Heir of Fire (14 page)

And then he attacked.

She'd contemplated his blows all morning, the way he'd moved, the swi
ft
ness and angles. So she dodged the
fi
rst blow, sidestepping his
fi
st, strands of her hair snapping in the wind.

She even twisted far enough in the other direction to avoid the second strike. But he was so damn fast she could barely register the movements—­so fast that she had no chance of dodging or blocking or anticipating the third blow. Not to her face but to her legs, just as he had the night before.

One sweep of his foot and she was falling, twisting to catch herself, but not fast enough to avoid thudding her brow against a weather-­smooth rock. She rolled, the gray sky looming, and tried to remember how to breathe as the impact echoed through her skull. Rowan pounced with
fl
uid ease, his powerful thighs digging into her ribs as he straddled her. Breathless, head reeling, and muscles drained from a morning in the kitchen and weeks of hardly eating, she ­couldn't twist and toss him—­couldn't do anything. She was outweighed, outmuscled, and for the
fi
rst time in her life, she realized she was utterly outmatched.

“
Shi
ft
,” he hissed.

She laughed up at him, a dead, wretched sound even to her own ears. “Nice try.” Gods, her head throbbed, a warm trickle of blood was leaking from the right side of her brow, and he was now
sitting
on her chest. She laughed again, strangled by his weight. “You think you can trick me into shi
ft
ing by pissing me o
ff
?”

He snarled, his face speckled with the stars
fl
oating in her vision. Every blink shot daggers of pain through her. It would probably be the worst black eye of her life.

“Here's an idea: I'm rich as hell,” she said over the pounding in her head. “How about we pretend to do this training for a week or so, and then you tell Maeve I'm good and ready to enter her territory, and I'll give you all the gods-­damned gold you want.”

He brought his canines so close to her neck that one movement would have him ripping out her throat. “Here's an idea,” he growled. “I don't know what the hell you've been doing for ten years, other than
fl
ouncing around and calling yourself an assassin. But I think you're used to getting your way. I think you have no control over yourself. No control, and no discipline—­not the kind that counts, deep down. You are a
child
, and a spoiled one at that. And,” he said, those green eyes holding nothing but distaste, “you are a coward.”

Had her arms not been pinned, she would have clawed his face o
ff
right then. She struggled, trying every technique she'd ever learned to dislodge him, but he didn't move an inch.

A low, nasty laugh. “Don't like that word?” He leaned closer still, that tattoo of his swimming in her muddled vision. “
Coward
. You're a coward who has run for ten years while innocent people ­were burned and butchered and—”

She stopped hearing him.

She just—­stopped.

It was like being underwater again. Like charging into Nehemia's room and
fi
nding that beautiful body mutilated on the bed. Like seeing Galan Ashryver, beloved and brave, riding o
ff
into the sunset to the cheers of his people.

She lay still, watching the churning clouds above. Waiting for him to
fi
nish the words she ­couldn't hear, waiting for a blow she was fairly certain she ­wouldn't feel.

“Get up,” he said suddenly, and the world was bright and wide as he stood.
“Get up.”

Get up
. Chaol had said that to her once, when pain and fear and grief had shoved her over an edge. But the edge she'd gone over the night Nehemia had died, the night she'd gutted Archer, the day she'd told Chaol the horrible truth . . . Chaol had helped shove her over that edge. She was still on the fall down.
Th
ere was no getting up, because there was no bottom.

Powerful, rough hands under her shoulders, the world tilting and spinning, then that tattooed, snarling face in hers. Let him take her head between those massive hands and snap her neck.

“Pathetic,” he spat, releasing her. “Spineless and pathetic.”

For Nehemia, she had to try, had to
try
—

But when she reached in, toward the place in her chest where that monster dwelled, she found only cobwebs and ashes.

•

Celaena's head was still reeling, and dried blood now itched down the side of her face. She didn't bother to wipe it o
ff
, or to really care about the black eye that she was positive had blossomed during the miles they'd hiked from the temple ruins and into the forested foothills. But not back to Mistward.

She was swaying on her feet when Rowan drew a sword and a dagger and stopped at the edge of a grassy plateau, speckled with small hills. Not hills—­barrows, the ancient tombs of lords and princes long dead, rolling to the other edge of trees.
Th
ere ­were dozens, each marked with a stone threshold and sealed iron door. And through the murky vision, the pounding headache, the hair on the back of her neck ­rose.

Th
e grassy mounds seemed to . . . breathe. To sleep. Iron doors—­to keep the wights inside, locked with the trea­sure they'd stolen.
Th
ey in
fi
ltrated the barrows and lurked there for eons, feeding on what­ever unwitting fools dared seek the gold within.

Rowan inclined his head toward the barrows. “I had planned to wait until you had some handle on your power—­planned to make you come at night, when the barrow-­wights are
really
something to behold, but consider this a favor, as there are few that will dare come out in the day. Walk through the mounds—­face the wights and make it to the other side of the
fi
eld, Aelin, and we can go to Doranelle whenever you wish.”

It was a trap. She knew that well enough. He had the gi
ft
of endless time, and could play games that lasted centuries. Her impatience, her mortality, the fact that every heartbeat brought her closer to death, was being used against her. To face the wights . . .

Rowan's weapons gleamed, close enough to grab. He shrugged those powerful shoulders as he said, “You can either wait to earn back your steel, or you can enter as you are now.”

Th
e
fl
ash of temper snapped her out of it long enough to say, “My bare hands are weapon enough.” He just gave a taunting grin and sauntered into the maze of hills.

She trailed him closely, following him around each mound, knowing that if she fell too far behind, he'd leave her out of spite.

