Crown of Midnight

The few people still active at this hour had quickly looked away as she made her way here. She didn’t blame them. A black dress and a sheer, flowing black veil spoke enough about her grief, and kept everyone at a long, long distance. As though her sorrow were a plague.

But she didn’t give a damn what the others thought; the mourning clothes weren’t for them. She rounded the back of the mausoleum and beheld the rows of graves in the gravel garden behind it, the pale and worn stones illuminated by the moon. Statues depicting everything from mourning gods to dancing maidens marked the resting places of distinguished nobility, some so lifelike they seemed to be people frozen in stone.

It had not snowed since before Nehemia’s murder, so it was easy enough to spot the grave by the upturned earth before it.

There were no flowers, not even a headstone. Just fresh soil and a sword thrust into the earth—one of the curved swords of Nehemia’s fallen guards. Apparently, no one had bothered to give her anything more, not when she would be retrieved and brought back to Eyllwe.

Celaena stared at the dark, tilled earth, a chill wind rustling her veil.

Her chest ached, but this was the one last thing she had to do, the one last honor she could give her friend.

Celaena tilted her head to the sky, closed her eyes, and began to sing.

Chaol had told himself that he was only following Celaena to make sure she didn’t hurt herself or anyone else, but as she’d neared the royal mausoleum, he followed for other reasons.

The night provided good cover, but the moon was bright enough to keep him back, far enough away so she wouldn’t see or hear his approach. But then he saw where she had stopped, and realized he had no right to be here for this. He’d been about to turn away when she lifted her face to the moon and sang.

It was not in any language that he knew. Not in the common tongue, or in Eyllwe, or in the languages of Fenharrow or Melisande or anywhere else on the continent.

This language was ancient, each word full of power and rage and agony.

She did not have a beautiful voice. And many of the words sounded like half sobs, the vowels stretched by the pangs of sorrow, the consonants hardened by anger. She beat her breast in time, so full of savage grace, so at odds with the black gown and veil she wore. The hair on the back of his neck stood as the lament poured from her mouth, unearthly and foreign, a song of grief so old that it predated the stone castle itself.

And then the song finished, its end as brutal and sudden as Nehemia’s death had been.

She stood there for a few moments, silent and unmoving.

He was about to walk away when she half turned to him.

Her thin silver circlet shimmered in the moonlight, weighing down a veil so concealing that only he had recognized her.

A breeze whipped past them, making the branches of the trees moan and creak, setting her veil and skirts billowing to one side.

“Celaena,” he pleaded. She didn’t move, her stillness the only sign that she’d heard him. And that she had no interest in talking.

What could he ever say to repair the rift between them, anyway? He’d kept information from her. Even if he hadn’t been directly responsible for Nehemia’s death, if either girl had been more alert, they might have had their own defenses prepared. The loss she felt, the stillness with which she watched him—it was all his fault.

If the punishment for that was losing her, then he’d endure it.

So Chaol walked away, her lament still echoing through the night around him, carried on the wind like the pealing of distant bells.

Chapter 38

The dawn was chill and gray as Celaena stood in the familiar field of the game park, a large stick dangling between her gloved fingers. Fleetfoot sat before her, her tail slashing through the long, dried grass that poked up through the remaining layer of snow. But the hound didn’t whine or bark for the stick to be thrown.

No, Fleetfoot just kept sitting there, watching the palace far behind them. Waiting for someone who was never going to arrive.

Celaena stared across the barren field, listening to the sighing grasses. No one had tried to stop her from leaving her rooms last night—or this morning. Yet even though the guards were gone, whenever she left her room, Ress had an uncanny habit of accidentally running into her.

She didn’t care if he reported her movements to Chaol. She didn’t even care that Chaol had been spying on her at Nehemia’s grave last night. Let him think what he would about the song.

With a sharp intake of breath, she hurled the stick as hard as she could, so far it blended in with the cloudy morning sky. She didn’t hear it land.

Fleetfoot turned to look up at Celaena, her golden eyes full of question. Celaena reached down to stroke the warm head, the long ears, the slender muzzle. But the question remained.

Celaena said, “She’s never coming back.”

The dog kept waiting.

Dorian had spent half the night in the library, searching in forgotten crevices, scouring every dark corner, every hidden nook, for any books on magic. There were none. It wasn’t surprising, but given how many books were in the library, and how many twisting passageways there were, he was a little disappointed that nothing of worth could be found.

He didn’t even know what he would do with a book like that once he found it. He couldn’t bring it back to his rooms, since his servants were likely to find it there. He would probably have to put it back in its hiding place and return to it whenever he could.

He was scanning a bookshelf built into a stone alcove when he heard footsteps. Immediately, just as he’d rehearsed, he took out the book he’d tucked into his jacket and leaned against the wall, opening to a random page.

“It’s a little dark for reading,” a female voice said. She sounded so normal, so like herself that Dorian nearly dropped the book.

