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He was taking too long.
He was supposed to be back hours ago, and of course, she’d thought of other scenarios -- maybe he was waiting to make sure he wasn’t followed. But if that was the case, she might not have such a bad feeling.
Arobynn had always taught her to trust her gut. Perhaps it was time she listened to her idiot ex-master.
So, she re-dressed. Re-prepared. And as she pulled on her suit, she thought to herself, “My name is Celaena Sardothien, and I will not be afraid.”
She showed up in Farran’s house within the next ten minutes. She sliced through the guards with such ease that she couldn’t decide if she was in rare form or if he just had astonishingly low standards when he chose his men.
It wasn’t until she got to the middle of the home, in his common room, that she started to see any signs that Sam had ever been there. There was spilled blood on the carpet that she was sure she hadn’t shed.
She could smell something sickeningly sweet under the iron tang of the blood lacing the air.
Something wasn’t right. More not right than she’d thought.
She stalked her way through the house, finding no trace of Farran, no trace of Sam. No signs to indicate who’d died from this encounter.
Until she saw the door, seemingly made of steel, sitting under the stairs. She threw herself into it again and again until it slammed open.
There were more men in the stairway that led down, at least half a dozen guards armed to the teeth and already launching towards the doorway.
But it wasn’t them she was focused on.
It was the world-ending screaming coming from the bottom of the stairs.
Taking down these men took little more effort than the ones at the top of the stairs. They had higher quality weapons -- their swords were definitely made of stronger metal than the ones she’d fought at the door. Farran’s own personal army, then.
She stumbled over the bodies, nearly slipping in blood as she abandoned all of her training, all efforts at coordination as she relied on instinct alone to carry her to the end of the hallway, where the screaming didn’t seem to get louder, but instead quieter. Raspier. He’d been at this for longer than she’d thought. She reached a door, slamming through it without any care to surprise. She didn’t need it.
She threw herself at Farran, if nothing else to get him away from Sam.
And so began the dance. He came at her with whatever was on that table he’d kept what she could only assume to be his torture instruments, and each time she dodged him, if only by a hair’s width.
She never got a good look at Sam. She didn’t dare take her attention away from Farran. All she could tell from the blurred motions as she swept around the room was that there was blood. So much blood that it stained his once white shirt a shade of red so dark it was almost purple.
She heard a groan from where Sam had nearly gone quiet and fought the urge to look, to make sure he was alive, and Farran took the opportunity to slam her into the wall and hold a knife to her throat there.
Sam was in perfect view now, body unmoving, but wide-eyed as she allowed them both to think she was done for. She would’ve been, if Farran didn’t enjoy taunting to the degree he did.
She kicked his leg out from under him in a single movement, pinning him face down in a small pool of blood by the side of the table where Sam lay, “You should’ve known better than to come for us,” she whispered in his ear as she slit his throat.
She took a few moments to be sure he was dead, that he wasn’t feinting anything as she had a few moments before, and then she stood, throwing herself at Sam.
She went to work on the bindings holding him to the table first, releasing his arms before she got to his legs, “Celaena,” he mumbled through a swollen lip, blood trailing down his chin. She ignored him, undoing the last binding before reaching across the table for his hands, trying to help him sit up, “Celaena,” he said again, with more force than before.
“What,” she snapped, still reaching for his hands.
He closed his eyes tight, avoiding her gaze, “It’s gloriella,” he breathed, wincing as he did so, “it’s not worn off enough, I can’t-”
“Shut up.”
He opened his eyes to look down at her, “What? Celaena, I-”
She looked nearly animalistic as she snarled at him, “I said to shut up. I know where this is going, and I’m not leaving here without you. I will kill anyone who walks through that door for the next week if I have to, but we leave here together,” she stared him down, the dare to question her gleaming in her eyes.
He nodded slightly, as much as the poison allowed him to.
She began surveying his wounds then, keeping an ear open to the rest of the house, ready to stop and throw herself into battle if she needed to.
He didn’t know how long it had been, maybe a half-hour or a hundred years, but he was slowly able to turn his head, then sit up on the table, and finally walk like a newborn fawn up the stairs with the help of Celaena.
He would never know how she did it. He’d been jealous of her for years, wanting to take the role of Adarlan’s Assassin for himself, but seeing the carnage she’d left behind to get to him… she deserved it. She’d won that title through more than just Arobynn’s disgusting crush or her wits.
Better yet, she deserved a medal for how slowly she helped him walk across town, and then up the stairs to their apartment, and finally to sit on the couch, where she all but threw him down before going to get the salve and bandages from the bathroom.
And more than anything, she deserved the world for how she pulled up that part of her who had wanted to be a healer as a child while she fussed over him, despite all of his groanings as she touched open wounds and the harsher burns that had been left on his body.