Maeve falls to her knees in the snow with Goldryn still burning through her chest. Fenrys returns to Aelin’s side, while Lorcan looks over the Fae and wolf-riders destroying Maeve’s spiders and declares, “Long live the queen,” naming Aelin as the Faerie Queen of the West.

Maeve drops her glamour of civility and shows the Valg beneath it, begging Aelin to remove the sword and promising to accept banishment anywhere. Aelin questions Maeve about fleeing a husband and world she hated and about loving Erilea in her own twisted way. Maeve accepts Aelin’s offered hand, believing it is a bargain for exile.

Instead, Aelin slips Silba’s ring onto Maeve’s finger and tells Maeve to go to hell. The ring, which grants immunity from Valg and is poison to them, begins destroying Maeve from within. Aelin recognizes that Elide had given the ring not as a weapon of vengeance, but as an act of friendship meant to protect Aelin, a power Maeve never understood.

With silent approval from Rowan, Lorcan, and Fenrys, Aelin pulls Goldryn free, then beheads Maeve and pins Maeve’s skull to the earth with the sword. At Lorcan’s command, Aelin joins power with Rowan and burns Maeve’s remains into ash, ending the Valg queen’s long reign of terror.

As Maeve dies, Rowan looks toward the battlefield, where Morath’s army collapses in waves: Valg soldiers fall mid-fight, ilken drop from the sky, and the shadow over the host dissolves. Aelin understands that Erawan has also been destroyed and knows Yrene was the one who brought him down. Aelin raises Goldryn and cries Yrene’s name, and the soldiers and city of Orynth take up the victorious chant beneath the Lord of the North.