Embedded Files
The Captain and the Prince
The Captain and the Prince
Chaol & Dorian
(Set before TOG)
{A conversation between Chaol and Dorian about who the Prince will choose as his champion.}
Dorian Havilliard stood at the window of his tower bedroom, leaning out as far as he dared to catch just a breath of wind on his face. In the distance, the emerald roofs of Rifthold sizzled in the late summer sun, and beyond them, the foothills rolled toward the storm clouds gathering on the western horizon. The rain would be a relief. It had been three weeks of stifling heat, two weeks without a whisper of wind off the Avery, and the reek from the rotting city had now reached even the highest spires of the glass castle. The stench of baking filth was so bad that most of his father’s court had left—either for the sea or for the north. Or both. The heat made the endless string of council meetings and state dinners unbearable, even when encircled by servants fanning them with palm fronds imported from Eyllwe. And if the miserable heat wasn’t enough, the topic of those meetings made Dorian’s temper fray.
Wiping the sweat from his brow on the back of a hand, Dorian shoved up the sleeves of his white shirt to his elbows and faced the Captain of the Guard. Chaol, who had been reading some document or report or other on the couch by the unlit fireplace, looked up. “Well?”
“I’m still thinking about it,” Dorian said, going to the oak table that once had been intended for dining but was now covered in ever-growing stacks of books and papers.
“Your father wanted your decision yesterday.”
No hint of aggression or condescension — just worry. Chaol was always worrying. Even if he rarely showed it. No, even in the heat, Chaol was still wearing his black uniform, still looking crisp and alert and ready to face any threat.
“This… contest” — Dorian spat the word — “is absurd. A waste of gold, a waste of time, a waste of men’s lives.” He reached for the pitcher of water wedged between two piles of books and poured himself and Chaol each a glass. “I don’t even understand why he needs a so-called Champion when he has you and your men. Plus the gods know how many shady people work for him.”
Chaol set down the papers as Dorian handed him the glass, but frowned. “The other councilmen have already selected their Champions. Whether you want to or not, your father’s competition will happen.” Chaol drummed his fingers on the worn fabric of the back of the couch. “If you refuse to play, it will make a statement” A flash of bronze eyes. “And I don’t think it’s the kind of statement you want to make right now.”
Chaol knew — had always known — about Dorian’s tumultuous relationship with his father. Dorian had never been outright rebellious, perhaps because Chaol was usually there to subtly interfere, to keep Dorian from saying or doing something he’d later regret. But each year, each month, each gods-damned day, it was getting harder and harder to submit.
He didn’t know why, exactly. He’d never seen one of those far-off battlefields where his father’s armies still fought to quell any rebel uprisings, had never seen the labor camps at Calculla or Endovier, had never even been in one of his Father’s interrogation chambers, hidden away in Rifthold. Dorian didn’t support the rebels, didn’t want to be a part of anyone’s rebellion, but… Perhaps it was just that he was as much a slave to the crown as the rest of the continent.
Dorian took a long sip of his water. It was already warm.
“If I’m going to be press ganged into this competition,” Dorian mused, more to himself than to his friend, “then I want to win.”
Chaol nodded as if he’d been expecting it. Which wasn’t surprising at all. Nor were the captain’s next words. “I have a list of possible Champions we could approach.”
Dorian finished his water. “Who?”
Chaol rattled off four names — three of them soldiers of some notoriety, and one a mercenary Chaol had worked with in years past. But Dorian shook his head.
“No. No, they’re too… ordinary.” The other councilmen had picked soldiers and mercenaries and thieves. And if Dorian couldn’t make a statement to his father by refusing to participate, then perhaps…
He went back to the open window to study Rifthold, as if he could see every person and creature winding through the city. He’d never been allowed to roam Rifthold on his own, and the last time he’d had a night out had been a year ago. The party at the river front estate remained the most lavish Dorian had ever seen, and Chaol had nearly lost his position when they learned — when his father learned — who had actually been at that party.
Wealthy rebels from the kingdom of Melisande, courtesans from the finest brothel in Adarlan. And mixed in with them all had been thieves, mercenaries, and assassins. Not just any assassins, gods above, but Arobynn Hamel, King of the Assassins, and his cabal of notorious killers. Dorian had unwittingly danced and drank with them all, and Chaol, who had been told the estate belonged to the visiting emissary from Melisande, had let him remain there for hours. No one had known who either of them were, thanks to masks they’d donned at another party earlier that night, but… Even now, Dorian couldn’t suppress a chill at the thought of whom he might have been dancing with, whom he might have clinked glasses with…
For a heartbeat, Dorian could have sworn he felt a cool northern wind on his face, faintly scented with pine and snow. He leaned his head out the window, trying to catch some more of it, but only the relentless, beating sunshine greeted him. He loosed a sigh and again studied the city.
Arobynn Hamel would be a good Champion, but the man had no incentive to participate. They probably wouldn’t even be able to find him. Or come out of that meeting alive. But…
But.
“Celaena Sardothien,” Dorian murmured.
“What?”
Dorian turned from the window to find Chaol approaching him. “Celaena Sardothien.”
Chaol just stared at him with narrowed brows.
It had been almost a year since the infamous assassin had been captured, tried, and sentenced to a lifetime of labor in the Salt Mines of Endovier. Dorian and Chaol had been in the seaside town of Suria when it happened, and though they’d raced back to Rifthold, by the time they’d returned, she was gone. The guards who had watched her had all been conveniently reassigned to border outposts, and his father had sealed each and every document regarding her capture. Or anything about her. Even the papers had little information, save for a list of victims and her punishment. They didn’t even know how old she was.
“No,” Chaol said — quietly but laced with a building temper.
Dorian angled his head. “Rumor claimed Sardothien was the best. Who better to be my father’s Champion? Besides, I heard she was pretty, too.” He grinned. “Why not have something pleasant to look at during the competition?”
“She’s been in Endovier for a year, Dorian. I doubt she’s much to look at. In fact, she’s probably dead.”
Dorian might have ignored it had Chaol not spoken so calmly, so clearly.
“Tell me what you know,” Dorian said. Oh, Chaol was definitely hiding something.
“She’s probably dead,” Chaol repeated and crossed his arms. They had fought before— many times. And in this horrible heat… Dorian shoved his own temper down.
“Tell me.”
Chaol gave him a pinning stare, one he usually reserved for his men. Dorian refused to break it, and in turn gave him the gloriously bored stare he reserved for sycophantic councilmen.
After a moment, Chaol sighed through his nose and said, “I’ve made a few… inquiries over the past year. To Endovier. They all have gone unanswered.” A flicker of anger — and concern — in his eyes.
“If my father had all the documents about her capture and trial locked away, then he probably gave an order for all inquiries about her to be ignored.”
“The question is why, though.”
Dorian shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe whoever — whatever — she is threatens him. Or undermines him in some way.” He glanced again to the window, to the land beyond the city, and smiled slightly. “And if no one will answer your letters, then perhaps we should just go see for ourselves if she’s alive or not.”
“And if she’s still capable of work.”
Dorian grimaced. After a year in a place like Endovier, it’d be a miracle if she still breathed. He hadn’t even considered the damage to her body. “I’m sure a few months of good food and exercise will help her recover.”
“That won’t mean anything if she’s broken in other ways.”
“You mean if she’s still sane.”
A half smile, edged with no little amount of disgust. “If she was even sane to begin with.”
Silence fell, and Dorian had another glass of water. But if Sardothien was sane, if she wasn’t yet broken, if she was still alive…
“Endovier is two weeks away,” Chaol said slowly. “Not an easy journey to make. Or a safe one. It’s right on Terrasen’s border — and the rebels have been restless all summer.”
“I’m going with you, so don’t even start trying to convince me to stay here.” Dorian couldn’t keep the snap from his voice. Gods, just the thought of getting out of the castle, getting away from his father, even for a month…
Chaol held up his hands. “It’s my job to at least attempt to keep you safe. And even if I say yes to your accompanying me, your father still has to agree. And I’ll have some conditions of my own.”
Dorian rolled his eyes. He might as well be living in the royal nursery. “Leave my father to me.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
Dorian opened his mouth to object but found a faint smirk on Chaol’s face. Perhaps the captain wanted to get out of the castle for a while, too. “So you’re really not going to put up a fight about hunting down Sardothien?”
“I’ve learned to pick my battles with you.”
He studied his friend. “Let’s hear your conditions, then.”
Chaol’s smile faded, and he took a seat on the back of the couch. “We travel with my men—men picked by me.” Dorian nodded. That was fine. And smart, if Terrasen’s rebels were indeed restless. “This journey might be your idea, but I’ll be the one leading it.” Dorian tensed a bit at that but nodded again. “And,” Chaol added, “when we get to Endovier, if I think it’s too dangerous to take her out of the mines, then you’ll yield.”
Dorian straightened. “So you get final say about whether she’s suitable?”
A terse nod. “I’m not questioning your judgment—”
“Oh, I think all of your conditions say quite the opposite.”
A flash of ire, then a shake of his head. “I’m not going to get into an argument with you about it. If you don’t like the terms, then pick another Champion.”
What Chaol didn’t need to say was that if he refused to escort him, no other guard would dare cross the captain’s orders to bring Dorian to Endovier. And Chaol also wasn’t above going to Dorian’s father to ensure that his order became a royal command.
Dorian gritted his teeth. “Those aren’t unreasonable demands,” he admitted. “But —in regard to Sardothien’s suitability…” Chaol stilled. “We’ll decide together.”
Chaol loosed a breath. Then another. Judging, weighing, calculating. When Chaol had that contemplative look on his face, it was impossible to tell what he’d decide. Keeping Dorian and this castle safe was his first priority, but Dorian knew that he also considered their friendship to be almost as important, and sometimes weighed it in his decisions. Even if, as it had last year, it sometimes got him in trouble.
But Chaol sighed a third time and said, “Fine. We’ll decide if she’s fit to participate together. But” — Dorian groaned — “promise you’ll not let your desire to needle your father cloud your judgment.”
“I wouldn’t—”
A pointed look.
Dorian lifted his eyes to the stone ceiling. “Fine, fine. I promise.”
Chaol finished off the jug of water, and both of them approached the window to stare out across the sweeping city.
The Captain of the Guard rapped his knuckles against the stone window ledge. “To Endovier, then.”
“If my father says yes,” Dorian added, already wondering how he could approach the king about it.
“I have a feeling you’ll find a way to convince him,” Chaol said, a hint of a smile in his voice.
Thunder grumbled in the distance, the clouds sweeping closer, and Dorian could have sworn he heard all of Rifthold sigh in relief. He again wiped the sweat from his brow and grinned. “To Endovier, then.”
The Assassin and the Captain
The Assassin and the Captain
Celeana & Chaol
(Set after TOG but before COF)
{The assassin Celaena Sardothien returns to the capital city after completing her first mission for the King. She is questioned by Captain Chaol about being late. They discuss her mission and their relationship, with hints that there may be more between them than just a professional one.}
Celaena Sardothien, Erilea’s greatest assassin and now the King’s Champion, hadn’t bothered to hurry her black mare through the teeming streets of Rifthold. Even after two weeks of traveling to and from the base of the Ararat Mountains, even though she was half-frozen and covered in the dust of a hundred roads, she wasn’t all that eager to reach her final destination.
She wasn’t surprised to find Chaol Westfall standing at the bottom of the hill atop which the castle was perched — wasn’t surprised to see the half-dozen or so guards doing their best to pretend they weren’t watching every movement, or signaling up the winding path that she had returned. She’d already spotted the men Chaol had stationed in the city itself: at the wall gates, on street corners, on rooftops, all scouting for any sign of her return.
Chaol looked just as he had when she left, his black and gold uniform clean-pressed, the eagle-shaped pommel of his sword gleaming in the midmorning sun.
At least he was now using the blade. After killing Cain at the duel, he hadn’t worn it for the few weeks it’d taken her to recover from her injuries. When she’d left last month, he’d still been using another blade. Still had those shadows in his bronze eyes.
But those shadows were gone now, as she looked down at him from beneath the black cowl of her hood. He was just standing to the side of the gate, arms crossed over his broad chest, that familiar frown on his lips.
She clicked her tongue and dismounted, tossing the reins to one of the awaiting guards as she turned to face the captain. “What — no flowers?”
The frown deepened. She smiled broadly.
This had been her first mission, the first test of trust, and genuine ability. Celaena jerked her chin to one of the mare’s saddlebags. A massive lump pushed out from under the worn leather. “When do you suppose he’ll give me targets worthy of my skill?”
Chaol’s eyes flicked from her face to the head in the saddle bag, then back to her, the frown deepening. “You’re three days late.”
She shrugged, and didn’t wait for his permission to begin walking up the sloped path to the castle itself. No, she didn’t need any sort of permission anymore — not as King’s Champion. But Chaol stiffened nonetheless.
She chuckled under her breath. “You try going to the foothills of the Ararat Mountains in the dead of winter and see if you make it anywhere on time. I almost lost my fingers and toes to the cold.” She wriggled the former in his face. “You don’t even want to know how I managed to keep warm.”
Nothing. Not even a hint of a smile.
She sighed and looked skyward. “Will it be a whipping, or the rack, or shall I just be forced to attend the Queen’s Court for an afternoon?”
He didn’t react to that, either, but merely fell into step beside her. “I’m not the one you have to explain yourself to.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “Were you worried I wouldn’t come back?” When he didn’t respond, she said, “How long before you sent out your dogs to hunt me down?”