Steady breathing and the yawns of awakening things arose beyond those iron doors.
Th
ey ­were unadorned, bolted into the stone lintels with spikes and nails that ­were so old they probably predated Wendlyn itself.

Her footsteps crunched in the grass. Even the birds and insects did not utter a too-­loud sound ­here.
Th
e hills parted to reveal an inner circle of dead grass around the most crumbling barrow of all. Where the others ­were rounded, this one looked as if some ancient god had stepped on it. Its
fl
attened top had been overrun with the gnarled roots of bushes; the three massive stones of the threshold ­were beaten, stained, and askew.
Th
e iron door was gone.

Th
ere was only blackness within. Ageless, breathing blackness.

Her heartbeat pounded in her ears as the darkness reached for her.

“I leave you ­here,” Rowan said. He hadn't set one foot inside the circle, his boots just an inch shy of the dead grass. His smile turned feral. “I'll meet you on the other side of the
fi
eld.”

He expected her to bolt like a hare. And she wanted to. Gods, this place, that damned barrow only a hundred yards away, made her want to run and run and not stop until she found a place where the sun shone day
and
night. But if she did this, then she could go to Doranelle tomorrow. And those wights waiting in the other half of the
fi
eld . . . they ­couldn't be worse than what she'd already seen, and fought, and found dwelling in the world and inside of herself.

So she inclined her head to Rowan, and walked onto the dead
fi
eld.

14

Each step toward the central mound had Celaena's blood roaring.
Th
e darkness between the stained, ancient stones grew, swirling. It was colder, too. Cold and dry.

She ­wouldn't stop, not with Rowan still watching, not when she had so much to do. She didn't dare look too long toward the open doorway and the thing lurking beyond. A lingering shred of pride—­stupid, mortal pride—­kept her from bolting through the rest of the
fi
eld. Running, she remembered, only attracted some predators. So she kept her steps slow and called on every bit of training she'd had, even as the wight slunk closer to the threshold, no more than a ripple of ravenous hunger encased in rags.

Yet the wight remained within its mound, even as she came near enough to drag into the barrow, as if it ­were . . . hesitating.

She was just passing the barrow when a pulsing, stale bit of air pushed against her ears. Maybe running was a good idea. If magic was the only weapon against wights, then her hands would be useless. Still, the wight lingered beyond the threshold.

Th
e strange, dead air pushed against her ears again, a high-­pitched ringing wending itself into her head. She hurried, grass crunching as she gathered every detail she could to wield against what­ever assailant lurked nearby. Treetops swayed in the misty breeze on the other end of the
fi
eld. It ­wasn't far.

Celaena passed the central mound, cracking her jaw against the ringing in her ears, worse and worse with each step. Even the wight cringed away. It hadn't been hesitating because of her, or Rowan.

Th
e circle of dead grass ended a few steps away—­just a few. Just a few, and then she could run from what­ever it was that could make a wight tremble in fear.

And then she saw him.
Th
e man standing behind the barrow.

Not a wight. She glimpsed only a
fl
ash of pale skin, night-­dark hair, unfathomable beauty, and an onyx torque around his strong column of a neck, and—

Blackness. A wave of it, slamming down on her.

Not oblivion but actual dark, as if he'd thrown a blanket over the two of them.

Th
e ground
felt
grassy, but she ­couldn't see it. ­Couldn't see
anything
. Not beyond, not to the side, not behind.
Th
ere was only her and the swirling black.

Celaena crouched, biting down on a curse as she scanned the dark. What­ever he was, despite his shape, he ­wasn't mortal. In his perfection, in those depthless eyes, there was nothing human.

Blood tickled her upper lip—­a nosebleed.
Th
e pounding in her ears began to drown out her thoughts, any plan, as if her body ­were repulsed by the very essence of what­ever this thing was.
Th
e darkness remained, impenetrable, unending.

Stop. Breathe
.

But someone was breathing behind her. Was it the man, or something ­else?

Th
e breathing was louder, closer, and a chill air brushed her nose, her lips, licking along her skin. Running—­running was smarter than just waiting. She took several bounding steps that
should
have taken her toward the edge of the
fi
eld, but—

Nothing. Only endless black and the breathing
thing
that was closer now, reeking of dust and carrion and another scent, something she hadn't smelled for a lifetime but could never forget, not when it had been coating that room like paint.

Oh,
gods
. Breath on her neck, snaking up the shell of her ear.

She whirled, drawing in what might very well be her last breath, and the world
fl
ashed bright. Not with clouds and dead grass. Not with a Fae Prince waiting nearby.
Th
e room . . .

Th
is room . . .

Th
e servant woman was screaming. Screaming like a teakettle.
Th
ere ­were still puddles just inside the shut windows—­windows Celaena herself had sealed the night before when they'd been
fl
apping in the swi
ft
and sudden storm.

She had thought the bed was wet because of the rain. She'd climbed in because the storm had made her hear such horrible things, made her feel like there was something
wrong
, like there was someone standing in the corner of her room. It was not rain soaking the bed in that elegantly rugged chamber at the country manor.

It was not rain that had dried on her, on her hands and skin and nightgown. And that smell—­not just blood, but something ­else . . . “
Th
is is not real,” Celaena said aloud, backing away from the bed on which she was standing like a ghost.
“
Th
is is not real.”

But there ­were her parents, sprawled on the bed, their throats sliced ear to ear.

Th
ere was her father, broad-­shouldered and handsome, his skin already gray.

Th
ere was her mother, her golden hair matted with blood, her face . . . her face . . .

Slaughtered like animals.
Th
e wounds ­were so vulgar, so gaping and deep, and her parents looked so—­so—