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She’d chosen to leave Arobynn. She’d paid off her debt to him, and Sam’s debt to him, and had moved out. She’d walked away from her life as Arobynn Hamel’s protégée. That had been her decision—and one she didn’t regret, not after Arobynn had so sorely betrayed her. He’d humiliated and lied to her, and used her blood money to win Lysandra’s Bidding just to spite her.
a place in Rifthold where the scum of the capital could always be found, it was the Vaults.
There was only one rule in the Vaults: no weapons, just fists.
The Assassin’s Guild would punish us for leaving the Guild and beginning our own establishment elsewhere without Arobynn’s approval.”
While they’d paid their debts to Arobynn, they were still members of the Guild, and still obligated to pay them dues every year. Every assassin in the Guild answered to Arobynn. Obeyed him. Celaena and Sam had both been dispatched more than once to hunt down Guild members who had gone rogue, refused to pay their dues, or broken some sacred Guild rule. Those assassins had tried to hide, but it had only been a matter of time before they’d been found. And the consequences hadn’t been pleasant.
If we leave Rifthold on bad terms, we’ll never be able to settle anywhere—not if we want to keep our current occupation. And even if we decided to find honest professions instead, I’d always wonder if he or the Guild would show up one day and demand that money. So if I have to give him every last copper in my bank account to ensure that I can sleep in peace for the rest of my life, so be it.”
In some ways, Sam was right. But she’d dragged him into this mess—she’d been the one who had started things in Skull’s Bay. Though he claimed to have been in love with her for years, if she’d only kept her distance these past few months, he wouldn’t be in this situation. Perhaps, if she’d been smart, she would have just broken his heart and let him remain with Arobynn. Having him hate her was easier than this. She was … responsible for him now. And that was terrifying. She cared for him more than she’d ever cared for anyone. Now that she’d ruined the career he’d worked for his whole life,
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inside that shining building, decisions were made daily that altered the course of Erilea. Inside that building, it had been decreed that magic was outlawed, and that labor camps like Calaculla and Endovier were to be established.
When he’d marched into Terrasen nine years ago, his invasion had been swift and brutal
“Ioan Jayne.” The biggest Crime Lord in Rifthold.
Farran … That man is a psychopath. He’s a sadist
Farran had been born and abandoned in the streets of Rifthold. He’d begun working for Jayne as one of his orphan-spies, and over the years had worked his way up the ranks of Jayne’s twisted court, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake until he was appointed Second.
Somewhere in the years he’d spent rising from orphan to Second, Farran had developed a taste for sadistic torture. It had earned him his spot at Jayne’s side—and kept his rivals from challenging him.
She’d known the stern Madame Florine since she was a child: she taught all of Arobynn’s assassins the latest popular dances. But Celaena liked to take extra lessons because of the flexibility and grace the classical dances instilled. She’d always suspected the terse instructor had barely tolerated her—but to her surprise, Madame Florine had refused to take any pay for lessons now that she’d left Arobynn.
“Tell me something, Celaena: do you trust Sam?” “What sort of a question is that?” Arobynn casually slid his hands into the pockets of his silver tunic. “Have you told him the truth about where you came from? I have a feeling that’s something he’d like to know. Perhaps before he dedicates his life to you.”
what Arobynn had done to her when he’d tricked her into killing Doneval, a man who could have freed countless slaves.
“Deep down,” she said, “I’m a coward.” His brows rose. “I’m a coward,” she repeated. “And I’m scared. I’m scared all the time. Always.”
Jayne owns the Vaults,”
“We’re not like that,” he whispered through his fingers. Celaena stared down at him, then sank onto the wooden bench. She knew exactly what he meant. The same thought had been echoing through her head as they walked here. They had been taught how to kill and maim and torture—she knew how to skin a man and keep him alive while doing it. She knew how to keep someone awake and coherent during long hours of torment—knew where to inflict the most pain without having someone bleed out. Arobynn had been so, so clever about it, too. He’d brought in the most despicable people—rapists, murderers, rogue
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“When Arobynn ordered us to do things like that, we never said no.” “We had no choice. But we do now.” Once they left Rifthold, they’d never have to make a choice like that again—they could create their own codes. Sam looked at her, his expression so haunted and bleak it made her sick. “But there was always that part. That part that did enjoy it when it was someone who truly deserved it.” “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, there was always that part. But we still had a line, Sam—we still stayed on the other side of it. Lines don’t exist for someone like Farran.”
“When we die, do you think we’ll be punished for the things we’ve done?” She looked at the far bank of the river, where a row of ramshackle houses and docks had been built. “When we die,” she said, “I don’t think the gods will even know what to do with us.” Sam glanced at her, a hint of amusement shining in his eyes.
This was some dream, or she had gone to hell after all, because she couldn’t exist in the world where this had been done to him, where she’d paced like an idiot all night while he suffered, while Farran tortured him,
She yanked out of Arobynn’s grasp. Wordlessly, she unfastened her cloak and spread it over Sam, covering the damage that had been so carefully inflicted. She climbed onto the wooden table and lay out beside him, stretching an arm across his middle, holding him close. The body still smelled faintly like Sam. And like the cheap soap she’d made him use, because she was so selfish that she couldn’t let him have her lavender soap.