He looked at her this time, his golden-brown eyes fierce. “A week. I’d have given you a week before I sent out my men to make inquiries. But you were lucky — news of Sir Carlin’s death reached us fairly soon after you… took care of him.”
Killed him. Slit his throat and cut off his head. Dumped his body in the Ararat River. She watched him silently, daring him to say it, but he had already looked away.
They were halfway up the long path before he quietly said, “Were you hurt at all?”
She snorted. “Killing men in their beds doesn’t involve much risk.”
His eyes narrowed.
And though she knew she shouldn’t, she added, “Or involve much honor. That’s what you’re thinking, right?”
A muscle feathered in his jaw. “I know what your position entails.”
But she still wondered if he’d somehow forgotten until now — as if the Yulemas ball and the duel with Cain had made him think she was someone else, someone harmless. A wolf with no fangs.
More silence, the castle growing ever-nearer. “I suppose His Majesty knows I’m here?”
“He wants to meet with you immediately. And bring your… proof.”
She made a face. “I knew he wanted the heads, but… He wants to see them in the meeting? Who will be there?”
“What concern is it to you?”
She shrugged again. Every detail of that meeting was a concern, especially Chaol with his too-keen eyes and ability to sniff out even the whitest of lies from her.
“I just want to know how candid I can be.”
“In front of the king? Do you want to wind up back in the mines?”
She gave him a sweet smile. “And here I was, thinking he and I had become such good friends.”
A flash of teeth. “Don’t you even thinkof—”
“A month without me and you’ve returned to taking me seriously? We’re back to that already?”
She hadn’t realized just how deep that question ran until he had stopped walking.
For a moment, they just looked at each other, a moment during which she remembered that day after the duel when he’d held her — not a captain holding an assassin, or a friend holding a friend, but a man holding a woman…
If she tried to hold him now, would he shove her aside? She didn’t want to know — didn’t quite have the nerve to try it.
Or the nerve to wonder why she wanted to. “I trust you,” was all he said.
“That’s why you had men around the city spying on me?”
“I had men around the city,” he said through gritted teeth, “because I wanted to have a chance to greet you first. To see if you were all right.”
She blinked and cocked her head. Looking after her, not spying. It had been so long since she’d had who cared enough to bother.
She had to swallow a few times before she could reply. “Of course I’m all right.” A stupid response, but he began walking again. She followed him, blinking against the brightness of melting snow off the glass castle.
“But if I wasn’t all right,” she dared ask, “what would you have done?”
A shrug of those powerful shoulders. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Indulge me.”
He didn’t look at her as he said, “I would have done what I needed to do.”
She ground her teeth. “Stop being so cagey.”
“I don’t see how knowing it makes any difference.”
She felt her nostrils flare, but kept her mouth shut.
Fine. They reached the front gates of the castle. The usual hustle and bustle of courtiers, servants, guards, and visitors was hardly lessened by the frigid day. She glanced up at the upper spires, her stomach twisting at more than the thought of climbing all those stairs to the king’s council room.
So much depended on this meeting — so much that she didn’t dare let herself think about it. And certainly not in front of Chaol, who could read her face with unnerving ease.
So she grinned before he could turn to glimpse her face, to discover the doubt and fear underneath. Absolute confidence, absolute arrogance: her best shields and most beloved masks.
“I hope His Majesty has a decent spread of food for me to eat while I’m being interrogated.”
“Watch your mouth or the only thing you’ll be eating is hot coals.”
“Do you actually make people do that?”
His eyes narrowed. “What kind of person do you take me for?”
“You are the Captain of the Guard of the most powerful man in the world. Wyrd knows what horrible things you’ve done to people.”
“You must be nervous as hell if you’re resorting to taunting me.”
She wouldn’t let that shake her, wouldn’t allow the grin or the swagger to pause for an instant. But she halted before the wide, sweeping front steps into the castle. The best lies were always mixed with the truth — let him believe what he would.
“You know my history with His Majesty.” After all, he’d been the one to bring her to that meeting with the king on the first day of the competition. He’d seen her near-panic at the thought of meeting him, seen her go pale.
Undoubtedly, he was thinking of the same encounter. His eyes softened, and he put a hand on her shoulder. “Just — be polite. Submissive.”
“Now that is a true challenge worthy of me.”
A half-smile. “If you’re well-behaved, I’ll have a chocolate-hazelnut cake sent to your rooms during our lunch.”
“Our lunch?”
A hint of wariness, but a growing smile. “Unless you had someone else you’d prefer to dine with?”
She chewed on the inside of her lip, looking toward one of the stone towers — the tower in which Dorian had his rooms. She’d meant every word she’d said to the Crown Prince that day she’d ended things between them, and had kept away ever since.
So no — there was no one else she’d rather eat with today, not even Nehemia. “I suppose I could endure lunch with you,” she said.
She couldn’t help but wonder if his grin was from amusement or something else. But the full force of his smile was enough to make the world pause.
“I missed you,” she admitted.
Chaol’s smile faltered, and he again stared at her — questioning, calculating, wondering. She waited for him to look around, to factor in the people swarming the grounds and how best to respond, but he just kept looking at her. As if the world had paused for him, too.
And then he chuckled under his breath, more to himself than to her, and said, “It was boring as hell without you.”
She laughed, and ascended the steps into the castle. And though she didn’t reach for him, and though he didn’t offer his arm, they walked a bit closer as they made their way to the king.
The Assassin and the Princess
The Assassin and the Princess
Celeana & Nehemia
(Set after TOG but before COF)
{Celaena and Nehemia go shopping and get to know one another a bit better}
The midwinter day was warm enough that Celaena Sardothien didn’t bother with gloves when she set out into Rifthold.
Princess Nehemia however, was thoroughly miserable. Still, she declined Celaena’s repeated offers to take a carriage to the most fashionable avenue of the capital city. Traveling by carriage would only make the day go faster, the princess said. And since they’d claimed the day solely for enjoying each other’s company, neither young woman was in much of a hurry to see it quickly end.
So they walked through Rifthold, dressed as finely as they could while still being warm — and remaining relatively unnoticed. They took their time crossing the city, though they had an unspoken agreement not to venture near the docks, warehouses, or anywhere they might run into any living proof of Adarlan’s empire — and brutal conquest of the continent.
Having spent a year as a slave herself, and not particularly inclined to discuss the topics of slavery, war, and the general hellishness of the world, Celaena was more than happy to stick to the broad, clean streets where they could pretend to be two young women on their way to spend obscene amounts of money.
Nehemia had already toured much of the city and disliked almost all of what she’d seen, but still indulged Celaena in a detour to walk past the Royal Theater, in going into her favorite bakeries and sweet-shops, and popping into a few bookstores. Unsurprisingly, by the time they reached Kavill’s, the finest clothier in Rifthold, Celaena had spent a good chunk of her monthly salary as King’s Champion.
That was another topic they’d agreed to ignore for the day.
The two young women paused outside the front of the shop, and Celaena ran an eye over the gilded woodwork wreathing the glass window. Two dresses were displayed — one a somewhat traditional blue ball gown, edged with gold and splashes of turquoise; the other a daring work of red velvet, long-sleeved and accented with midnight lace.
“Kavill’s,” Nehemia read on the ornate shop sign swinging in the breeze off the Avery River. The princess frowned at Celaena. “It’s very… fancy,” she said in Eyllwe.
Indeed, beyond the glass and the display, Celaena could see a cluster of well-dressed women offering advice to a companion showing off a potential purchase.
Celaena hid her own frown. They were supposed to have a private appointment. Not just for the safety of the princess, whose personal guards trailed behind them, but also to put Nehemia — who hated shopping and playing dress-up and anything ‘useless’ — at some degree of ease.
“We’re a few minutes early, I think,” Celaena said. Nehemia was still frowning at the storefront. “We could pop into a tea shop if you want and—”
“No, no. My hands are frozen through,” Nehemia said, her gloved fingers curling into fists. “Let’s just go in and wait.”
It had been a month since Celaena had been appointed King’s Champion — a month during which she’d had to face all the hardships the position presented — but somehow the thought of walking into Kavill’s’s with an already ill-tempered Nehemia made even Celaena’s nerves fray. She already pitied Lee Kavill himself…and the other customers inside.
“Just remember,” Celaena said in Eyllwe as Nehemia walked to the green-painted door, “I’m Lillian Gordaina and I am just some—”
“Heiress in Rifthold, I know,” Nehemia finished without looking back at her, and walked inside.
Celaena followed after the princess, giving Nehemia’s two personal guards a nod as they moved into position: one by the storefront, the other going around the block to take up a spot by the back door. Once the appointment began, no one went in or out.
The lavender-and-mint smell inside Kavill’s was altogether familiar and foreign.
Familiar, for in the years Celaena had lived in Rifthold, this had been her preferred clothier. Foreign, for the year she’d spent in Endovier and the months that she’d been in the glass castle had made everything from that past life into something strange and unknown.
Lee Kavill, whom Celaena had already visited twice since becoming the King’s Champion, was standing by the gaggle of women before the dressing room curtains, his signature plain leather notebook in his arms and a glass pen in hand.
In his forties, Kavill was a decent-looking man, his clothes simple and elegant, despite some of the extravagant offerings in his shop. He was also quiet. Not shy, but calm. Balanced. He didn’t fuss, and didn’t push, and had an artist’s eye for colors and cuts and changing trends.
But those very eyes went a little wide at the sight of them, darting between the gathered women and his one o’clock appointment.
Nehemia stopped just inside the door, but Celaena went a few steps further into the red-carpeted shop. Kavill was already before them by the time Celaena smiled and held out her hands.
“We’re a little early,” she said by way of greeting, “but we’re more than happy to wait.” She inclined her head to the green-and-gold circular divan in the front of the room—a place usually reserved for ladies-in-waiting, patient husbands, and bored children.
Kavill took her hands with a smile. His fingers were just as calloused as hers, though his calluses and scars came from years with needles and pins, not blades. “Marta said my one o’clock was an important guest, but I had no idea I’d receive such an honor.” As he finished, he looked to Nehemia and bowed. “You are most welcome.”
Of course he’d recognize the princess. While it was fairly easy for Celaena to blend in, there was no hiding who Nehemia was. Not because of her creamy dark skin, but because Nehemia carried herself like a princess.
No matter where they went or how they were dressed, Nehemia always had that angle to her head and a glint in her eye, as if she’d come out of the womb knowing royal blood flowed in her veins. As if she always wore an invisible crown. Celaena still wasn’t sure if she envied or pitied the princess for it.
Nehemia gave a shallow nod of the head — as much respect as Kavill deserved, if not more, given that he’d come from peasant stock and worked his way up.
“I can offer you my office to wait, if you’d prefer,” Kavill said quietly, especially as some of the women by the dressing room curtains turned to examine the newcomers. “We shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
It was his step to the side that ultimately gave him away — gave away what he was trying to shield from them. And Celaena might have played along had Nehemia not noticed it, too.
The girl could have been from Fenharrow or Eyllwe with her tan skin, but it was the twin gold bracelets — manacles — around her wrists that marked her as a slave. Gold, chainless manacles that had been welded on — and would never come off.
“We can go somewhere else,” Celaena said softly.
Nehemia just stared at the slave-girl, her face blank. The girl was dressed well, and looked well-fed, but the manacles, so horrifyingly beautiful, gleaming in the warm light…
The women were staring at them now, but the slave-girl kept her eyes down. Didn’t even turn toward them. Celaena rotated her own wrists, a tinge of phantom pain going through the scars that marked where her own shackles — iron and scratched — had once been.
Celaena put a hand on Nehemia’s elbow. “We can—”
“No,” Nehemia said, looking away from the girl and giving Kavill and bland smile. “We shall wait. Please — return to your work,” she said to him, and took a seat on the divan. Celaena slowly sat down beside her, and Nehemia flashed her a brighter smile.
Today, they had agreed when setting out, would just be about enjoying themselves — about letting Celaena dress Nehemia up. Today, they were just two ordinary, perfectly happy girls, out to do some shopping.
Celaena gave her best smile in return.
So Kavill went back to his customers, the soft-spoken Marta came to take their cloaks and gloves and replaced them with jasmine tea, delicate cookies, and a selection of the day’s papers.
“Such service,” Nehemia said when Marta had slipped away to assist Kavill in taking down his measurements and seeing to the needs of their customers. The princess ran an eye around the gilded walls, the racks of sample gowns, the displays of jewelry, shoes, hats, and parasols. “Such wealth, too.”
Celaena, who had been watching one of the women debate whether a quarter of an inch would make her neckline too daring, glanced at the princess. “If it makes you feel better, he’s turned down positions as the royal tailor several times.”
Nehemia raised a well-groomed brow, the gold jewelry she wore glinting in the light of the lily-shaped glass sconces. “I don’t mean to be… difficult,” Nehemia said in the common tongue, any trace of her fake, thick accent gone.
The accent, Celaena had learned, was just to deceive the royal court — to get them to think she was dimwitted, and make them speak more freely when they thought she couldn’t understand. But Nehemia spoke better than the most refined of them. And she had been using the knowledge she’d gleaned to uncover any tidbits of maneuverings that might help the plight of her enslaved people.
