Crown of Midnight

“She comes here,” Archer said. “She comes here to feed us all of the information that you confide in her.”

“If she’s part of your group,” Celaena ground out, “then where is she?”

Archer drew his word and pointed it at Chaol. “Ask him.”

A sharp pain twisted in her gut. “What is he talking about?” she asked Chaol.

But Chaol was staring at Archer. “I don’t know.”

“Lying bastard,” Archer snapped, and bared his teeth with a savagery that made him, for once, look anything but attractive. “My sources told me that the king informed you over a week ago of the threat to Nehemia’s life. When were you planning on telling anyone about that?” He turned to Celaena. “We brought him here because he was ordered to question Nehemia about her behavior. We wanted to know what kind of questions he’d been commanded to ask. And because we wanted you to see what sort of man he really is.”

“That’s not true,” Chaol spat. “That’s a damned lie. You haven’t asked me one thing, you gutter-born piece of filth.” He turned pleading eyes to Celaena. The words were still sinking in, each more awful than the next. “I knew about the anonymous threat to Nehemia’s life, yes. But I was told that she would be questioned by the king. Not me.”

“And we realized that,” Archer said. “Moments before you arrived, Celaena, we realized the captain wasn’t the one. But it’s not questioning that they’re going to be doing tonight, is it, Captain?” Chaol didn’t answer—and she didn’t care why.

She was pulling away from her body. Inch by inch. Like a tide ebbing from the shore.

“I just sent men to the castle a moment ago,” Archer went on. “Perhaps they can stop it.”

“Where is Nehemia?” she heard herself asking, from lips that felt far away.

“That’s what my spy discovered tonight. Nehemia insisted on staying in the castle, to see what kind of questions they wanted to ask her, to see how much they suspected and knew—”

“Where is Nehemia?”

But Archer just shook his head, his eyes bright with tears. “They aren’t going to question her, Celaena. And by the time my men get there, I think it will be too late.”

Too late.

Celaena turned to Chaol. His face was stricken and pale.

Archer shook his head again. “I’m sorry.”

Chapter 29

Celaena hurtled through the city streets, discarding her cloak and heavier weapons as she went, anything to give her additional speed, anything to get her back to the castle before Nehemia … Before Nehemia—

A clock began sounding somewhere in the capital, and a lifetime passed between each booming peal.

It was late enough that the streets were mostly deserted, but the people who saw her kept well out of her way as she sprinted past, her lungs nearly shattering. She pushed that pain away, willing strength into her legs, praying to whatever gods still cared to give her swiftness and strength. Who would the king use? If not Chaol, then who?

She didn’t care if it was the king himself. She’d destroy them. And that anonymous threat to Nehemia—she’d sort that out, too.

The glass castle loomed closer, its crystalline towers glowing with a pale greenish light.

Not again. Not again, she told herself with each step, each pound of her heart. Please.

She couldn’t take the front gate. The guards there would surely stop her or cause a ruckus that might prompt the unknown assassin to act faster. There was a high stone wall bordering one of the gardens; it was closer, and far less monitored.

She could have sworn she heard hooves thundering after her, but there was nothing in the world except her and the distance to Nehemia. She neared the stone wall surrounding the garden, her blood roaring in her ears as she made a running jump for it.

She hit the side as silently as she could, her fingers and feet immediately finding purchase, digging in so hard her fingernails cracked. She scrambled up and over the wall before the guards even looked her way.

She landed on the gravel path of the garden, falling onto her hands. Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered pain in her palms, but she was already running again, careening toward the glass doors that led to the castle. Patches of snow glowed blue in the moonlight. She’d go to Nehemia’s room first—go there and lock Nehemia up safely, and then take down the bastard who was coming for her.

Archer’s men could go to hell. She’d dispatched them in a matter of heartbeats. Whoever had been sent to hurt Nehemia—that person was hers. Hers to take apart bit by bit, until she ended them. She would throw their remnants at the feet of the king.

She flung open one of the glass doors. There were guards loitering about, but she’d picked this entrance because they knew her—and knew her face. She didn’t expect to glimpse Dorian, though, chatting with them. His sapphire eyes were nothing more than a glimmer of color as she sprinted by.

She could hear shouts from behind her, but she wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop. Not again. Never again.

She hit the stairs, taking them by twos and threes, her legs trembling. Just a bit farther—Nehemia’s rooms were only one level up, and two hallways over. She was Adarlan’s Assassin—she was Celaena Sardothien. She would not fail. The gods owed her. The Wyrd owed her. She would not fail Nehemia. Not when there were so many awful words left between them.

Celaena hit the top of the stairs. The shouts behind her grew; people were calling her name. She would stop for no one.

She turned down the familiar hallway, nearly sobbing with relief at the sight of the wooden door. It was shut; there were no signs of forced entry.