Never to hear his laugh, never to hear him say her name like it meant something special, something more than being Adarlan’s Assassin could ever mean. 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.
the lock on the door had been altered since she’d left—it now locked only from the outside. He had locked her in.
Someone had betrayed her. Not Arobynn. Not when he hated Jayne and Farran so much. If she’d been betrayed, it would have been one of the wretches in the Guild—someone who would have benefited most from her death. It couldn’t be Arobynn.
Gloriella—the same poison Ansel had used on the Mute Master, somehow warped into incense. He must have caught Sam somehow, brought him back here, used the smoke on him, and … He was going to torture her, too.
“But that wasn’t part of the bargain, was it?” Words boiled up in her, but her tongue didn’t move. She couldn’t even open her mouth. “You’re dying to know what the bargain was, aren’t you? Let’s see if I remember correctly … We kill Sam Cortland,” Farran recited, “you go berserk and break in here, then you kill Jayne”—he gave a nod toward the huge body on the table—“and I take Jayne’s place.”
“Pity that I need you to take the blame for Jayne’s death. And if only handing you over to the king wouldn’t make such a nice gift.” The king. He wasn’t going to torture her, or kill her, but give her to the king as a bribe to keep royal eyes from looking Farran’s way.
Wesley. He had tried to tell her: It’s all just a— And his face hadn’t been set with irritation, but with grief—grief and rage, directed not at her, but at someone else. Had Arobynn sent Wesley to warn her? Harding, the assassin who had been talking about the window, had always had an eye on her position as Arobynn’s heir. And he’d practically spoon-fed her the details about where to break in, how to break in … It had to be him. Maybe Wesley had figured it out just as she was breaking out of the Keep.
She had been betrayed—betrayed by Harding or someone like him, someone who would benefit from her being permanently gone, with no hope of ever coming back.
No one got out of the royal dungeons, and no one got in.
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.
“The captain’s going to be furious he wasn’t here for the trial.” “Serves him right for gallivanting with the prince along the Sorian coast.”
She deserved this. For more reasons than she could count. She should never have allowed Sam convince her to let him dispatch Farran on his own. It was her fault, all of it, all set in motion the day she’d arrived in Skull’s Bay and decided to make a stand for something.
And then he began a long recitation of all those lives she’d taken. The brutal story of a girl who was now gone. Arobynn had always seen to it that the world knew of her handiwork. He always got word out through secret channels when another victim had fallen to Celaena Sardothien. And now, the very thing that had earned her the right to call herself Adarlan’s Assassin would be what sealed her doom.
He’d already destroyed so much of Erilea—destroyed parts of her without even knowing it.
Those black eyes were poised to devour the world;
those eyes still searing through every defense she’d ever learned. She could still smell the smoke that had suffocated every inch of Terrasen nine years ago, still smell the sizzling flesh and hear the futile screams as the king and his armies wiped out every last trace of resistance, every last trace of magic. No matter what Arobynn had trained her to do, the memories of those last weeks as Terrasen fell were imprinted upon her blood.
“You, Celaena Sardothien, are sentenced to nine lives’ worth of labor in the Salt Mines of Endovier.”
“You will be sent with orders to keep you alive for as long as possible—so you will have the chance to enjoy Endovier’s special kind of agony.”
Standing atop one of the many emerald roofs of Rifthold, Rourke Farran and Arobynn Hamel watched as the prison wagon was escorted out of the city.
“Endovier, then,” Farran mused, his dark eyes still upon the wagon. “A surprising twist of events. I thought you had planned a grand rescue from the butchering block.” The King of the Assassins said nothing. “So you’re not going after the wagon?” “Obviously not,” Arobynn said, glancing at the new Crime Lord of Rifthold. It had been on this very rooftop that Farran and the King of the Assassins had first run into each other. Farran had been going to spy on one of Jayne’s mistresses, and Arobynn … well, Farran had never learned why Arobynn had been meandering across the roofs of Rifthold in the
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She had believed she could love Sam and not pay the price. Everything has a price, she’d once been told by a Spidersilk merchant in the Red Desert. How right he was.
The trek to the Salt Mines of Endovier took two weeks, and each mile led them farther and farther north—and into colder weather.
No one survived Endovier. Most prisoners didn’t survive a month. It was a death camp.
Oakwald Forest
there—standing in a copse of thorns—was a white stag. Celaena’s breath hitched. She clenched the bars of the small window as the creature looked at them. His towering antlers seemed to glow in the moonlight, crowning him in wreaths of ivory. “Gods above,” one of the guards whispered. The stag’s enormous head turned slightly—toward the wagon, toward the small window. The Lord of the North. So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home, she’d once told Ansel as they lay under a blanket of stars and traced the constellation of the stag. So they can look up at the sky, no
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A glimmer of a world long since destroyed—a kingdom in ruins. The stag shouldn’t be here—not so deep into Adarlan or so far from home. How had he survived the hunters who had been set loose nine years ago, when the king had ordered all the sacred white stags of Terrasen butchered? And yet he was here, glowing like a beacon in the moonlight. He was here. And so was she. She felt the warmth of the tears before she realized she was crying.
she could feel the endless hole where Sam had once been.
