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Celaena sat at the bench of her pianoforte, staring mournfully at her right hand. Collecting herself. Silently saying goodbye to her pianoforte, at least for a few months. The sick dread that lay heavily on her stomach sank further, and she swallowed around a dry mouth. She flexed her right hand. It was well manicured, the short nails well rounded, the skin smooth despite the number of scars flecking it. She inhaled a shaky breath, and stood from her pianoforte.
The trip across her well appointed chambers felt too slow and yet too fast at the same time. She resisted the urge to skitter back to her pianoforte bench. Her eye caught on the heavy, dark wood door that stood as the entrance to her rooms. She stepped slowly towards it, loosely shaking out both of her hands. Another nervous, gulping breath had her standing before its heavy brass knob. The door creaked open, just as wide as her twelve year old arm could still close it with some force. A jagged breath had her consciousness floating into the calm she summoned before the group fights Arobynn had just started pushing on her. She placed her now clammy right hand on the doorjamb.
A quick, sharp breath, and Celaena’s brain processed every sound it heard before the feelings that followed. The shuck of the door moving against the heavy carpet, the light squeal of the hinges, and then, the dazzling crack of her hand when the door closed on her hand as hard as she could propel it to. The pain, searing and white hot, shot up her arm, knocking the breath from her. She sat back, hard, and the jarring of her landing caused a feral noise to rip from her, but she did not cry out. She couldn’t. She sat on the floor outside of her room, her mangled hand sending ripples of pain up arm so strong she thought she might pass out. She gasped around tears, and saw the two white bones protruding from the flesh of her hand. Her hand. Mala Firebringer, what had she done?
She only registered Sam’s presence when his startled cursing became too vulgar to ignore. She struggled to keep from whimpering. She held him with what she could hold together of a cold stare, and said, “Go get Arobynn and his healer.” The cool command came out somewhat watery, and Celaena had the sudden sensation of watching herself from the perspective of a balloon over her own head. She started to pant. Celaena struggled, and failed at neutrality, and her chin wobbled. Sam’s face did something unexpected. It shifted quickly from horror, to realization as he pieced together what she’d done, then to blinding, quick rage before reeling back to horror.
Her mask disintegrated further, and tears coursed freely down her bloodless cheeks. Utter panic stove Sam’s features when he glanced again at her hand, and noticed the bones. His tan face was wan, and when he met Celaena’s they met for the first time not as adversaries, or as competitors for Arobynn’s affection, or even as burgeoning assassins. Their eyes met with none, not one of the countless masks they had both learned to conjure after years in Arobynn’s court. It shocked Celaena through the pain. She has the sudden realization that this was the first moment someone had looked at her without masks since... before. Her mind balked at the treacherous memories she worked so hard to ignore. In that moment, she would have paid any price for the pine and snow of Terrasen.
And then Arobynn and his physician were there, speaking in terse tones. She was still staring at Sam. Arobynn said something in a sharp tone to Sam, she couldn’t make out what he said through the ringing in her ears. Sam’s gaze ripped from hers so abruptly that she slammed back into her own awareness, and the pain shrieked up her arm. The physician grabbed her wrist to inspect the damage, and she glanced back over to where Sam had stood, searching for the glimmer of understanding they had shared, but Sam was gone, ordered away by Arobynn with hardly a second look at his second apprentice. Through the blinding pain, she thought of Sam and her pianoforte, and tried desperately to conjure a mask to hide her pain from Arobynn. Hissing through her teeth and blinking around tears as the excruciating process of setting her hand began, the clear caramel of Sam’s eyes remained imprinted in her mind. They echoed through her even hours later, when the physician’s medicine had made her limbs heavy, and thoughts groggy. As she layed in bed and drifted off to sleep, her right hand bound and resting lightly on the pillow beside her, she wondered if he had been as surprised as she had been to find that glimmer of truth in the webs of power and smoke Arobynn wrapped his guild in.