She drew her two remaining daggers, summoning the words she’d need to quickly explain to Nehemia how and where to hide. When her assailant arrived, Nehemia’s only task would be to keep quiet and concealed. Celaena would deal with the rest. And she’d enjoy the hell out of it.

She reached the door and slammed into it, exploding through the locks.

The world slowed to the beat of an ancient, ageless drum.

Celaena beheld the room.

The blood was everywhere.

Before the bed, Nehemia’s bodyguards lay with their throats cut from ear to ear, their internal organs spilling out onto the floor.

And on the bed …

On the bed …

She could hear the shouts growing closer, reaching the room, but their words were somehow muffled, as though she were underwater, the sounds coming from the surface above.

Celaena stood in the center of the freezing bedroom, gazing at the bed, and the princess’s broken body atop it.

Nehemia was dead.

Part Two

The Queen’s Arrow

Chapter 30

Celaena stared at the body.

An empty body, artfully mutilated, so cut up that the bed was almost black with blood.

People had rushed into the room behind her, and she smelled the faint tang as someone was sick nearby.

But she just stayed there, letting the others fan out around her as they rushed to assess the three cooling bodies in the room. That ancient, ageless drum—her heartbeat—pulsed through her ears, drowning out any sound.

Nehemia was gone. That vibrant, fierce, loving soul; the princess who had been called the Light of Eyllwe; the woman who had been a beacon of hope—just like that, as if she were no more than a wisp of candlelight, she was gone.

When it had mattered most, Celaena hadn’t been there.

Nehemia was gone.

Someone murmured her name, but didn’t touch her.

There was a gleam of sapphire eyes in front of her, blocking out her vision of the bed and the dismembered body atop it. Dorian. Prince Dorian. There were tears running down his face. She reached out a hand to touch them. They were oddly warm against her freezing, distant fingers. Her nails were dirty, bloody, cracked—so gruesome against the smooth white cheek of the prince.

And then that voice from behind her said her name again.

“Celaena.”

They had done this.

Her bloody fingers slid down Dorian’s face, to his neck. He just stared at her, suddenly still.

“Celaena,” that familiar voice said. A warning.

They had done this. They had betrayed her. Betrayed Nehemia. They had taken her away. Her nails brushed Dorian’s exposed throat.

“Celaena,” the voice said.

Celaena slowly turned.

Chaol stared at her, a hand on his sword. The sword she’d brought to the warehouse—the sword she’d left there. Archer had told her that Chaol had known they were going to do this.

He had known.

She shattered completely, and launched herself at him.

Chaol had only enough time to release his sword as she lunged, swiping for his face with a hand.

She slammed him into the wall, and stinging pain burst from the four lines she gouged across his cheek with her nails.

She reached for the dagger at her waist, but he grasped her wrist. Blood slid down his check, down his neck.

His guards shouted, rushing closer, but he hooked a foot behind hers, twisting as he shoved, and threw her to the ground.

“Stay back,” he ordered them, but it cost him. Pinned beneath him, she slammed a fist up beneath his jaw, so hard his teeth sang.

And then she was snarling, snarling like some kind of wild animal as she snapped for his neck. He reared back, throwing her against the marble floor again. “Stop.”

But the Celaena he knew was gone. The girl he’d imagined as his wife, the girl he’d shared a bed with for the past week, was utterly gone. Her clothes and hands were caked with the blood of the men in the warehouse. She wedged a knee up, pounding it between his legs so hard he lost his grip on her, and then she was on top of him, dagger drawn, plunging down toward his chest—

He grabbed her wrist again, crushing it in his hand as the blade hovered over his heart. Her whole body trembled with effort, trying to shove it the remaining few inches. She reached for her other dagger, but he caught that wrist, too.

“Stop.” He gasped, winded from the blow she’d landed with her knee, trying to think past that blinding pain. “Celaena, stop.”

“Captain,” one of his men ventured.

“Stay back,” he snarled again.

Celaena threw her weight into the dagger she held aloft, and gained an inch. His arms strained. She was going to kill him. She was truly going to kill him.

He made himself look into her eyes, look at the face so twisted with rage that he couldn’t find her.

“Celaena,” he said, squeezing her wrists so hard that he hoped the pain registered somewhere—wherever she had gone. But she still wouldn’t loosen her grip on the blade. “Celaena, I’m your friend.”

She stared at him, panting through gritted teeth, her breath coming quicker and quicker before she roared, the sound filling the room, his blood, his world: “You will never be my friend. You will always be my enemy.”

She bellowed the last word with such soul-deep hatred that he felt it like a punch to the gut. She surged again, and he lost his grip on the wrist that held the dagger. The blade plunged down.

And stopped. There was a sudden chill in the room, and Celaena’s hand just stopped, as though it had been frozen in midair. Her eyes left his face, but Chaol couldn’t see who it was she hissed at. For a heartbeat, it seemed as if she was thrashing against some invisible force, but then Ress was behind her, and she was too busy struggling to notice as the guard slammed the pommel of his sword into her head.