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Chapter Text

Blood ran down her back, soaking through her pants and the sand beneath her feet as the two males dragged her to that iron coffin—to the prison forged centuries ago, for Mala’s heir. 

For her.

Manon was gone, an unconscious Elide hauled over her shoulder. Aelin would never stop being grateful for both of them—for Manon, for understanding what it was she had to do and getting the Wyrdkey out of there without Maeve realizing, and for Elide, for refusing to give up on her, for her loyalty and courage. 

Gavriel lay on the sandy earth, panting and barely half-aware, as the effects of the severed blood oath thrummed through him, but he made a weak move to get to his feet, to make a lunge for her—

Gods, if nothing else, she’d be grateful for that. 

She’d refused to count the lashes Cairn had given her, refused to give him or Maeve that satisfaction. With every reset of the count, she tried to buy herself a little more time, tried to postpone the inevitable, because if Rowan could just get there—

In her heart, she knew he’d be too late—because this wasn’t a fairytale, a bedtime story where the heroes won. A happy ending had never been in the cards for her. The witch mirror had revealed that. She’d died when she was eight—she should have died then, but she’d been brought back to be a sacrifice later. 

The Queen Who Was Promised.

That was the only reason she’d made it to nineteen.

She’d only made it to nineteen to be a pawn in the gods’ games, to be a sacrificial lamb at their altar. More than two thousand years, and it all came down to her, those eleven extra years a mere consolation prize.

Because she was nineteen and she’d never really realized just how young nineteen was until the prospect of eternity was snatched away from her. 

Because she was nineteen and never really had a childhood to begin with.

Because she was nineteen and her life had never been her own.

Because she was nineteen and scared. 

And she knows it was a miracle she’d ever made it to nineteen anyway. It was a miracle she’d found a family in her friends, that she’d seen even a bit of the world, that she’d laughed and danced and heard such beautiful music. 

She was nineteen and had fallen in love, had married her mate and was grateful she’d gotten to spend even this short time with him. 

Maeve approached her, those dark eyes gleaming with malicious triumph. Aelin’s knees threatened to give out once more at the sight of the chains in the dark queen’s hands.

She’d been a slave once before. She wouldn’t—she couldn’t—

Endovier, she thought numbly, might have been a blessing. 

She couldn’t be shackled again, locked in the darkness with precious little air and no idea of passing time, with only a single mantra to keep herself sane.

It was only the thought of Sam’s words that kept her from sobbing as the manacles were clamped around her wrists.

My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius—and I will not be afraid. 

So Aelin Ashryver Galathynius dried her tears and forced herself to be grateful for everything Elena had given her that night as Maeve fitted that beautiful iron mask over her face.

And she was grateful—she was.

But she still wished she’d had more time.

Chapter Text

Evalin Ashryver, Princess of Terrasen, kept her long, slender fingers still on the council table as she listened to the lords argue about the finer points of Adarlan’s upcoming visit.

She resisted the urge to drum her nails on the wood. Princesses didn’t fidget, and they didn’t show any indication of how much they wished the meeting was over.

If only she could teach Aelin that. She loved her daughter dearly, but she couldn’t deny that the girl was a bit of a hellion at times.

Still, if only in this one instance, she sympathized with Aelin’s disdain of royal duties. This meeting had been dragging on for nearly three hours now, and the only thing they’d agreed on was the menu for the welcoming feast—a careful balancing of food from both Adarlanian and Terrasen cuisine, so as not to offend their guests but also subtly establish their identity as a separate culture and polity. 

Creamy mushroom soup, potted shrimp with crusty bread, and siamban for the first course. Then pheasant pies, grilled fish fillets, roast beef, and stobhach, served with loaves of barmbrack, mounds of potatoes, and braised vegetables. Dessert would be three different types of trifle and chocolate coffee cake. 

It was no wonder it had taken them so long to finalize the menu. Though they were royalty, both Evalin and Rhoe made it a point not to indulge in excess and eat relatively simple, local foods—much to the annoyance of Aelin, who would gladly stuff herself with chocolate cake and fine sugar candies, the ingredients for which had to be brought from the south, where the canes grew. But war loomed on the horizon, and Evalin and Rhoe agreed that it was foolish to waste gold on expensive imported foods when they could be perfectly content with meals sourced closer to home. 

