Why did the king not speak? Why did he not come to her aid? Perrington had given her the poison based on the king’s command, hadn’t he? The council members looked at her accusingly, whispering among themselves.
“You gave it to me!” she said to the duke.
Perrington’s orange brows furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
Kaltain started forward. “You scheming son of a harlot!”
“Restrain her, please,” the duke said, blandly, calmly—as if she were no more than a hysterical servant. As if she were nobody.
“I told you,” the duke said into the king’s ear, “that she’d do anything to get the Cro—” The words were lost as she was dragged away. There was nothing—no emotion at all—in the duke’s face. He had played her for a fool.
Kaltain struggled against the guards. “Your Majesty, please! His Grace told me that you—”
The duke merely looked away.
“I’ll kill you!” she screamed at Perrington. She turned to the king, beseechingly, but he, too, looked away, his face crumpled with distaste. He wouldn’t listen to anything she said, no matter what the truth was. Perrington had been planning this for too long. And she’d played right into his hands. He’d acted the besotted fool only to plunge a dagger into her back.
Kaltain kicked and thrashed against the guards’ grip, but the king’s table became smaller and smaller. As she reached the doors to the castle, the duke grinned at her, and her dreams shattered.
Chapter 51
The next morning, Dorian kept his chin high as his father stared at him. He didn’t lower his gaze, no matter how many silent seconds ticked by. After his father had allowed Cain to toy with and hurt Celaena for so long, when she’d clearly been drugged . . . It was a miracle Dorian hadn’t snapped yet, but he needed this audience with his father.
“Well?” asked the king at last.
“I wish to know what will happen to Chaol. For killing Cain.”
His father’s black eyes gleamed. “What do you think should happen to him?”
“Nothing,” said Dorian. “I think he killed him to defend Cel—to defend the assassin.”
“You think the life of an assassin is worth more than that of a soldier?”
Dorian’s sapphire gaze darkened. “No, but I believe there was no honor in stabbing her in the back after she’d won.” And if he ever found out that Perrington or his father had sanctioned it, or somehow played a hand in Kaltain drugging her . . . Dorian’s hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“Honor?” The King of Adarlan stroked his beard. “And would you have slain me if I tried to kill her in such a manner?”
“You’re my father,” he said carefully. “I would trust that the choice you made was correct.”
“What a cunning liar you are! Almost as good as Perrington.”
“So you won’t punish Chaol?”
“I see no reason why I should rid myself of a perfectly capable Captain of the Guard.”
Dorian sighed. “Thank you, Father.” The gratitude in his eyes was genuine.
“Is there anything else?” asked the king offhandedly.
“I—” Dorian glanced at the window, then back at his father, steeling his nerve once more. The second reason he’d come. “I want to know what you’re going to do with the assassin,” he said, and his father smiled in a way that made Dorian’s blood run cold.
“The assassin . . . ,” his father mused. “She was rather disgraceful at the duel; I don’t know if I can have a blubbering woman as my Champion, poison or no. If she’d been really good, she would have noticed the poison before she drank. Perhaps I should send her back to Endovier.”
Dorian’s temper flared with dizzying speed. “You’re wrong about her,” he began, but then shook his head. “You’ll not see her otherwise, no matter what I tell you.”
“Why should I see an assassin as anything but a monster? I brought her here to do my bidding, not to meddle in the life of my son and empire.”
Dorian bared his teeth. He’d never dared look at his father like this. It thrilled him, and as his father slowly sat down, Dorian wondered if the king was considering whether he had become a genuine concern. To Dorian’s surprise, he realized that he didn’t care. Perhaps the time had come for him to start questioning his father.
“She’s not a monster,” Dorian said. “Everything she’s done, she did to survive.”
“Survive? Is that the lie she told you? She could have done anything to survive, but she chose killing. She enjoyed killing. She has you at her beck and call, doesn’t she? Oh, how clever she is! What a politician she’d have made if she had been born a man!”