Celaena was standing a few feet away, arms crossed. Pitter-pattering feet echoed against the floors, and a moment later Dorian braced himself against the wall as Fleetfoot flung herself at him, all wagging tail and bountiful kisses. “Gods, you’re huge,” he told the dog. She licked his cheek one last time and sprinted off down the hall. Dorian watched her go, brows raised. “I’m fairly certain that whatever she’s about to do, it won’t make the librarians happy.”

“She knows to stick to the poetry and mathematics books.”

Celaena’s face was grave and pale, but her eyes shone with faint amusement. She wore a dark blue tunic he’d never seen before, with golden embroidery that glinted in the dim light. In fact, her whole outfit looked new.

The silence that settled between them made him shift on his feet. What could he possibly say to her? The last time they’d been this close, she’d grazed her nails across his neck. He’d had nightmares about that moment.

“Can I help you find anything?” he asked her. Keep it normal, keep it simple.

“Crown Prince and royal librarian?”

“Unofficial royal librarian,” he said. “A title hard-won after many years of hiding here to avoid stuffy meetings, my mother, and … well, everything else.”

“And here I was, thinking you just hid in your little tower.”

Dorian laughed softly, but the sound somehow killed the amusement in her eyes. As if the sound of merriment was too raw against the wound of Nehemia’s death. Keep it simple, he reminded himself. “So? Is there a book I can help you find? If that’s a list of titles in your hand, then I could look them up in the catalog.”

“No,” she said, folding the papers in half. “No, there’s no book. I just wanted a walk.”

And he’d just come to a dark corner of the library to read.

But he didn’t push it, if only because she could easily start asking him questions, too. If she remembered what had happened when she attacked Chaol, that is. He hoped she didn’t.

There was a muffled shriek from somewhere in the library, followed by a string of howled curses and the familiar pitter-patter of paws on stone. Then Fleetfoot came sprinting down the row, a scroll of paper in her jaws.

“Wicked beast!” a man was shouting. “Come back here at once!”

Fleetfoot just zoomed on by, a blur of gold.

A moment later, when the little librarian came waddling into view and asked if they’d seen a dog, Celaena only shook her head and said that she had heard something—from the opposite direction. And then she told him to keep his voice down, because this was a library.

His eyes shooting daggers at her, the man huffed and scuttled away, his shouting a bit softer.

When he was gone, Dorian turned to her, brows high on his head. “That scroll could have been invaluable.”

She shrugged. “He looked like he could use the exercise.”

And then she was smiling. Hesitantly at first, then she shook her head, and the smile bloomed wide enough to show her teeth.

It was only when she looked at him again that he realized he’d been staring, trying to sort out the difference between this smile and the smile she’d given his father the day she’d put Grave’s head on the council table.

As if she could read his thoughts, she said, “I apologize for my behavior lately. I haven’t … been myself.”

Or she’d just been a part of herself that she usually kept on a tight, tight leash, he thought. But he said, “I understand.”

And from the way her eyes softened, he knew that was all he’d ever needed to say.

Chaol wasn’t hiding from his father. He wasn’t hiding from Celaena. And he wasn’t hiding from his men, who now felt some ridiculous urge to look after him.

But the library did offer a good amount of refuge and privacy.

Maybe answers, too.

The head librarian wasn’t in the little office tucked into one of walls of the library. So Chaol had asked an apprentice. The gawking youth pointed, gave some vague directions, and told him good luck.

Chaol followed the boy’s directions up a sweeping flight of black marble stairs and along the mezzanine rail. He was about to turn down an aisle of books when he heard them speaking.

Actually, he heard Fleetfoot’s prancing first, and looked over the marble rail in time to see Celaena and Dorian walking toward the towering main doors. They were a comfortable, casual distance apart, but … but she was talking. Her shoulders were relaxed, her gait smooth. So different from the woman of shadow and darkness that he’d seen yesterday.

What were the two of them doing here—together?

It wasn’t his business. Frankly, he was grateful that she was talking to anyone, and not burning her clothes or butchering rogue assassins. Still, something twanged in his heart that Dorian was the one beside her.

But she was talking.

So Chaol quickly turned from the balcony rail and walked deeper into the library, trying to shove the image from his mind. He found Harlan Sensel, the head librarian, huffing and puffing down one of the main paths through the library, shaking a fistful of paper shreds at the air around him.

Sensel was so busy cursing that he hardly noticed when Chaol stepped in his path. The librarian had to tilt his head back to see Chaol, and then frowned at him.

“Good, you’re here,” Sensel said, and resumed walking. “Higgins must have sent word.”

Chaol had no idea what Sensel was talking about. “Is there some issue that you need assistance with?”

“Issue!” Sensel waved the shredded papers. “There are feral beasts running amok in my library! Who let that—that creature in here? I demand that they pay!”

Chaol had had a feeling that Celaena had something to do with this. He just hoped she and Fleetfoot were out of the library before Sensel reached the office.

“What sort of scroll was damaged? I’ll see to it that they replace it.”

“Replace it!” Sensel sputtered. “Replace this?”

“What, exactly, is it?”

“A letter! A letter from a very close friend of mine!”