It was why they had gone shopping in the first place: to find gowns that Queen Georgina would approve of — gowns to enable Nehemia to cozy up to the queen and her inner circle, to see if she might help Eyllwe by winning over the King of Adarlan’s wife.
“Let’s just enjoy ourselves,” Celaena said, taking a long sip of her jasmine tea, almost groaning at the sheer perfection of it, then adjusting the folds of her forest-green gown. A piece that had been made in this very shop — a fact that she was certainKavill had already noted.
The five other customers cast only a few curious glances their way before they finally left the shop in a flurry of fur cloaks, kidskin gloves, and moans about the endless winter. The slave girl never once looked up, and Celaena could have sworn that Nehemia’s hand twitched when she walked by — as if the princess had contemplated reaching for the girl, and then thought better of it.
When they were at last gone, Marta shut the curtains on the front window, lit a few more sconces, and escorted them to the silk couches before the dressing room curtains. Kavill himself bought them another ornate pot of jasmine tea, and then refilled both their cups.
After Celaena explained that Nehemia needed at least four dresses, two of them to be ball gowns, and all fit for Adarlanianroyalty, Kavill crossed his arms behind his back and paced as he inquired after the colors and fabrics that Nehemia preferred or hated, about her feelings toward low or high necklines, how much mobility she desired, and on and on until Celaena started wondering if Nehemia would snap.
But the princess just smiled at the slender man, answering him with the thick, hesitant accent she used for everyone butCelaena. And then she patiently sat through Kavill and Marta’s presentation of color, cloth, beading, and stitching. It wasn’t until Kavill and Marta went into the back — to get a sample of the blue ball gown in the window — that the princess sagged slightly.
“I think I prefer just having the royal dressmaker bring me something,” she said quietly. “This is truly what you — you enjoydoing?”
Celaena winced, but smiled. “When the mood strikes me, yes.” And now that she had the king’s gold burning a hole in her purse, she was more than happy to spend most of it. “I’ve always liked pretty things — dresses, jewelry, shoes… I suppose it’s easy to dismiss it as frivolous, but a gown like the onesKavill makes is art. It’s art, and mathematics, and economics.”
Nehemia’s brows lifted and Celaena shrugged, but turned to point to the red velvet sheath dress in the window display.
“That gown in the window — think about how Kavill had to first come up with the design, then get the measurements just right to match the image in his head, then find the right vendor to supply the perfect red velvet and black lace. Think about where that velvet and lace came from — the velvet from the port in Meah, the lace from Melisande, the thread that holds the whole thing together from a spinner in Fenharrow. Think about where the dyes for the red and the black came from, too — think about all the people and places that had a hand in that dress coming together. It’s like a map of the continent, and every part of it tells a story, and—” Celaena trailed off and snorted. “Well, map and story aside, it’s also pretty as hell.”
Heir of Fire
Heir of Fire
Aelin & Rowan
(Read after Chapter 45)
“What’s your favorite food?” Lounging on a boulder like a lizard in the sun, Celaena chucked a nut in the air and caught it in her mouth.
“Whatever keeps me alive at the moment,” Rowan said from beside her, forearms braced on his knees as he monitored the foothills and valleys of Wendlyn rippling away below.
She clicked her tongue. “Could you be any more of an animal?”
He slid a glance in her direction, lifting a brow as if to say, you remember what my other form is, don’t you?
When she only scowled, he sighed. “There's a street vendor in Doranelle who sells meat on a stick.”
“Meat on a stick,” Celaena said as steadily as she could, fighting to keep her lips in a straight line.
“And I suppose yours is some confection or useless bit of sugar.”
“Sweets aren’t useless. And yes, I’d crawl over hot coals for a piece of chocolate hazelnut cake right now.” Lies. The last time she’d had it, it had been with Chaol. She wasn’t sure she could ever eat it again.
“What good could that possibly be for keeping your blood strong? With your magic, you’d burn through it and be hungry again within half an hour.”
She propped herself up on her elbows. “Your priorities are obscenely out of order. Not all food is for survival and strength-building. You didn’t even try one of the chocolates from that town. I guarantee the moment you do, every time I turn my back, you’ll be shoveling them down.”
The thought of Rowan doing it made her clamp her lips together again. She knew he’d make her start training the moment she started howling, so she quickly asked, “Favorite color?”
“Green.”
“I’m surprised you actually know.”
He narrowed his eyes, but said, “What’s yours?”
“For a while, I made myself believe it was blue. But – it’s always been red. You probably know why.”
He made an affirmative sound. Celaena lay down and raised a hand above her, threading a line of fire through her fingers. She plaited it between her knuckles, then snaked it down her palm, until it curled around her wrist, twining and slithering along her skin.
“Good,” Rowan said. “Your control is improving.”
“Mmhmm.” She lifted her other hand, and rings of flame encircled her fingers. She set to work on carving the flames, forging them into individual patters.
“Try it on me,” Rowan said, and she turned her head toward him and frowned deeply. “Do it.”
He didn’t flinch when she fashioned a crown of flame for him. Right atop his head. She sat up, kneeling before him, her own jewelry still burning on her hands and wrists, and concentrated as she fashioned the crown into a wreath, each individual leaf a flick of flame, the gold and red and blue bright as any precious stone. Rowan’s silver hair gleamed beneath it.
“Bold move,” he said as she continued to add details to his crown. “One that doesn’t have much space for error.”
“I’m surprised you’re not encasing your head with ice.”
“I trust you,” he said quietly enough that she looked at his face. With the crown of flame, he looked kingly indeed – a warrior-king, as brutal as the lines of his tattoo.
“And now one for you,” he said, and a delightful chill went down her spine as a crown of ice formed in the space between them, its delicate spikes rising high. Rowan lifted it between his hands and set it on her head, its weight light, the chill a balm against the heat of her fire. Celaena smiled at him, and he gave her a tiny lift of his lips in response. But then she remembered – remembered that it was a crown he had made for her. A crown.
Her flames sputtered out as she rose to her feet and strode to the edge of the boulder, wrapping her arms around herself. A moment later, the crown of ice dissolved into mist on the mountain wind.
“We’re going to have visitors tonight,” Rowan said, approaching her side. “Should I be concerned?”
“I – need your help.”
“Ah. So that’s why you let me have an afternoon of peace.”
He snarled, but she lifted a brow. “Will I finally be meeting your mysterious friends?”
“No. They’re Fae nobility, passing through the area. They requested a place to stay for the night, and will arrive around sunset. Emrys is making them dinner, and I am expected to... entertain them.”
When he just looked at her, she said, “Oh, no. No.”
“They will not condescend to dine with the demi-Fae, and... ”
“I’m even less acceptable than a demi-Fae!”
“... if I have to play host to them all evening, it will likely end in blood-shed.”
She blinked. “Not favorites of yours?”
“They’re typical nobility. Not trained warriors. They expect to be treated in a certain way.”
“So? You’re in Maeve’s little cabal. And you’re a prince to boot. Don’t you outrank them?”
“Technically, but there are politics to consider, especially when they’ll be reporting to Maeve.
She groaned. “So what – I’m supposed to play hostess?”
His face was about as miserable as hers. “No. Just – help me deal with them.” Another bit of trust, she realized.
“And what am I going to get out of it?”
He clenched his jaw, and she honestly thought he’d say, I won’t kick your ass, but he sighed. “I’ll find you a chocolate hazelnut cake.”
“No.”
When he raised his brows, she threw a wicked smile at him. “You’ll just owe me a favor that I can call whenever I please.”
He sighed, lifting his gaze skyward. “Just look presentable at sundown.”
***
The jingling bells and merry voices reached the fortress long before the party appeared through the ward-stones.
Standing in the small courtyard, Celaena slid a glance to Rowan. “Really? You need my help with these prancing idiots?”
But aside from those on watch, the demi-Fae had made themselves scarce. He glared at her. She’d bathed and dressed in her cleanest tunic, even going so far as to plait her hair into pleasant coronet.
“Keep your voice down,” he muttered, giving a pointed glance to her ears.
She rolled her eyes, but didn’t say anything else as they arrived. Their horses were all – gods, those were all Asterion horses. Each worth its weight in gold and then some. She’d owned one – well, she’d stolen one and kept it – but had sold it to pay off Sam’s debts to Arobynn. It had been utterly worth it, but... she still missed Kasida. She’d never seen or ridden a finer horse. There were five in the party now taking in the courtyard and fortress, two of them bored-looking guards whose attention fixed solely on Rowan, and the other three... the female in the front was stunning – and undoubtedly the leader. Beneath her pale blond hair, her face was a concoction of ivory and soft rose, her eyes a vibrant cerulean blue. They flared with delight as they fixed on Rowan. She didn’t so much as spare Celaena a passing glance as she slid gracefully off her white mare.
“Rowan!” She advanced, holding out her hands. Her fingers were slender and long – and as flawless as the rest of her.
“Lady Remelle,” Rowan said, his massive hands engulfing hers as he took them. His spine was straight as a rod, and though Remelle looked at their joined hands as if expecting him to plant a kiss – gods, the idea of Rowan kissing anyone’s hand – he dropped her fingers unceremoniously and turned to the other two nobles dismounting.
“Lord Benson,” he said to the tall, slender male, who just nodded at him. Benson, Celaena noted, bothered to look at her – his long nose and dark eyes sweeping over her body, then moving on. Dismissed.
“Lady Essar,” Rowan said to the small, dark-haired Fae female. Remelle might be the staggering beauty, but Essar had a set of curves that even Celaena found herself envying. Her light brown skin seemed to glow as if lit by an inner light, and her chestnut eyes glinted with genuine kindness as she held out her hands to Rowan and smiled. He took Essar’s fingers a bit more warmly than he had Remelle’s – and the blond-haired lady’s eyes slightly narrowed.
But Remelle recovered swiftly, smiled prettily, and placed a proprietary hand on Rowan’s shoulder as she said, “It’s been an age, hasn’t it? You never come to our parties, and Maeve keeps you all to herself.”
Rowan’s face went blank. Cold.
“There was a time,” Remelle pouted, “when I got to keep you to myself. Sometimes I miss those days.” Rowan just flicked his eyes to the watching guards, who looked in need of a decent meal – and a break from their companions. “Stables are to the left.” Celaena was too busy glancing from Rowan to Remelle to see if the guards obeyed the prince’s orders. Lovers.
She didn’t know why she’d thought that losing his mate meant he’d be celibate, but – but someone like Remelle –
Remembering she existed, Rowan extended an arm in her direction. Celaena honestly debated striding back into the fortress and leaving Rowan at their mercy, but found herself walking to him, closer and closer, until he could have tucked her into his side. He actually seemed to relax a bit as he said, “This is – Elentiya.”
She hadn’t thought of how he’d introduced her, but she was grateful for the anonymity he offered. “I´m training her at the queen’s request. Elentiya, this is Lady Remelle, Lord Benson, and Lady Essar.”
He began rattling off house names and other nonsense, and Celaena gave a shallow nod that had Benson and Remelle pursing their lips. Only Essar said hello, a sultry purr that made Celaena wonder why the hell Rowan hadn’t taken her to his bed instead of the bright, cold smiles of Remelle.
“So you are a half-breed, then,” Benson said, his eyes raking over her. Rowan, to her surprise, bristled – but held in the growl she knew was rumbling in him.
Celaena smiled tightly. “My great-grandmother was Fae. So, if that makes me demi-Fae, I don’t know.”
She caught the look Remelle gave Rowan: a mix of exasperation, as if to say, Really, Rowan? You brought a half-breed to meet us? How common of you.
But – Rowan hadn’t asked her to appear in her Fae form. No, he’d left her to appear in whatever form she wished. The thought warmed her enough that she stepped a bit closer to him, near enough now to nearly brush his arm with her own. Remelle didn’t fail to notice that, either. What sort of visit was this, anyway?
It was Essar who said, “Well, I look forward to hearing about your adventures, Rowan – and how you came to be here, Elentiya. But first, I think I should very much like a bath and something to nibble on.”
She slid an apologetic look in Celaena’s direction. “I’d kill for anything chocolate right now.” Despite herself, Celaena decided that she liked her.
“So, you and Remelle,” Celaena said from where she lounged on Rowan’s bed, her head propped up by a hand. At his worktable, sharpening his weapons with a bit too much interest, Rowan snarled.
They’d dumped the nobles at the baths, asked Emrys to bring foot to the rooms they’d be taking over while here (there had been three demi-Fae who were more than happy to vacate their large bedrooms if it meant getting out of the path of their visitors). They had an hour until dinner – and though Celaena could have scrounged up a dress... she didn’t feel like it.
“Remelle was... a very, very big mistake,” Rowan said, his back to her.
“Seems like she doesn’t think so.”
He glared over a shoulder. “It was a hundred years ago.”
Gods, sometimes she forgot how old he was. “She acts like you cast her aside this winter.”
“Remelle just wants whatever she can’t have. A condition many immortals suffer from stave off boredom,” he turned, the hunting knife in his hands gleaming in the firelight.
“She was practically clawing at you.”
“She can claw all she wants, but I’m not making that mistake again.”
“Sounds like you made that mistake a few times.”
Rowan leveled a vicious gaze at her. “It was over the course of a season, and then I came to my senses.”
“Mmmm.”
He stabbed the knife into the table and stalked to the bed until he glowered over her. Celaena lay as she was, brows high and lips pressed together. “One laugh,” he warned. “Just one laugh, and I’m going to dump you in the nearest pond.”
