So first off, this is full of spoilers for empire of Storms!
Also sorry I left this on 'hiatus' for so long. Heir of Fire really stuck with me and I've spent all this time drooling over Rowan, but I never managed to put pen to paper. The words never quite felt right. But now, Empire of Storms has happened and I've been left distraught and confused by the ending and wondering how I'm going make it a year for the final book. So this somewhat unfinished feeling piece has spewed its way forth.
These books still don't belong to me, just my imagination.
Foundations
Lorcan Salvaterre wasn't a man of kindness or mercy, of guilt or remorse. Blessed by Hellas himself, the greatest mercy Lorcan was capable of was sparing his victims the slow, drawn out agony of a death given by Anneith, Hellas' own consort. But death at Lorcan's hands was never anything less than brutal.
Never, in his five hundred years of life, in centuries of serving Maeve, had he regretted a single action. Never doubted a choice or a command. Always he had loved Maeve, had relished being her right hand when it came to meeting out punishment and retribution, had gloried in the blood, the destruction.
The agony of the severed Blood Oath still had him waking at night. The betrayal of those minutes turning his blood to ice.
Aelin Galathinius had destroyed his world, burned it into so much ash as she was so often wont to do. It had all started when she had come to his queen, asking about the Wyrd keys. Never had he heard of them before, never had he seen such lust and hunger in his sovereign's eyes.
And he'd known then, what he had to do and the death that would be his reward for saving his queen from herself. Had accepted it and acted without hesitation.
But now, sat upon another God's dammed ship, this time heading back to the Eastern continent, he questioned. So much more than the Blood Oath had been broken on that windswept beach. The very foundations of his world had been cracked, the most sacred of things used as nothing more than a tool.
Lorcan had listened to Maeve's revelations of how she had awaited the arrival of Aelin Galathinius, how she had seen the bond between her and Whitethorn, seen the kingdom they would create and the children they would have. How she had decided to break them and use her for her own schemes.
None of that had interested him, beyond the fact that Maeve had been prepared to give up the Blood Oath to Rowan. Until she had spoken of that flower girl.
The bond between mates was sacred.
It wasn't as if he had never used a mate against an enemy, he was a warrior of Hellas. But to create a bond, to forge that most pure and overwhelming of sensations... That was a betrayal that Lorcan had never considered, not for an instant. Not only because he had never considered it possible, but because the mating bond was sacrosanct.
Yet Maeve had used it as just another tool.
In that instant he had seen the shock in Fenrys' eyes, in Gavriel's, had seen the hot, wet tears on Elide's face and had known that they felt the same horror as he. He had watched Aelin Galathinius' heart of fire bleed at the words.
And he had stood through it all, holding Elide in that vice-like grip while he himself was similarly bound by the command of the Blood Oath. He had stood as Aelin Galathinius, the pillar of that court which had made even him begin to see a glimmer of hope for the future, had been whipped and been locked inside that beautiful, hideous casket of iron and taken away.
Never had he felt more useless.
And then Maeve had spoken those words to him, had severed that Oath. In desperation, in horror he had tried to crawl after Maeve, the foundation stone of his life.
And then he had looked back to see the horror in Elide's eyes, the revulsion. And known that the Blood Oath wasn't the only bond that had been broken in that instant.
Now... Now, he didn't know what they could possibly achieve against the beauty, the horror of Maeve's magic, against the undeniable fact that even if they rescued her, the Queen of Terrassen had to die, but he knew that he would face any challenge, any horror, to take that look of disgust out of Elide's beautiful eyes.
To try to find that ember of hope that seemed to have spread from the Heir of Fire and ignited in the barren hearts of so many.
