Lies. The words of a girl who had been grateful to him for offering her freedom, for pushing and pushing her until she was roaring at the world again.
A girl who had stopped existing the night they’d found that body on the bed.
When she had ripped his face open.
When she had tried to plunge that dagger into his heart.
The predator he’d seen in those eyes … it had been unleashed.
There were no leashes that could ever keep her restrained. And words like honor and duty and trust, they were gone.
She had gutted that courtesan in the tunnels. She’d let the man’s body drop, closed her eyes, and had looked precisely as she had during those throes of passion. And when she had opened her eyes again …
Killer. Liar. Thief.
She was still sitting on the chaise, the Fae Prince beside her, both of them watching that scene in the tunnel, as if they were spectators in a sport.
Watching Archer Finn slump to the stones, his blood leaking from him, face taut with shock and pain. Watching Chaol stand there, unable to move or speak, as she breathed in the death before her, the vengeance.
As Celaena Sardothien ended, shattering completely.
He had still tried to protect her. To get her out. To atone.
You will always be my enemy.
She had roared those words with ten years’ worth of rage.
And she had meant it. Meant it as any child who had lost and suffered at Adarlan’s hand would mean it.
As Yrene meant it.
The garden appeared in another pocket of the darkness. The garden and the cottage and the mother and laughing child.
Yrene.
The thing he had not seen coming. The person he had not expected to find.
Here in the darkness … here she was.
And yet he had still failed. Hadn’t done right by her, or by Nesryn.
He should have waited, should have respected them both enough to end one and begin with another, but he supposed he had failed in that, too.
Aelin and Rowan remained on that chaise in the sunshine.
He saw the Fae Prince gently, reverently, take Aelin’s hand, turning it over. Exposing her wrist to the sun. Exposing the faint marks of shackles.
He saw Rowan rub a thumb over those scars. Saw the fire in Aelin’s eyes bank.
Over and over, Rowan brushed those scars with his thumb. And Aelin’s mask slid off.
There was fire in that face. And rage. And cunning.
But also sorrow. Fear. Despair. Guilt.
Shame.
Pride and hope and love. The weight of a burden she had run from, but now …
I love you.
I’m sorry.
She had tried to explain. Had said it as clearly as she could. Had given him the truth so he might piece it together when she had left and understand. She meant those words. I’m sorry.
Sorry for the lies. For what she had done to him, his life. For swearing that she would pick him, choose him, no matter what. Always.
He wanted to hate her for that lie. That false promise, which she had discarded in the misty forests of Wendlyn.
And yet.
There, with that prince, without the mask … That was the bottom of her pit.
She had come to Rowan, soul limping. She had come to him as she was, as she had never been with anyone. And she had returned whole.
Still she had waited—waited to be with him.
Chaol had been lusting for Yrene, had taken her into his bed without so much as thinking of Nesryn, and yet Aelin …
She and Rowan looked to him now. Still as an animal in the woods, both of them. But their eyes full of understanding. Knowing.
She had fallen in love with someone else, had wanted someone else—as badly as he wanted Yrene.
And yet it was Aelin, godless and irreverent, who had honored him. More than he’d honored Nesryn.
Aelin’s chin dipped as if to say yes.
And Rowan … The prince had let her return to Adarlan. To make right by her kingdom, but to also decide for herself what she wanted. Who she wanted. And if Aelin had chosen Chaol instead … He knew, deep down, Rowan would have backed off. If it had made Aelin happy, Rowan would have walked away without ever telling her what he felt.
Shame pressed on him, sickening and oily.
He had called her a monster. For her power, her actions, and yet …
He did not blame her.
He understood.
That perhaps she had promised things, but … she had changed. The path had changed.
He understood.
He’d promised Nesryn—or had implied it. And when he had changed, when the path had altered; when Yrene appeared down it …
He understood.
Aelin smiled softly at him as she and Rowan rippled into a sunbeam and vanished.
Leaving a red marble floor, blood pooling across it.
A head bumping vulgarly over smooth tile.
A prince screaming in agony, in rage and despair.
I love you.
Go.
That—if there had been a cleaving, it was that moment.
When he turned and ran. And he left his friend, his brother, in that chamber.
When he ran from that fight, that death.
Dorian had forgiven him. Did not hold it against him.
Yet he had still run. Still left.
Everything he had planned, worked to save, all came crumbling down.
Dorian stood before him, hands in his pockets, a faint smile on his face.
He did not deserve to serve such a man. Such a king.
The darkness pushed in further. Revealing that bloody council room. Revealing the prince and king he’d served. Revealing what they had done. To his men.
In that chamber beneath the castle.
How Dorian had smiled. Smiled while Ress had screamed, while Brullo had spat in his face.
His fault—all of it. Every moment of pain, those deaths …
It showed him Dorian’s hands as they wielded those instruments beneath the castle. As blood spurted and bone sundered. Unfaltering, clean hands. And that smile.
He knew. He had known, had guessed. Nothing would ever make it right. For his men; for Dorian, left to live with it.
For Dorian, whom he’d abandoned in that castle.
That moment, over and over, the darkness showed him.
As Dorian held his ground. As he revealed his magic, as good as a death sentence, and bought him time to run.
He had been so afraid—so afraid of magic, of loss, of everything. And that fear … it had driven him to it anyway. It had hurried him down this path. He had clung so hard, had fought against it, and it had cost him everything. Too late. He’d been too late to see clearly.
And when the worst had happened; when he saw that collar; when he saw his men swinging from the gates, their broken bodies picked over by crows …
It had cracked him through to his foundation. To this hollow pit beneath the mountain he’d been.
He had fallen apart. Had let himself lose sight of it.
And he had found some glimmer of peace in Rifthold, even after the injury, and yet …
It was like applying a patch over a knife wound to the gut.
He had not healed. Unmoored and raging, he had not wanted to heal.
Not really. His body, yes, but even that …
Some part of him had whispered it was deserved.
And the soul-wound … He had been content to let it fester.
Failure and liar and oath-breaker.
The darkness swarmed, a wind stirring it.
He could stay here forever. In the ageless dark.
Yes, the darkness whispered.
He could remain, and rage and hate and curl into nothing but shadow.
But Dorian remained before him, still smiling faintly. Waiting.
Waiting.
For—him.
He had made one promise. He had not broken it yet.
To save them.
His friend, his kingdom.
He still had that.
Even here at the bottom of this dark hell, he still had that.
And the road that he had traveled so far … No, he would not look back.
What if we go on, only to more pain and despair?
Aelin had smiled at his question, posed on that rooftop in Rifthold. As if she had understood, long before he did, that he would find this pit. And learn the answer for himself.
Then it is not the end.
This …
This was not the end. This crack in him, this bottom, was not the end.
He had one promise left.
To that he would still hold.
It is not the end.
He smiled at Dorian, whose sapphire eyes shone with joy—with love.