If she had to admit it, Evalin actually preferred it. Sometimes she missed the spices and bursting flavours of Wendlyn, her homeland, but in the years since she’d married Rhoe, she’d come to love the simple yet elegant foods that were Terrasen’s traditional staples. There was something about coming in from the thick snows and settling down to a hearty stew or leg of roast meat that made warmth glow in her chest. She could sit down with a loaf of arán sóide, Rhoe, Orlon, and Aelin at the table, and forget, just for a moment, the weight of their birthrights.

It wasn’t the taste of home, but it did taste of family. 

Unfortunately, Adarlan’s delegation would be expecting the sort of finery that came with being royalty, so multiple courses were being planned and ingredients shipped in from across the continent, the palace cooks all but run off their feet with the preparations. 

Beneath the table, Rhoe subtly nudged her ankle with his foot. When she glanced over, he quirked a brow in a silent question and she realized she’d completely missed the past several minutes of conversation. Well, it likely wasn’t important, and even if it was, he would tell her later. 

She focused back on the arguing lords in time to hear Aelin’s name and Weylan Darrow say, “—not appropriate for her to—”

“What was that?” Evalin interrupted. “What about Aelin?”

The lords shifted uneasily, a few glancing down at their feet in uncomfortable silence. On her other side, Rhoe was echoing her frown, and the sight of both their Crown Prince and Princess with that expression seemed to silence any further comments about the youngest royal. 

“Just why, Lord Darrow,” Rhoe began in a dangerously quiet tone, “do you think Aelin needs to sit out the formal dinner.”

Darrow’s eyes flickered with something like guilt and shame. “I just mean that, in light of the rumours coming out of Adarlan, it might not be appropriate for the princess to attend any diplomatic functions. The King of Adarlan is known to distrust magic and given the recent… accident in the Library of Orynth—”

“Careful, Darrow,” Rhoe said lowly.

It was true that Darrow was Orlon’s lover and that afforded him a certain informal status above what his peerage and place on the council already gave him, but it was not his place to question the royal family in such a way. Still, Evalin could acknowledge that his criticism came from a place of concern, not malice, and had it been about anyone other than her daughter, she would have agreed with him. 

“Aelin's absence would only further the rumours that her magic cannot be controlled,” Evalin said. Her voice was calm, but beneath the table her fists were clenched in her dress. “We cannot afford any such appearances of weakness, for just the same reasons you put forward.”

Darrow pursed his lips, but movement from the head of the table had everyone falling immediately silent. Orlon, who had been watching the meeting quietly without speaking for most of the proceedings, now raised a hand to forestall any further protests. 

“As an heir to the throne, Aelin will be attending the welcome feast, regardless of concerns surrounding her magic,” Orlon began, “but nevertheless, Lord Darrow makes a valid point. Princess Evalin,” he said, turning to her. “How has Aelin’s training been coming along? In the event that something does trigger an episode of wild magic, can she be relied upon to get it under control?”

All eyes turned to her now, and it was Evalin’s turn to purse her lips. Aelin had been improving, but with a gift as deep and powerful as her well of magic seemed to be, it was a miracle she’d stopped setting her bedsheets on fire after every nightmare. Even still, the fact that she’d accidentally sent an entire shelf of books up in flames after the novel she’d been reading ended on a cliffhanger…. Well, it was an indication of just how far they still had to go.

“Very well,” Orlon said after the silence had stretched a bit too long. He sounded weary, and not for the first time in recent years, Evalin realized that he was getting old. After Rhoe’s mother died in childbirth and his father, Orlon’s younger brother, went down with his ship in a storm off the Gulf of Oro, Orlon had taken the young prince in as more of a son than a nephew. That had been more than twenty years ago, and though Orlon had been a commanding presence in his prime, his hair was more grey now than brown and there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there a few years before. Assuming the throne at the young age of fifteen, the decades he’d spent as king of Terrasen had left their mark, aged him prematurely in some ways, and he’d begun talking with Rhoe recently about increasing his royal duties in preparation for Orlon’s eventual abdication and the transition of power to his nephew. 

“Adarlan’s Crown Prince is coming, so it is imperative that both Aelin and Aedion are seen to be attending the diplomatic events.” Like he always did when speaking of his pseudo-grandchildren, he dropped their titles. He claimed it was a mouthful to have attached to the name of one so young, but Evalin suspected he did it more out of habit than anything. Aelin, as much as she adored the finery and pomp that came with being the princess, dreaded the day she would become queen and hated any reminders of that inevitable fact. Orlon had always been susceptible to those tearful blue-gold eyes and indulged Aelin, even if it meant disregarding formality. “There cannot be any speculation over why our own heir is not present when Adarlan’s is. I trust you have a plan in place to control any outbursts?”