She shook with the effort to keep howl inside.
“Don’t. You. Dare,” he growled, leaning low enough that his breath warmed her mouth. “If you –”
The door opened, and Rowan froze, a low snarl rumbling in him, so violent that it echoed in her bones. But the threat was just Remelle, who blinked, and said, “Oh!”
It took Celaena a heartbeat to realize what it looked like, she was sprawled on the bed, Rowan braced over her, too close to be casual, but –
“What do you want?” Rowan said, straightening but not stepping away. Remelle surveyed the room, taking the details that suggested it was not Rowan’s space alone: the brush in the dresser, the undergarments Celaena had left tossed over a chair (oh, how that would be interpreted!), the ribbons she used to tie back her hair, the small boots beside Rowan’s massive ones, and even the various personal items they kept on their own nightstands.
“I wanted to catch up,” Remelle said, looking everywhere but at Celaena, “but it seems you are… occupied.”
“We’ll talk at dinner,” Rowan said. Celaena popped up from bed.
“I have to go help Emrys with the meal, actually.” She barely managed to hide her wicked grin. “Why don’t you stay, Remelle?”
Rowan could have melted her bones with the look he gave her, but Celaena was already out the door and down the hall, whistling to herself.
***
Rowan was going to kill her. As soon as they resumed training, he was going to murder her. And then murder her again. Remelle was still in the doorway, frowning in the direction Aelin had gone. When she turned, a serpentine smile danced on her red lips.
“Is this considered part of her training, too?”
“Get out,” was all he said. Remelle clicked her tongue.
“Is that how you speak to me these days?”
“I don’t know why you bothered to stop here, or what you expect of me –”
“I heard you were here, and thought I’d say hello and spare you the tedious company of halfbreeds, I didn’t realize you’d taken to them so much.”
He knew exactly what it had looked like when she burst in here. Denying it would only lead to a headache, but letting Remelle assume he was sharing bed with Aelin was equally unacceptable. He couldn’t decide how Maeve would interpret it. Unless –
“And who was it that told you I’m here?”
“Maeve, of course. I complained to her that I missed you.”
The question was whether or not Remelle was willing or unknowing spy. Or if Maeve had sent Remelle to see just what manner of relationship Rowan had developed with the princess.
“As your friend, Rowan, I have to say… the girl’s rather beneath you.”
He held in his laugh. Apparently, Maeve hadn’t informed her who, exactly, he was training. Remelle had been relentless in her pursuit of him a century ago, winning him over with her charm and smiles, but – he didn’t really care to think back that time.
“One,” he said, “you’re not my friend. Two, it’s not of your business.”
Her eyes narrowed in a way that made him realize Remelle would make every minute until she left a living hell for the princess – not knowing what manner of predator she was provoking. So rather than see Remelle’s blood splattered on the walls before dawn, he said, “There is a shortage of bedrooms here, and we’ve to share quarters as a result.”
Not quite a lie, but not the entire truth. Remelle’s brows remained high on her moon-white skin. “Well, I suppose that’s good news for Benson.”
“What?”
“He has needs that must be attended to, and finds her attractive enough. Maeve said it was more than fine if she –”
“If Benson lays one finger on her, he’s going to find himself without his insides.”
Maeve – Maeve had suggested that she was available for –
He clamped down on the blinding rage as Remelle blinked. “Honestly, Rowan, what do you think most of the half-breeds wind up doing in Doranelle?”
He had no answer – no words at all – as soon as she said that. She shrugged. “Benson will be gentle with –”
“Benson looks twice at her, and he dies. He looks twice at any of the females in this fortress and he dies.” The words were laced with a growl so fierce that they were barely understandable. But Remelle understood. Did Lorcan know? He was demi-Fae himself, had proven himself half a millennium ago. Was he aware what went on their city? It was disgusting – worse than disgusting. The Fae were better than that. But Maeve –
“I’ll make sure the warning in conveyed,” Remelle purred.
***
Celaena indeed went to the kitchen, where she helped Emrys prepare the meal. Luca was there, prattling away, but the chatter stopped mid-sentence. Essar was standing at the foot of the stairs, smiling faintly.
“Dinner won’t be ready for another twenty minutes,” Celaena said, wiping her hands on a dishcloth before approaching the lady. Luca was practically gaping at the small beauty, but Essar gave him a polite smile and he immediately found himself interested in whatever he was doing. “I can show you to the dining hall, if you’d like to wait there.”
Gods, being polite was... strange. “Oh no, Benson’s in there already, and he... I think I’d have more fun in here.”
She’d also make Emrys and Luca uncomfortable, if their silence was any indication, but Celaena found herself saying, “It can be chaotic and loud and messy in here –”
“I know how a kitchen operates,” Essar said. “Just tell me what work needs to be done, and I’ll do it.” Celaena looked to Emrys, who bowed and introduced himself and Luca – who went beet red – and then found herself chopping vegetables beside the lady.
Celaena said to Essar after a minute, “So, you’re just... traveling around?”
“Maeve gave us a task, which I’m bit supposed to talk about, but yes – it involved us traveling for a bit. We’re on our way back to Doranelle, though – thank the Bright Lady.”
Celaena raised a brow. “Mala?” Essar lifted a hand, and flames danced on her fingertips. “Not much of a gift, but it kept us warm on the road at least.”
Celaena swallowed. She’d never met another fire-wielder. Did Rowan know?
“Is it hard – to master the fire?”
Essar shrugged. “I was very young when my training began, and I’ve had about two centuries to master what little power I have. Aside from a few burns and blisters, I’ve never really been able to do much harm, or impress anyone, really. Remelle’s got the more interesting gift – her magic lends itself toward mastering any language she hears, no matter how briefly. It’s why Maeve likes to send her around places. And Benson’s got a knack for becoming invisible whenever he wants to, which...” Essar winced.
“Makes him a good listener,” Celaena finished. Essar had to be lousy spy if she was so willing to talk. Essar brushed back a strand of her silky, dark hair.
“You must have impressive gifts, if Prince Rowan is training you.”
“I –”
“Those vegetables done?” Emrys asked, and one glance at the male had Celaena sending him her silent thanks. She handed him a bowl of the potatoes, then got to work on the next item. Essar was making neat, perfect slices – too slowly to be useful, but at least she was trying.
Essar said casually, “I can’t imagine Rowan is an easy teacher.”
“You could say that.”
“But they’re all like that – Rowan and his companions who serve the queen.”
“You know them?”
Essar blushed prettily. “I was involved with Lorcan, their leader, for a time. But – his lifestyle and mine are very different.”
“And what is Lorcan like?”
“A demi-Fae, like you.”
Was he now? Rowan had failed to mention that tidbit. Essar went on, “He has had to prove himself every single day, every hour, since he was born. Even though his power isn’t challenged by anyone other than Rowan, that is – he... Lorcan is not an easy male to be around. Some days, I’m surprised he has friends.”
“And Rowan is his friend?”
Essar gave her an amused smile. “In a way. They frighten even us, you know. Especially when they’re together in a room... Let’s just say that they sometimes do not leave that room intact by the time they depart. Or the city, for that matter.”
“And yet Maeve lets them work together?”
“She would be a fool to let them go – which is why she bound them to her with the blood oath. They’ve leveled cities for her before.”
A chill went up Celaena’s spine. “Actually leveled cities?”
Essar nodded gravely. “And yet Remelle thinks she can control Rowan – wants to possess him. Rowan could end Remelle with half a thought, if he was provoked enough.”
“She’s an idiot.”
“Indeed. But power is power, and since Remelle can’t look past Lorcan’s mixed bloodline, Rowan is her only option.”
“Would – would their children also belong to Maeve, the way Rowan does?”
Essar cocked her head. “I don’t know. None of his companions have sired offspring, so there’s no way of telling what Maeve would do.”
Celaena shuddered. “You don’t seem to speak reverently as the others do about her.”
“Not all Fae are willing slaves, you know. And part of – part of why my relationship with Lorcan fell apart was due to that. He is blood-sworn to her, and no matter how I cared for him, I am most certainly not. Nor will I ever swear such an oath.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you are training with the most dangerous pure-blooded Fae male in the world, and yet he treats you as an equal. He presented you as his equal.”
There was an implied question there – So who are you, really? – but Celaena couldn’t answer.
“I think Rowan just didn’t feel like dealing with Remelle alone.”
“Probably. But he’s also dealt with her on his own plenty. And since Rowan’s not one to show off a new companion just to spite an old lover...”
“I’m not sure I follow what you’re getting at.”
“I find it all very interesting.”
“I think you’re reading a bit into it.”
But Essar gave her a soft smile. “I’m sure I am.”
***
Dinner went well for the six seconds it took to walk from the doorway to the large table in the vacant dining hall. Since the table was so large, they’d set the five places at one end, with Rowan at the head, as his position demanded. The plan had been for Celaena to sit at his left, with Essar beside her, leaving Remelle to take the seat opposite Celaena’s, and Benson across from Essar. But Remelle, moving swifter than Celaena had expected, had steered Benson into the seat meant for Celaena, plopped herself next to Rowan, and left Celaena with the choice of sitting beside the white-blond lady or the leering male. She chose Benson. Rowan followed the ordeal without comment, his attention pinned on Benson as Celaena took a seat next to the lord. But whether or not Benson noticed the lethal glare in Rowan’s eyes – gods, what was that about? – the lord revealed nothing. So Celaena had nothing better to do in the silence except take a sip from her wine, and pray that the meal would be over quickly.
The first course – a roast-chicken soup that Remelle and Benson frowned over – came out fast enough. It tasted divine, and Celaena managed all of one delectable spoonful before Remelle said to her, “So you’re from Adarlan’s empire.”
Celaena took a second, slow spoonful of soup. “I am.”
“I thought I detected the accent – Adarlan and... Terrasen, am I right? They do mangle their words over there so brutally. I doubt even years here will cure you of the boorish accent.”
Celaena took another very slow spoonful of soup. But Essar said, “I find the accent quite charming, actually.”
Benson grunted his agreement, giving her a too-long look, and Celaena fought the urge to shift her chair down a setting or two. Or to take her spoon and use it to carve out his eyes.
“Well, you had such a provincial upbringing, Essar,” Remelle said brightly. “I’m not surprised that you like it.”
Essar’s round face tightened, but she said nothing. However, when Remelle went to take a delicate sip of her soup, she let out a hiss and nearly dropped her spoon. The liquid was indeed steaming hot – far hotter than any of theirs.
Essar gave the female an innocent, questioning look, but Remelle said, “The beastly cook boiled this soup.”
Celaena clamped down on a retort. Especially as Rowan’s face became a mask of calm. One that usually meant violence was on its way. That had been his request, hadn’t it? To keep him from causing a brawl that would be reported back to Maeve?
So Celaena swallowed her own rage and said to Essar, “You grew up in the countryside?”
Remelle rolled her eyes, but Essar smiled. “My father owns a vineyard in the southeast of our territory. I spent my youth roaming the olive orchards and the cypress groves. But I moved to Doranelle when it was deemed time for me to enter society.”
“Alas, Essar has been rather unlucky when it comes to fulfilling her parents’ wishes to find a proper husband,” Remelle said.
“Husband,” Celaena found herself saying. “Not – mate?”
Remelle clicked her tongue. “Of course not. A mate is rare – most Fae don’t find them.”
Celaena couldn’t bring herself to look at Rowan, though her heart strained.
Remelle waved an idle hand - “So, we marry.”
“What if you marry, then you find your mate?”
“Wars have been started for that,” Benson finally said, his dark eyes seeming to swallow her whole. “But if that is the case, it is treated very delicately.”
“It’s a mess, is what he means,” Essar clarified. “A male will feel the need to kill any challenger to his mate, even if that challenger is already wed to her. Even if they’re in love. For all our refinements, there are still instincts that can’t be controlled.”
Celaena nodded, finishing off her soup. Remelle, however, smiled at her. “But as a half-breed, you won’t have to worry about such things. Finding a mate is even rarer for those with diluted blood – and none of us would marry you, anyway.”
Celaena stared at the female for a long moment, even as she could have sworn she felt the reverberations in the table as Rowan snarled softly. Remelle refused to break the stare, and Celaena settled in, willing calm to her veins.
She could feel Essar’s attention, and could almost hear the puzzle pieces snap together in Essar’s mind as she recognized the coloring of Celaena’s eyes and murmured, “Remelle.”
But Remelle looked to Rowan and began saying something in the Old Language, smiling sweetly. When Rowan didn’t respond, Remelle turned to Benson, saying something else, to which the lord replied in the same elegant, lovely language. Remelle again opened her mouth, but Rowan said with lethal quiet, “Speak the common tongue, Remelle.”
Remelle put a hand on her chest in a mockery of an apology. “Something I forget – it’s not every day I’m in the company of half-breeds.”
Essar swallowed hard, her brown skin going a bit warn as she surveyed Celaena and Remelle. Oh, yes. The lady had figured out that it wasn’t some common by-blow seated across from them. Emrys and Luca entered, clearing the soup away and bringing out the next course – platters of roast meats and vegetables.
Emrys loitered by the doorway, and Celaena took one bite of the rabbit, moaned, and turned in her seat to nod her enthusiasm to the ancient cook. He grinned, his face flushing.
Then Remelle said, “Rowan, it must be a trial for you to have to eat this day on and day out.” She pushed her meat around on her plate, then set the fork down.
