You must be brave a little while longer, and remember...
Her mother placed a phantom hand over Aelin’s heart.
It is the strength of this that matters. No matter where you are, no matter how far, this will lead you home.
Aelin managed to slide a hand up to her chest, to cover her mother’s fingers. Only thin fabric and iron met her skin.
But Evalin Ashryver held Aelin’s gaze, the softness turning hard and gleaming as fresh steel. It is the strength of this that matters, Aelin.
Aelins fingers dug into her chest as she mouthed, The strength of this.
Cairn’s hissed threats danced through the coffin, his knife scraping and scraping.
Evalin’s face didn’t falter. You are my daughter. You were born of two mighty bloodlines. That strength flows through you. Lives in you.
Evalin’s face blazed with the fierceness of the women who had come before them, all the way back to the Faerie Queen whose eyes they both bore.
Then she was gone, like dew under the morning sun.
Blossomed within Aelin, bright as a kindled ember.
Cairn scraped his dagger over the metal, right above her head. “When I cut you up this time, bitch, I’m going to—“
Aelin slammed her hand into the lid.
Aelin pounded her fist into the iron again. Again.
Until she was alive with it, until her blood was raining onto her face, washing away the tears, until every pound of her fist into the iron was a battle cry.
It rose in her, burning and roaring, and she gave herself wholly to it. Distantly, close by, wood crashed. Like someone had staggered into something. Then shouting.
Aelin hammered her fist into the metal, the song within her pulsing and cresting, a tidal wave racing for the shore.
The words meant nothing. He was nothing. Would always be nothing.
Over and over, she pounded against the lid. Over and over, that song of fire and darkness flared through her, out of her, into the world.
Something hissed and crackled nearby, and smoke poured through the lid.
But Aelin kept striking. Kept striking until the smoke choked her, until its sweet scent dragged her under and away.
And when she awoke chained on the altar, she beheld what she had done to the iron coffin.
The top of the lid had been warped. A great hump now protruded, the metal stretched thin.
As if it had come so very close to breaking entirely.
-Sarah J Maas, Kingdom of Ash
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