Crown of Midnight

She batted her eyelashes at him. “I’m truly honored.” Actually, the thought of Dorian with other women made her want to shatter a window, but it wouldn’t be fair to let him know that. She glanced at the clock on the small table beside a wall. “I actually need to go back into Rifthold right now,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. She still had a few hours of daylight left—enough time to survey Archer’s elegant townhouse and start trailing him to get a sense of his usual whereabouts.

Dorian nodded, his smile fading.

Silence fell, interrupted only by the ticking of the clock on the table. She crossed her arms, remembering how he’d smelled, how his lips had tasted. But this distance between them, this horrible gap that spread every day … it was for the best.

Dorian took a step closer, exposing his palms to her. “Do you want me to fight for you? Is that it?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I just want you to leave me alone.”

His eyes flickered with the words left unsaid. Celaena stared at him, unmoving, until he silently left.

Alone in the foyer, Celaena clenched and unclenched her fists, suddenly disgusted with all of the pretty packages on the table.

Chapter 5

On a rooftop in a very fashionable and respectable part of Rifthold, Celaena crouched in the shadow of a chimney and frowned into the chill wind gusting off the Avery. She checked her pocket watch for the third time. Archer Finn’s previous two appointments had only been an hour each. He’d been in the house across the street for almost two.

There was nothing interesting about the elegant, green-roofed townhouse, and she hadn’t learned anything about who lived there, other than the client’s name—some Lady Balanchine. She had used the same trick she’d employed at the other two houses to gain that bit of information: she pretended to be a courier with a package for Lord So-and-So. And when the butler or housekeeper said that this was not Lord So-and-So’s house, she’d feigned embarrassment, asked whose house it was, chatted up the servant a bit, and then went on her way.

Celaena adjusted the position of her legs and rolled her neck. The sun had nearly set, the temperature dropping with each passing minute. Unless she could get into the houses themselves, she wasn’t going to learn much else. And given the likelihood that Archer might actually be doing what he was paid to do, she was in no rush to go inside. Better to learn where he went, who he saw, and then take the next step.

It had been so long since she’d done something like this in Rifthold—since she’d crouched on the emerald rooftops and learned what she could about her prey. It was different than when the king had sent her off to Bellhaven or to some lord’s estate. Here, now, in Rifthold, it felt like …

It felt like she’d never left. As if she might look over her shoulder and find Sam Cortland crouching behind her. As if she might return at the end of the night not to the glass castle, but to the Assassins’ Keep on the other side of the city.

Celaena sighed, tucking her hands under her arms to keep her fingers warm and agile.

It had been over a year and a half since the night she’d lost her freedom; a year and a half since she’d lost Sam. And somewhere, in this city, were the answers to how it all had happened. If she dared to look, she knew she’d find them. And she knew it would destroy her again.

The front door of the townhouse opened, and Archer swaggered down the steps, right into his waiting carriage. She barely caught a glimpse of his golden-brown hair and fine clothes before he was whisked away.

Groaning, Celaena straightened from her crouch and hurried off the roof. Some harrowing climbing and a few jumps soon had her back on the cobbled streets.

She trailed Archer’s carriage, slipping in and out of shadows as they made their way across the city, a slow journey thanks to traffic. While she might be in no hurry to seek out the truth behind her own capture and Sam’s death, and while she was fairly certain the king had to be wrong about Archer, part of her wondered whether whatever truth she uncovered about this rebel movement and the king’s plans would destroy her, too.

And not just destroy her—but also everything she’d grown to care about.

Savoring the warmth of the crackling fire, Celaena leaned her head against the back of the small couch and dangled her legs over the cushioned arm. The lines on the paper she held before her were beginning to blur, which was no surprise, given that it was well past eleven, and she’d been up before dawn.

Sprawled on the well-worn red carpet in front of her, Chaol’s glass pen flickered with firelight as he scanned through documents and signed things and scribbled notes. Giving a little sigh through her nose, Celaena lowered the paper in her hands.

Unlike her spacious suite, Chaol’s bedroom was one large chamber, furnished only with a table by the solitary window and the old couch set before the stone fireplace. A few tapestries hung on the gray stone walls, a towering oak armoire stood in one corner, and his four-poster bed was decorated with a rather old and faded crimson duvet. There was a bathing room attached—not as large as her own, but still spacious enough to accommodate its own pool and privy. He had only one small bookcase, filled and neatly arranged. In alphabetical order, if she knew Chaol at all. And it probably contained only his most beloved books—unlike Celaena’s, which housed every title she got her hands on, whether she liked the book or not. Regardless of his unnaturally organized bookshelf, she liked it here; it was cozy.

She’d started coming here a few weeks ago, when thoughts of Elena and Cain and the secret passageways made her itch to get out of her own rooms. And even though he’d grumbled about her imposing on his privacy, Chaol hadn’t turned her away or objected to her frequent after-dinner visits.

The scratching of Chaol’s pen stopped. “Remind me again what you’re working on.”