Celaena couldn’t look back at Emrys – didn’t allow herself to glimpse his face.
Rowan said, “I eat better here that I do in Doranelle.”
“There’s no need to be nice on account of the help,” Remelle said, “If they don’t learn what we like, whatever will they do in the capital?” Footsteps scuffed behind them, and Celaena knew Emrys had gone back downstairs.
Celaena said softly, “The next time you insult my friend, I’m going to shove your face into whatever plate is in front of you.”
Remelle blinked. “Well, I never –“
“Remelle,” Essar whispered. But Remelle put a hand on Rowan’s forearm, gripping with such possessiveness that Celaena saw red as the lady hissed at him, “You mean to let her insult me like that? To make threats against a member of the royal household?”
“Get your hand off me,” Rowan said too quietly.
But Remelle didn’t let go of Rowan as she snapped at Celaena, “You are dismissed from this table. Get out.”
Celeana looked at the white hand gripping Rowan. “Take your hand off him.”
“I can do as I please, and if you have any sense, you’ll vacate this hall before I have you whipped for your –”
Fire erupted, and Remelle’s scream echoed off the stones. Living flame wrapped around the lady, not burning, not singeing, just – encasing. Even the hand on Rowan was aflame, and through the column of gold-and-red fire, Remelle’s eyes were wide as she turned to Essar and said, “Release me.”
But Essar only looked at Celaena. “It’s not my magic.”
Rowan went perfectly still as Celaena willed the fire to allow a lick of heat through. Not enough to burn, but enough to make Remelle start sweating.
And then Celaena said, “If you ever raise a whip to anyone, I will find you, and I will make sure that these flames burn.”
She had to admit: Remelle had no small amount of courage, especially as the woman seethed, “How dare you threaten a lady of Doranelle.”
Celaena laughed under her breath. “The next time you touch Rowan without his permission, I will burn you into ashes.”
She turned her head to Benson. “And if you look at me or any female like that again, I will melt your bones before you have a chance to scream.”
Benson, wisely, nodded and averted his gaze. Essar was pale when Celaena pulled back her teeth in a snarl and said to her, “You keep everything you learned here to yourself.”
Essar nodded. Celaena at last faced Rowan, who seemed like he was trying his best not to smirk, though the amusement still danced in his eyes as she said, “I defer judgement to you, Prince.”
He studied Remelle, who was barely moving, hardly breathing, then jerked his chin. “Released her and let’s eat.”
The flames winked out so fast it was as if they’d never existed. In the silence that fell, Remelle leaned over the arm of her chair and vomited on the floor. Celaena picked up her fork, took a bite of rabbit, and smiled.
***
“If I never see them again, it’ll be too soon,” Celaena said into the darkness of their room.
Rowan let out a low laugh. “I thought you liked Essar.”
“I do, but... you should have heard her trying to get me to talk in the kitchen.”
“About what?”
“About you. About our – relationship. I think you’ll go home to a host of unpleasant rumors.”
“I think the status of our relationship will be the least of the rumors after tonight.”
“Essar said that you – you and Lorcan once decimated a city together.”
He hissed. “Ah. Sollemere.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“That’s because it doesn’t exist anymore.”
She turned over, staring at him in the moonlight that slipped in through the curtains. “You wiped it off the map – literally?”
He pinned her with a long look. “Sollemere was a place so wicked, full of monstrous people who did such unspeakable things, that... even Maeve was disgusted by them. She gave them a warning to stop their ways, and said if they...”
He clenched his jaw. “There are some acts that are unforgivable – and I won’t stain this room by mentioning them. But she swore to them that if they continued to do it, she would obliterate them.”
“Let me guess: they didn’t listen.”
“No. We got out as many children as we could with our legion. And when they were safely away, Lorcan and I leveled it to dust.”
“You’re that powerful.”
“You don’t seem shocked by it.”
“You’ve told me plenty of harrowing stories. If what these people did was so awful that even you won’t repeat it, then I’ll say they had it coming.”
“So bloodthirsty.”
“Is that a problem for you?”
“I find it endearing.”
She gave him a playful shove, but he caught her hand and held it, his calluses brushing her own.
“You could do that, you know. Make an entire city burn.”
“I hope I never have to.”
“So do I.”
He threaded his fingers through hers and held them up to examine the scars along the back of her hand, her fingers. “But I’ll never forget the look on Remelle’s face when you shot fire out of your mouth and eyes.”
“I did not.” He laughed, a low, rumbling sound that echoed in her chest. “Part woman, part dragon.”
“I didn’t spew flames.”
“Your eyes were living gold.”
Celaena narrowed those same eyes at him. “And are you going to reprimand me?”
He lowered their joined hands to the bed, but didn’t let go. “Why should I? she was given fair warning, she ignored it, and you followed through. It follows the Old Ways, and you had every right to show her how serious you were.”
She considered it, then after a moment said, “It scared me – how in control I was. How much I meant it. It scared me that I wasn’t scared. It scared me that...”
She made herself look at him. His face was unreadable in the dim light. “It scared me that… It scared me that I’ve come to care so much about you that I’d draw that sort of line in the sand. It scared me that I would burn and maim and kill for you, and yet – and yet at the end of the day, you still belong to Maeve, and there is nothing I can do, no amount of burning and maiming and killing, to keep you with me.”
He released her hand – only to slide his own against her cheek, the gesture so unexpected that she closed her eyes and leaned into it, hearing the unspoken words in the touch. “I know.”
***
The party departed the next morning, and Rowan didn’t bother to bring the princess down to see them off. It was for the best, given that Remelle still appeared jumpy and furious, Beson refused to look at anyone, and even Essar was wide-eyed. Rowan waited until they were all mounted on their fine horses in the courtyard before he approached.
It was to Essar he spoke, grabbing hold of her Asterion mare’s bridle. “Let’s hope last night was the most eventful of your journey.”
Remelle sniffed from her saddle, but said nothing. Essar, however, looked up at the fortress, as if she could see through moss and stone to the princess sleeping within. Essar, was a beautiful female – soft and inviting and clever – and he’d never understood why Lorcan hadn’t tried harder to keep her. She had been good for him. But Lorcan’s ruthlessness and cold ambitions were his best tools and worst enemies. He had only seen the female for what she offered inside his bedroom.
Essar said, “I do not think any of us will forget last night anytime soon.”
Neither would he. When Aelin had engulfed Remelle in flame, he’d been stunned stupid. She hadn’t demonstrated skills of that level, hadn’t practiced that sort of thing. And if Remelle had tried to fight back, if Remelle had physically hurt him or anyone in that fortress... the lady would be ash on the wind right now.
A threat had been made against those Aelin saw as hers. Such things would be dealt with swiftly and brutally. Interesting – so interesting for that side of the princess to have come snarling to the surface. And she had claimed him.
Essar knew. She’d figured out what kind of magic smoldered in Aelin’s veins, and that last night, the Queen of Terrasen had made a claim on him. If Essar told Maeve about it...
The others in the party moved on, Remelle stiff-backed, but Rowan remained with Essar. “Name the price for your silence,” Rowan said. Essar’s dark brows rose. “You think I would run the nearest gossip and tell them Aelin Galathynius is training here?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
Essar’s dark eyes narrowed. “I would not run to Maeve, either. Remelle will tell her that the girl threw a tantrum and attacked her without provocation – she’d never admit to any of the truth behind it. Or figure out who she really is. And Benson... Leave him to me.”
“And your price?”
“There is no price, Prince.”
He gripped the bridle harder. “Why?”
Essar studied the disappearing party, then the fortress. “We have known each other for a while now. Through all the centuries, I have never seen you present another female as your equal – as your friend. And I do not think you did it because of who she is.”
Rowan opened his mouth, but she said, “I would not take that gift away from you, Rowan. Because it is a gift. She is a gift – to the world, and to you.”
His fingers slackened on the reins, and Essar motioned her mount into a walk. “She is going to fight for you, Rowan,” Essar said, looking over a shoulder. “And you deserve it, after all this time. You deserve to have someone who will burn the earth to ash for you.”
His heart was pounding wildly, but he kept his face blank, his will ice and steel. “If you see him,” Essar added with a sad smile, “tell Lorcan I send my regards.” And then she was gone.
***
Things fell back into their usual rhythm in the two days that followed, though Rowan couldn’t stop thinking about what Essar had said. Because he knew it was true, because... because he wanted it to be true.
Aelin had said nothing about it, though he’d sometimes catch her frowning at him, as if trying to decipher some puzzle. He was poring over a report Vaughan had sent him when she walked into his room that night. The smell of chocolate and nuts hit him, and when she twisted in his seat, he discovered her carrying a small, miss-shapen cake, a sheepish smile on her face.
“It took me hours to make this damn thing, so you’d better say it’s good.” She set it in front of him, along with a plate, fork, and a knife. The blade she used to slide into the chocolate-frosted lump, cutting a large piece. It was layered with a lighter frosting – some sort of creamy-looking filing between the dark cake.
“Chocolate hazelnut cake?”
She plopped the piece on the plate for him and took his hand to press the fork into it. “You have no idea how hard it was to get the ingredients. Or to find some sort of recipe. I haven’t even tasted it yet. Emrys looked like he was going to faint with horror.”
When Rowan just stared at the cake, she clicked her tongue. “This is the favor you owe me. Just try it.”
He gave her a long stare that usually sent men running, but she bit her lip and glanced at the cake. It was enough that he adjusted his grip on the fork, picked up a piece, and brought it to his mouth. While he chewed and swallowed, she was practically hopping from foot to foot and wringing her hands.
So he let out a grunt of pleasure, took another bite, then another, until the entire piece was cleaned off his plate. Then he took another piece. And another. Until his stomach was protesting and all but a sliver was left on the platter.
“I told you it was delicious,” she preened, giving him a triumphant smile as he set down his fork.
She ruffled his hair, but he caught her wrist, squeezing gently while he rose from his seat and brought his face dangerously close to her. He knew every fleck of gold in those remarkable eyes – knew how her very blood tasted.
And this near to her, their breath mingling…
“Now we’re even,” he said, and stalked out of the room. He was about three steps down the hall when Aelin’s fork scraped against the platter, no doubt scooping up the sliver of cake he’d left. A moment after that, her curse barked off stones of the fortress, followed by spitting and coughing. Despite himself, Rowan was smiling when he shouldered open the bathing room door – and quickly cast up the contents of his stomach.
Empire of Storms
Empire of Storms
Aelin & Co
They’d crossed the Terrasen border two days ago.
The little town baking in the midday sun was the first they’d encountered, the gray stones and moss-speckled shingles all weatherworn and near-crumbling. No main road connected to it-at least no road beyond a groove of wagon tracks through hard grass and mud-and freshly tilled farmlands surrounded it for a good mile in either direction.
Atop a grassy, rock-strewn outlook, Aelin surveyed the sprawl of hills through the little valley, the town at its heart, and the ancient ramble of Oakwald Forest flowing on after it.
“The outfitter is small, but surprisingly well stocked,” Lysandra said beside her, still breathless from scouting ahead. Rowan had accompanied her, keeping at a distance, letting the shifter glean what information was vital, then showing what she’d missed. He’d been training her since they’d left Rifthold-not just the scouting, but the flying. Reading the winds, too.
The shifter went on, “The people seemed friendly enough. I could buy what we need and be done in an hour or so. Then meet you in the forest with a wagon.”
Aelin at last drew her attention away from the village and valley. Lysandra wore her human form- rare, these days. “I assume you’d do this as… a man?”
Lysandra braced her hands on her hips. “No, as a squirrel.”
Aelin’s mouth twitched. “That’d be a sight.”
“What would be?” Aedion sauntered over from where he’d been rubbing down the horses, Fleetfoot trotting merrily at his heels. Aelin didn’t miss how her cousin raked his gaze over Lysandra-or how the shifter deliberately ignored it. Fleetfoot bounded right up to the shifter, however, and peppered her with sloppy kisses.
Aelin jerked her chin at the shifter, who was now ruffling Fleetfoot’s soft head. “Lysandra plans to barter with acorns for our food, apparently.”
Aedion’s brows furrowed. “What?”
The ladies snorted, right as Rowan said from where he and Evangeline had been gathering buckets of water, “Don’t even bother getting in the middle of that nonsense, Aedion.”
Aelin stuck out her tongue at the Fae Prince. Evangeline giggled— then quickly hid the grin when Rowan shot a look at her. The girl darted to Lysandra-wholly missing the crinkling in Rowan’s eyes as she took over pampering Fleetfoot.
Something tightened in Aelin’s chest at Rowan’s quiet amusement. He and Aedion had both been kind to the girl- knowing when to tease, when to comfort. Two bossy, overbearing older brothers-and trained, lethal killers. Gods help Evangeline when she was old enough to be interested in anyone romantically.
Though given the horror of her childhood, even with Lysandra’s intervention… Aelin supposed they’d all be happy for Evangeline when that day came. But the moment any young man looked too long at Evangeline… Aelin smiled to herself. The man or woman, she supposed- wouldn’t just have Rowan and Aedion snarling at them. Oh, no. They’d have a fire-breathing bitch-queen and a shape-shifter capable of turning into the face of their nightmares waiting to have a little chat.
Honestly, it was enough to make anyone pity the girl.
Fleetfoot seemed rather put out as Evangeline straightened and wrapped her arms around Lysandra’s waist, holding her tightly. The shifter smiled absently down at the girl, stroking her red-gold head.
