A Court of Fear and Longing

Chapter 31

"You are a monster," Aelin growled, "Look at what you and Erawan have done, creating a war that could never end well." 

Maeve smiled. "Aelin, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters? Look at what you've become. Watch what happened because of you." 

Aelin was shackled, kneeling in the middle of the Endovier salt mines. 

"This is where it all began, Aelin. You could have died here, and no one would've been wiser. But you went with the Crown Prince of your enemy, and you will pay for it." 

She heard the song of the whip slicing through air, and held back the scream as it marred her flesh. 

"Watch what happened while you were playing savior to a group of Demi-Fae." 

Aelin watched as the men, women, and children were lined up, no one knowing what was about to happen.  As Adarlan's soldiers took out their swords, and stepped up behind each victim. Tears falling down her face as each slave was beheaded. Her fault. 

She was the monster. The true antagonist. All the deaths she caused flashed before her. Marion. Sam. Nox, dead in a river. Nehemia. Kaltain. Every man and woman she had ever killed, because she never forgot them. The looks of terror on their faces, knowing what would happen. The soldiers on battlefields, never to return to their own families. The Thirteen, eleven of the best witches to live, Yielding their lives to destroy a witch tower. 

The vision Fenrys had described. The sky was red with blood. The bodies of her court lay around her. Monster. 

Monster. 

It echoed around her. 

Aelin shot up, calming the flames around her. She had control. They no longer raged and destroyed miles of forest, but stayed in a ring around her. 

Waking wasn't enough to escape the nightmares this time. 

Monster.

It echoed as she summoned her wings and shot up into the sky, a beacon of flame shutting out the stars. 

Monster. 

She flew as high as possible, as high as she could without the fire burning out. 

Do monsters make war, or do wars make monsters? 

This was the first time since her parents deaths that she didn't have the same dream. It was the anniversary of their assassination. And the dream had finally been different. 

Aelin smiled, not the queen, not the young girl sleeping in her parent's blood, but an assassin herself. She was a monster. But that didn't make her evil. 

"Everyone has a monster in their closet, Maeve. It's time to meet yours. Time to learn I get stronger with every wound inflicted." She whispered into the starry night. And then she dropped. 

Her wings faded into ash and she fell down, down, down, landing on her feet.

"It doesn't matter if you've been through hell, Maeve. What matters most is how well you walk through fire." (-Charles Bukowski)

...........

"We're running low on arrows," Petrah Blueblood said to Manon in the blue-gray light just before dawn. They strode through the makeshift aerie atop one of the castle's towers along with Asterin. "We might want to consider assigning some of the lesser covens to stay behind today to craft more."

"Do it," Manon said, surveying the still-unfamiliar wyverns who shared the space with Abraxos and Narene. Her mount was already awake. Staring out, her second's wyvern close by his side, toward the battlefield beyond the city walls. Toward the blasted stretch of earth that no snow had been able to wipe away entirely.