Thanks to everyone who reviewed!

This will be the last chapter. I won't write another one set in the future, or where they go from here or anything, because I'm not really a fan of epilogues in that sense, so this is it. Thanks to everyone who's read this far, whether as and when I updated, or years after I finished it. I hope you enjoyed this fic!

Disclaimer: I don't own Throne of Glass. It belongs to Sarah J. Maas.

"Tell me," drawled a deep, male voice behind her, from near the driver's seat. "What would you have done if I were an ilken soldier?"

Relief turned her bones to liquid, and Elide held in her sob. She twisted to find Lorcan covered in black blood, sitting on the bench behind the driver's seat, his legs spread before him. His axe and sword lay discarded beside him, coated in that black blood as well, and Lorcan idly chewed on a long stalk of wheat as he gazed at the canvas wall of the wagon.

"The first thing I might have done in your place," Lorcan mused, still not looking at her, "would have been to ditch the robe. You'd fall flat on your face if you ran - and the red would be as good as ringing the dinner bell."

"The second thing I might have done," Lorcan went on, not even bothering to wipe away the blood spattered on his face, "is tell me the gods-damned truth. Did you know those ilken beats love to talk with the right encouragement? And they told me some very, very interesting things." Those dark eyes at last slid to her, utterly vicious. "But you didn't tell me the truth, did you, Elide?"

"How-" The queen looked stunned. "How did you get out? The guard-" She checked the clock. "The guard should be on his rounds now; he would have noticed if you'd come down the stairs."

"Maybe I didn't come down the stairs, Your Highness," Elide all but spat back, before reigning herself in. The familiar touch of Anneith's hand on her shoulder didn't come as she stalked towards the end of the gallery, descended the stairs, and came out into the throne room.

"But that's hardly what matters." She walked forwards until she was as the base of the steps up to the raised dais the throne sat on. Iskra's corpse was less than two metres to her left, still caged by the chandelier, but she ignored it as she defiantly met the queen's gaze. "What matters is this: Why the fuck did you lock me up in the first place?"

The queen's lips were wan. "I already explained in the tower that-"

"No," Elide cut her off. "You told me as much as you thought you'd be allowed to tell me. I don't want the carefully prepared words of a puppet queen - I want the truth. And if you want there to be the slightest possibility that this offence won't escalate into a full scale war, then I suggest you start talking!"

"I don't owe you anything!" the queen hissed. "Not all of us have goddesses protecting us, my lady. Not all of us had a hard and noble fight to return to our long lost queen. I've had to make sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice for my country, and you will not patronise me now!"

Rant over, she slumped in her seat, like it had completely used up the little fight left in her. Her eyes moved from Elide, to behind her. The woman turned to look.

Lorcan had just walked through the doors at the other end of the throne room; they slammed shut with a bang. Nox had apparently climbed down the curtain and now stood near the wall, his crossbow held casually in his hands, but loaded and ready to fire if necessary. The queen gave them both cursory glances, and Elide saw her throat bob.

"When the attacks began," she said quietly. Elide didn't let her surprise at the acquiescence show, "we didn't know what was happening. There would be a peaceful evening, then the next morning people reported hearing screams and crashes. Houses just on the edge of the city walls were attacked and destroyed, their owners either having fled or been killed. The corpses," she took a choking breath, "were half eaten. We were all terrified.

"A few weeks passed, and we didn't have the money to rebuild the walls. The attacks were getting closer to the city centre, carving through the houses that had been destroyed in previous nights. People carried weapons around, even during the day. Others evacuated the city to live in the countryside, and we heard rumours that they'd been killed too. None of the country dwellers who'd been there before - only those from the city.

"When Iskra," she cast a sneering look at the witch's corpse, "approached me with the offer of an alliance in return for the attacks to stop, I readily agreed. I couldn't stand by and let my people be killed further - even with all the palace guards being transferred to city guards, the rate of death didn't stop. What was one Lady from the country who'd left us so desolate in return for that?

"So I hired Ombriel to stage the attacks on other Erilean cities - using hellfire, instead of wyverns. And I planted the clues that would lead to your queen sending you here, so we could spring the trap."

Lorcan's hands twitched towards the blood-stained knife at his waist; Nox's finger tightened minutely on the trigger. But the queen seemed unfazed.

No, not unfazed, Elide realised. Resigned. Hopeless.

"And now, here we are." The queen spread her arms. "What a mess."

For maybe the first time, Elide noticed just how tired the queen looked. Melisande had swayed to Erawan in the War, but. . . they would have died otherwise. All of them. And the country was still being punished for it.

As was its queen.

"The witches wanted to take back their homeland; they wanted Terrasen and Adarlan's troops sitting tight in their capitals whilst Ansel's were overwhelmed," Elide said quietly. "Isn't that what you said? In the tower?"