This last question was directed at Evalin and Rhoe, and this time it was Rhoe who answered. “I had an iron bracelet commissioned from the royal jeweller—a precaution only, you understand—and in the event that Aelin cannot control her magic, the bracelet will act as a barrier long enough to remove her from the room and reign it in somewhere without potential casualties. Evalin will have her water magic, of course,” Rhoe added, “and we can only hope that nothing in this dinner proves exciting enough to elicit such a reaction,” he finished with a bit of dry humour. 

There were a few quiet huffs of not-quite-laughter from some of the lords. Diplomatic dinners were full of stiff formalities and dull conversations consisting mostly of polite small talk; they were not usually known to be interesting, let alone exciting. Still, some sense of foreboding twisted in Evalin’s gut. Few things seemed to go normally when Aelin was involved—almost as though the gods were up there, pulling on their strings like they were marionettes and making them act out the story the way they wanted. 

And whatever they wanted from Aelin, Evalin suspected it wasn’t good. Nothing about Aelin screamed ordinary. In fact, it seemed the gods had deliberately fashioned her to be as un- ordinary as possible; the most powerful gift of magic in centuries, isolation from her peers, the burden of a throne and shackles of a crown… They all seemed like trials designed to make or break the greatest hero of a generation, not her eight year old daughter. 

No, ordinary would not be a word Evalin would use to describe Aelin.

And that was before the bloody body appeared on the council room floor.

Chapter Text

The sharp curse Darrow let out was so foul that, under any other circumstance, Evalin would have gaped at the man. 

As it was, she thought his reaction was quite sensible. It wasn’t every day that a young woman bound in irons was dropped, shirtless and bleeding, in the middle of the castle. Dropped wasn’t even the right word—that implied an entry point, a fall of some sort. This girl had simply appeared, no flash of light, no distant rumble of thunder, nothing to indicate anything askance. If it wasn’t for the fact that she very clearly did not enter the council room through the doors, Evalin would have been hard-pressed to discern any magical element in her sudden appearance. 

But magic it must have been, for she had simply materialized on the floor between one heartbeat and the next. 

Delayed chaos erupted in the room, the lords all scrambling to their feet and craning their necks to get a better look at the newcomer. The guards stationed by the doors hastily drew their weapons, one poor man nearly fumbling his pike. Cries of alarm erupted from numerous people. Lord Riley tripped over his chair. 

The woman on the ground gave no indication she even registered the noise around her. Her wrists and ankles were shackled in heavy iron, and though she was lying face down in a crumpled heap, Evalin could see that her face was caged in a massive iron mask, the chains of which wrapped around the back of her head and tangled in her hair. 

But the worst was her back. 

Blood spilled over her skin, so thick and heavy that it was impossible to see what wound had caused it. Some of the blood had begun drying on her arms and legs, indicating that it was at least several minutes old, but enough of it was deep red and glistening to reveal that whatever wound she suffered was still bleeding profusely. 

“HEALERS!” Rhoe broke the stunned atmosphere and roared the command at a hapless castle page, gesturing sharply in the general direction of the infirmary. “GET THE HEALERS!”

The boy took off at a run, but Evalin knew he wouldn’t bring them back in time. Through whatever lingering Fae instinct she had inherited from her grandmother, she felt the woman’s pulse grow thready and knew she couldn’t wait for the healers. 

“Your shirt,” she gasped to Rhoe as she fell to her knees beside the woman. Thankfully, her husband didn’t ask questions and pulled off his ornate jacket to reveal the simple white under tunic he wore, then divested himself of that and handed it to her. She took it and pressed it against the bloody mass of skin that had once been a back. She quickly turned to Quinn, “Yours too.”

The Captain of the Guard obeyed instantly, but when he went to hand it to her, she shook her head. “Rip it into strips lengthwise. I need something to bind the shirt in place or she’ll bleed out.”

As Quinn set to doing that, she returned her attention to Rhoe. “Come hold this in place. Push it down— hard. Don’t worry about hurting her; if you don’t put enough pressure on it, she won’t be alive to complain about the pain.” 

The room had fallen silent now, and as Rhoe took her place, she glanced around and saw that someone had ushered the council outside. Orlon was returning from the doors and carried with him a flagon of water. She accepted it gratefully, her hands leaving bloody prints on the crystal. 

