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When she awoke every morning, she repeated the same words: I will not be afraid. For a year, those words had meant the difference between breaking and bending; they had kept her from shattering in the darkness of the mines.
The only thing all the intended disorientation had accomplished was to familiarize her with the building. Idiots.
But they were now only stories and nothing more.
She wasn’t fated for anything. Not anymore.
Still, the image haunted his dreams throughout the night: a lovely girl gazing at the stars, and the stars who gazed back.
“I don’t know how you can sleep at night with only a wall of glass keeping you from death.”
What a ridiculous idea: a castle made of glass.
other up.
A dead, empty space opened inside her.
Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.
And we claim men cannot think with their brains! At least men are direct about it.”
“You can fight your own battles.”
She knew better than anyone not to underestimate opponents based on their appearance.
“But you’re going to outlast them,” Chaol continued. “And when they wake up on the morning of the final duel and find that you are their opponent, and that you have beaten them, the look on their faces will make all of the insults and lack of attention worthwhile.”
There was something great and deadly concealed within her, and he didn’t like it. He’d be ready—when the time came, he’d be waiting. He just wondered which one of them would survive.
In the silence that followed in his wake, she contemplated his story, the paths that had made them so different, but so similar.
It was the kind of belt intended to bear the weight of multiple weapons. Its lightness now only reminded her of what she’d lost—and what she had to gain.
But though she hadn’t lost by any means, Celaena couldn’t stand—absolutely could not stand—the feeling that she hadn’t really won anything at all.
Sven had wanted to prove a point, she understood, and understood only because of that day she had come within a fingertip of touching the wall at Endovier.
Adarlan could take their freedom, it could destroy their lives and beat and break and whip them, it could force them into ridiculous contests, but, criminal or not, they were still human. Dying—rather than playing in the king’s game—was the only choice left to him.
He didn’t feel older, nor did he feel any wiser, but rather he felt … He felt … He felt as if there were something inside him that didn’t fit in with their merriment, with their willing ignorance of the world outside the castle. It went beyond his title. He had enjoyed their company early in his adolescence, but it had become apparent that he’d always be a step away.
Apparently, a woman can only go so long without a sword between her hands.” She bit her lip.
Why would I kill the one person in this castle who isn’t a babbling idiot?”
He was charming, she supposed. In an arrogant sort of way.
I hate being told what I can’t do.
No, she was tired of being a minor lady, waiting to be married off to the highest bidder, tired of petty politics and easily manipulated fools.
oh, she’d loved to play, loved music, the way music could break and heal and make everything seem possible and heroic.
Things had been such a haze when she’d been captured—in two weeks, she’d lost Sam and her own freedom, and lost something of herself in those blurry days, too.
But Sam, like her, had been betrayed—and sometimes the absence of him hit her so hard that she forgot how to breathe.
She forgot about time as she drifted between pieces, voicing the unspeakable, opening old wounds, playing and playing as the sound forgave and saved her.
He wouldn’t mind listening forever.
He had come here with the intention of embarrassing a snide assassin, and had instead found a young woman pouring her secrets into a pianoforte.
“Well,” he said, trying not to get lost in her strange, lovely eyes, “I don’t think anyone who plays like that can be just a criminal. It seems like you have a soul,” he teased.
“Well, who wants to be hated? Though I’d rather be hated than invisible. But it makes no difference.”
“No. I can survive well enough on my own—if given proper reading material.”
“I’m not some odd commodity that you can gawk at!” She stepped closer. “I’m not some carnival exhibit, and you won’t use me as part of some unfulfilled desire for adventure and excitement! Which is undoubtedly why you chose me to be your Champion.”
There was nothing worse than second place.
While she might be used to darkness, she wasn’t foolish enough to trust it.
“Courage of the heart is very rare,” she said with sudden calm. “Let it guide you.”
On and on, as if she had something burning inside of her that she couldn’t quite get out.
“I think if she doesn’t get too riled and keeps a cool head when they duel, she might. But she’s … wild. And unpredictable. She needs to learn to control her feelings—especially that impossible anger.”
He knew jealousy when he saw it, and while Dorian was clever, he was just as bad as Celaena at hiding his emotions.
She’d master this ridiculous game or she’d turn the table into firewood.
“You’re immensely entertaining when you’re hopping mad.”
But he couldn’t imagine that she was pretending. Didn’t want to imagine that she was pretending.
She had often wished for adventure, for old spells and wicked kings. But she hadn’t realized it would be like this—a fight for her freedom. And she’d always imagined that there’d be someone to help her—a loyal friend or a one-armed soldier or something. She hadn’t imagined she would be so … alone.
The door in her mind that she kept locked at all times had been cracked open by the question, and now she tried frantically to close it. Seeing his face, seeing him so near to her … The door shut and she turned the key.
“I like music,” she said slowly, “because when I hear it, I … I lose myself within myself, if that makes sense. I become empty and full all at once, and I can feel the whole earth roiling around me. When I play, I’m not … for once, I’m not destroying. I’m creating.”
“I used to want to be a healer. Back when I was … Back before this became my profession, when I was almost too young to remember, I wanted to be a healer.” She shrugged. “Music reminds me of that feeling.”
“I’m not married,” he said softly, “because I can’t stomach the idea of marrying a woman inferior to me in mind and spirit. It would mean the death of my soul.”
