Crown of Midnight

Still she approached, and the sword at her back whined as she drew it. The moonlight glinted off the long blade. Probably a gift from her princeling lover.



Grave pulled his second dagger from his boot. This wasn’t a frilly, ridiculous competition run by nobility. Here, any rules applied.



She didn’t say anything when she neared.



And Grave didn’t say anything to her as he rushed at her, swiping for her head with both blades.



She stepped aside, dodging him with maddening ease. Grave lunged again. But faster than he could follow she ducked and slashed her sword across his shins.



He hit the wet ground before he felt the pain. The world flashed black and gray and red, and agony tore at him. A dagger still left in his hand, he scuttled backward toward the wall. But his legs wouldn’t respond, and his arms strained to pull him through the damp filth.



“Bitch,” he hissed. “Bitch.” He hit the wall, blood pouring from his legs. Bone had been sliced. He would not be able to walk. He could still find a way to make her pay, though.



She stopped a few feet away and sheathed her sword. She drew a long, jeweled dagger.



He swore at her, the filthiest word he could think of.



She chuckled, and faster than a striking asp, she had one of his arms against the wall, the dagger glinting.



Pain ripped through his right wrist, then his left as it, too, was slammed into the stone. Grave screamed—truly screamed—as he found his arms pinned to the wall by two daggers.



His blood was nearly black in the moonlight. He thrashed, cursing her again and again. He would bleed to death unless he pulled his arms from the wall.



With otherworldly silence, she crouched before him and lifted his chin with another dagger. Grave panted as she brought her face close to his. There was nothing beneath the cowl—nothing of this world. She had no face.



“Who hired you?” she asked, her voice like gravel.



“To do what?” he asked, almost sobbing. Maybe he could feign innocence. He could talk his way out, convince this arrogant whore he had nothing to do with it …



She turned the dagger, pressing it into his neck. “To kill Princess Nehemia.”



“N-n-no one. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”



And then, without even an intake of breath, she buried another dagger he hadn’t realized she’d been holding into his thigh. So deep he felt the reverberation as it hit the cobblestones beneath. His scream shattered out of him, and Grave writhed, his wrists rising farther on the blades.



“Who hired you?” she asked again. Calm, so calm.



“Gold,” Grave moaned. “I have gold.”



She drew yet another dagger and shoved it into his other thigh, piercing again to the stone. Grave shrieked—shrieked to gods who did not save him. “Who hired you?”



“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”



After a heartbeat, she withdrew the daggers from his thighs. He almost soiled himself at the pain, at the relief.



“Thank you.” He wept, even as he thought of how he would punish her. She sat back on her heels and stared at him. “Thank you.”



But then she brought up another dagger, its edge serrated and glinting, and hovered it close to his hand.



“Pick a finger,” she said. He trembled and shook his head. “Pick a finger.”



“P-please.” A wet warmth filled the seat of his pants.



“Thumb it is.”



“N-no. I … I’ll tell you everything!” Still, she brought the blade closer, until it rested against the base of his thumb. “Don’t! I’ll tell you everything!”



Chapter 36



Dorian was just starting to feel his temper fray after hours of debate when the doors to his father’s council room were thrown open and Celaena prowled in, her dark cape billowing behind her. All twenty men at the table fell silent, including his father, whose eyes went straight to the thing dangling from Celaena’s hand. Chaol was already striding across the room from his post by the door. But he, too, stopped when he beheld the object she carried.



A head.



The man’s face was still set in a scream, and there was something vaguely familiar about the grotesque features and mousy brown hair that she gripped. It was hard to be certain as it swung from her gloved fingers.



Chaol put a hand on his sword, his face pale as death. The other guards in the room drew their blades, but didn’t move—wouldn’t move, until Chaol or the king commanded them.



“What is this?” the king demanded. The councilmen and assembled lords were gaping.



But Celaena was smiling as her eyes locked onto one of the ministers at the table, and she walked right toward him.



And no one, not even Dorian’s father, said anything as she set the severed head atop the minister’s stack of papers.



“I believe this belongs to you,” she said, releasing her grip on the hair. The head lolled to the side with a thud. Then she patted—patted—the minister’s shoulder before rounding the table and plopping into an empty chair at one end, sprawling across it.



“Explain yourself,” the king growled at her.



She crossed her arms, smiling at the minister, whose face had turned green as he stared at the head before him.



“I had a little chat with Grave about Princess Nehemia last night,” she said. Grave, the assassin from the competition—and Minister Mullison’s champion. “He sends his regards, minister. He also sends this.” She tossed something onto the long table: a small golden bracelet, engraved with lotus blossoms. Something Nehemia would have worn. “Here’s a lesson for you, Minister, from one professional to another: cover your tracks. And hire assassins without personal connections to you. And perhaps try not to do it so soon after you’ve publicly argued with your target.”



Mullison was looking at the king with pleading eyes. “I didn’t do this.” He recoiled from the severed head. “I have no idea what she’s talking about. I’d never do something like this.”



