Crown of Midnight

  “Coping,” Dorian said. “Coping as best she can. And since I know you’re too proud to ask it, I’ll just tell you that no, she hasn’t mentioned you. Nor do I think she will.”

  Chaol took a long breath. How could he convince Dorian to stay away from her? Not because he was jealous, but because Celaena might be more of a threat than Dorian could ever imagine. Only the truth would work, but …

  “Your father is curious about you,” Dorian said. “After the council meetings, he always asks me about you. I think he wants you back in Anielle.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you going to go with him?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “It’s not for me to decide.”

  Chaol clamped his teeth. He certainly wasn’t going anywhere, not while Celaena was here. And not just because of who she actually was. “I have no interest in being Lord of Anielle.”

  “Men would kill for the kind of power that Anielle wields.”

  “I’ve never wanted it.”

  “No.” Dorian braced his hands on the balcony rail. “No, you’ve never wanted anything for yourself, save for the position you have now, and Celaena.”

  Chaol opened his mouth, excuses already forming on his tongue.

  “You think I’m blind?” Dorian asked, his gaze a frozen, ice blue. “Do you know why I approached her at the Yulemas ball? Not because I wanted to ask her to dance, but because I saw the way you two were looking at each other. Even then, I knew how you felt.”

  “You knew, and yet you asked her to dance.” His hands clenched into fists.

  “She’s capable of making up her own mind. And she did.” Dorian gave him a bitter smile. “About both of us.”

  Chaol took a steadying breath, calming his rising anger. “If you feel the way you do, then why let her stay shackled to your father? Why not find a way to get her out of her contract? Or are you just afraid that if you set her free, she’ll never come back to you?”

  “I’d be careful what you say,” Dorian said softly.

  But it was true. Even though he couldn’t imagine a world without Celaena, Chaol knew he had to get her out of this castle. Yet he couldn’t tell if it was for Adarlan’s sake or her own.

  “My father is temperamental enough to punish me—and her—if I try to broach that subject. I agree with you, I truly do: it’s not right to keep her here. But you should still mind what you say.” The Crown Prince of Adarlan stared him down. “And consider where your true loyalties lie.”

  Once, Chaol might have argued. Once, he might have protested that his loyalty to the crown was his greatest asset. But that blind loyalty and obedience had started this descent.

  And it had destroyed everything.

  Celaena knew she’d only been out for a few seconds, but it was long enough for Yellowlegs to yank her arms behind her back and get the chain around her wrists. Her head was pounding, and blood slid down the side of her neck, trickling into her tunic. Nothing too bad—she’d had worse wounds. Her weapons were gone, though, discarded somewhere in the wagon. Even the ones in her hair and clothes. And boots. Clever woman.

  So she didn’t give the witch a chance, not even a heartbeat, to realize she was conscious. With no warning, she surged her shoulders up, throwing back her head as hard as she could.

  Bone cracked, and Yellowlegs howled, but Celaena had already twisted, getting her legs beneath her. Yellowlegs scrambled for the other end of the chain, fast as a viper. Celaena stomped on the length of chain between them, her other foot lashing out to meet Yellowlegs’s face.

  The woman went flying, as though she were made of nothing but dust and wind, tumbling into the shadows between mirrors.

  Swearing under her breath, Celaena’s wrists ached against the cold iron. But she’d been taught to free herself from worse. Arobynn had bound her up from head to toe and made her learn how to get loose, even if it meant spending two days prostrate on the ground in her own filth, or dislocating her shoulder to get out. So, not all that surprisingly, she had the chains off in a matter of seconds.

  She yanked a handkerchief from her pocket and used it to snatch up a long mirror shard. Angling the glass, Celaena peered into the shadows where Yellowlegs had gone flying. Nothing. Just a smear of dark blood.

  “Do you know how many young women I’ve trapped in this wagon in the past five hundred years?” Yellowlegs’s voice was everywhere and nowhere. “How many Crochan witches I destroyed? They were warriors, too—such talented, beautiful warriors. They tasted like summer grass and cool water.”

