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It had all been fine—fine and easy Hiding in the little woods and barns along the way, she passed like a shadow through the countryside
Wendlyn A land of htmares made flesh
The kingdorowing ever greener as hills rolled inland and sharpened into towering peaks The coast and the land around the capital were dry, as if the sun had baked all but the hardiest vegetation Vastly different froy, frozen empire she’d left behind
A land of plenty, of opportunity, where men didn’t just take what they wanted, where no doors were locked and people smiled at you in the streets But she didn’t particularly care if someone did or didn’t smile at her—no, as the days wore on, she found it suddenly very difficult to bring herself to care about anything at all Whatever deter she’d felt upon leaving Adarlan had ebbed away, devoured by the nothingness that noed at her
It was four days before Celaena spotted the massive capital city built across the foothills Varese, the city where her dom
While Varese was cleaner than Rifthold and had plenty of wealth spread between the upper and lower classes, it was a capital city all the saa to find its underbelly
On the street below, three of the uards paused to chat, and Celaena rested her chin on her hands Like every guard in this kingdoood number of weapons Rumor claimed the Wendlynite soldiers were trained by the Fae to be ruthless and cunning and swift And she didn’t want to know if that was true, for about a dozen different reasons They certainly seee Rifthold sentry—even if they hadn’t yet noticed the assassin in their midst But these days, Celaena knew the only threat she posed was to herself
Even baking in the sun each day, even washing up whenever she could in one of the city’s many fountain-squares, she could still feel Archer Finn’s blood soaking her skin, into her hair Even with the constant noise and rhythutted him in that tunnel beneath the castle And even with the wine and heat, she could still see Chaol, horror contorting his face at what he’d learned about her Fae heritage and the monstrous power that could easily destroy her, about how hollow and dark she was inside
She often wondered whether he’d figured out the riddle she’d told him on the docks of Rifthold And if he had discovered the truthCelaena never let herself get that far Noasn’t the tis that had left her soul so limp and weary
Celaena tenderly prodded her split lip and frowned at theher mouth hurt even more She’d deserved that particular blow in the brawl she’d provoked in last night’s taberna—she’d kicked a ht his breath, he’d been enraged, to say the least Lowering her hand frouards for a few moments They didn’t take bribes frouards and officials in Rifthold Every official and soldier she’d seen so far had been siood
The saood
Dredging up soue At the guards, at the market, at the hawk on the nearby chimney, at the castle and the prince who lived inside it She wished that she had not run out of wine so early in the day
It had been a week since she’d figured out how to infiltrate the castle, three days after arriving in Varese itself A week since that horrible day when all her plans crumbled around her
A cooling breeze pushed past, bringing with it the spices fro, thy the scents clear her sun-and-wine-addled head The pealing of bells floated down fro mountain towns, and in some square of the city, a minstrel band struck up a merry midday tune Nehemia would have loved this place
That fast, the world slipped, sed up by the abyss that now lived within her Neheh the spice ht pressed on Celaena’s chest
It had seemed like such a perfect plan when she’d arrived in Varese In the hours she’d spent figuring out the royal castle’s defenses, she’d debated how she’d find Maeve to learn about the keys It had all been going smoothly, flawlessly, until
Until that gods-dauards left a hole in their defense in the southern wall every afternoon at two o’clock, and grasped how the gateout through those gates, in full viehere she’d been perched on the roof of a nobleman’s house
It hadn’t been the sight of him, with his olive skin and dark hair, that had stopped her dead It hadn’t been the fact that, even from a distance, she could see his turquoise eyes—her eyes, the reason she usually wore a hood in the streets
No It had been the way people cheered
Cheered for hi s in the endless sun, as he and the soldiers behind hi Blockade running The prince—her target—was a gods-daainst Adarlan, and his people loved him for it
She’d trailed the prince and hisfrom rooftop to rooftop, and all it would have taken was one arrow through those turquoise eyes and he would have
been dead But she followed hi louder, people tossing flowers, everyone bea with pride for their perfect, perfect prince
She’d reached the city gates just as they opened to let hih And when Galan Ashryver rode off into the sunset, off to war and glory and to fight for good and freedoered on that roof until he was a speck in the distance
Then she had walked into the nearest taberna and gotten into the bloodiest, uard was called in and she vanished moments before everyone was tossed into the stocks And then she had decided, as her nose bled down the front of her shirt and she spat blood onto the cobblestones, that she wasn’t going to do anything
There was no point to her plans Nehemia and Galan would have led the world to freedoether the prince and princess could have defeated the King of Adarlan But Nehemia was dead, and Celaena’s vow—her stupid, pitiful voorth as much as mud when there were beloved heirs like Galan who could do so much more She’d been a fool to make that vow
Even Galan—Galan was barely ainst Adarlan, and he had an entire armada at his disposal She was one person, one complete waste of life If Nehethen that plan, to find a way to contact Maevethat plan was absolutely useless
Mercifully, she still hadn’t seen one of the Fae—not a single daic She’d done her best to avoid it Even before she’d spotted Galan, she’d kept away fro to trinkets to potions, areas that were usually also full of street perfor She’d learned which tabernas the ic-wielders liked to frequent and never went near the awaken in her gut if she caught a crackle of its energy