A deep-throated growl rippled from Dorian. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no attachment to her.”
But in that one sentence, Dorian made his mistake, and he knew that his father had found his new weak spot: the overwhelming terror that Celaena would be ripped from him. His hands slackened at his sides.
The King of Adarlan looked at the Crown Prince. “I shall send her my contract whenever I get around to it. Until then, you’d do well to keep your mouth shut about it, boy.”
Dorian drowned in the cold rage that lay inside of him. Yet an image came vividly to his mind: Nehemia handing Celaena her staff at the duel. Nehemia was no fool; like him, she knew that symbols held a special kind of power. Though Celaena might be his father’s Champion, she’d gained the title using a weapon from Eyllwe. And while Nehemia might be playing a game that she had no chance of winning, Dorian couldn’t deny that he greatly admired the princess for daring to play in the first place.
Perhaps he might someday work up the nerve to demand retribution for what his father had done to those rebels in Eyllwe. Not today. Not yet. But maybe he could make a start.
So he faced his father, and kept his head held high as he said, “Perrington wishes to use Nehemia as some sort of hostage in order to make the Eyllwe rebels obey.”
His father cocked his head. “Does he now? It’s an interesting idea. Do you agree?”
Though Dorian’s palms began sweating, he schooled his features into neutrality as he said, “No, I don’t. I think we’re better than that.”
“Are we? Do you know how many soldiers and supplies I’ve lost thanks to those rebels?”
“I do, but to use Nehemia like that is too risky. The rebels might use it to gain allies in other kingdoms. And Nehemia is beloved by her people. If you’re worried about losing soldiers and supplies, then you’ll lose far more if Perrington’s plan ignites a full-on rebellion in Eyllwe. We’d be better off trying to win over Nehemia—trying to work with her to get the rebels to back off. That won’t happen if we hold her hostage.”
Silence fell, and Dorian tried not to fidget as his father studied him. Every heartbeat felt like a hammer striking his body.
At last, his father nodded. “I shall order Perrington to stop his planning, then.”
Dorian almost sagged with relief, but he kept his face blank, kept his words steady as he said, “Thank you for hearing me out.”
His father didn’t reply, and without waiting for his dismissal, the prince turned on his heel and left.
•
Celaena tried not to wince at the pain that shot through her shoulder and leg as she awoke. Swaddled in blankets and bandages, she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was almost one in the afternoon.
Her jaw hurt as she opened her mouth. Celaena didn’t need a mirror to know that she was covered in nasty bruises. She frowned, and her face throbbed at the movement. Undoubtedly, she looked hideous. She tried unsuccessfully to sit up. Everything hurt.
Her arm was in a sling, and her thigh stung as her legs moved under the covers. She didn’t remember much of what had happened after the duel yesterday, but at least she wasn’t dead—either by Cain or the king’s order.
Her dreams last night had been filled with Nehemia and Elena—though, more often than not, they disappeared into visi
ons of demons and the dead. And those things Cain had said. The nightmares were so terrible that Celaena barely slept, despite her pain and exhaustion. She wondered what had become of Elena’s amulet. She had a feeling the nightmares were due to its absence, and wished repeatedly for it to be restored to her, even though Cain was now dead.
The door to her chambers opened, and she found Nehemia standing in the doorway. The princess only smiled slightly at her as she closed the bedroom door and approached. Fleetfoot lifted her head, her tail slapping against the bed as she wagged it in earnest.
“Hello,” Celaena said in Eyllwe.
“How are you feeling?” Nehemia replied in the common tongue, without a hint of her accent. Fleetfoot climbed over Celaena’s sore legs to greet the princess.
“Exactly how I look,” Celaena said, her mouth aching at the movement.
Nehemia took a seat on the edge of the mattress. As it shifted beneath her, Celaena winced. Recovery wasn’t going to be easy. Fleetfoot, done licking and sniffing at Nehemia, curled up in a ball between them and went to sleep. Celaena buried her fingers in her velvet-soft ears.
