Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
“I thought it would be easier this way,” she said. In two hours, she would sail to Wendlyn, that land of myths and monsters, a kingdom of dreams and nightmares made flesh.
Dorian approached her. “This plan is madness. You don’t have to go. We can convince my father to do something else. If they catch you in Wendlyn—”
“They won’t catch me.”
“There will be no help for you,” Dorian said, putting a hand on the satchel. “If you are captured, if you are hurt, you are beyond our reach. You will be entirely on your own.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“But I won’t be. Every day that you’re there, I will wonder what has become of you. I won’t … I won’t forget you. Not for one hour.”
Her throat bobbed, the only sign of emotion she allowed to show, and she looked toward her dog, watching them from the rug. “Will you …” He watched her swallow again before meeting his gaze. The gold in her eyes glowed in the morning sun. “Will you look after her while I’m gone?”
He took her hand, squeezing. “As if she’s one of my own. I’ll even let her sleep in the bed.”
She gave him a small smile, and he had a feeling that any greater sign of emotion would shatter her self-control. He waved a hand to the books he’d brought. “I hope you don’t mind, but I need a place to store these, and your rooms might be … safer than mine.”
She glanced at the desk but, to his relief, didn’t go to it. The books he’d brought would only lead to more questions. Geneaologies, royal chronicles, anything on how and why he might have magic. “Of course,” was all she said. “I think The Walking Dead is still floating around in here, anyway. Maybe it’ll be glad to have company.”
He might have smiled had it not been eerily true. “I’ll leave you to your packing. I have a council meeting at the same time your ship departs,” he said, fighting the ache in his chest. It was a lie—and a bad one. But he didn’t want to be at the docks, not when he knew someone else would be there to see her off. “So … I suppose this is good-bye.” He didn’t know whether he was allowed to embrace her anymore, so he stuffed his hands into his pockets and gave her a smile. “Take care of yourself.”
A faint nod.
They were friends now, and he knew that the physical boundaries between them had been altered, but … He turned away rather than let her see the disappointment he knew was all too clear on his face.
He took all of two steps toward the door before she spoke, the words soft and strained. “Thank you for all that you have done for me, Dorian. Thank you for being my friend. For not being like the others.”
He paused, turning to face her. She kept her chin high, but her eyes were gleaming.
“I’ll come back,” she said quietly. “I’ll come back for you.” And he knew that there was more that she wasn’t saying, some bigger meaning behind those words.
But Dorian still believed her.
The docks were crowded with sailors and slaves and workers loading and unloading cargo. The day was warm and breezy, the first hint of spring in the air, and the sky was cloudless. A good day for sailing.
Celaena stood before the ship that would carry her through the first leg of the journey. It would sail to a prearranged location where a ship from Wendlyn would meet it to take aboard refugees fleeing the shadow of Adarlan’s empire. Most of the women traveling on her ship were already belowdecks. She shifted the fingers of her bandaged left hand, wincing at the dull pain radiating outward from her palm.
She had hardly slept that night, holding Fleetfoot close to her instead. Saying good-bye an hour ago had been like ripping out a piece of her heart, but the dog’s leg was still too injured for her to risk the journey to Wendlyn.
She hadn’t wanted to see Chaol, hadn’t bothered saying good-bye, because she had so many questions for him that it was easier not to ask at all. Hadn’t he known what an impossible trap he was setting for her now?
The ship captain bellowed a five-minute departure warning. The sailors started scrambling, doubling their efforts to prepare to leave the harbor and set out down the Avery, and then into the Great Ocean itself.
To Wendlyn.
She swallowed hard. Do what needs to be done, Elena had told her. Did that mean actually killing the royal family of Wendlyn, or something else?
A salty breeze ruffled her hair, and she stepped forward.
But someone emerged from the shadows of the buildings lining the docks.
“Wait,” Chaol said.
Celaena froze as he walked to her, and didn’t move even when she found herself looking up into his face.
“Do you understand why I did this?” he asked softly.
She nodded, but said, “I have to return here.”
“No,” he said, his eyes flashing. “You—”
“Listen.”
She had five minutes. She couldn’t explain it to him now—couldn’t explain that the king would kill him if she didn’t return. That knowledge could be fatal to him. And even if he ran away, the king had threatened Nehemia’s family, too.
But she knew that Chaol was trying to protect her. And she couldn’t leave him wholly ignorant. Because if she did die in Wendlyn, if something happened to her …
“Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you.”
His brows rose. But she didn’t give herself a moment to reconsider, to second-guess her decision.
As succinctly as she could, she told him about the Wyrdkeys. She told him about the Wyrdgates, and about Baba Yellowlegs. She told him about the papers she’d stashed down in the tomb—the riddle with the locations of the three Wyrdkeys. And then she told him that she knew the king had at least one. And that there was a dead creature sealed beneath the library. And that he should never open the door to the catacombs—never. And that Roland and Kaltain might be part of some bigger, deadlier plan.
And when that horrible truth had been revealed, she unfastened the Eye of Elena from her neck and folded it into his palm. “Never take it off. It will protect you from harm.”
