Bronwyn's grief:
Brownyn wanted to kill, to ravage, to slaughter; to make a desert, to make a sea. She wanted them all dead, and she would only stop, the battlefield barren and ruined. Her heart had shrank, her rage taking its stead. Her eyes coated with darkness, she slithered onto the paths her magic opened to her, felt the magic pulse beneath her feet, laughed, and cackled and madly screamed, taking mind after mind, corrosive and destructive, using the warriors as puppets to kill those whose minds she did not reduce to rubble. Laying waste around her, a murder of her own crows flying overhead to feast on limb after limb, she suggested: ‘chop your friend’s arm’, ‘eat your ally’s leg’, ‘pry your friend’s heart’, ‘destroy. Destroy yourselves.’ ‘Good puppets, now kill. Kill.’, gentle whispers, almost coaxing, almost soothing, a dark lullaby of darker intents. ‘There goes your reward, my darlings. Eat yourselves. Kills yourselves. The more gruesome the better.’
‘Kill yourselves for my beloved’s death.’
“Die,” she seethed, her voice hoarse and dismal. “Die. All of you die!”
It was a feat of scattered brain, of bowels on display, of screams of pain and vain cries for mercy. It was Bronwyn’s mad laughter, her cruelty revived, scalding hot in her veins. It was death in her voice and worse in her design. It was Einar’s fear she felt from a battlefield away. It was the despair, the helplessness. Because Aelys had given her something that meant more than life itself. Because she had been kind and true. Because she had seen her and made her see a new road that had vanished, wasted, with her death. Because Aelys had been hope, had been love, had been life for a vertiginous moment, and Aelys was dead.
Bronwyn had nothing to lose. Not anymore.
She pried her way into skulls, cracked them open like one cracks open nuts, mashed the brains, the spirits, the intents. Everything she destroyed. Like wildfire she destroyed.
She wasn’t concerned about the world-tree anymore. Let it rot. Let the world burn so that she burned with it. Who wanted to live when Aelys was dead?
A tear ran down her cheek.
“Die! All of you die!” she roared, on the verge of madness. “Worms! Ants! Dogs! I will put you down!”
‘Good puppets. Good puppets. Now there goes your reward, my darlings. Now, there you can die,’ she cajoled.