“I won’t waste time dancing around the truth,” Nehemia said. “I saved your life at the duel.”
She had a hazy memory of Nehemia’s fingers making strange symbols in the air. “I didn’t hallucinate all of that? And—and you saw everything, too?” Celaena tried to sit up a little higher, but found it too painful to even move an inch.
“No, you didn’t,” the princess said. “And yes, I saw everything that you saw; my gifts enable me to see what others normally cannot. Yesterday, the bloodbane Kaltain put in your wine made you see it, too: what lurks beyond the veil of this world. I don’t think Kaltain intended that effect, but it reacted to your blood in that way. Magic calls to magic.” Celaena shifted uncomfortably at the words.
“Why did you pretend to not understand our language all these months?” Celaena asked, eager to change the subject, but also wondering why the question stung as much as her wounds.
“It was originally a defense,” Nehemia said, gently setting her hand on Celaena’s good arm. “You’d be surprised how much people are willing to reveal when they think you can’t understand them. But with each day that I pretended to not know anything, being around you became harder and harder.”
“But why make me give you lessons?”
Nehemia looked up at the ceiling. “Because I wanted a friend. Because I liked you.”
“So you truly were reading that book when I came across you in the library.”
Nehemia nodded. “I . . . I was doing research. On the Wyrdmarks, as you call them in your language. I lied to you when I said I didn’t know anything about them. I know all about them. I know how to read them—and how to use them. My entire family does, but we keep it a secret, passed down from generation to generation. They are only to be used as a last defense against evil, or in the gravest of illnesses. And here, with magic banned . . . well, even though the Wyrdmarks are a different kind of power, I’m sure that if people discovered I was using them, I’d be imprisoned for it.”
Celaena tried to sit up straighter, cursing herself for being unable to move without wanting to faint from pain. “You were using them?”
Nehemia nodded gravely. “We keep them a secret because of the terrible power that they wield. Terrible, in that it can be used for good or evil—though most have used their power for wicked deeds. Since the moment I arrived here, I was aware that someone was using the Wyrdmarks to call forth demons from the Otherworlds—realms beyond our realm. That fool Cain knew enough about the Wyrdmarks to summon the creatures, but didn’t know how to control them and send them back. I’ve spent months banishing and destroying the creatures he summoned; that is why I’ve sometimes been so absent.”
Shame burned on Celaena’s cheeks. How could she ever have believed Nehemia was the one killing the Champions? Celaena lifted her right hand so she could see the scars on it. “That was why you didn’t ask questions the night my hand was bitten. You—you used the Wyrdmarks to heal me.”
“I still don’t know how or where you came across the ridderak—but I think that’s a tale for another time.” Nehemia clicked her tongue. “The marks you found under your bed were drawn by me.” Celaena jolted a bit at that. She hissed as her body gave a collective, miserable throb of pain.
“Those symbols are for protection. You have no idea what a nuisance it was to have to keep redrawing them every time you washed them away.” A smile tugged on the edges of Nehemia’s full lips. “Without them, I think the ridderak would have been drawn to you far sooner.”
“Why?”
“Because Cain hated you, of course. And wanted to eliminate you from the competition. I wish he weren’t dead, so I might ask him where he learned to rip open portals like that. When the poison made you hover between worlds, his very presence somehow brought those creatures to the In-Between to shred you apart. Though after all he’s done, I think he deserved Chaol running him through like that.”
Celaena looked toward the bedroom door. She still hadn’t seen Chaol since yesterday. Had the king punished him for all that he had done to help her?
“That man cares for you more than either of you realize,” Nehemia said, a smile in her voice. Celaena’s face burned.
Nehemia cleared her throat. “I suppose you wish to know how I saved you.”
“If you’re so willing,” Celaena said, and the princess grinned.