  Confirming that Yellowlegs was a blue-blooded Ironteeth witch changed nothing, Celaena told herself. Nothing, except that she’d have to find a bigger weapon.

  Celaena scanned the wagon—for the witch, for her lost daggers, for anything to use against the crone. Her gaze lifted to the shelves on the nearby wall. Books, crystal balls, paper, dead things in jars …

  Celaena would have missed it if she’d blinked. It was coated in dirt, but still gleamed faintly in the light of the distant oven. Mounted on the wall above a woodpile was a long, single-bladed ax.

  She smiled faintly as she yanked it off the wall. All around, Yellowlegs’s image danced in the mirrors, a thousand possibilities for where she could be standing, watching, waiting.

  Celaena swung the ax at the nearest one. Then the next. And the next.

  The only way to kill a witch is to cut off her head. A friend had told her that once.

  Celaena wove between the mirrors, smashing them as she went, the reflections of the crone vanishing until the real witch stood along the narrow pathway between Celaena and the hearth, the chain back in her hands.

  Celaena hefted the ax over a shoulder. “One more chance,” she breathed. “You agree to never say one word about me and Dorian, and I’ll walk out of here.”

  “I can taste your lies,” Yellowlegs said. Faster than should be possible, she came for Celaena, scuttling like a spider, the chain swinging from her fingers.

  Celaena dodged the first whip of the chain. She heard the second before she saw it, and though it missed her, it struck a mirror and glass exploded everywhere. Celaena had no choice but to shield her eyes, to look away for one heartbeat.

  It was enough.

  The chain wrapped around her ankle, stinging and bruising, and then yanked.

  The world tilted as Yellowlegs pulled her feet out from under her, and Celaena went crashing to the floor. Yellowlegs rushed for her, but Celaena rolled across the shards, chain tangling around her, clinging to the ax with one hand, until her face brushed against the coarse fibers of the ancient rug before the oven.

  There was a firm yank on the chain, and then another whipping sound. Metal slammed into Celaena’s forearm, so hard that she lost her grip on the ax. She flipped onto her back, still tangled in the infernal chain, only to find the iron teeth of Baba Yellowlegs looming above her. In a flash, the witch slammed Celaena back down into the carpet.

  The iron nails dug into her skin, drawing blood as the witch pinned her by the shoulder. “Hold still, you foolish girl,” Yellowlegs hissed, grabbing for the length of the chain lying nearly.

  The rug scratched against Celaena’s fingers as she stretched for the fallen ax, just inches out of reach. Her arm throbbed mercilessly, her ankle, too. If she could just get the ax … Yellowlegs lunged for Celaena’s neck, her teeth snapping.

  Celaena threw herself to the side, narrowly dodging those iron teeth, and grabbed the ax at last. She hauled it up so hard that its blunt end slammed into the side of the old woman’s face.

  Yellowlegs was knocked away, collapsing in a heap of billowing brown robes. Celaena scrambled back and raised the weapon between them.

  Pushing to her hands and knees, Yellowlegs spat dark blood—blue blood—onto the aged rug, her eyes blazing. “I am going to make you wish you’d never been born. Both you and your prince.” And then Yellowlegs shot forward so fast Celaena could have sworn she was flying.

  But she only got
as far as Celaena’s feet.

  Celaena brought the ax down, throwing every bit of strength into her arms. Blue blood sprayed everywhere.

  There was a smile on Baba Yellowlegs’s decapitated head as it thudded to a stop.

  Quiet fell. Even the fire, still burning so hot that she was sweating again, seemed to have gone silent. Celaena swallowed. Once. Twice.

  Dorian couldn’t know. Even though she wanted to scold him to high hell for asking questions that Yellowlegs had deemed valuable enough to sell to others, he couldn’t know what had happened here. No one could.

  When she at last found the strength to disentangle herself, her pants and boots were stained blue-black. Another outfit to be burned. She studied the body and the stained, soaking carpet. It hadn’t been quick, but it could still be clean. A missing person was better than a decapitated corpse.

