The top of the first page, it merely said, Chapter Twenty-One. She read the first few lines beneath it, then nearly dropped the pages. “This—this is about us.”
Gwyn beamed. “I convinced Merrill to add us into the penultimate chapter. She even let me write it—with her own annotations, of course. But it’s about the rebirth of the Valkyries. About what we’re doing.”
Gwyn’s fingers slid into hers, squeezing tight. Nesta looked up to find her holding Emerie’s free hand as well. Gwyn smiled again, her eyes bright. “Our stories are worth telling.”
"I am the rock against which the surf crashes. Nothing can break me"
"Nothing can break us....The world seemed to pause at the words. As if it had been following one path and now branched off in another direction. In a hundred years, a thousand, this moment would still be etched in his mind. That he would tell his children, his grandchildren, Right then and there. That was when it all changed."
It became the ritual: to cut that ribbon, to be crowned with its severed half and anointed Valkyrie. Gwyn was the first. Emerie the second. By the end of training that morning, Nesta became the third.
“I wanted them to know. What you’ve accomplished. That even though Valkyries don’t have something akin to the Blood Rite, you’re as trained as any warrior in Illyria.”
Friendship Bracelets and Wishes
But Gwyn grinned, beginning her demonstration by selecting three colors that she thought matched Emerie’s spirit, she claimed. Green, purple, and gold. Nesta refrained from snickering and selected colors for Gwyn: blue, white, and teal. Emerie, in turn, selected Nesta’s colors: navy blue, crimson, and silver.
“Let me make a wish for all of us,” she explained, gathering the three charms. A small gift—for the friends who had become like sisters.
A chosen family. Like the one Feyre had found for herself.
Nesta squeezed the charms in her palm, closing her eyes, and said: “I wish for us to have the courage to go out into the world when we are ready, but to always be able to find our way back to each other. No matter what.”
“I want to take that road.” Her voice thickened. “I want to take the road that no one dares travel, and I want to travel it with you two. No matter what may befall us. Not as Illyrians, not for their titles, but as something new. To prove to them, to everyone, that something new and different might triumph over their rules and restrictions.”
“So we climb Ramiel. We take the Breaking. We win to prove to everyone that something new can be as powerful and unbreakable as the old rules. That something no one has ever seen before, not entirely Valkyrie nor entirely Illyrian, can win the Blood Rite.”
"Succeeding in the Blood Rite didn’t mean the training stopped. No, after she and her friends told Cassian and Azriel most of the details of their ordeal, the two commanders had compiled a long list of mistakes that the three of them had made that needed to be corrected, and the others wanted to learn from them, too.
"So they would keep training, until they were all well and truly Valkyries."
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