“With the Wyrdmarks, I was able to open a portal into one of the realms of the Otherworld—and let through Elena, first queen of Adarlan.”
“You know her?” Celaena raised an eyebrow.
“No—but she answered my call for help. Not all realms are full of darkness and death. Some are filled with creatures of good—beings that, if our need is great enough, will follow us into Erilea to help in our task. She heard your plea for help long before I opened the portal.”
“Is it . . . is it possible to go to these other worlds?” Celaena vaguely recalled the Wyrdgates that she’d stumbled across in that book months and months ago.
Nehemia studied her carefully. “I don’t know. My schooling isn’t yet completed. But the queen was both in and not in this world. She was in the In-Between, where she could not fully cross over, nor could the creatures that you saw. It takes an enormous amount of power to open a true portal to let something through—and even then, the portal will close after a moment. Cain could open it long enough for the ridderak to come through, but then it would shut. So I had to open it long enough to send it back. We’ve been playing a cat-and-mouse game for months.” She rubbed her temples. “You have no idea how exhausting it’s been.”
“Cain summoned all of those things at the duel, didn’t he?”
Nehemia contemplated the question. “Perhaps. They might have already been waiting.”
“But I could only see them because of the bloodbane that Kaltain gave me?”
“I don’t know, Elentiya.” Nehemia sighed and stood. “All I know is that Cain knew the secrets of my people’s power—power that has long been forgotten in the lands of the North. And that troubles me.”
“At least he’s dead,” Celaena offered, then swallowed. “But . . . but in that . . . place—Cain didn’t look like Cain. He looked like a demon. Why?”
“Perhaps the evil he kept summoning seeped into his soul and twisted him into something he was not.”
“He talked about me. Like he knew everything.” Celaena clenched the blankets.
Something flickered in Nehemia’s gaze. “Sometimes, the wicked will tell us things just to confuse us—to haunt our thoughts long after we’ve faced them. He would be delighted to know you’re still fretting over whatever nonsense he said.” Nehemia patted her hand. “Don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’s still troubling you; put those thoughts from your mind.”
“At least the king doesn’t know about any of this; I can’t imagine what he’d do if he had access to th
at kind of power.”
“I can imagine a great deal,” Nehemia said softly. “Do you know what the Wyrdmark is that burned on your forehead?”
Celaena stiffened. “No. Do you?”
Nehemia gave her a weighing look. “No, I do not. But I have seen it there before. It seems to be a part of you. And I do worry what the king thinks of it. It’s a miracle he hasn’t questioned it further.” Celaena’s blood went cold, and Nehemia quickly added, “Don’t worry. If he wanted to question you, he would have done it already.”
Celaena let out a shuddering breath. “Why are you really here, Nehemia?”
The princess was quiet for a moment. “I will not claim ties of allegiance to the King of Adarlan. You know this already. And I’m not afraid to tell you that I came to Rifthold only for the excellent view it offered of his movements—of his plans.”
“You truly came here to spy?” Celaena whispered.
“If you want to put it that way. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my country—no sacrifice too great to keep my people alive and out of slavery, to keep another massacre from happening.” Pain flickered across her eyes.
Celaena’s heart twisted. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
Nehemia stroked Fleetfoot’s coat. “My love for Eyllwe drowns out my fear of the King of Adarlan. But I will not involve you, Elentiya.” Celaena almost sighed with relief, though it shamed her to feel that way. “Our paths might be entwined, but . . . but I think you must continue to travel your own road for now. Adjust to your new position.”
Celaena nodded and cleared her throat. “I won’t tell anyone about your powers.”
Nehemia smiled sadly. “And there shall be no more secrets between us. When you are better, I’d like to hear how you got entangled with Elena.” She glanced down at Fleetfoot. “Do you mind if I take her for a walk? I need to feel the wind on my face today.”
“Of course,” Celaena said. “She’s been cooped up here all morning.”
As if the dog understood, she jumped off the bed and sat at Nehemia’s feet.