  Celaena raised her eyes to the large oven grate.

  Chapter 42

  Mort chuckled when she staggered through the tomb door. “Witch Slayer, are you? Another lovely title to add to your repertoire.”

  “How do you know about that?” she asked, setting down her candle. She’d already burned her bloodied clothes. They had reeked as they burned—reeked like rotting flesh, just as Yellowlegs had. Fleetfoot had growled at the fireplace and tried to herd Celaena away by pressing her body against her legs.

  “Oh, I can smell her on you,” Mort said. “Smell her fury and wickedness.”

  Celaena peeled back the collar of her tunic to show the little cuts where Yellowlegs’s nails had pierced the skin right above her collarbone. She’d cleaned them out, but had a feeling they would leave marks, a necklace of scars. “What do you make of those?”

  Mort winced. “Those make me grateful I’m made of bronze.”

  “Will they harm me?”

  “You killed a witch—and you’re now marked by a witch. It will not be the usual sort of wound.” Mort’s eyes narrowed. “You understand that you may have just landed yourself in a heap of trouble.”

  Celaena groaned.

  “Baba Yellowlegs was a leader—a queen to her clan,” Mort went on. “When they destroyed the Crochan family, they joined with the Blackbeaks and the Bluebloods in the Ironteeth Alliance. They still honor those oaths.”

  “But I thought all the witches were gone—scattered to the winds.”

  “Gone? The Crochans and those who followed them have been in hiding for generations. But the clans in the Ironteeth Alliance still travel about, as Baba did. Though many more of them live in the ruined and dark places of the world, content in their wickedness. But I suspect that when the Yellowlegs learn of their matron’s death, they will muster the Blackbeaks and the Bluebloods and demand answers from the king. And you will be fortunate if they do not come on their brooms and drag you into it.”

  She grimaced. “I hope you’re wrong.”

  Mort’s brows lowered slightly. “So do I.”

  Celaena spent an hour in the tomb, reading through the riddle on the wall, puzzling over Yellowlegs’s words. Wyrdkeys, Wyrdgates … it was all so strange, so incomprehensible and terrifying. And if the king had them—if he even had one …

  Celaena shuddered.

  When staring at the riddle gave her no further answers, Celaena trudged back to her rooms for a much-needed nap.

  At least she’d finally discovered a possible source of the king’s power. But she still needed to learn more. And then the real question: what was the king planning to do with the keys that he had not done already?

  She had a feeling she didn’t want to know.

  But the library catacombs might contain the answer to that most horrible of questions. There was a book she could use to gain access to that answer—a book that might have the unlocking spell she was looking for. And she knew that The Walking Dead would find her the moment she began looking for it.

  Halfway up to her rooms, all plans for a nap vanished as Celaena turned back around and went to retrieve Damaris, and every other ancient blade she could carry.

  He shouldn’t be here. He was only asking for trouble—another fight that might wind up tearing the castle in two. And if Celaena attacked him again, Chaol knew with absolute certainty that he’d let her kill him, if she really wanted.

  He didn’t even know what he’d say to her. But he had to say something, if only to end the silence and the tension that kept him awake night after night and prevented him from focusing on his duties.

  She wasn’t in her rooms, but he went in anyway, wandering over to her desk. It was as messy as Dorian’s, and covered in papers and books. He might have turned away had he not seen the strange symbols written on everything, symbols that reminded him of the mark he’d seen burn on her forehead at the duel. He’d somehow forgotten about it in the months that had gone by. Was it … was it something connected to her past?

  Glancing over his shoulder, listening for any sign of Philippa or Celaena, he rifled through the documents. Just scribblings—drawings of the symbols and random underlined words. Perhaps they were no more than doodles, he tried to tell himself.

  He was about to turn away when he caught sight of a document peeking out from a stack of books. It was written in careful calligraphy and signed by multiple people.

  Easing it out from under the books, Chaol picked up the thick paper and read.

  The world dropped out from beneath his feet.

