#Having a very why do you cry fireheart kinda week🥺 I keep just remembering this scene & sobbing on the 1st read😅😭🖤

[acourtofquestions]

There was nothing that could be done to fix her.

And she was ... she was ...

A whimpering noise came out of her, lips trembling so hard she had to clamp down to keep the sound inside.

But the sound was in her throat and her lungs and her mouth, and when she took a breath, it cracked out. Once she heard it, everything came spilling into the world, until her body ached with the force of it.

She vaguely felt the light shifting on the lake.

Vaguely felt the sighing wind, warm as it brushed against her damp cheeks. And heard, so soft it was as if she dreamed it, a woman's voice whispering, Why are you crying, Fireheart?

It had been ten years--ten long years since she had heard her mother's voice. But she heard it then over the force of her weeping, as clear as if she knelt beside her. Fireheart--why do you cry?

"Because I am lost," she whispered onto the earth. "And I do not know the way."

It was what she had never been able to tell Nehemia--that for ten years, she had been unsure how to find the way home, because there was no home left.

Storm winds and ice crackled against her skin before she registered Rowan sitting down beside her, legs out, palms braced behind him in the moss. She raised her head, but didn't bother to wipe her face as she stared across the glittering lake.

"You want to talk about it?" he asked.

"No." Swallowing a few times, she yanked a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose, her head clearing with each breath.

They sat in silence, no sound but the quiet lapping of the lake on the mossy bank and the wind in the leaves. Then-- "Good. Because we're going."

Bastard. She called him as much, and then asked, "Going where?" He smiled grimly. "I think l've started to figure you out, Aelin Galathynius."