She had water magic, had healing magic, but she’d never been formally trained in it. Betrothed to Rhoe from birth, it was understood that she would one day be queen, and queens did not do the work of common healers. Most of her training had been for show, little more than fancy tricks to impress the court, but her year at Mistward had taught her much and the healers at the nearby compound had been more than willing to share their secrets. 

Now she just hoped she remembered enough of them. 

If not… Well, she’d bind Rhoe’s shirt to the woman’s ruined back and pray she could hold out until the page returned. 

Drawing the water up from the pitcher, she indicated that Rhoe should remove the soiled cloth and immediately set to work healing the wounds. Except—they weren’t healing. No matter how much blood they blotted away, how much magic she poured into knitting the flesh back together, the wounds—for she could see now that there were many—remained stubbornly open. 

The iron, she realized faintly. The girl was bound so thoroughly in iron that it was blocking Evalin’s magic. 

“It needs to come off,” Rhoe growled, as though following her train of thought. “She’s Fae, Evalin. Who the hell does something like this?”

She just shook her head mutely. The female—for Evalin realized that her husband was right, the body on the floor had the tell-tale pointed ears of the Fae—was disturbingly still and silent. If it wasn’t for the shallow rise and fall of her back, she might have thought her dead. Quickly, she tilted the female’s head up, trying to find a latch to release the irons, but there was nothing. A quick examination of the chains around her wrists and ankles revealed the same. 

Quinn knelt next to them and held out a dagger. “I could try to pick them,” he offered, goosebumps rising on the flesh of his bare chest in the chill stone room. If he was uncomfortable, Evalin could only imagine how cold the female must be with her bare torso and the blood loss. 

He fitted the tip in the lock, but the blade snapped with a noise that echoed sharply through the council chamber as soon as Quinn tried to force it open. 

Evalin was about to despair when suddenly, as if the sound of the knife cracking startled her into wakefulness, the female’s head jerked up. She took one glance around the room—and began thrashing wildly in Rhoe’s grip. 

Evalin quickly rushed to soothe her. “It’s okay, you’re safe now, you’re safe. We’re going to get you free.”

Her words only seemed to make the female struggle harder. 

“Hush,” Evalin whispered. “You’ve been hurt and we’re trying to heal you. Try not to move too much, you’ll only make it worse.”

A quiet whimper came from behind the beautiful iron mask, muffled and distorted. “Get it off.”

“I know,” she soothed again and Rhoe and Quinn exchanged concerned looks. Behind them, seated at the table, Orlon watched on, face serious and impassive. 

“Get it off.”

“We don’t have the key,” Evalin admitted, still cradling the iron-bound face in her hands, ignoring the burning that had begun in her palms. Rhoe’s shirt was beginning to soak through. The female didn’t have much time left, she was losing too much blood too quickly. 

At those words, the female stilled again and Evalin almost thought the worst had happened—but then one shackled hand began to inch slowly forward until it landed in a pool of blood that had spilled down her sides. With obvious difficulty, she moved one trembling finger along the floor in a strange pattern until a shape became visible in the coagulating blood. 

“T’open,” she gasped, pain shortening her words. “Needs to be—be made in blood. On the… the…” Words seemed to fail her there, but Evalin thought she understood. The symbol reminded her of the runes carved into the ward stones around Mistward—not the same, not exactly, but something that might once have been a related language. Something old and primal, something that was not magic but existed beyond it. There was power in those runes, Evalin knew, and she just had to pray that there was power in this symbol too. 

“Evalin,” Rhoe said quietly, brown eyes full of concern. “We can’t trust—”

But at the sound of her name, the female jerked in his grip again, and he was forced to return his attention to keeping the sodden shirt on her back. 

Carefully, Evalin dipped her fingers in the female’s blood and copied the symbol into the shackle at her left wrist, but it just glowed faintly and faded. Nothing else happened. 

“Yours,” the female moaned. “‘M too drained. Needs magic.”

“Quinn,” Evalin said quietly. “I need a knife.”

“Your Highness—” Quinn began, but Evalin turned a level stare on him. 

“I need a knife.” Her voice was still soft but firm, a reminder that she was princess of two kingdoms and had given her Captain a command, one that she expected to be obeyed. 

Silently, the Captain of the Guard pulled another dagger from a sheath at his side and handed it to her. This time, when Evalin drew the symbol on the chains in her own fresh blood, there was a violent flare of green light and the shackle fell to the floor with a hiss. 

