Aelin looked at each of the gods' faces, one by one. "I should like to make a bargain."
The gods stilled. The dark-haired one hissed and lashed her silvery eyes at her, "what?"
Aelin squared her shoulders as she told them, "You promised to take Erawan with you when we sealed the Gate. To destroy him." The god with a voice like death faced her, as if remembering that they had indeed promised such an outrageous thing.
"I would like to trade," she said again, turning to look at Elena with a soft smile. She 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, before whispering, "We accept. It is done." The other gods stared at Mala in outrage, but she ignored them as she walked to her daughter and knelt to her side.
Elena only gasped in disbelief, her grey eyes wide with horror, but also bursting with silent hope, as Mala took her hands. "Go back to the Afterworld, my child. Go live in peace with your loved ones."
A bright light enveloped Elena's presence, and Aelin could stare only long enough to see Elena's tear-streaked face convey a parting message before her body faded into the colorless light, and then into nothing. Thank you.
"Enough of this," Deanna snapped. The gods all turned and followed her, their footsteps a march of power, as she led them through the Gate, and into the shining green land beyond.
Mala stayed behind, her sad eyes resting on Aelin's face. "Thank you. For saving Elena's life. For letting go of one hope so that her soul may live."
Aelin only stared back. "I wish," Mala continued. "I wish I had something to offer you. But my last kernel of power, I used in sending Elena back."
Something in her heart cracked. A last shard of hope that she hadn't known she'd harbored. A small, foolish hope that somehow she would survive. That perhaps Mala would help her. "Just get through the Gate. I need to get this done with," before I can think too much of all that I am losing. Oh gods- "Get. Out."
And so, Mala turned and stepped through the Gate.
She looked at Aelin, and watched as Aelin surrendered the last bits of her shredded soul.
As Aelin gave away everything she was, and had been, to molding those wretched keys back into the Gate. The last drop of her magic- her mother's water droplet- was ripped from her essence.
She felt her whole being snap when the mating bond at last gave way, too. Her one and final thought before stopped feeling anything, was a prayer. An apology, and an anguish cry at all that she had given up.
Rowan.
….….
Dorian felt it, then.
He thought he was grieving as he stood back with Chaol, and watched Rowan bowing to the ground before Aelin's frozen figure. His hand clenching painfully to his chest, as if straining to keep her alive somehow.
All they could do was wait. Whether they waited for Aelin's body to fall to the ground, or for it to disappear into thin air, he didn't know.
But Dorian was wrong.
The pain he felt was nothing compared to that damning second, that moment when time seemed to still as the forest held its breath.
Aelin's body crumpled to the ground.
And then faded into the sunlight around them, before any of them could stir out of their shock and the uproar of despair. All that was left where she'd stood, where her wild heart had pushed Dorian out of that space-between-worlds to spared him from sharing that terrible fate- all that was left of that vibrant, brilliant, wicked and fierce loving heart-
Nothing.
That's when Dorian felt it.
The ache of grief and anguish that he'd felt before was now amplified a thousand-fold. He didn't realize- he hadn't realized. What he'd done, what they all had done, in voting to use the Wyrdkeys immediately. In letting Aelin sacrifice herself. Aelin, who wasn't even 20. Who had already suffered so damn much. Who'd already lost so much and fought so hard, who had a mate-
Dorian saw it before Chaol did. Through his tear-filled sight, he vaguely glimpsed Rowan's grey cloak shift before he could realize what the male was planning to do.
He felt his lungs compress, as if to draw air to shout, but his despair strangled any sound he would have made. He and Chaol started and could only stare in horror at what unfolded before them.
Dorian realized that beyond the ringing in his ears, he could hear Rowan's earth-shattering roar of unending rage of grief as the male crawled towards something- Damaris. Towards that ancient sword, where Dorian had hurled it a few feet away after falling back into this world.
No. no-
He realized just how many people- the hundreds of survivors of Terrassen, who were fighting and dying against Morath's armies as he stood there, Aelin's cousin, her friends, her court- all of them raging and fighting for her. For a Queen, a cousin, a beloved friend- who would not return home with them.
So neither will he, Dorian realized with horror as Rowan took the gleaming sword at pointed it towards his chest. They had not known how deep and terrible the fate would be for Rowan- how fatal it would be. The male had likely not told anyone, if only because then Aelin would have done something, warned someone to watch him before he did anything reckless. As the male was now about to do.
Rowan gave one last roar of rage to the world, for what it had demanded of his mate, of himself, before thrusting the sword into his heart.
One last roar before ending his grief, the unbearable pain he'd had to endure, even for a few moments. He'd shouted her name in a plea, in a beseech for forgiveness, in an unyielding promise to see her again. Aelin.