“If you turn into a squirrel,” Evangeline said into Lysandra’s road-dusty white shirt, “will you travel on my shoulder and let me make an acorn hat for you to wear?”
Aelin bit her lip, striding toward Rowan and the water before she could make the mistake of meeting Lysandra’s gaze and howling. Rowan was indeed clamping his lips together, eyes dazzlingly bright. Aelin linked her arm through his and led the prince toward the copse of trees behind them quickly.
Aelin made it about ten feet into the shaded wood before her cackle burst free, echoing off the trees and scattering the birds, drowsy in the midday heat.
Rowan chuckled, rubbing his neck as Aelin fizzed and gurgled. Laughing at Evangeline was something none of them were particularly inclined to do, but… gods above.
“I’m honestly debating offering Lysandra a gold coin just so I can see her little woodland outfit,” Aelin said when she managed to master herself.
Rowan laughed again. “I don’t think you’d need to pay her anything — she’ll do it just to make the girl happy.”
Indeed, they all were inclined to make the girl happy. Evangeline had suffered enough-seen far more than a child should ever witness. Aelin and Lysandra had as well. As had Aedion, she supposed. But out of all of them…” You had a fairly happy childhood,” she said, more musing than question.
Rowan nodded nonetheless. “Yes-my parents faded when I was still young. But in all honesty, my uncle’s house was much more… fun. Our education was strict, but there was joy in that house. With six children plus me, plus a horde of my other cousins living nearby, it was a menagerie.”
Aelin lifted a brow. “Literally, with your other forms.”
He pinched her side. “You have no idea. When our tutors and nurses gave us orders, we’d simply fly away. So my uncle installed locks on the windows, and spikes on the chandeliers and bookcases, just to keep us from having anywhere to fly to.”
Aelin laughed. “I have trouble imagining you misbehaving.”
His brows rose. “I was obedient in public. And among strangers, I was quiet. But on my uncle’s estate… Perhaps I was calmer than some of my cousins, but we ran wild.”
“And you all could turn into hawks?”
“Mostly birds of prey fill the Whitethorn bloodline. My cousin, Enda, can shift into a peregrine falcon. Sellene, another cousin from a different uncle, shifts into a golden eagle. But we all bear the ice and wind-which was another source of grief for our tutors.”
Aelin strode for a tree and leaned against it. “But you wanted to avoid them when we went to Doranelle.”
He stiffened slightly. “They… Their relationship with Maeve can be fraught. Bringing them into the hell I was sure we were walking toward only added potential casualties.”
“Would they have sided with you-against her?”
“It’s been so long since I bothered to spend more than a few minutes with them that I honestly don’t know. I was not kind to them for a great while. I was worried that they might add more obstacles for you and me.”
She angled her head. “What happened between you?”
“After… Lyria,” he said, still hesitating on his mate’s name as if it snagged on something razor-sharp in him, “when I got back from wandering and swore the blood oath to Maeve, I… I shut out everyone I had associated with before then. The people who had known her, known us together. It was easier to surround myself with the cadre, with armies, than face the pity of my cousins. Enda — he and I were closest while growing up. He came to visit me every week if I was in residence in Doranelle. I refused to see him. Then I went off to war, and when I returned two years later, he didn’t come again.”
He shrugged. “The rest of my cousins would sometimes corner me at events, or show up at my door, but I dismissed it as meddling.”
She considered his words. “I don’t blame you.”
He seemed to sag slightly.
Pushing off the tree and taking a few steps toward him, she asked, “You have an actual house?”
“Many, actually properties owned by my parents, and going back generations.”
“I suppose you redecorated them in warrior-squalor.”
He rolled his eyes, stalking over to her. “I left them precisely how they were given to me. Stuffy, frilly, and utterly useless.”
“Only a Fae brute would find luxury to be that way.”
She let him back her up against the tree, let him brace his hands on either side of her head. “If I weren’t banished from Doranelle for the rest of eternity, I’d invite you to come play house. And I’d give you two days before you were bored out of your mind and grousing to me about it.”
“I happen to love playing house. Nesting is an art form for me.” Her lips twitched.
“Don’t you dare turn that into some joke about birds.”
She clenched her jaw shut, even as her lips shook.
Rowan flicked her nose.
She batted away his hand, laughing under her breath. “Our friends are being suspiciously quiet.”
“I bet they decided to go for a walk in the opposite direction.” He leaned in until his breath warmed her mouth.
“We should get those supplies from the town.” It was a halfhearted offer at best.
Rowan’s lips brushed her own as he murmured, “It can wait a minute or two.”
His first kiss was barely more than a caress. Followed by another, soft and slow, against the corner of her mouth. Then the other.
“Ten minutes,” she murmured, settling against the tree behind her. “Let’s give them ten minutes.”
“Twenty,” was his only response as she lifted her chin so he could have better access to her mouth, letting him place those featherlight kisses over and over.
“Do you remember that day in Mistward,” Aelin breathed, “when I finally mastered shifting, and we raced through the forest?”
Rowan paused his nuzzling long enough to nod.
He leaned in again to kiss her, but she put a finger on his lips. He met her stare, his eyes dark and simmering.
“You looked at me while we were running through the trees, and smiled.” She swallowed. “And you looked… you looked so alive, so wild and alive, and…” She traced the contours of his mouth. “I think that was the moment when I began to want you. I didn’t know it at the time, but… I think it was then. You were real and wicked and as savage as I was, and when you saw my speed and the Fae heritage and you didn’t balk…when you only smiled at me. No one had ever done that before. You saw all of me, yet you still smiled.”
Rowan brushed her unbound hair out of her face. “I think we both tried for a damn long time to convince ourselves of our… neutrality.” He kissed one of her cheekbones, then the other. “I find I prefer this much more.”
Her toes curled inside her boots. “Likewise, Prince,” she said onto his mouth, hauling him against her, savoring every hard inch and ripple of muscle. “Likewise.”
***
In the end, Rowan and Aelin were gone for thirty minutes.
Long enough for Aedion and Lysandra to have sorted out that they were all going to the village. One person getting that many supplies might draw attention, both from spies and would-be thieves, and after so long in the wild, Aelin was craving at least some semblance of civilization. How Rowan had wandered the wilds for ten years..
Aelin didn’t like to think about it. Him alone for that long, or the grief and guilt and rage that had thrown him so far into that abyss.
That even when he’d returned to civilization a decade later, he hadn’t really… lived. Yes, he’d gone off to war, gone on a thousand adventures, but… Aelin kept close to Rowan as they made their way into the little village, hooded and cloaked.
Lysandra was indeed wearing the form of a burly, plain man-to be their negotiator while they got what they needed. Evangeline was his daughter, Aelin her nursemaid, and the two males their hired guard. Their cover was simple: they were a small party trekking north to visit long-lost kin now that Adarlan’s armies were at last leaving.
With midday edging toward afternoon, many of the village denizens had finished their lunch and returned to the fields to tend the harvest now abundant in the dark soil. The perfect time to come; the main, dirt street was nearly empty. Save for the center of town, where the murmur of quiet talking whispered out, along with the splash of water and flap of wet laundry. Some sort of fountain, no doubt.
They reached the outfitter Lysandra had scouted, the shifter making a stellar show of lumbering up the stairs of the small stone building, then ordering them to wait outside.
Aedion’s quiet huff of laughter at the performance earned him a sharp warning look from Evangeline. Aelin dipped her head, ever the demure nursemaid, to hide her grin as Aedion murmured his apologies to the girl.
They led the horses to the stone trough at the edge of the building, and Aelin casually glanced at the quiet village around them.
One main street flanked by a lone tavern, a clothier that had somehow missed out on the fashions of the last five years, and a blacksmith. All were interspersed with what looked to be one- or two-room cottages. No roads led to the houses beyond the street-only grass and rocks seemed to mark the way.
“Did you ever come here before?” Aelin asked Aedion from the shadows of her hood, stroking her mare’s neck as the horse drank deep.
“No - I don’t even know what here is,” Aedion muttered, glancing over a shoulder. A few villagers eyed them as they hurried from the lichen-choked, gray stone fountain at the heart of town, mostly women with the day’s laundry in their baskets, off to hang them out at home.
“There are some abandoned houses,” she observed. “This close to Adarlan’s border, do you think-“
“I think it’s best if we don’t talk about it here,” Aedion cut in. Aelin straightened. Her cousin added a bit more softly, a hand drifting to the Sword of Orynth hidden beneath the folds of his cloak, “Adarlan plundered — people sometimes fought back. People sometimes vanished. Or left entirely. I doubt any of the explanations are pleasant ones.”
And these were her people. This village was hers.
Her hood turned a bit stifling, but Aelin ran a hand through the mare’s mane. Rowan, his horse drinking greedily across from her own, asked, “Are there many villages like this?”
“These days?” Aedion’s hand lingered on the bone pommel of his sword. “The small ones like this, not connected to any of the main roads, survived with minimal damage. But the villages close to the roads-to the marching armies many are just bits of rubble. Adarlan took and took, and when they were done, they burned it all.”
Her throat tightened.
“We tried to help,” Aedion added. “But… we were usually too far away, or too late.”
Aelin snapped her head toward him. “You…” The words dried up. “Gods above, Aedion, no one blames for it.”
“If anything…” She shook her head.
Her cousin patted his bay gelding’s neck. “We couldn’t do much, anyway. Not without crossing a dangerous line with Adarlan. We tried to get the magic-wielders into hiding. But Adarlan always found them.”
A shudder went down Aelin’s spine. The King of Adarlan, in his twisted way, had tried to save them-had cut off magic so that the Valg, when they came, could not seek them out as prime vessels. And when that had not worked, he’d executed any with magic simmering in their veins. And those who tried to protect them.
“What about the Fae?” Rowan asked quietly.
Aedion’s turquoise eyes flickered in the shadows of his hood. “Adarlan had hunters-how and where they were trained, I don’t know. But they found the few Fae here. The ones that didn’t flee over the mountains, at least.”
Rowan didn’t respond.
It cracked her heart a bit when Aedion added, “I’m sorry.”
“As Aelin said,” Rowan replied, “it was not your fault. Or your burden to bear.”
Aelin might have echoed the sentiment had she not heard it — the sound that crackled through the town.
Laughter-children laughing.
And she had not heard it – had not expected it here of all places-in so long that she turned from her horse to seek the source.
There were five of them, the eldest no more than eleven and the youn- gest perhaps six, all bobbing and scrambling around the town fountain. Shrieking with delight as they were chased by-
Aelin left the mare behind, head angled as she walked toward the fountain.
Butterflies of water-pure water-flitted and chased after the children, emerging from the fountain and sparkling in the midday sun.
Adults had stopped their washing and chatting to watch, the children wholly unaware of their audience. Delight cast their faces near-glowing, their shrieking laughter and sprinting steps the only sounds amid the bur bling fountain.
And in the heart of their merry storm… a dirty-faced girl around eight wriggled her fingers, eyes scrunched in concentration, as her creatures fluttered to life from the fountain.
“Powerful,” Rowan murmured, appearing at Aelin’s side with that preternatural silence. “She’ll grow into a powerful wielder if she can already muster this much control, likely without training.”
Indeed, Aelin could barely summon more than a ribbon of water, let alone actual animated creatures. She noted the faces of the adults-at the same moment they realized strangers were in their midst.
Wary amusement shifted into something hard and cold. Aelin met the eyes of an older woman near the fountain-the others seeming to look to her for guidance. Their leader-or some person of authority. The woman’s tan, lined face hardened. Aelin only inclined her head, offering a small smile to the gathered women.
A hissed word from another washer had the girl halting. The other children picked up on the ripple of quiet — and went still.
Aelin held out a palm toward them. Toward the girl now ducking behind the skirts of the washer who had shushed her.
With the blazing midday sun, Aelin’s fire raged and roared in her veins, and she willed it to cool, to settle. Sweat beaded on her brow, but she held steady as a droplet of water formed in the air above her palm.
The girl let out a gasp that echoed through the silent square.
Aelin smiled a bit more, letting the water grow into the size of an apple, then setting it spinning.
The adults murmured, glancing at one another — and at that woman who had met Aelin’s stare. Already, the magic was quaking a bit, the smooth orb rippling and sagging in spots.
They all watched as a small water-butterfly flapped out of the fountain and alit atop Aelin’s sphere, its wings flexing.
A laugh of joy lodged in Aelin’s throat as she surveyed the fine details up close. The girl wasn’t just strong. She was creative. She’d used different currents to shape patterns into the wings, the entire butterfly in constant motion within its form.
Aelin kept perfectly still, concentrating so hard on keeping that sphere intact that she barely registered the scuffle between the girl and her guardian. From the corner of her eye, she noted the girl approaching, the other children peering around their keepers’ skirts, but she didn’t dare break her focus until the girl was before her and whispered, “You’re like me?”
The accent — the Terrasen accent, the lilt to the words…
She had not spoken to one of her people, in her own land, in… a very long time.
She wondered if the girl noticed that the sphere splashed to the earth not entirely for show. The water-butterfly, however, took off, flapping around them as if it were drunk on nectar.
Aelin met the girl’s brown-eyed gaze and said, “Not as talented, but yes.”
And the sound of her accent, the mix of Terrasen and Adarlan… The girl’s chin lifted. Mistrust-a bit of fear. But courage. A great well of courage – The girl did not back down.