The Queen of Melisande nodded.

She turned around, and gestured for Lorcan to sheathe his blade. Nox lowered his crossbow.

"Then it was not your fault." She laid a hand on the queen's shoulder. "Melisande has had a hard run these past few decades. You now have a staunch ally in Queen Aelin's inner circle." The queen looked up in shock, but her dark eyes met Elide's, and realised she was serious. Tears welled up and gave her gaze a silvery tinge. "I urge you, contact me if there is anything I can do to help."

"Elide," Lorcan said slowly. "Are you sure this is wise?"

Anneith was silent. "Yes," was her response. "I am."

The Queen of Melisande found her voice. "Thank you, my lady." She reached up, and took the woman's hand, squeezed it gently. "Thank you, Elide."

Elide just furrowed her brows. "What's your name?"

The queen jerked her head up; apparently, she hadn't realised that none of them knew it either. "Isobel," she said hoarsely. "Isobel Regina."

The Lady of Perranth nodded, and stepped back. "We need to leave." Her voice was calm - diplomatic. "The sooner we can get back to Terrasen, the sooner Aelin's temper gets defused, and the smaller chance there is that she'll start a war."

"Agreed," Nox piped up.

The queen glanced out of the east window. The sun was beginning to peep above the horizon, like it finally had the nerve to now that the bloodshed had ended. "If you leave now, and take a few fast horses, you should be able to reach Terrasen by nightfall," she advised. "I can send your luggage behind you, if speed is of the essence."

"It is." Elide nodded at Lorcan. "We'll head off right away." She made to leave, before pausing. "Thank you, Isobel."

The queen smiled then. It wasn't a controlled smile, like Elide was accustomed to seeing, nor was it a smirk. It was a full-blown, beaming grin. One that seemed to dwarf the sunrise. "No," she corrected. "Thank you, Elide."

The moment they stopped at a water trough to let the horses drink, Lorcan resumed his incessant questioning.

"Are you sure-"

"Are you a politician, Lorcan?" Elide couldn't help the tiny snap to her voice, but in her defence, he'd asked her this at least a dozen times already. Wisely, he didn't answer. "Because, as I've said, I'm fairly sure this gamble will pay off. Queen Isobel will make a good ally sometime in the future, and until then we've repaired ties with a country that was otherwise fairly hostile to Terrasen."

"She locked you up!"

"Exactly." Elide twisted around to face the demi-Fae riding beside her. "She locked me up, Lorcan. I'm the one who gets to decide whether or not she gets forgiveness. Is that so hard to understand?"

"No." The wind sent a lock of her hair dancing; she tucked it behind her ear again. His eyes tracked the motion. "But it doesn't mean I'm not angry on your behalf. Elide, you could have died. You were suspended from a tower, hundreds of metres above the ground, with only a bedsheet and a basket between you and certain death. How am I supposed to just forget that?"

"You don't." With a sigh, she took a handle of water and splashed her face and neck. Nox had already disappeared into the bushes for one reason or another. "I certainly won't. But you do need to forgive it. If you murdered everybody who slighted you in the world, I'm afraid you'd end up drowning yourself in blood."

"You consider that a mere slight?" She didn't think she'd ever heard him sound more incredulous.

"I consider it an unavoidable circumstance." She narrowed her eyes at him, and was suddenly struck by how. . . open. . . he looked. She hadn't seen this much raw emotion on his face since the marshes of Eyllwe. She unconsciously allowed it to soften her voice as she said, "Why can't you accept that?"

"Because-" He stiffened, then started again. "Elide, I-" He moved his mouth, but no sound came out.

"You love me?" she observed quietly. He nodded silently, and the sun struck her head as she shook it with a small smile. "I know. Lorcan, I've known for years. After that stunt you pulled with Maeve, how could I not know?"

His eyes were fixed to some point in the distance behind her. She took his chin in her hand and made him look down at her.

"And I love you too," she continued, a smile spreading across her lips at the abject shock and hope that lit up his features. "But I do wonder sometimes how you've lived centuries without learning how to let go of a grudge. How are you supposed to move forward if you're tied down here?"

He still seemed stunned into silence, but his shoulders relaxed when she put her arms around him and rested her head against his chest. His hand came up to rest on her back. "So where are we moving on to then?" he asked, somewhat gruffly. She smiled to herself.

"Well, next we go home to Terrasen." She closed her eyes. "Then, we try to stop Manon from murdering you for a whole slew of reasons I don't want to go into right now. We convince Aelin to help us foster good relations with Melisande. We help Melisande. We keep going." She tilted her head back to smile up at him. The sun behind his head limned his hair in light, like he was wearing a crown of gold. "We just keep going."

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