Maybe. Maybe not. “You’ll find that she tends to do what she wants, when she wants, and doesn’t ask for permission first.” Aelin probably had just been in a pissy mood and decided to unleash her temper on the pleasure hall.
Nesryn said, “You should have known better than to get tangled up with a woman like that.”
“And I suppose you would know everything about getting tangled up with people, given how many suitors are lined up outside your father’s bakeries.” A cheap shot, maybe, but they’d always been blunt with each other. She hadn’t ever seemed bothered by it, anyway.
That faint gleam of amusement returned to her eyes as Nesryn put her hands in her pockets and turned away. “This is why I never get too involved. Too messy.”
Why she didn’t let anyone in. Ever. He debated asking why—pushing about it. But limiting the questions about their pasts was part of their deal, and had been from the start.
Honestly, he didn’t know what he’d expected when the queen returned.
Not this.
You do not get to pick and choose which parts of her to love, Dorian had once said to him. He’d been right. So painfully right.
Nesryn let herself out.
At first light, Chaol went to the nearest jeweler and pawned the ring for a handful of silver.
Exhausted and miserable, Aelin trudged back to her old apartment above the unremarkable warehouse. She didn’t dare linger outside the large, two-level wooden building that she’d purchased when she’d at last paid off her debts to Arobynn—purchased for herself, to get out of the Keep. But it had only started to feel like a home once she’d paid off Sam’s debts as well, and he’d come to live here with her. A few weeks—that was all she’d been able to share with him.
Then he was dead.
The lock on the large, rolling door was new, and inside the warehouse, the towering stacks of crates full of ink remained in prime condition. No dust coated the stairs in the back. Either Arobynn or another face from her past would be inside.
Good. She was ready for another fight.
When she opened the green door, a knife angled behind her, the apartment was dark. Empty.
But it smelled fresh.
It was a matter of a few moments to check the apartment—the great room, the kitchen (a few old apples, but no other signs of an occupant), her bedroom (untouched), and the guest room. It was there that someone’s scent lingered; the bed was not quite perfectly made, and a note lay on the high dresser beside the door.
The captain said I could stay here for a while. Sorry for trying to kill you this winter. I was the one with the twin swords. Nothing personal. —Ren
She swore. Ren had been staying here? And—and he still thought she was the King’s Champion. The night the rebels had kept Chaol hostage in a warehouse, she had tried to kill him, and had been surprised when he’d held his ground. Oh, she remembered him.
At least he was safe in the North.
She knew herself well enough to admit that the relief was partially that of a coward—that she didn’t have to face Ren and see how he might react to who she was, what she’d done with Marion’s sacrifice. Given Chaol’s own reaction, “not well” seemed like a fair guess.
She walked back into the darkened great room, lighting candles as she went. The large dining table occupying one half of the space was still set with her elegant plates. The couch and two red velvet armchairs before the ornate mantel were a bit rumpled, but clean.
For a few moments, she just stared at the mantel. A beautiful clock had once sat there—until the day she’d learned Sam had been tortured and killed by Rourke Farran. That the torture had gone on for hours while she’d sat on her ass in this apartment, packing trunks that were now nowhere to be seen. And when Arobynn had come to deliver the news, she’d taken that beautiful clock and hurled it across the room, where it had shattered against the wall.
She hadn’t been back here since then, though someone had cleaned up the glass. Either Ren or Arobynn.
A look at one of the many bookshelves gave her the answer.
Every book she’d packed for that one-way trip to the Southern Continent, for that new life with Sam, had been put back in place. Exactly where she’d once kept them.
And there was only one person who would know those details—who would use the unpacked trunks as a taunt and a gift and a quiet reminder of what leaving him would cost her. Which meant Arobynn had no doubt known she would return here. At some point.
She padded into her bedroom. She didn’t dare to check whether Sam’s clothes had been unpacked into the drawers—or thrown out.
A bath—that’s what she needed. A long, hot bath.
She hardly noticed the room that had once been her sanctuary. She lit the candles in the white-tiled bathroom, casting the chamber in flickering gold.
After turning the brass knobs on the oversized porcelain bathtub to start the water flowing, she unstrapped each of her weapons. She peeled off her filthy, bloody clothes layer by layer, until she stood in her own scarred skin and gazed at her tattooed back in the mirror above the sink.
A month ago, Rowan had covered her scars from Endovier with a stunning, scrolling tattoo, written in the Old Language of the Fae—the stories of her loved ones and how they’d died.
She would not have Rowan ink another name on her flesh.
She climbed into the tub, moaning at the delicious heat, and thought of the empty place on the mantel where the clock should have been. The place that had never quite been filled again since that day she’d shattered the clock. Maybe—maybe she’d also stopped in that moment.
Stopped living and started just … surviving. Raging.
And maybe it had taken until this spring, when she had been sprawled on the ground while three Valg princes fed on her, when she had at last burned through that pain and darkness, for the clock to start again.
No, she would not add another name of her beloved dead to her flesh.
She yanked a washcloth from beside the tub and scrubbed at her face, bits of mud and blood clouding the water.
Unpredictable. The arrogance, the sheer single-minded selfishness …
Chaol had run. He’d run, and Dorian had been left to be enslaved by the collar.
Dorian. She’d come back—but too late. Too late.
She dunked the washcloth again and covered her face with it, hoping it would somehow ease the stinging in her eyes. Maybe she’d sent too strong a message from Wendlyn by destroying Narrok; maybe it was her fault that Aedion had been captured, Sorscha killed, and Dorian enslaved.
Monster.
And yet …
For her friends, for her family, she would gladly be a monster. For Rowan, for Dorian, for Nehemia, she would debase and degrade and ruin herself. She knew they would have done the same for her. She slung the washcloth into the water and sat up.
Monster or no, never in ten thousand years would she have let Dorian face his father alone. Even if Dorian had told her to go. A month ago, she and Rowan had chosen to face the Valg princes together—to die together, if need be, rather than do so alone.
You remind me of what the world ought to be; what the world can be, she’d once said to Chaol.
Her face burned. A girl had said those things; a girl so desperate to survive, to make it through each day, that she hadn’t questioned why he served the true monster of their world.
Aelin slipped back under the water, scrubbing at her hair, her face, her bloody body.
She could forgive the girl who had needed a captain of the guard to offer stability after a year in hell; forgive the girl who had needed a captain to be her champion.