He was shaking his head, his face deathly pale. “Celaena, I can’t—”
“I don’t care if you go looking for the keys, but someone has to know about them. Someone other than me. All the proof is in the tomb.”
Chaol grabbed her hand with his free one. “Celaena—”
“Listen,” she repeated. “If you hadn’t convinced the king to send me away, we could have … figured them out together. But now …”
Two minutes, the sea captain shouted. Chaol was just staring at her, such grief and fear in his eyes that speech failed her.
And then she did the most reckless thing she’d ever done in her life. She stood on her toes and whispered the words into his ear.
The words that would make him understand, understand why it was so important to her, and what it meant when she said she would return. And he would hate her forever for it, once he understood.
“What does that mean?” he demanded.
She smiled sadly. “You’ll figure it out. And when you do …” She shook her head, knowing she shouldn’t say it, but doing it anyway. “When you do, I want you to remember that it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. It’s never made any difference to me when it came to you. I’d still pick you. I’ll always pick you.”
“Please—please, just tell me what that means.”
But there was no time, so she shook her head and stepped back.
Chaol took one step toward her, though. One step, then he said, “I love you.”
She strangled the sob that built in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, hoping he would remember those words later—later, when he knew everything.
Her legs found the strength to move. She took a breath. And with a final look at Chaol, she strode up the gangplank. Taking no notice of those onboard, she set down her sack and took up a place by the railing. She looked down at the dock to find Chaol still standing by the walkway as it was lifted.
The ship’s captain
The ship began moving. And Chaol—the man she hated and loved so much that she could hardly think around him—just stood there, watching her go.
The current grabbed the ship, and the city began to diminish. The ocean breeze soon caressed her neck, but she never stopped staring at Chaol. She stared toward him until the glass castle was a sparkling speck in the distance. She stared toward him until there was only gleaming ocean around her. She stared toward him until the sun dropped beyond the horizon and a smattering of stars hung overhead.
It was only when her eyelids drooped and she swayed on her feet that Celaena stopped staring toward Chaol.
The smell of salt filled her nostrils, so different from the salt of Endovier, and a spirited wind whipped through her hair.
With a hiss through her teeth, Celaena Sardothien turned her back on Adarlan and sailed toward Wendlyn.
Chapter 56
Chaol didn’t understand what she’d told him, the words she’d whispered in his ear. It was a date. Not even a year attached to it. A month and a day—a date that had passed weeks and weeks ago. It was the day that Celaena had left the city. The day she had snapped at Endovier a year before. The day her parents had died.
He stayed on the docks long after the ship was out of the harbor, watching its sails become smaller and smaller as he mulled over the date again and again. Why had she told him everything about those—those Wyrdkeys, but made this hint so obscure? What could possibly be more important than the horrible truth about the king he served?
The Wyrdkeys, while they terrified him, made sense. They explained so much. The king’s great power, his journeys that ended with the whole party mysteriously dying, how Cain had become so strong. Even that time Chaol had looked at Perrington and seen his eyes darken so strangely. But when she’d told him, had she known what kind of choice she’d left him? And what could he possibly do about it from Anielle?
Unless he could find a way out of the vow he’d made. He’d never said when he would go to Anielle. He could think about that tomorrow. For now …
When Chaol returned to the castle, he went to her rooms, sorting through the contents of her desk. But there was nothing about that date. He checked the will she’d written, but that had been signed several days after. The silence and emptiness of her chambers threatened to swallow him whole, and he was about to leave when he spotted the stack of books half hidden in the shadows of her desk.
Geneaologies and countless royal chronicles. When had she brought these books here? He hadn’t seen them the other night. Was it somehow another clue? Standing before the desk, he pulled out the royal chronicles—all from the the past eighteen years—and started back, one by one. Nothing.
Then came the chronicle from ten years ago. It was thicker than all the rest—as it should be, given the events that had happened that year. But when he saw what was written about the date she had given, everything froze.
This morning, King Orlon Galathynius, his nephew and heir, Rhoe Galathynius, and Rhoe’s wife, Evalin, were found assassinated. Orlon was murdered in his bed at the royal palace in Orynth, and Rhoe and Evalin were found dead in their beds at their country estate along the River Florine. There is no word yet about the fate of Rhoe and Evalin’s daughter, Aelin.
Chaol grabbed for the first geneaology book, the one on the bloodlines of the royal houses of Adarlan and Terrasen. Was Celaena trying to tell him she knew the truth about what had happened that night—that she might know where the lost princess Aelin was hiding? That she had been there when this all happened?
He flipped through the pages, scanning the genealogies he had already read. But then he remembered something about the name Evalin Ashryver. Ashryver.
Evalin had come from Wendlyn, had been a princess of the king’s court. Hands shaking, he yanked out a book containing Wendlyn’s royal family tree.
