Chaol ran a hand over his face. “She told you about her parents in her note?” Maybe it held a shred more information—anything for him to better understand what sort of woman he’d be facing when she returned, what sort of memories he’d have to contend with.
“No,” Nehemia said. “She didn’t tell me. But I know.” She watched him with a calculated stillness, a switch to the defensive that he recognized. What sort of secrets was she protecting for her friend? And what sort of secrets did Nehemia herself keep that had caused the king to have her watched? The fact that he didn’t know anything about it, about how much the king knew, enraged him to no end. And then there was the other question: who had threatened the princess’s life? He’d ordered more guards to look after her, but so far, there had been no sign of anyone wanting to harm her.
“How do you know about her parents?” he asked.
“Some things you hear with your ears. Others, you hear with your heart.” He looked away from the intensity in her eyes.
“When is she coming back?”
Nehemia returned to the book in front of her. It looked like it was filled with strange symbols; vaguely familiar markings that tickled at his memory. “She said she won’t be back until after nightfall. If I were to guess, I’d say she didn’t want to spend one moment of daylight in this city—especially in this castle.”
In the home of the man whose soldiers had probably butchered her family.
Chaol took the morning training run alone. He ran through the mist-shrouded game park until his very bones were exhausted.
In the misty foothills above Rifthold, Celaena strode between the trees of the small forest, barely more than a sliver of darkness winding through the woods. She had been walking since before dawn, letting Fleetfoot follow as she would. Today, even the forest seemed silent.
Good. Today was not a day for the sounds of life. Today was for the hollow wind rustling branches, for the rushing of a half-frozen river, for the crunch of snow under her boots.
On this day last year, she’d known what she had to do—had seen every step with such brutal clarity that it had been easy when the time came. She’d once told Dorian and Chaol that she’d snapped that day in the Salt Mines of Endovier, but it was a lie. Snapped implied too human a feeling; nothing like the cold, hopeless rage that had taken hold and shut everything down when she’d awoken from the dream of the stag and the ravine.
She found a large boulder nestled between the bumps and hollows and sank down on its smooth, ice-cold top, Fleetfoot soon sitting beside her. Wrapping her arms around the dog, Celaena looked out into the still forest and remembered the day she’d unleashed herself upon Endovier.
Celaena panted through her bared teeth as she yanked the pickax out of the overseer’s stomach. The man gurgled blood, clutching at his gut as he looked to the slaves in supplication. But one glance from Celaena, one flash of eyes that showed she had gone beyond the edge, kept the slaves at bay.
She merely smiled down at the overseer as she swung the ax into his face. His blood sprayed her legs.
The slaves still stayed far away when she brought down the ax upon the shackles that bound her ankles to the rest of them. She didn’t offer to free them, and they didn’t ask; they knew how useless it would be.
The woman at the end of the chain gang was unconscious. Her back poured blood, split open by the iron-tipped whip of the dead overseer. She would die by tomorrow if her wounds were not treated. Even if they were, she’d probably die from infection. Endovier amused itself like that.
Celaena turned from the woman. She had work to do, and four overseers had to pay a debt before she was done.
She stalked from the mine shaft, pickax dangling from her hand. The two guards at the end of the tunnel were dead before they realized what was happening. Blood soaked her clothes and her bare arms, and Celaena wiped it from her face as she stormed down to the chamber where she knew the four overseers worked.
She had marked their faces the day they’d dragged that young Eyllwe woman behind the building, marked every detail about them as they used her, then slit her throat from ear to ear.
Celaena could have taken the swords from the fallen guards, but for these four men, it had to be the ax. She wanted them to know what Endovier felt like.
She reached the entrance to their section of the mines. The first two overseers died when she heaved the ax into their necks, slashing back and forth between them. Their slaves screamed, backing against the walls as she raged past them.
When she reached the other two overseers, she let them see her, let them try to draw their blades. She knew it wasn’t the weapon in her hands that made them stupid with panic, but rather her eyes—eyes that told them they had been tricked these past few months, that cutting her hair and whipping her hadn’t been enough, that she had been baiting them into forgetting that Adarlan’s Assassin was in their midst.
But she had not forgotten a second of pain, nor what she had seen them do to the others—to that young woman from Eyllwe, who had begged to gods who did not save her.
The men died too quickly, but Celaena had one more task to complete before she would meet her end. She prowled back up the main tunnel that led out of the mines. Guards foolishly came rushing out of tunnel mouths to meet her.
She surged upward, hacking and swinging. Two more guards went down, and she took up their swords, leaving the ax behind. The slaves didn’t cheer as their oppressors fell; they just watched in silence, understanding. This was not a fight for escape.
The light of the surface made her blink, but she was ready. Her eyes having to adjust to the sun would be her greatest weakness. That was why she had waited until the softer light of afternoon. Twilight would have been better, but that time of day was too heavily guarded, and there were too many slaves about then that could be caught in the crossfire. This last hour of full daylight, when the warm sun lulled many to sleep, was when the sentries went lax on watch before the evening inspection.
The three sentries at the entrance to the mines didn’t know what was happening below. Everyone was always screaming in Endovier. Everyone sounded the same when they died. And the three sentries screamed just like the others.
And then she was running, sprinting for the death that beckoned to her, making for the towering stone wall at the other end of the compound.
Arrows whizzed past, and she zigzagged. They wouldn’t kill her, by order of the king. An arrow through the shoulder or leg, maybe. But she’d make them reconsider their orders once the carnage was too massive to ignore.