  It was Celaena’s will. Signed two days before Nehemia’s death.

  And she’d given everything—every last copper—to him.

  His throat tightened as he stared at the sum and the list of assets, including an apartment in a warehouse in the slums and all the wealth inside.

  And she had signed it all to him, with only one request: that he consider giving some of it to Philippa.

  “I’m not going to change it.”

  He whirled, finding her leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed. Though the position was so familiar, her face was cold, blank. He let the document slip from his fingers.

  The list of noble houses in his pocket became leaden. What if he’d been jumping to conclusions? Perhaps the song wasn’t actually a dirge of Terrasen. Maybe it had been another language he’d never heard of.

  She watched him like a cat. “It would be too much trouble to bother changing it,” she went on. She wore a beautiful, ancient-looking blade at her side, along with a few daggers he’d never seen before. Where had she gotten them?

  There were so many words trying to work their way out of him that he couldn’t speak at all. All of that money—she’d left everything to him. Left it to him because of what she’d felt for him … even Dorian had seen it from the start.

  “At least now,” she said, pushing off the doorframe and turning away, “when the king sacks you for being so damn lousy at your job, you’ll have something to fall back on.”

  He couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t just done it out of generosity. But rather because she knew that if he ever lost his position, he’d have to consider going back to Anielle, to his father’s money. And that it’d kill part of him to do that.

  But she’d have to be dead for him to see that money. Verifiably dead, and not a traitor to the crown, either—if she died a traitor, then all her assets had to go to the king.

  And the only way she’d die a traitor would be for her to do what he feared: ally with this secret organization, find Aelin Galathynius, and return to Terrasen. This was a hint that she had no intention of doing that. She had no plans to reclaim her lost title, and posed no threat to Adarlan or Dorian. He’d been wrong. Yet again, he’d been wrong.

  “Get out of my chambers,” she said from the foyer, before striding into the gaming room and slamming the door behind her.

  He hadn’t wept when Nehemia died, or when he’d thrown Celaena in the dungeons, or even when she’d returned with Grave’s head, utterly different from the woman he had grown to love so fiercely.

  But when Chaol walked out, leaving that damning wi
ll behind him, he didn’t even make it to his own room. He barely made it into an empty broom closet before the sobs hit.

  Chapter 43

  Celaena stood in the gaming room, staring at the pianoforte as she heard Chaol quickly leave. She hadn’t played in weeks.

  Originally, it had been just because she didn’t have time. Because Archer and the tomb and Chaol had occupied every moment of her day. Then Nehemia had died—and she hadn’t gone into this room once, hadn’t wanted to look at the instrument, hadn’t wanted to hear or make music ever again.

  Shoving the encounter with Chaol out of her mind, Celaena slowly folded back the lid of the pianoforte and stroked the ivory keys.

  But she couldn’t push down, couldn’t bring herself to make a sound. Nehemia should have been here—to help with Yellowlegs and the riddle, to tell her what to do with Chaol, to smile as Celaena played something particularly clever for her.

  Nehemia was gone. And the world … it was moving on without her.

  When Sam had died, she had tucked him into her heart, tucked him in alongside her other beloved dead, whose names she kept so secret she sometimes forgot them. But Nehemia—Nehemia wouldn’t fit. It was as if her heart was too full of the dead, too full of those lives that had ended well before their time.

  She couldn’t seal Nehemia away like that, not when that bloodstained bed and those ugly words still haunted her every step, every breath.

  So Celaena just hovered at the pianoforte, tracing her fingers over the keys again and again, and let the silence devour her.

  An hour later, Celaena stood before the strange, second staircase at the end of the forgotten hall of ancient records, a clock chiming somewhere far in the library above. The images of Fae and flora danced along the fire-lit stairwell, spiraling out of sight, down and down into unknown depths. She’d found The Walking Dead almost immediately—discarded on a lonely table between some stacks. As though it had been waiting for her. And it had been the work of a few minutes to find a spell inside that claimed to unlock any door. She’d quickly memorized it, practicing a few times on a locked closet.