“We were playing,” the girl said, as if they needed defending. As if… The empty homes, the wary faces, flashed before Aelin’s eyes.
“I saw,” Aelin said gently. Calmly. “You are very skilled.”
A one-shouldered shrug.
“How old are you?”
“Nine.”
“A good age.” Small, for nine. Perhaps years of poverty had taken their toll. Aelin’s stomach tightened.
“How old are you?”
One of the women choked behind them.
Aelin huffed a laugh. “Nineteen.”
“A good age,” the girl said, nodding sagely. Aelin laughed again.
Behind them, Aelin sensed Rowan and Aedion monitoring — but it wasn’t the males that drew the girl’s attention. “What happened to her face?”
Aelin knew who she meant, but she still looked over her shoulder to Evangeline, who stood between Aedion and Rowan, each warrior with a hand on her shoulder.
In the bright sun, the girl’s scars were stark — brutal.
“Bad people tried to hurt her,” Aelin said.
“Mama says that with my magic, I could be a great healer.”
“You indeed could,” Aelin replied, flicking her attention over to where the woman now monitored them with a stone face.
“I could heal her scars one day, maybe.”
Aelin considered. “That is very generous of you. I suppose it would be up to my friend, though-whether she wishes to remove them.” With magic-based healing, it’d still be a brutal process, but… perhaps it was possible.
“I could fix yours, too.”
Clever-eyed little thing.
“You could do that, and a great many more things,” Aelin said. She went on a bit louder, just so the adults could hear, “You could ensure your fields and farms get proper water. You could keep the fountain’s well safe. And yes, you could learn to heal and tend to the sick and injured.”
“Where?” said a low female voice.
Aelin looked to the older woman seated on the cracked fountain lip — the town’s matron.
“Where does she learn such things?” the woman pushed.
Aelin paused. She didn’t know. Had no idea.
“They burned the magic academy,” the woman said. “There’s no place left to learn.”
“I know,” Aelin said.
“Then don’t put dreams in her head,” the woman snapped.
Aelin’s cheeks heated. But Aedion said behind her, still hidden beneath his hood, “Terrasen will be rebuilt. Give it a few years, and there will be a place.”
“If war doesn’t destroy us,” the woman said, jerking her chin to the others to resume their washing. “Best be on the road soon if you want to make it to the next town by dark.”
A curt, if not polite, dismissal.
Aelin didn’t blame them. She looked down at the girl before her, looked into those large brown eyes. And she whispered so no one could hear, not the women washing or the Fae males monitoring, “If war comes, if we survive, wait a year after it ends. Then come to Orynth, and find Celaena Sardothien. Go to the castle and tell them you’re looking for her, and have come at last for magic lessons.”
“Phedre,” the older woman barked. An order.
But Aelin leaned down, whispering into Phedre’s ear as she slipped a gold coin into her pocket, “Do not be afraid of what makes you shine brightly.”
Whether the girl felt or identified the sudden weight in her pocket, she didn’t let on. Phedre only nodded, eyes so bright, and scampered off. Lysandra soon finished at the outfitter’s, and they left the village immediately after, a group of women and men trailing them toward the forest to make sure they were gone for good.
But for half a mile down the grassy slopes and to the threshold of Oakwald, a water-butterfly flitted at Aelin’s shoulder.
Seated around a fire of Aelin’s own making hours later, Oakwald a tangled nest around them, they dined on fresh berries and a few fine cuts of beef that Lysandra had procured for them. A rare, indulgent treat when they could hunt for themselves, but… none of them objected.
The shifter stayed in her human form long enough to devour her share, but now lounged in ghost leopard form at Evangeline’s feet. Fleetfoot, however, sat at the girl’s side, eyes riveted to the bit of meat still in Evangeline’s fingers.
Evangeline paused eating and said to none of them in particular, “Could a healer fix me?”
“There is nothing to fix,” Aedion said a bit too quietly.
Lysandra growled her agreement, but seemed to be listening, waiting for an answer.
They all looked to Rowan, who frowned slightly. “The process would require extensive treatments, with…” He checked himself, and said carefully, “With the scars being so deep.”
Lysandra tensed. Aedion was not the only one of them who blamed himself for the past. Evangeline ran a finger down the side of her face. “What kind of treatments?”
Those citrine eyes were so large, so full of… hope. Fear, yes, but hope.
“The kind that might hurt you a great deal before the scars get better.”
“But they would go away?”
“Perhaps.”
Aedion scuffed his boot against the dirt. “You don’t need it, Evangeline. You’re perfect as you are.”
Evangeline smiled at Aedion — broadly and happily. Aelin glanced to Rowan, who looked as she did: like someone had punched him in the gut.
Lysandra was just staring at her young ward, devastation in those pale green eyes. Devastation and yet… Lysandra glanced at Aedion, who had moved to sit beside Evangeline and was showing her how to make a proper daisy chain. Aelin didn’t miss the change in Lysandra’s expression, even in ghost leopard form, as she took in the warrior.
Aelin met Rowan’s eyes again, and he leaned in to press a soft kiss to her neck. He said, so quietly none of them could hear, “You told that girl to come to Orynth, didn’t you?”
She nodded. Rowan pulled back to look at her face, to study her. The pride in his eyes made her throat tighten. “It is an honor to serve you.”
But Aelin shook her head, looking at him, at Aedion, at Evangeline, and Lysandra, watching over them all. “The honor is all mine,” she said softly.
The next morning, Evangeline’s squeal of delight was nearly loud enough to wake the dead slumbering in their hill tombs to the south.
Lysandra remained in squirrel form throughout the day, and the next one after that, and wore her acorn hat as proudly as any fine lady while she rode atop Evangeline’s shoulder.
Tower of Dawn
Tower of Dawn
Chaol & Nesryn
After two weeks aboard the Wind Cutter, Chaol Westfall still wasn’t entirely certain how Dorian and Aelin had arranged for him to stay inside the captain’s lavish suite. He wouldn’t have put it past either of them to have bribed or bullied the ship’s captain into yielding the room - but from the polite, cool distance with which the captain treated him and Nesryn, Chaol suspected that the Queen of Terrasen had made a point of visiting the ship before departing for her own kingdom.A suspicion that was only solidified by the handprint burned into the desk across the room.
Honestly, he would have preferred if they had just given him a small stateroom. Mostly for two reasons: the first, and perhaps worst, was that it only drew attention to him. To his condition. He still didn’t know what, exactly, to call the absolute numbness and lack of movement below his waist. But he could only endure it thanks to the other reason for wanting a smaller room: Nesryn.
With the larger cabin, there was really no excuse for her to stay elsewhere. And though he knew damn well that she could take care of herself, the thought of Nesryn staying belowdecks in a ship filled with sea-hardened men made him grind his teeth. So, she stayed with him. Here. In this room. In this very bed in which he was now lying, watching the reflection of sunlight on water ripple over the white-painted ceiling.
He hadn’t touched her – not during the nights they’d shared this bed. Not during the daytime hours, either. Though he certainly woke up most mornings with the merciful proof that something still worked below his waist.
Not that Nesryn showed any inclination to touch him, either.
He wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing. Whether he could stomach the sure humiliation of trying without use of his legs. Whether he could stomach reaching for her, only to have her recoil.
He knew Nesryn didn’t think less of him. She believed the injury was only temporary, and he knew that even if she had to bang on the front doors of the Torre Cesme, she’d get him help from its famed healers.
But he still noted the way she’d sometimes look at him – with that pain and pity.
He wanted to scream whenever she did. Whenever any of the sailors on this ship had the same look as they wheeled him in that infernal chair onto the deck for some fresh air. Another reason why he’d been granted the captain’s suite: it didn’t require stairs to access the deck.
He tried. Every day he tried to get just one of his toes to move. The empty silence that greeted him was more terrifying than those moments facing the king. Even the death he’d believed was coming had been less harrowing and unbearable than the utter silence of his body.
Chaol blew out a long breath, and slid his gaze to the woman sleeping beside him.
Nesryn’s dark hair spilled across the pillow, her tan face softened with sleep.
They’d been lovers over a year ago, but had never actually shared a bed until now. Hadn’t spent much longer together than the time it took to enjoy each other.
Everything with her had been out of order from the very start. They hadn’t even really become proper friends until this spring. And they certainly weren’t lovers now.
She never talked about it.
Her brow furrowed a bit in her sleep, and she nestled further into the pillow. Dawn had broken only minutes ago. They usually awoke with the sunrise to train in whatever way he could on the deck, but… she must have been exhausted if she had slept through the shifting light. He could let her sleep. Since he certainly couldn’t get into that awaiting chair without her.
Chaol rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He wished he could drift back to sleep. If Nesryn hadn’t joined him on this journey, he might very well have not bothered to get out of bed at all. Just to avoid the stares. And avoid the constant, endless reminder of all that he had taken for granted. The body he’d assumed would always serve him.
But the things he had come to depend on, the things he’d assumed would always be the same, always be right… they’d vanished too. They’d vanished the moment Nehemia Ytger had died, the moment that collar had gone around Dorian’s neck. The moment he’d seen his own men, seen Ress, hanging from the castle fence.
Chaol loosed a breath from deep in his chest.
He hadn’t told Nesryn or Dorian that he wished he’d been among them–his men.
That he wished Aelin hadn’t slipped the Eye of Elena into his pocket; that Rowan Whitethorn hadn’t spared him from the collapsing glass castle.
That even though Dorian appointed him the King’s Hand, he was still no better than an oath-breaker, a liar, a traitor.
***
The sun had become merciless the closer they’d sailed to the shores of the southern continent.
“It will only get worse,” Nesryn admitted as she panted beside him on the main deck, after Chaol had mentioned it for the second time that morning. They were both already deeply tanned from the hours spent out here – though she handled the sun better than he did. His face and bare chest and back were splattered with specks of peeling skin from various sunburns.
“And it’ll be even hotter in Antica, with summer now upon them,” she added, finishing her set of abdominal exercises. She slugged from a glass of water beside them before bracing his feet apart on the deck and pinning them down. The only way he could exercise his stomach muscles.
Chaol gritted his teeth and began his set, his body already aching from the grueling exercises they’d been working through. Peacefully – calmly. Not at all like the verbal sparring that had always accompanied sessions with Aelin.
He wondered if it made him a bastard for not knowing what he preferred.
He was on his seventh curl when Nesryn said, “You’re quiet today.”
He paused at the apex of the curl to his knees, meeting her dark stare. Wariness flickered in those night-black eyes, in that lovely, solemn face. He’d noticed the way the sailors looked at her. Especially now that she was in civilian clothing. Especially when her sweating made her white shirt cling with little to be imagined.
Chaol tried not to look at said white shirt as he renewed his repetitions.
“It’s the heat.”
“So you’ve said.”
Challenge, sleek and cool, lurked beneath those words. He ignored it.
What could he really say that wasn’t obvious? She was bracing his gods - damned legs. And she had to help him to just use the privy.
Chaol coiled upward again, a trickle of sweat sliding down his back, tickling, tickling – then nothing. It passed whatever demarcation line and vanished.
He did another curl, then another.
His friends were likely readying for conflict with Morath, and he could barely exercise without assistance. And if those healers failed, if he could not walk again…
“That’s enough,” Nesryn said quietly. “You’ve done double.”
Chaol obeyed, lying flat on his back, a boiling heat in his face, his bare chest.
A flopping fish in the sun–
He would beat this; he would fight this.
Even if the thought of Nesryn and whatever waiting sailor helping him into that chair right now made him want to roll off the deck and into the sea.
His stomach burned, his arms ached – but he jerked his chin at her. “Next round.”
“It’s too hot. You’ll get heat sickness.”
“I’m not an invalid.”
“No, but you also aren’t immune to the dangers of the sun, so we’re done.”
He sat up, holding her stare as he growled, “Next. Round.”
They were close enough to share breath, and her own stirred against his mouth as Nesryn said calmly, “No.” And stood from where she’d been bracing his feet.
Without her weight, his legs slid out – and only the clenching of his stomach muscles and splaying of his hands on the deck saved him from falling flat on his back. His face heated, hotter than the midmorning sun, and he refused to see which sailors had observed it.
She strode the few steps to the wheeled chair, and every groan and rattle as she rolled it to him was like talons scraping down his temper. But he let her and the waiting sailor hoist him into it. And he did not speak, or look at anything but the door ahead, as Nesryn pushed him back to their room.
He didn’t speak for a while after that, either.
As a passenger – and as an incapacitated one at that – there was little to do during the day. Other than plan for their inevitable meetings in Antica, and when that grew tiresome, read the trunk of books Dorian had sent along with them.
Seated at the large captain’s desk in the suite, Chaol went over the list of names both Dorian and Nesryn had supplied. “The emperor,” he said to Nesryn as the afternoon sun sank toward the horizon, “has enough advisors and councilmen to make up a whole army.”
“He rules a continent,” Nesryn said mildly from the chaise lounge by the salt-stained windows, where she read one of Dorian’s books.
“He needs an army of people to manage it. And he goes by khagan, not emperor.” Chaol frowned at the sheets of information.
The god-city was the heart of that empire, the khagan’s mighty hold for three hundred years. The continent itself stretched from the arid northern continent, which Antica occupied, to the vast grassland steppes and deserts in the east, where the khagan’s bloodline had once reigned as nomadic warlords before turning conquerors, to the lush rice paddies and jungles in the west, to the towering mountains stretching to an icy sea in the south. The khaganate had taken it all – and built several cities throughout, key centers for trade and learning and invention. Magic wasn’t as rife as it was in their own land – though their healers had been extraordinarily gifted.