“That’s not what Grave said,” Celaena crooned. Dorian could only stare at her. This was different from the feral creature she’d become the night Nehemia had died. What she was right now, the edge on which she was balancing … Wyrd help them all.



But then Chaol was at her chair, grasping her elbow. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”



Celaena looked up at him and smiled sweetly. “Your job, apparently.” She shook off his grip with a thrash, then got out of her seat, stalking around the table. She pulled a piece of paper out of her tunic and tossed it in front of the king. The impertinence in that throw should have earned her a trip to the gallows, but the king said nothing.



Following her around the table, a hand still on his sword, Chaol watched her with a face like stone. Dorian began praying they wouldn’t come to blows—not here, not again. If it riled his magic and his father saw … Dorian wouldn’t even think of that power when he was in a room with so many potential enemies. He was sitting beside the person who would give the order to have him put down.



His father took the paper. From where he sat, Dorian could see that it was a list of names, at least fifteen long.



“Before the unfortunate death of the princess,” she said, “I took it upon myself to eliminate some traitors to the crown. My target,” she said, and he knew his father was aware she meant Archer, “led me right to them.”



Dorian couldn’t look at her for a moment longer. This couldn’t be the whole truth. But she hadn’t gone after them to hunt them down, she’d gone to save Chaol. So why lie now? Why pretend she’d been hunting them? What sort of game was she playing?



Dorian looked across the table. Minister Mullison was still trembling at the severed head in front of him. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the minister vomited right there. He was the one who had made the anonymous threat against Nehemia’s life?



After a moment, his father looked up from the list and surveyed her. “Well done, Champion. Well done indeed.”



Then Celaena and the King of Adarlan smiled at each other, and it was the most terrifying thing Dorian had ever seen.



“Tell my exchequer to give you double last month’s payment,” the king said. Dorian felt his gorge rise—not just for the severed head and her blood-stiffened clothing, but also for the fact that he could not, for the life of him, find the girl he had loved anywhere in her face. And from Chaol’s expression, he knew his friend felt the same.



Celaena bowed dramatically to the king, flourishing a hand before her. Then, with a smile devoid of any warmth, she stared down Chaol before stalking from the room, her dark cape sweeping behind her.



Silence.



And then Dorian’s attention returned to Minister Mullison, who merely whispered, “Please,” before the king ordered Chaol to have him dragged to the dungeons.



Celaena wasn’t done—not nearly. Perhaps the bloodletting was over, but she still had another person to visit before she could return to her bedroom and wash off the stink of Grave’s blood.



Archer was resting when she arrived at his townhouse, and his butler didn’t dare stop her as she strode up the carpeted front steps, stormed down the elegant wood-paneled hallway, and flung open the double doors to what could only have been his room.



Archer jolted in bed, wincing as he put a hand to his bandaged shoulder. Then he took in her appearance, the daggers still strapped to her waist. He went very, very still.



“I’m sorry,” he said.



She stood at the foot of his bed, staring down at him, at his wan face and injured shoulder. “You’re sorry, Chaol’s sorry, the whole damn world is sorry. Tell me what you and your movement want. Tell me what you know about the king’s plans.”



“I didn’t want to lie to you,” Archer said gently. “But I needed to know that I could trust you before I told you the truth. Nehemia”—she tried not to wince at the name—“said you could be trusted, but I needed to know for sure. And I needed you to trust me, too.”



“So you thought kidnapping Chaol would make me trust you?”



“We kidnapped him because we thought he and the king were planning to hurt her. I needed you to come to that warehouse and hear from Westfall’s lips that he was aware there had been threats to her safety and he didn’t tell you; to realize that he is the enemy. If I’d known you would go so berserk, I never would have done it.”



She shook her head. “That list you sent me yesterday, of the men from the warehouse—they’re truly dead?”



“You killed them, yes.”



Guilt punched through her. “For my part, I am sorry.” And she was. She’d memorized their names, tried to recall their faces. She would carry the weight of their deaths forever. Even Grave’s death, what she’d done to him in that alley; she’d never forget that, either. “I gave their names to the king. It should keep him from looking in your direction for a little while longer—five days at most.”



Archer nodded, sinking back into the pillows.



“Nehemia really worked with you?”



“It was why she came to Rifthold—to see what could be done about organizing a force in the north. To give us information directly from the castle.” As Celaena had always suspected. “Her loss …” He closed his eyes. “We can’t replace her.”



Celaena swallowed.



“But you could,” Archer said, looking at her again. “I know you came from Terrasen. So part of you has to realize that Terrasen must be free.”



You are nothing more than a coward.



She kept her face blank.



“Be our eyes and ears in the castle,” Archer whispered. “Help us. Help us, and we can find a way to save everyone—to save you. We don’t know what the king plans to do, only that he somehow found a source of power outside magic, and that he’s probably using that power to create monstrosities of his own. But to what end, we don’t know. That’s what Nehemia was trying to discover—and it’s knowledge that could save us all.”