Crown of Midnight

He couldn’t meet the servant’s gaze as he walked into the bathing chamber, because he knew the truth he’d find there.



He’d realized it the moment Celaena had turned to him in Nehemia’s bedroom.



He had lost her.



And she would never, in a thousand lifetimes, let him in again.



Chapter 32



Celaena awoke in her own bed, and knew there would be no more sedatives in her water.



There would be no more breakfast conversations with Nehemia, nor would there be any more lessons on the Wyrdmarks. There would be no more friends like her.



She knew without looking that someone had scrubbed her clean. Blinking against the brightness of the sunlight in her room—her head instantly pounding after days in the darkness of the dungeon—she found Fleetfoot sleeping pressed against her. The dog lifted her head to lick Celaena’s arm a few times before going back to sleep, her nose nestled between Celaena’s elbow and torso. She wondered if Fleetfoot could sense the loss, too. She’d often wondered if Fleetfoot loved the princess more than her.



You are nothing more than a coward.



She couldn’t blame Fleetfoot. Outside of this rotten, festering court and kingdom, the rest of the world had loved Nehemia. It was hard not to. Celaena had adored Nehemia from the moment she’d laid eyes on her, like they were twin souls who had at last found each other. A soul-friend. And now she was gone.



Celaena put a hand against her chest. How absurd—how utterly absurd and useless—that her heart still beat and Nehemia’s didn’t.



The Eye of Elena was warm, as if trying to offer some comfort. Celaena let her hand drop back to her mattress.



She didn’t even try to get out of bed that day, after Philippa coaxed her into eating and let slip that she’d missed Nehemia’s funeral. She’d been too busy guzzling down sedatives and hiding from her grief in the dungeons to be present when they put her friend in the cold earth, so far from the sun-warmed soil of Eyllwe.



You are nothing more than a coward.



So Celaena didn’t get out of bed that day. And she didn’t get out of it the next.



Or the next.



Or the next.



Chapter 33



The mines in Calaculla were stifling, and the slave girl could only imagine how much worse they would become when the summer sun was overhead.



She had been in the mines for six months—longer than anyone else had ever survived, she’d been told. Her mother, her grandmother, and her little brother hadn’t lasted a month. Her father hadn’t even made it to the mines before Adarlan’s butchers had cut him down, along with the other known rebels in their village. Everyone else had been rounded up and sent here.



She’d been alone for five and a half months now; alone, yet surrounded by thousands. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the sky, or the grasslands of Eyllwe undulating in a cool breeze.



She would see them both again, though—the sky and the grasslands. She knew she would, because she’d stayed awake on nights she was supposed to have been sleeping, listening through the cracks in the floorboards as her father and his fellow rebels talked of ways to bring down Adarlan, and of Princess Nehemia, who was in the capital at that very moment, working for their freedom.



If she could just hold on, if she could just keep drawing breath, she might make it until Nehemia accomplished her goal. She would make it, and then bury her dead; and when the mourning months were over, she would find the nearest rebel group and join them. With every Adarlanian life she took, she would say the names of her dead again, so that they would hear her in the afterlife and know they were not forgotten.



She swung her pickax into the unforgiving wall of stone, her breath ragged in her parched throat. The overseer lounged against a nearby wall, sloshing water in his canteen, waiting for the moment when one of them would collapse, just so he could unfurl that whip of his.



She kept her head down, kept working, kept breathing.



She would make it.



She didn’t know how much time passed, but she felt the ripple go through the mines like a shudder in the earth. A ripple of stillness, followed by wails.



She felt it coming, swelling up toward her, closer and closer with each turned head and murmured words.



And then she heard it—the words that changed everything.



Princess Nehemia is dead. Assassinated by Adarlan.



The words were past her before she had time to swallow them.



There was a scrape of leather against rock. The overseer would tolerate the pause for only a few seconds longer before he started swinging.



Nehemia is dead.



She stared down at the pickax in her hands.



She turned, slowly, to look into the face of her overseer, the face of Adarlan. He cocked his wrist, pronged whip ready.



She felt her tears before she realized they were falling, sliding through six months’ worth of filth.



Enough. The word screamed through her, so loudly she began to shake.



Silently, she began to recite the names of her dead. And as the overseer raised his whip, she added her name to the end of that list and swung her ax into his gut.



Chapter 34



“Any changes in her behavior?”



“She got out of bed.”



“And?”



Standing in the sunlit hall of the upper levels of the glass castle, Ress’s usually jovial face was grim. “And now she’s sitting in a chair in front of the fire. It’s the same as yesterday: she got out of bed, sat in the chair all day, then got back into bed at sundown.”



“Is she still not speaking?”



Ress shook his head, keeping his voice low as a courtier passed by. “Philippa says she just sits there and stares at the fire. Won’t speak. Still barely touches her food.” Ress’s eyes grew warier as they took in the healing cuts that ran down Chaol’s cheek. Two had already scabbed and would fade, but there was a long, surprisingly deep one that was still tender. Chaol wondered whether it would scar. He’d deserve it if it did.



