“Oh, look at how many people are here,” Lysandra said. Her low-cut ice-blue dress did little to hide her cle**age as she craned her neck over the rail. Celaena blocked out Lysandra’s prattling as the courtesan began tossing out important names.
Celaena could sense Sam behind her, feel his gaze focused solely on the gold velvet curtains concealing the stage. She should say something to him—apologize or thank him or just … say something kind. She felt him tensing, as if he, too, wanted to say something. Somewhere in the theater, a gong began signaling the audience to take their seats.
It was now or never. She didn’t know why her heart thundered the way it did, but she didn’t give herself a chance to second-guess herself as she twisted in her seat to look at him. She glanced once at his clothes and then said, “You look handsome.”
His brows rose, and she swiftly turned back around in her seat, focusing hard on the curtain. He looked better than handsome, but … Well, at least she’d said one nice thing. She’d tried to be nice. Somehow, it didn’t make her feel that much better.
Celaena folded her hands in the lap of her bloodred gown. It wasn’t cut nearly as low as Lysandra’s, but with the slender sleeves and bare shoulders, she felt particularly exposed to Sam. She’d curled and swept her hair over one shoulder, certainly not to hide the scar on her neck.
Doneval lounged in his seat, eyes on the stage. How could a man who looked so bored and useless be responsible for not just the fate of several lives, but of his entire country? How could he sit in this theater and not hang his head in shame for what he was about to do to his fellow countrymen, and to whatever slaves would be caught up in it? The men around Bardingale kissed her cheeks and departed for their own boxes. Doneval’s three thugs watched the men very, very closely as they left. Not lazy, bored guards, then. Celaena frowned.
But then the chandeliers were hauled upward into the dome and dimmed, and the crowd quieted to hear the opening notes as the orchestra began playing. In the dark, it was nearly impossible to see Doneval.
Sam’s hand brushed her shoulder, and she almost jumped out of her skin as he brought his mouth close to her ear and murmured, “You look beautiful. Though I bet you already know that.” She most certainly did.
She gave him a sidelong glare, and found him grinning as he leaned back into his seat.
Suppressing her urge to smile, Celaena turned toward the stage as the music established the setting for them. A world of shadows and mist. A world where creatures and myths dwelled in the dark moments before dawn.
Celaena went still as the gold curtain drew back, and everything she knew and everything she was faded away to nothing.
The music annihilated her.
The dancing was breathtaking, yes, and the story it told—a legend of a prince seeking to rescue his bride, and the cunning bird he captured to help him to do it—was certainly lovely, but the music.
Had there ever been anything more beautiful, more exquisitely painful? She clenched the arms of the seat, her fingers digging into the velvet as the music hurtled toward its finale, sweeping her away in a flood.
With each beat of the drum, each trill of the flute and blare of the horn, she felt all of it along her skin, along her bones. The music broke her apart and put her back together, only to rend her asunder again and again.
And then the climax, the compilation of all the sounds she had loved best, amplified until they echoed into eternity. As the final note swelled, a gasp broke from her, setting the tears in her eyes spilling down her face. She didn’t care who saw.
Then, silence.
The silence was the worst thing she’d ever heard. The silence brought back everything around her. Applause erupted, and she was on her feet, crying still as she clapped until her hands ached.
“Celaena, I didn’t know you had a shred of human emotion in you,” Lysandra leaned in to whisper. “And I didn’t think the performance was that good.”
Sam gripped the back of Lysandra’s chair. “Shut up, Lysandra.”
Arobynn clicked his tongue in warning, but Celaena remained clapping, even as Sam’s defense sent a faint trickle of pleasure through her. The ovation continued for a while, with the dancers emerging from the curtain again and again to bow and be showered with flowers. Celaena clapped through it all, even as her tears dried, even as the crowd began shuffling out.
When she remembered to glance at Doneval, his box was empty.
Arobynn, Sam, and Lysandra left their box, too, long before she was ready to end her applause. But after she finished clapping, Celaena remained, staring toward the curtained stage, watching the orchestra begin to pack up their instruments.
She was the last person to leave the theater.
There was another party at the Keep that night—a party for Lysandra and her madam and whatever artists and philosophers and writers Arobynn favored at that moment. Mercifully, it was confined to one of the drawing rooms, but laughter and music still filled the entirety of the second floor. On the carriage ride home, Arobynn had asked Celaena to join them, but the last thing she wanted to see was Lysandra being fawned over by Arobynn, Sam, and everyone else. So she told him that she was tired and needed to sleep.
She wasn’t tired in the least, though. Emotionally drained, perhaps, but it was only ten thirty, and the thought of taking off her gown and climbing into bed made her feel rather pathetic. She was Adarlan’s Assassin; she’d freed slaves and stolen Asterion horses and won the respect of the Mute Master. Surely she could do something better than go to bed early.
So she slipped into one of the music rooms, where it was quiet enough that she could only hear a burst of laughter every now and then. The other assassins were either at the party or off on some mission or other. Her rustling dress was the only sound as she folded back the cover of the pianoforte. She’d learned to play when she was ten—under Arobynn’s orders that she find at least one refined skill other than ending lives—and had fallen in love immediately. Though she no longer took lessons, she played whenever she could spare a few minutes.
The music from the theater still echoed in her mind. Again and again, the same cluster of notes and harmonies. She could feel them humming under the surface of her skin, beating in time with her heart. What she wouldn’t give to hear the music once more!
She played a few notes with one hand, frowned, adjusted her fingers, and tried again, clinging to the music in her mind. Slowly, the familiar melody began to sound right.