as a demi-Fae male, to have her lean over to straighten his blankets, too, then run a sharp, critical eye down his face. To fuss over him.
He stared right back, scanning for any wounds, any sign that the blood on her the other day hadn’t belonged only to those men. But save for a few shallow, scabbed cuts on her left forearm, she was unharmed.
When she seemed assured that he wasn’t about to die, and when he was assured the wounds on her arm weren’t infected, she leaned back on the pillows and folded her hands over her abdomen. “Do you want to go first, or should I?”
Outside, gulls were crying to each other, and that soft, briny breeze kissed his face. “You,” he whispered. “Tell me everything.”
So she did.
They talked and talked, until Aedion’s voice became hoarse, and then Aelin bullied him into drinking a glass of water. And then she decided that he was looking peaky, so she padded to the kitchen and dug up some beef broth and bread. Lysandra, Chaol, and Nesryn were nowhere to be seen, so they had the apartment to themselves. Good. Aelin didn’t feel like sharing her cousin right now.
As Aedion devoured his food, he told her the unabridged truth of what had happened to him these past ten years, just as she’d done for him. And when they were both finished telling their stories, when their souls were drained and grieving—but gilded with growing joy—she nestled down across from Aedion, her cousin, her friend.
They’d been forged of the same ore, two sides of the same golden, scarred coin.
She’d known it when she spied him atop the execution platform. She couldn’t explain it. No one could understand that instant bond, that soul-deep assurance and rightness, unless they, too, had experienced it. But she owed no explanations to anyone—not about Aedion.
They were still sprawled on the bed, the sun now settling into late afternoon, and Aedion was just staring at her, blinking, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Are you ashamed of what I’ve done?” she dared to ask.
His brow creased. “Why would you ever think that?”
She couldn’t quite look him in the eye as she ran a finger down the blanket. “Are you?”
Aedion was silent long enough that she lifted her head—but found him gazing toward the door, as though he could see through it, across the city, to the captain. When he turned to her, his handsome face was open—soft in a way she doubted many ever saw. “Never,” he said. “I could never be ashamed of you.”
She doubted that, and when she twisted away, he gently grabbed her chin, forcing her eyes to him.
“You survived; I survived. We’re together again. I once begged the gods to let me see you—if only for a moment. To see you and know you’d made it. Just once; that was all I