Rhoe’s hands slackened slightly on the shirt. More blood beaded up through the soaked fabric. “Holy gods. What is that?”

Evalin just shook her head. She didn’t know. But it didn’t stop her from drawing the symbol on the other shackles and watching as they too unlocked and fell away. 

The female had been quiet since she’d shown them the symbol, but as Evalin touched the ornate iron mask, she flinched away. 

“Get it off.”

“We’re going to,” Evalin soothed again, running a comforting hand along the small sliver of exposed skin on the female’s forehead. It was something she did with Aelin after a particularly bad nightmare, the only thing that could get her to settle down, and it seemed to have a similar effect on the strange female, for she went limp and docile almost immediately. 

When the symbol was etched and the mask fell off, Evalin immediately drew water out of the flask to heal the female, but stopped dead. 

The female had turned her head slightly and cracked an eye open to study them. 

A turquoise and gold eye.

The resemblance was so strong—even with the mutilated back and bloody skin. The female was her, looked exactly like her. Even her cousins in Wendlyn hadn’t shared so many features.

Except… the longer Evalin stared at her, the more she realized that there was something off about her appearance. Evalin’s chin wasn’t that sharp, her jaw not quite so strong. This female’s brow was also a slightly different shape, more angular in nature than her own. But aside from that—and the obvious changes brought about by the female’s Fae form—she could nearly be Evalin’s sister. 

And then the truth hit her. 

Because that was Rhoe’s chin, Rhoe’s jaw, Rhoe’s brow shape merged with her own. 

Somehow, impossibly...

This female looked similar enough to be her sister. 

Or her daughter.

Chapter Text

Someone was stroking Aelin’s forehead, a slow curving motion between her brows. 

Her mother used to do that when she couldn’t sleep. It was comforting.

She’d once overheard Evalin tell Rhoe that she dreaded the day when Aelin stopped coming to them for comfort after her nightmares, that Evalin craved the quiet moments soothing her daughter back to sleep as much as Aelin herself did.

She shouldn’t have worried. 

Aelin never got the chance to outgrow needing her parents’ comfort. 

This was nice. Everything was heavy and muffled, but the hand against her forehead was steady and cool. There was no more pain.

Maybe she’d died.

The thought should have scared her more than it did.

oO0Oo

Voices were the next thing to register in her consciousness. The hand hadn’t stopped stroking. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep—if she’d even woken up in the first place.

Dead people didn’t wake up, after all. 

“—been a day, I don’t understand why she’s still just lying there.”

The deep male voice that accompanied the words was vaguely familiar, a lilting brogue that she kept tucked away in the recesses of her memory.

“I don’t know,” a different voice answered—female this time, also familiar. “The healers said the blood loss was traumatic and she’d nearly burned out before… Well, before she arrived.”

A frustrated growl. “But Ev, you saw—”

“I know you want answers, Rhoe, but we have to wait for our daughter to wake up. Only Aelin can tell—”

Aelin’s eyes flew open.

The sight before her made absolutely no sense. The plush bed she was lying on was a far cry from the narrow berths in the ship and watery early spring light filtered through gaps in the heavy curtains. Seated beside her on the bed was a woman who looked very much like her, with golden hair and Ashryver eyes. It was her hand that had been on her forehead just moments before. The man who’d been pacing the length of the room froze dead as her eyes met his, a warm brown with laughter lines crinkling the corners. 

No crown adorned either of their heads, but it would have been impossible to mistake them for anyone else.

“I’m dead,” Aelin said faintly as she gawked at her parents. “I’m actually dead. Rutting hell—I didn’t think Maeve had it in her.” 

She’d figured it would take a lot longer for the Fae queen to grow tired of her stubborn refusal to hand over the Wyrdkeys and kill her. She didn’t remember anything between Skull’s Bay and now, but maybe that was a blessing. Whatever tortures Maeve had subjected her to, it was probably a good thing she had no memory of them.

She’d also always figured she’d be going to hell when she finally did die—but if her parents were here, surely that meant she’d gone to a more blessed afterworld. Perhaps the gods had granted her this one mercy.

Here there were no shackles, here there were no whips. Here she could stay with her beloved dead until the end of all things. Here she would wait for the others to join her, for the mortals and immortals she called her friends. Here she would wait for the long millenia it would take for Rowan to find her again, until they could be reunited once more, a tether no longer pulled taught between worlds.

She fought down the burning in her eyes as she stared at the two ghosts before her. 

