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she’d kicked a man’s balls into his throat, and when he’d caught his breath, he’d been enraged, to say the least.
“Rowan.” His tattoo seemed to soak up the sun, so dark it looked freshly inked.
The Crown Prince didn’t return Chaol’s half smile. Instead, Dorian quietly said, “You were thinking about her.”
Maeve ran a moon-white finger down the owl’s head. “I wish you to become who you were born to be. To become queen.”
“Fleetfoot? Oh, she’s fine. Her leg’s healed beautifully.” The hound now slept in his bed,
“Because she is dead!” She screamed the last word so loudly it burned in her throat. “Because she is dead, and I am left with my worthless life!”
There was a muffled curse, and Rowan slammed his body against hers, as if he could somehow shield her. No, not shield her. Cover her, the flash of light.
“Cut me open bit by bit, then took the bones here and—” “I can see very well what happened, and know exactly how it’s done,” she said, stomach tightening.
“Was it you,” Rowan said quietly, but not gently, “or someone else?” “I was too late. He didn’t survive.” Again
had he not tossed her his cloak—dry and warm. Then he dropped his jacket in her lap, too.
It was a mistake. It had to be a mistake, because … His chest had become too tight, too small.
For a moment, he could only stare at his friend. Then he managed to say, “Why?”
Dorian knew he was hurting him—knew it, and didn’t quite care. “Because you want to be Aedion’s king someday?”
And that day in Endovier—that first day, he had felt as if there were something familiar about her … Oh gods.
“When she returns,” Aedion said quietly, “what she will do to the King of Adarlan will make the slaughtering ten years ago look merciful.” And in his heart, Aedion hoped he spoke true.
Aedion pulled out a deep blue tunic, gold embroidery around the lapels and buttons glimmering in the light from the sconces.
“But I need your help. It’ll be easier for the mortals to talk to you.” “Is that a compliment?” He rolled his eyes.
He shot left to pinch or poke or hit her, and she whirled, slamming down his arm with an elbow and whacking him upside the head with her other hand. He stopped dead and blinked a few times. She smirked at him.
“Oh, you’d better run now.” When he lunged, she shot through the trees.
She could have sworn he was smiling.
“I think I’d prefer death at your hands to death at Maeve’s.” “That might be the first wise thing you’ve said to me.”
breath, sniffing, and—was that chocolate? “Did you bring any money?”
“Tell me.” When her mother didn’t respond, her father growled. “She is eight—and she has told me that her dearest friends are characters in books.”
she’d not only rolled in its dung as she’d grappled with it but it had also dumped a fresh load on her, right before it went tumbling out of her arms and broke its skull on the rocks below.
“I thought you might want some stew and—” Well, the stranger was half-naked. And lying on his back atop Rowan’s worktable. But Rowan was fully clothed, seated before him, and looking pissed as hell. Yes, she had
“There is nothing that I can give you. Nothing I want to give you. You are not owed an explanation for what I do outside of training. I don’t care what you have been through or what you want to do with your life. The sooner you can sort out your whining and self-pity, the sooner I can be rid of you. You are nothing to me, and I do not care.”
she hissed to Emrys and Malakai and Luca. “I do not care about your knife. I do not care about your stories or your little kingdom.”
The girl was nowhere to be seen, and for a heartbeat, he hoped she’d left again, if only so he didn’t have to face what he’d said yesterday.
“What are you doing?” “What?” Emrys didn’t raise his voice as he said, “To that girl. What are you doing that makes her come in here with such emptiness in her eyes?”
There was nothing that could be done to fix her. And she was … she was … A whimpering noise came out of her, lips trembling so hard she had to clamp down to keep the sound inside.
“You want to talk about it?” he asked. “No.” Swallowing
And just like that, he was pinned, his eyes wide with what could only be fury and surprise.
“If you ever again bring someone else into this,” she panted, hitting him on his tattoo—on that gods-damned tattoo. “If you ever endanger anyone else the way you did today …” The blood on her nose splattered on his face, mingling, she noted with some satisfaction, with blood from the blows she’d given him. “I will kill you.”
“I told her I would not help, so she orchestrated her own death. Because she thought …” She laughed—a horrible, wild sound. “She thought that her death would spur me into action. She thought I could somehow do more than her—that she was worth more dead. And she lied—about everything. She lied to me because I was a coward, and I hate her for it. I hate her for leaving me.”
Rowan still pinned her, his warm blood dripping onto her face.
She waited for the lecture. But Rowan merely said, “Good.”
It must have hurt like hell. Yet he had taken it—the beating, the burning—while she let out those words that had clouded her senses for so many weeks now. “I am … so sorry,” she started, but he held up a hand.
Swore at the pain in the ass sitting right next to her. “Clean
You think any of us like to hear you two cursing and screaming every afternoon? The language you use is enough to curdle all the milk in Wendlyn.
But she was surprised when Rowan took a spot at the sink and helped clean up after the evening meal.
Emrys didn’t back down. “And no more brawling.” Rowan met Celaena’s stare over the table. His expression yielded nothing. “We’ll try.”
She tossed the salve to him. “I thought you might want this.” He caught it with one hand, but his eyes remained on her. “I deserved it.”
“But maybe,” he said, quietly enough that she looked at him again. He didn’t smile, but his eyes were inquisitive. “Maybe we could find the way back together.”
And somewhere far and deep inside her, an ember began to glow.
and I convinced him to teach me.” “With that legendary charm of yours, I suppose.” That earned her a half smile at least. “Just fill in the spots where I—
She used her free hand to make a particularly vulgar gesture, and he caught it with his own, teeth still out. “That is not very queenly.”
“Because if I free Eyllwe and destroy the king as Celaena, I can go anywhere after that. The crown … my crown is just another set of shackles.”
“What do you mean, another set of shackles?”
because the second thing I wanted, even then, was to be able to someday … hurt people the way I had been hurt. And it turned out that I was very, very good at it.
“You thought I was just going to spread my whole history at your feet the moment I met you?