Chaol supposed that for a conquering people, having an abundance of healers had likely assisted in their rise. And would hopefully assist in his own healing.
But the other thing, the greater thing, he needed… “He has six children,” Chaol said to Nesryn. “Who commands the northern armies?” The one that would be closest to the Narrow Sea – to come to Adarlan’s aid.
“The second-eldest son. Sartaq. The one likely to take the crown.”
Succession in the khaganate was not determined by birth or gender. No - it was determined by whom the emperor deemed strongest. Perhaps another reason why the dynasty had lasted. Lesser heirs were discarded, better ones raised up. The last khagan had been female – a mighty empress who had made slavery illegal, paid good money to bring in artists of all kinds to enrich her cities, and opened trade routes with previous enemies, filling her empire’s coffers to the point of overflowing. She had picked her fifth-born child – the current khagan — to take her throne, only days before she had died at the ripe old age of ninety-six. Already wed with children of his own, the khagan had ensured his reign by killing the siblings who had coveted that throne. Immediately. Along with any of their offspring.
Only three others survived his assassins – one of them fleeing into exile, and the other two swearing fealty. They started by having the healers of the Torre Cesme render them infertile.
No threats to the bloodline.
The khagans knew that most empires were not destroyed from outside forces alone – but from weaknesses within. A vast royal bloodline offered too many contenders for the throne, too many chances for divisive factions. Chaol wondered what it had been like to grow up in that household – to be a potential khagan heir and know your siblings might one day kill you.
Though Chaol supposed it wouldn’t be too different from his own upbringing.
His attention drifted to the large map painted on the wall. To Anielle.
Had his father heard of his injuries? Had his mother?
Anielle was so close to Morath. Too close. He prayed his father would get his mother out–get his brother, Terrin, out, too – before it was too late. The thought of either in Morath’s claws…
“We have nothing to offer the khagan,” Chaol said quietly.
Nesryn set the book on her lap.
Chaol continued when she remained silent, “We already trade with them, already have agreed not to bother them if they don’t bother us… There’s no incentive to join this war, to send an army capable of hammering Morath.”
“I’d think the threat of Morath turning its eye on them would be enough incentive,” Nesryn said, also studying the large map.
“Their empire is larger. Morath might seem inconsequential.”
“Not with those rings and collars – not if they have an aerial legion of witches that can sack cities.”
Chaol’s stomach twisted. “The khagan might find it more profitable to ally with Morath.”
“He would never,” Nesryn said tightly. “We do not bow to foreign rulers, and surely that’s what the asking price of allying with Morath would be. But the khagan will still need to be convinced of the threat – his children will need to be convinced of the threat.”
Chaol tapped a finger on the desk. “And what of the threat our friends pose?”
A dark eyebrow lifted.
“Dorian has magic–but Aelin… How do I explain Aelin Galathynius?”
“She gave you leave to bargain on her behalf. I assume that means you are free to explain her however it will benefit us.”
“An assassin turned queen who can shatter castles and kill kings as she wishes?”
Nesryn studied the cover of her book. “The khagan employs many spies. They might already know the assassin part – and her involvement with you.”
“Do you think that would hurt our cause?”
“We are free to love who we will in the southern continent,” she said. “Many do not bother with vows of marriage. But Aelin Galathynius shared a bed with Dorian Havilliard, and with you, and now with Prince Rowan. They might have… questions.”
“She didn’t share a bed with Dorian. Not–like that.”
“It was a romantic entanglement regardless.”
He clenched his jaw.
She opened up her book again with a feigned casualness. “Do you… do you still hold hope for her?”
“No,” he said, his voice flat and hollow. “She changed her mind; she changed–as a person. And even if she had wanted to be with me, I would not have left Dorian, and she would have gone to Terrasen, and it would never have worked. And perhaps we would have been a bit shattered by it, but whether in a year, or ten… Rowan would have been there. Waiting for her, all that time.”
“That’s a rather romantic view of it.” But her gaze rose to his face – to the scar along his cheek, courtesy of Aelin.
“She’s allowed to fall in and out of love as she chooses.”
“And have you fallen out of love with her?”
“This spring and summer was a maelstrom,” he said tightly, glancing at the burned handprint peeking from beneath a stack of papers across the desk. “Between Dorian, and all that happened… Everything fell apart. If the price of getting Dorian back was losing her, then so be it.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m here with you, aren’t I?
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you want to be.”
Instinct had him pushing off the desk – to stand. And his rage as his body refused to move, as his legs didn’t respond—
”Am I supposed to lie in bed and weep over it? That I was not the man she wanted? Am I supposed to mourn the fact that the dreams I had, the plans I made, were all for a woman who did not exist? Loving an assassin with no responsibilities is completely different from loving a queen with a kingdom and a world to look after. Would I have loved her if I had known from the start what she is?” He shook his head. “If I had met her now… my first instinct would have been to protect Dorian from her. I expect the khagan to feel the same.”
His words sank in, one by one. He added more calmly, running a hand over his face, “That’s the difference. Celaena was a fraction of Aelin– both good and bad. But Aelin… She is Celaena, and she is queen, and she is the Fire-Bringer. I fell in love with a facet, and I panicked when I realized it was a fraction of the whole–when I saw that power, that heritage, and… It was not a part of my plans.”
He looked to the sea gleaming behind her, the wind whipping the waves. “Rowan Whitethorn saw everything. From the moment he met her, he saw all of Aelin. And he was not afraid. I don’t blame either of them for falling in love. I don’t blame her.” He loosed a shuddering breath. “I was what Celaena needed after Endovier. But Rowan is who Aelin needs – forever.”
“And what about what you need?” Nesryn angled her head, that dark hair sliding along her neck and jaw.
“I have never been in a position to demand the things I need. This trip… is the first.”
She stalked to him with feline quiet, taking up a perch on the edge of the desk before him. She stared at him for a long moment, the lap of the waves and groaning of the wood the only sound.
He didn’t move as Nesryn reached out a slender hand and brushed the hair back from his brow. “You give and give and give,” she murmured. “When will it be enough?”
“It is my honor to serve.”
“I don’t mean in that way. When have you ever been selfish?”
“Stop trying to make me out to be something I’m not.”
She lowered her hand from his hair, the corner of her mouth tugging upward. “And what is that? A good man?”
“People died because of me.”
“They have also died at my hand, and Aelin’s, and a great many others! And this is war. A great many will die from your choices, or your hand, as well.”
“Not if I can’t walk.”
“You will walk again.”
He met those dark eyes. Unfaltering will glimmered in them.
“You will walk again,” Nesryn repeated. “And you will remember that you are a good man regardless, a brave and selfless man. You will remember that you may not have magic, but there is mighty power in the strength of ordinary people. You will remember that…” Her chest heaved and she steadied herself with a long breath. “You will remember, Chaol,” she said, “that the world needs men like you. In war, and after it. Especially after it.”
“And what of you?”
“What about me?”
His heart thundered as he traced a finger over the back of her hand, her knuckles white as she gripped the edge of the desk. “Where will you fit in with this?”
“I will go where I am needed most.”
“And if that is at my side?”
“Then that is where I shall be.” Her dark eyes flickered. “But I hold you to no promises, Chaol. I expect nothing.”
“Why?”
“Because I know who I am – what I am. You turned to me last summer, after Lithaen left you for Lord Roland. You turned to me again this spring, after Aelin. I am not the first choice. But for now, it suits my own interests to be here. I enjoy your company – enjoy you.”
He wasn’t sure how the conversation had shifted toward this. “You – you aren’t some sort of consolation prize.”
She let out a low laugh and leaned in to kiss the top of his head. “Would you have picked me if Aelin had come running back to you? Would you have noticed my existence?”
She pulled back when he didn’t answer, a self-effacing smile on her mouth.
She made to walk away, but he gripped her arm.
Yanked, actually, as he pulled her toward him and claimed her mouth.
Nesryn stilled, but didn’t retreat. So he gentled his kiss, loosening his grip on her arm, sliding his other hand around her neck to rest against her nape. Holding her to him as he kissed the corner of her mouth, the bow of her lips. Coaxing kisses, exploring the shape of her, until he nipped at her bottom lip.
Nesryn made a small sound and at last opened for him. The heat of her mouth, the slide of her tongue as it met his own…
Warmth and steel and silk–that’s what being with her was always like. Like pulling back a silken curtain to find a roaring storm beneath.
Finding he had no power to resist losing himself in it.
He tilted her head slightly to more thoroughly claim her, the hand gripping her arm sliding to rest on her hip.
She needed no encouragement. Her hands ran over his shoulders, digging in to muscle, as she straddled him. Slender–her body was so slender when he touched her like this. He forgot so easily how much smaller she was than him, how delicately built.
His hands roved over her ribs, her back, and he growled into her mouth as she ground against him. Yes, that part of him certainly worked.
Calculating, cool Nesryn – she was like molten steel in his arms as he devoured her mouth, then ripped his lips away to taste her neck, taste her skin. Salt and sun and smoke–
He slid a hand up her side, then palmed her full breast. Her hand landed atop his, guiding him to squeeze harder, to roll her breast in his palm as he licked up the column of her throat.
The noise that came out of her, deep and breathless, made him see red. Had his damned legs worked, he would have surged out of the chair and splayed her out on that desk.
But they didn’t work.
And even being here in this chair… even if they got to the bed…
How could he taste her everywhere he wished without needing her help?
She felt him pause. Felt the insidious thoughts grip him.
Nesryn gripped his face, her breathing ragged. “It is temporary, and we will fight it together.” She leaned in, nipping at his neck, his ear. “I can do everything.”
His back stiffened. “I don’t want you to do everything.”
But her fingers drifted toward the buttons of his pants. “I want to.”
For a heartbeat, he flashed between this chair and a broom closet in the glass castle. Where it had been so easy – so stupidly easy – to hoist Aelin against the wall and take her. Where he’d laughed as he did it. His stomach turned, nausea rippling through him as he glanced at that burned handprint across the desk.
Nesryn slipped her hand beneath the waist of his pants. He caught her wrist and squeezed lightly. “Stop.”
She obeyed. But by the time her hand was free, her face had gone still and solemn. She remained straddling him, but–
“Not like this,” he told her. “I don’t want it to be like this.”
He couldn’t read her face as she asked softly, “You can – feel it, can’t you?”
“Gods, yes.” He was aching so fiercely he thought he’d combust. “That part still works.”
“We can move to the bed.”
“No.”
Again, no ripple of emotion on that beautiful face. As if she’d blown out the candle that contained all of them.
Slowly, she stood, setting her shirt to rights. “It’s nearly dinner. I’ll go fetch the food.”
“Nesryn.”
But she was already walking toward the double door, her back a bit stiffer than usual.
He opened his mouth to say something, but the words failed him. How could he even explain? That it was humiliating? That he didn’t want to lie there like some invalid while she rode him? That being passive, being required to ask for things…
He hated words, had always preferred action. And this…
He still had nothing to say as she shut the door behind herself.
They barely spoke during dinner, and afterward.
And when she helped him into bed, then crawled in herself… she stayed as far away as possible. Her arms wrapped around herself. He knew she wasn’t asleep–knew her breathing was too shallow, too quiet.
“It has nothing to do with you,” he said hoarsely. “If I could, I’d have… I’d have taken you every which way by now. But I can’t, and I don’t want to settle for some reduced version–“
“You don’t know it’d be like that.”
Her first words to him in hours.
“You didn’t even try to find out,” she went on, her back still to him.
He sighed sharply through his nose.
And the sound must have kindled her temper, because she finally turned over. “You can’t stop fighting. You can’t stop living. Or you will never survive what’s ahead.”
“Says the woman who barely smiles and laughs.”
“Do not mistake my reserve for lack of feeling. Do not think that because I don’t flash my emotions around it means that I do not have them. That I do not have hopes and fears and desires. I have had to learn to be calm, to be quiet and aloof–because growing up in a city where most people were predisposed to dislike me for my heritage, I had to be those things. And now that we are headed into war, I find that those things are gifts. But I do not shut out the world. I do not shut out life. And I think you were doing that for a long, long time before your spine was broken. Before even Aelin came along.”
He opened his mouth. But Nesryn had already turned back over.
He mulled over her words, his face uncomfortably hot. She was right. Of course, she was right.
He tried to move his toes. Tried to do anything below the waist.
Only silence.
Three days. Three days until they reached the harbor of Antica.
He didn’t rouse her to voice his conclusions an hour later. Instead, he again watched her sleeping, that lovely face gentle in slumber.
It was stupid to say, anyway. It would not be what she wanted to hear.
That even though she had a point about living… this war might very well end with them all dead, anyway. And he would fight like hell to keep Dorian from that fate, to save Adarlan, but… he didn’t really see the point in bothering to fall in love with the world. Not when it could be taken from him. Not with so many dangers waiting to rip them apart.
Sleep eventually claimed him.
Even with the words between them, when he awoke at dawn, Nesryn was nestled against him, her hand curled against his bare chest. Right over his heart – as if she held it gently in her palm.
Chaol laid his hand over hers, listening to her steady, unfaltering breathing.
He would fight – but… he wasn’t quite sure how to even begin this business of living.
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