The man—Rhoe— her father —ran a hand through his hair as he approached the bed and sat at the end. His muscles were tense, his posture posed to move at a moment’s notice—a warrior prince, as all of Terrasen’s house had been for centuries. 

“Aelin,” Evalin said quietly. Aelin’s attention snapped to her, fixed on the sound of her mother’s voice after eleven years. 

Eleven years. She’d lived longer without her parents than with them. At least now she had the rest of forever.

“Aelin,” Evalin repeated, and took Aelin’s hand between hers. “You’re not dead.”

Aelin had to laugh, because that was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. A dead woman was telling her that she wasn’t dead?

… It did occur to her that Elena basically did the same thing for months in the glass castle. 

She decided to ignore that helpful thought.

“I am,” she insisted. “Because you and father are here. I—I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you.” 

The words burned her throat to say them, but it felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She couldn’t remember if she'd told her parents she loved them the night they were murdered, all caught up in the tension surrounding what had happened in the days previous. She just remembered the tacky feeling of their blood drying on her skin and the sound of the maid’s screams.

“Aelin…” Evalin looked at a loss for words. She exchanged a concerned look with Rhoe, but Aelin couldn’t figure out for what. “You’re not dead—”

“But I am,” Aelin interrupted, now more than a little irritated that the blissful reunion she’d always imagined wasn’t going as planned. “I have to be dead, Maeve had to have killed me because—”

The door to her suite burst open and two blond children tumbled in. They had clearly been eavesdropping outside the cracked door when it gave way, sending them sprawling on the ornate carpet. Aelin could only stare open-mouthed as the young girl and boy scrambled to their feet, excuses already spilling from their lips. Beside her, Rhoe pinched the bridge of his nose, looking pained.

“I’m not dead,” Aelin said faintly as she beheld the turquoise and gold eyes of her younger self. 

oO0Oo

It took much longer than it should have for the truth to sink in. 

As one of her favourite mystery book characters had once said, When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. And for all her talk about dying in the river ten years ago, aside from that brief moment before Elena had brought her back, she hadn’t actually died. Yes, she’d discarded her royal heritage and chosen a name so different from Aelin Ashryver Galathynius that no one could ever link the two together, but that hadn’t changed the fact that she had lived. In all her research on the Wyrdmarks and the Wyrdkeys, she’d never come across a situation when a part of a person’s soul moved on to the otherworld but the rest did not.

So a split soul was out of the question. Which meant that this was not hell or any other otherworld. 

A hallucination? Possibly, but she’d never woken up in a hallucination before. She had a faint memory of instructing Evalin on how to use the Wyrdmarks to unlock her chains—something which Maeve would surely never allow, even in an altered state of consciousness. So this wasn’t a hallucination—at least, not one brought about by whatever dark powers Maeve had used to warp the fabric of the universe and trick the mating bond, and she didn’t know of anyone else powerful enough to do such a thing.

Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. 

Aelin buried her face in her hands. She wanted to think that her theory was impossible, but she’d seen first hand how powerful the Wyrdmarks were. Using the right combinations, they could open portals to other realms—so why not to other times too? And the Wyrdkeys, they were able to alter the very world, able to call great power from deep within. 

But she hadn’t used any Wyrdkeys on the beach, hadn’t dared clue Maeve in on the power she had let slip through her fingers, and her magic had been too drained to use the Wyrdmarks. She hadn’t had enough….

A cold feeling crept down her spine like ice water. She’d been wearing the third Wyrdkey until the beach, had been wearing it when she and Manon had been sucked through the witch mirror. Other eyes had used the Wyrdkey to see through hers before, used it to take over her body and use her power as its own. 

Who was to say they didn’t linger when the key was gone?

Only a god would be powerful enough to do something like this—and Aelin was the Queen Who Was Promised. 

Was it Deanna again, or some other meddling deity that decided taking her at eight like planned was a better option?

She still wasn’t sure exactly what the gods wanted with her, but she’d be damned if she let them have it.

When she finally looked up, her parents were staring at her with wide eyes. Aedion beside them was also watching her warily, but it was young Aelin’s reaction that confused her most. The girl’s face was pale with fear and her lower lip trembled, as though she was trying not to cry.

Aelin realized that her hands were on fire and quickly extinguished them.

“You have control,” Evalin said faintly. “Who taught you…” She trailed off, but Aelin remembered the magic lessons of her youth, how they had always been focused on suppression, not control. Everyone had been terrified of her power—herself included—and they’d been forced to take drastic measures to try to mitigate the damage. 