She flopped onto her back as she waved the paper in the air above her. “Just information about Archer. Clients, favored haunts, his daily schedule.”

Chaol’s golden-brown eyes were molten in the firelight. “Why go to so much trouble to track him when you could just shoot him and be done with it? You said he was well-guarded, yet it seems like you tracked him easily today.”

She scowled. Chaol was too smart for his own good. “Because, if the king actually has a group of people conspiring against him, then I should get as much information about them as I can before I kill Archer. Perhaps following Archer will reveal more conspirators—or at least clues to their whereabouts.” It was the truth—and she’d followed Archer’s ornate carriage through the streets of the capital today for that very reason.

But in the hours she’d spent trailing him, he’d gone only to a few appointments before returning to his townhouse.

“Right,” Chaol said. “So you’re just … memorizing that information now?”

“If you’re suggesting that I have no reason to be here and should leave, then tell me to go.”

“I’m just trying to figure out what’s so boring that you dozed off ten minutes ago.”

She propped herself on her elbows. “I did not!”

His brows rose. “I heard you snoring.”

“You’re a liar, Chaol Westfall.” She threw her paper at him and plopped back on the couch. “I only closed my eyes for a minute.”

He shook his head again and went back to work.

Celaena blushed. “I didn’t really snore, did I?”

His face was utterly serious as he said, “Like a bear.”

She thumped a fist on the couch cushion. He grinned. She huffed, then draped her arm off the sofa, picking at the threads of the ancient rug as she stared up at the stone ceiling. “Tell me why you hate Roland.”

Chaol looked up. “I never said I hated him.”

She just waited.

Chaol sighed. “I think it’s fairly easy for you to see why I hate him.”

“But was there any incident that—”

“There were many incidents, and I don’t particularly feel like talking about any of them.”

She swung her legs off the arm of the couch and sat up straight. “Testy, aren’t you?”

She picked up another one of her documents, a map of the city that she’d marked up with the locations of Archer’s clients. Most of them seemed to be in the posh district where the majority of Rifthold’s elite lived. Archer’s own townhouse was in that neighborhood, tucked into a quiet, respectable side street. She traced a nail along it, but paused when her eyes fell upon a street just a few blocks over.

She knew that street—and knew the house that sat on its corner. Whenever she ventured into Rifthold, she took care to never pass too close to it. Today had been no different; she’d even gone a few blocks out of her way to avoid walking by.

Not daring to look at Chaol, she asked, “Do you know who Rourke Farran is?”

The name made her sick with long-suppressed rage and grief, but she managed to say it. Because even if she didn’t want the entire truth … there were some things she did need to know about her capture. Still needed to know, even after all this time.

She felt Chaol’s attention on her. “The crime lord?”

She nodded, her eyes still on that street where so many things had gone so horribly wrong. “Have you ever dealt with him?”

“No,” Chaol said. “But … that’s because Farran is dead.”

She lowered the paper. “Farran’s dead?”

“Nine months ago. He and his three top men were all found murdered by …” Chaol chewed on his lip, searching for the name. “Wesley. A man named Wesley took them all out. He was …” Chaol cocked his head to the side. “He was Arobynn Hamel’s personal guard.” Her breath was tight in her chest. “Did you know him?”

“I thought I did,” she said softly. For the years she’d spent with Arobynn, Wesley had been a silent, deadly presence, a man who had barely tolerated her, and had always made it clear that if she ever became a threat to his master, he’d kill her. But on the night that she’d been betrayed and captured, Wesley had tried to stop her. She’d thought that it was because Arobynn had ordered her locked in her rooms, that it had been a way to keep her from seeking retribution for Sam’s death at Farran’s hands; but …

“What happened to Wesley?” she asked. “Did Farran’s men catch him?”

Chaol ran a hand through his hair, glancing down at the rug. “No. We found Wesley a day later—courtesy of Arobynn Hamel.”

She felt the blood drain from her face, but dared to ask, “How?”

Chaol studied her closely, warily. “Wesley’s body was impaled on the iron fence outside Rourke’s house. There was … enough blood to suggest that Wesley was alive when they did it. They never confessed, but we got the sense that the servants in the household had also been instructed to let him stay there until he died.

“We thought it was an attempt to balance the blood feud—so that when the next crime lord ascended, they wouldn’t view Arobynn and his assassins as enemies.”

She stared at the carpet again. The night she’d broken out of the Assassins’ Keep to hunt down Farran, Wesley had tried to stop her. He’d tried to tell her it was a trap.

Celaena shut down the thought before it reached its conclusion. That was a truth she’d have to take out and examine at another time, when she was alone, when she didn’t have Archer and the rebel movement and all that nonsense to worry about. When she could try to understand why Arobynn Hamel might have betrayed her—and what she was going to do with that horrible knowledge. How much she’d make him suffer—and bleed for it.

After a few moments of silence, Chaol asked, “We never learned why Wesley went after Rourke Farran, though. Wesley was just a personal bodyguard. What did he have against Farran?”