Heir of Fire

“Get some sleep. You’re no use to me completely dazed.”

She blinked. She’d been staring at him. The meeting was over, the captains already walking away to attend to their various tasks.

“Sorry.” She rubbed her eyes. They’d been up since before dawn, readying the last few miles of path, checking that all the traps ­were secure. Working with him was so effortless. There was no judgment, no need to explain herself. She knew no one would ever replace Nehemia, and she never wanted anyone to, but Rowan made her feel . . . better. As if she could finally breathe after months of suffocating. Yet now . . .

He was still watching her, frowning. “Just say it.”

She examined the map on the table between them. “We can handle the mortal soldiers, but those creatures and Narrok . . . if we had Fae warriors—­like your companion who came to receive his tattoo”—­she didn’t think calling him Rowan’s kitty-­cat friend would help her case this time—“or all five of your cadre, even, it could turn the tide.” She traced the line of mountains that separated these lands from the immortal ones beyond. “But you have not sent for them. Why?”

“You know why.”

“Would Maeve order you home out of spite for the demi-­Fae?”

His jaw tightened. “For a few reasons, I think.”

“And this is the person you chose to serve.”

“I knew what I was doing when I drank her blood to seal the oath.”

“Then let’s hope Wendlyn’s reinforcements get ­here quickly.” She pursed her lips and turned to go to their room. He gripped her wrist.

“Don’t do that.” A muscle feathered in his jaw. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“With that . . . disgust.”

“I’m not—” But he gave her a sharp look. She sighed. “This . . . all this, Rowan . . .” She waved a hand to the map, to the doors the demi-­Fae had passed through, to the sounds of people readying their supplies and defenses in the courtyard. “For what­ever it’s worth, all of this just proves that she ­doesn’t deserve you. I think you know that, too.”

He looked away. “That isn’t your concern.”

“I know. But I thought you should still hear it.”

He didn’t respond, ­wouldn’t even meet her eyes, so she walked away. She looked over her shoulder once, to find him still hunched over the table, hands braced on its surface, the powerful muscles of his back visible through his shirt. And she knew he ­wasn’t looking at the map, not really.

But saying that she wished he could return with her to Adarlan, to Terrasen, was pointless. He had no way to break his oath to Maeve, and she had nothing to entice him with even if he could. She was not a queen. She had no plans to be one, and even if she had a kingdom to give him if he ­were free . . . Telling him all that was useless.

So she left Rowan in the hall. But it did not stop her from wishing she could keep him.

•

The next afternoon, after washing her face and bandaging a burn on her forearm in Rowan’s room, Celaena was just coming down to help with the dinner preparations when she felt, rather than heard, the ripple of silence through the fortress, deeper and heavier than the ner­vous quiet that had hovered over the compound the last few days.

The fortress had not been this tense since that first night Maeve had been ­here.

It was too soon for her aunt to be checking on her. She had little to show so far other than a few somewhat useful tricks and her various shields.

She took the stairs two at a time until she reached the kitchen. If Maeve learned about the invasion and ordered Rowan to leave . . . Breathing, thinking—­those ­were the key tools to enduring this encounter.

The heat and yeasty scent hit her as she bounded down the last steps, slowing her gait, lifting her chin, even though she doubted her aunt would condescend to meet in the kitchen. Unless she wanted her unbalanced. But—

But Maeve was not in the kitchen.

Rowan was, and his back was to her as he stood at the other end with Emrys, Malakai, and Luca, talking quietly. Celaena stopped dead as she beheld at Emrys’s too pale face, the hand gripping Malakai’s arm.

As Rowan turned to her, lips thin and eyes wide with—­with shock and horror and grief—­the world stopped dead, too.

Rowan’s arms hung slack at his sides, his fingers clenching and unclenching. For a heartbeat, she wondered if she went back upstairs, what­ever he had to say would not be true.

Rowan took a step toward her—­one step, and that was all it took before she began shaking her head, before she lifted her hands in front of her as if to push him away. “Please,” she said, and her voice broke. “Please.”

Rowan kept approaching, the bearer of some inescapable doom. And she knew that she could not outrun it, and could not fall on her knees and beg for it to be undone.

Rowan stopped within reach but did not touch her, his features hardening again—­not from cruelty. Because he knew, she realized, that one of them would have to hold it together. He needed to be calm—­needed to keep his wits about him for this.

Rowan swallowed once. Twice. “There was . . . there was an uprising at the Calaculla labor camp,” he said.

Her heart stumbled on a beat.

“After Princess Nehemia was assassinated, they say a slave girl killed her overseer and sparked an uprising. The slaves seized the camp.” He took a shallow breath. “The King of Adarlan sent two legions to get the slaves under control. And they killed them all.”

“The slaves killed his legions?” A push of breath. There ­were thousands of slaves in Calaculla—­all of them together would be a mighty force, even for two of Adarlan’s legions.

With horrific gentleness, Rowan grasped her hand. “No. The soldiers killed every slave in Calaculla.”

A crack in the world, through which a keening wail pushed in like a wave. “There are thousands of people enslaved in Calaculla.”

The resolve in Rowan’s countenance splintered as he nodded. And when he opened and closed his mouth, she realized it was not over. The only word she could breathe was “Endovier?” It was a ­fool’s plea.

Slowly, so slowly, Rowan shook his head. “Once he got word of the uprising in Eyllwe, the King of Adarlan sent two other legions north. None ­were spared in Endovier.”

She did not see Rowan’s face when he gripped her arms as if he could keep her from falling into the abyss. No, all she could see ­were the slaves she’d left behind, the ashy mountains and those mass graves they dug every day, the faces of her people, who had worked beside her—­her people whom she had left behind. Whom she had let herself forget, had let suffer; who had prayed for salvation, holding out hope that someone, anyone would remember them.