The Assassin and the Empire (Throne of Glass, #0.5)

by Sarah J. Maas

She ran a finger down the groove of his spine. She didn’t want to see another scar added to his flesh. She didn’t want this life for him. He was better than that. Deserved better.

Arobynn Hamel was sitting on the couch. “Hello, darling,” he said, and smiled.

bleh

“No matter what I have done, I really do love you, Celaena.”

Ewww nooo

Arobynn’s neck shifted as he swallowed. “I do the things that I do because I’m scared … and because I don’t know how to express what I feel.” He said it so quietly that she barely heard it. “I did all of those things because I was angry with you for picking Sam.”

Oh right. Well in that case it's all good 🥰

After a long moment, he spoke. “The only secret I’ve borne my entire life is that I love you.” He gave her a slight smile. “It was the one thing I believed I’d go to the grave without voicing.” His eyes were so full of light that their loveliness almost stopped her heart.

“You want to hear something ridiculous? Whenever I’m scared out of my wits, I tell myself: My name is Sam Cortland … and I will not be afraid. I’ve been doing it for years.”

No 😭

She didn’t want to go out into a world where he didn’t exist. So she watched the light shift and change, and let the world pass by without her.

After she had killed them, perhaps she’d tear the house down stone by stone. Perhaps she’d tear this entire city down, too. She smiled. She liked the sound of that.

“You would have been delightful to break,” he told her,

Now that Sam was dead, there wasn’t anything left outside of the dungeons worth fighting for, anyway. Not when Adarlan’s Assassin was crumbling apart, and her world with her. The girl who’d taken on a Pirate Lord and his entire island, the girl who’d stolen Asterion horses and raced along the beach in the Red Desert, the girl who’d sat on her own rooftop, watching the sun rise over the Avery, the girl who’d felt alive with possibility … that girl was gone. There wasn’t anything left. And Arobynn wasn’t coming. She’d failed.

A hanging or a beheading. Her throat closed up. There was no point in fighting, not now. She deserved this. For more reasons than she could count.

“Why did you do it?” Arobynn’s attention drifted back to the wagon, already a small dot in the rolling foothills above Rifthold. “Because I don’t like sharing my belongings,” was his only response.

Nuh uhh

I will not be afraid. Celaena Sardothien lifted her chin and walked into the Salt Mines of Endovier.