“I’m probably overstepping my bounds—”



“Then don’t say it,” Chaol growled. He knew exactly what Ress would say: the same thing Philippa said, and anyone who saw him and gave him that pitying glance. You should try talking to her.



He didn’t know how word had gotten out so quickly that she’d tried to kill him, but it seemed they all knew how deep the break between him and Celaena went. He’d thought the two of them had been discreet, and he knew Philippa wasn’t a gossip. But perhaps what he felt for her had been written all over him. And what she now felt for him … He resisted the urge to touch the cuts on his face.



“I still want the watch posted outside her door and windows,” he ordered Ress. He was on his way to another meeting; another shouting match about how they should deal with the fallout in Eyllwe over the princess’s death. “Don’t stop her if she leaves, but try to slow her down a bit.”



Long enough for word to get to him that she’d finally left her rooms. If anyone was going to intercept Celaena, if anyone would confront her about what happened to Nehemia, it would be him. Until then, he’d give her the space she needed, even if it killed him not to speak to her. She’d become entwined in his life—from the morning runs to the lunches to the kisses she stole from him when no one was looking—and now, without her, he felt hollow. But he still didn’t know how he’d ever look her in the eye.



You will always be my enemy.



She’d meant it.



Ress nodded. “Consider it done.”



The young guard saluted as Chaol headed for the meeting room. There would be other meetings today—lots of meetings, since the debate was still raging over how Adarlan should react to Nehemia’s death. And though he hated to admit it, he had other things to worry about than Celaena’s unending grief.



The king had summoned his southern lords and retainers to Rifthold.



Including Chaol’s father.



Dorian usually didn’t mind Chaol’s men. But he did mind being followed around, day and night, by guards who were on the lookout for any threat. Nehemia’s death had proved that the castle was not impregnable. His mother and Hollin were sequestered in her chambers, and many of the nobility had either left the city or were lying low, too.



Except Roland. Though Roland’s mother had fled back to Meah the morning after the princess was assassinated, Roland stayed, insisting that Dorian would need his support now more than ever. And he was right. At the council meetings, which grew more and more crowded as the southern lords arrived, Roland backed every point and objection that Dorian made. Together they argued against sending more troops into Eyllwe in case of revolt, and Roland seconded Dorian’s proposal that they should publicly apologize to Nehemia’s parents for her death.



His father had exploded when Dorian suggested that, but Dorian had still written her parents a message, expressing his deepest condolences. His father could go to hell for all he cared.



And that was starting to be a problem, he realized as he sat in his tower room and flipped through all the documents he had to read before tomorrow’s meeting with the southern lords. He had spent so long being careful to avoid defying his father, but what sort of man could he call himself if he blindly obeyed?



A smart man, a part of him whispered, flickering with that cold, ancient power.



At least his four guards stayed outside his rooms. His private tower was high enough that no one could reach the balcony, and only one stair led up and down. Easily defensible. But it also made for an easy cage.



Dorian stared at the glass pen on his desk. The night Nehemia had died, he hadn’t intended to stop Celaena’s wrist in midair. He’d just known that the woman he’d loved was about to kill his oldest friend over a misunderstanding. He’d been too far away to grab her as she plunged the blade down, but then … it was like a phantom arm reached out from within him and wrapped around her wrist. He could feel her blood-crusted skin, as if he himself were touching her.



But he hadn’t known what he was doing. He’d just acted on gut feeling and desperation and need.



He had to learn to control this power, whatever it was. If he could control it, then he could keep it from appearing at inopportune times. Like when he was in those damned council meetings and his temper rose, and he felt the magic stirring in response.



Dorian took a deep breath, focusing on the pen, willing it to move. He’d stopped Celaena midstrike, he’d thrown a wall of books into the air—he could move a pen.



It didn’t move.



After staring at it until his eyes nearly crossed, Dorian groaned and leaned back in his chair, covering his eyes with his hands.



Maybe he’d gone insane. Maybe he’d just imagined the whole thing.



Nehemia had once promised to be there when he needed help—when some power in him awoke. She had known.



Had her assassin, in killing Nehemia, also killed any hope he had of finding answers?



Celaena had only started sitting in the chair because Philippa had come in yesterday and complained about the dirty sheets. She might have told Philippa to go to hell, but then she considered who had last shared this bed with her, and was suddenly glad to have them replaced. Any trace of him, she wanted gone.



As the sun finished setting, she sat before the fire, staring into the glowing embers that grew brighter as the world darkened.



Time was shifting and ebbing around her. Some days had passed in an hour, others a lifetime. She had bathed once, long enough to wash her hair, and Philippa had watched the whole time to make sure she didn’t drown herself instead.



Celaena ran a thumb over the armrest of the chair. She had no intention of ending her life. Not before she did what needed to be done.



The shadows in the room grew, and the embers seemed to breathe as she watched them. Breathing with her, pulsing with each heartbeat.



In these days of silence and sleep, she’d realized one thing: the assassin had come from outside the palace.