And then they’d all died, magic had vanished, and it hadn’t mattered how much control she did or didn’t have. 

Not until Mistward.  

“I do.” She slid out from under the covers and took a few steps on shaky legs. It felt like it had after she’d brought the glass castle down with Dorian. Nearly a burn out, but not quite. Still, it would take time to build her strength back up.

Instead, she let a tendril of flame dance through her fingers, weaving in the air like water, and tried to stifle the pang of hurt she got when everyone took an involuntary step back. 

“I was trained,” she said instead. “In Wendlyn.”

Both Rhoe and Evalin went so pale it was almost comical. Rhoe’s hand landed protectively on young Aelin’s shoulder. “We sent you to Maeve?” he asked quietly.

“No,” she said with equal quiet, unable to tear her eyes away from her father and her younger self. She couldn’t stop the longing that flooded through her bones at the scene. “You didn’t.”

“Aelin—But how—” Evalin couldn’t seem to get the words out. 

At the sound of their name, both Aelins turned automatically to their mother, then faltered and eyed each other warily. 

She couldn’t do this, couldn’t stand to hear her name from her mother’s lips—even without the added confusion of her younger self sharing it. She’d had so many names, lived so many lives, that it wasn’t hard to come up with one. Hopefully in this world, whatever connotations were associated with that name would never come to be. 

Her first thought was to use Elenytia, the name her friend gave her to use when all other names were too heavy. But she couldn’t think of Nehemia without seeing that horrible scene from the witch mirror, couldn’t hear that name without the word coward echoing in the background, without seeing a beautiful bedroom so much like this one painted red with gore.

There was another option, a name she’d sworn she’d never use again. A name that belonged to the night, to clandestine deeds and acts of brutality and vengeance. A name belonging to a girl who had died in the Salt Mines, or perhaps one that had never truly been resurrected from the river on a frozen night so many years ago. A name that could strike fear into the hearts of all those who heard it. A name that had shaped her as much as her crown ever had.

If she truly was in the past, if the gods had tried to manipulate her by sending her back to the beginning, they’d be in for one hell of a surprise. 

She hadn’t gotten the luxury of growing up safe and cared for and loved. She refused to let the little girl standing before her experience the same thing.

“You can call me Celaena Sardothien,” she said.

Chapter Text

Evalin’s daughter stood by the window, leaning into the open air. Her face was tilted up slightly, letting the northern wind whip her hair around her ears. Evalin thought she must be freezing, but Aelin— Celaena —didn’t seem to notice the cold. Her fingers were white where they were gripping the stone ledge and she was taking deep breaths, as though savouring the scent of pine and winter snows that lingered in the Staghorn mountains even after the rest of the continent had begun to yield to spring.

It was hard to believe that girl, this grown woman, was her daughter. When she’d been pregnant with Aelin, she and Rhoe had spent hours speculating about what their child would be like, who and what they would grow up to be. Aelin stood beside her now, tucked against her side and watching her older self with a wariness that broke Evalin’s heart, but Celaena was a stranger to them all. 

She was Evalin’s daughter and she was a stranger.

Gods, Evalin couldn’t imagine what the future would hold to make her daughter look at her with such sorrow and disbelief. Couldn’t imagine what kind of future would harm her daughter so irrevocably. The bloody slab of meat that had been her back when she’d landed on the council room floor had been bad enough, but as soon as the healers repaired the damage their expressions had faltered for a different reason.

Celaena’s back was a tangled mess of scar tissue and tattoos, ragged in places where new skin had to be grown to seal the wounds. Wounds that had clearly come from a whipping. And from the look of Celaena’s back, it wasn’t the first time.

The day Celaena had been unconscious had given Evalin time to study her daughter, and she didn’t like the picture that was beginning to be revealed. Strong muscles corded her lithe body, scars that littered her skin but were the worst on her back, calloused palms and feet. The healers who’d attended her had pulled Evalin and Rhoe to the side and quietly told them that several of Celaena’s bones showed evidence of severe breaks and stress fractures, all since healed over—some in places that might be expected of an adventurous child, but too many that were suspicious in nature. As they headed for the council room, Evalin noticed how each of Celaena’s footfalls was nearly silent, how she moved with a grace and confidence that might be attributed to her Fae form—but Evalin had grown up around the Fae. She knew the difference between natural ability and ingrained training. Celaena’s eyes also never stopped roaming, taking in each doorway and window, the weapons hanging from the belts of the noblemen they passed and the pikes resting against the shoulders of the guards. 