On the last page, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius’s name was written at the bottom, and above it, her mother, Evalin’s. But the family tree traced only the female line. The female, not the male, because—
Two spots above Evalin’s name was written Mab. Aelin’s great-grandmother. She was one of the three Fae Sister-Queens: Maeve, Mora, and Mab. Mab, the youngest, the fairest, who, when she died, had been made into a goddess, known to them now as Deanna, Lady of the Hunt.
The memory hit him like a brick to the face. That Yulemas morning, when Celaena had looked so uncomfortable to be receiving the golden arrow of Deanna—the arrow of Mab.
And Chaol counted down the family tree, one after one, until—
My great-grandmother was Fae.
Chaol had to brace a hand against the desk. No, it couldn’t be. He turned back to the chronicle still lying open, and turned to the next day.
Aelin Galathynius, heir to the throne of Terrasen, died today, or sometime in the night. Before help could reach her deceased parents’ estate, the assassin who had missed her the night before returned. Her body has still not been found, though some believe it was thrown into the river behind her parents’ house.
She’d once said that Arobynn had … had found her. Found her half-dead and frozen. On a riverbank.
He was just jumping to conclusions. Maybe she merely wanted him to know that she still cared about Terrasen, or—
There was a poem scribbled at the top of the Ashryver family tree, as though some student had dashed it down it as a reminder while studying.
Ashryver Eyes
The fairest eyes, from legends old
Of brightest blue, ringed with gold.
Bright blue eyes, ringed with gold. A strangled cry came out of him. How many times had he looked into those eyes? How many times had he seen her avert her gaze, that one bit of proof she couldn’t hide, from the king?
Celaena Sardothien wasn’t in league with Aelin Ashryver Galathynius.
Celaena Sardothien was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and rightful Queen of Terrasen.
Celaena was Aelin Galathynius, the greatest living threat to Adarlan, the one person who could raise an army capable of standing against the king. Now, she was also the one person who knew the secret source of the king’s power—and who sought a way to destroy it.
And he had just sent her into the arms of her strongest potential allies: to the homeland of her mother, the kingdom of her cousin, and the domain of her aunt, Queen Maeve of the Fae.
Celaena was the lost Queen of Terrasen.
Chaol sank to his knees.
Acknowledgements
More than anyone, this novel belongs to Susan Dennard. For being the kind of friend that usually exists only in books. For being a friend worth waiting for. For being my anam cara. Thank you for the (mis)adventures, for laughing until our stomachs hurt, and for all the joy you’ve brought into my world. Love you.
Endless gratitude to my A Team: my incredible agent, Tamar Rydzinski; my stellar editor, Margaret Miller; and the incomparable Michelle Nagler. I’m tremendously blessed to have you in my corner. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.
To my good friend and critique partner, Alex Bracken, who never fails to offer sage advice and brilliant ideas, and who has talked me off many, many ledges. Thank you for being one of the bright lights on this journey. To Erin “Ders” Bowman, for the Friday chats, shenanigans in “Wilderness,” and being a fellow survivor of the brutal 2012 crawfish attack in Lake Glenville, North Carolina. I’m so glad I e-mailed you.
Thanks are also due to Amie Kaufman, Kat Zhang, and Jane Zhao, who have been everything from sounding boards to critique partners to cheerleaders, but always wonderful friends. To the ridiculously clever Biljana Likic, for helping with the riddle all those years ago. To Dan “DKroks” Krokos, for being a true friend and partner in crime. To the legendary Robin Hobb, for taking two debut authors to dinner in Decatur, Georgia—thank you for the wisdom an
There are so many people who work so tirelessly to make my books a reality and get them into readers’ hands. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to Erica Barmash, Emma Bradshaw, Susannah Curran, Beth Eller, Alona Fryman, Shannon Godwin, Natalie Hamilton, Bridget Hartzler, Katy Hershberger, Melissa Kavonic, Linette Kim, Ian Lamb, Cindy Loh, Donna Mark, Patricia McHugh, Rebecca McNally, Regina Roff Flath, Rachel Stark, and Brett Wright. And a huge thank-you to the entire worldwide team at Bloomsbury—it’s an honor to work with you all.
A giant hug for my parents, family, and friends—thank you for the unwavering support. And to my amazing husband, Josh: there aren’t enough words in any language to describe how much I love you.
Thank you to Janet Cadsawan, who makes the world of Throne of Glass come alive with her stunning jewelry. And thank you to Kelly de Groot for the map, the enthusiasm, and just for being awesome.
To my readers: thank you for making this journey such a fairy tale; thank you for the letters and art and for coming to my events; thank you for spreading the word about this series; thank you for letting Celaena into your hearts. You make the long hours and hard work absolutely worth it.
And lastly, I’d like to thank my FictionPress readers, who have been with me for so many years, and to whom I owe a debt I can never repay. No matter where this road takes me, I’ll be forever grateful that it brought you into my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Books by Sarah J. Maas
Throne of Glass
Crown of Midnight
Throne of Glass novellas
The Assassin and the Pirate Lord
The Assassin and the Desert
The Assassin and the Underworld
The Assassin and the Empire
Text copyright © 2013 by Sarah J. Maas