She studied them like they were a threat, like she was expecting an ambush.

Something sickly twisted in Evalin’s gut. She really didn’t like what all this was pointing to. 

Celaena finally stepped back from the window, cheeks flushed red from the cold. “They’re ready for us now.” 

Sure enough, moments after she spoke a castle page beckoned them inside the council room, where Orlon’s court had been debating the strange female’s mysterious arrival all morning.  Rhoe and Evalin had excused themselves from the meeting, opting to sit by their daughter until she woke, but the council would want to question her. Evalin supposed Celaena’s Fae ears had picked up the lull in conversation much better than hers. She wondered if Celaena already knew what they were going to ask her, if she’d spent all that time by the window actually listening in on the court. 

As they moved to enter, Rhoe put a hand on Aelin’s shoulder. “You’re not coming in.”

Aelin stamped her foot. “But she’s me! It’s my life!” Out of the corner of her eye, Evalin saw Celaena flinch. “I want to know what happens!”

“You’re too young. This is an adult conversation, Aelin,” Rhoe squeezed her shoulder gently. “It wouldn’t be interesting anyhow.”

“Aelin,” Celaena interrupted before she could start protesting again. She knelt down before the princess—before her younger self. “Your father is right. It will be long and boring and sad. A lot of things… some things happen in the future that aren’t very nice, things I’m going to make sure don’t happen here, so there’s no point in you knowing.”

But Aelin was undeterred. “But I want to know!”

Celaena studied her for a long while, and Evalin couldn’t help but compare the two of them. Their facial structures were identical, hair and eyes the same shade, but it was still hard to reconcile the two girls before her. There was a darkness in Celaena’s eyes, a wariness that made her chest hurt, that wasn’t present in Aelin. An exhaustion too, one that had nothing to do with sleeplessness, weighed down her shoulders. Her accent had changed, the sounds sharper and less rolling than Terrasen’s brogue—much more like she’d spent her formative years in Adarlan or Melisande. Her personality and mannerisms had changed too—and yes, it was expected that such things changed over the course of a person’s life, but surely not so drastically. Surely not so much that Evalin struggled to find echoes of her daughter in the grown woman kneeling before Aelin.

Your father, she’d said to Aelin. Not our.

Gods, where were she and Rhoe in all of this? 

…Celaena had been convinced she was dead when she woke up, because they were there. 

Because they were—in the future they—

Celaena couldn’t be any older than twenty. She hadn’t gotten to see her daughter grow up.

“I don’t want you to hear this,” Celaena admitted at last. “It will be hard enough to explain it to the council—everything that’s happened in the past decade, everything that… that I’ve done—” Here her voice shook slightly, something almost like shame flickering in her eyes. But she set her shoulders and locked her gaze with Aelin’s, trying to impart the seriousness of the situation to her. “It’s not something that should have ever happened to me, and I don’t want those memories in your head. Not when they’ll never come to pass here.”

There was such sorrow to those words, a kind of quiet resignation and defeat that had Evalin making an aborted move to pull her daughter— both versions of her—into her arms. Before she could follow through with the impulse, a figure rounded the bend in the corridor and her heart lifted at the sight of her lady-in-waiting. Marion always had a knack for turning up just when Evalin needed her most.

She beckoned her over and Marion curtsied as she approached the group. “Good afternoon, lady. How can I be of assistance?”  

As always, Evalin found herself smiling fondly at her friend. “It’s just family, Marion. There’s no need to be so formal.”

Marion cast a suspicious look at Celaena, no doubt weighing her physical appearance against both Evalin’s and Aelin’s. With Cal being part of the council, there was no doubt she’d already heard what had happened the day before—or at least some version of it. But Marion was smart enough to hear the things left unsaid, had likely come up with her own explanations that not even the council had considered. 

“Could you take Aedion and Aelin into town for the afternoon?” Evalin asked, slightly apologetically. It was still cold enough out there that no one in their right mind would willingly brave the snows, but it was the only way to guarantee that they wouldn’t be hiding in some nook in the castle, listening to the meeting with their Fae hearing. “Celaena has—” She turned to introduce the older version of her daughter but faltered. 

Celaena had gone as white as a sheet. A hand was braced against the wall, as though it was the only thing keeping her upright, and her eyes were wide. Evalin thought that there could be nothing more upsetting than the sadness on her daughter's face when she’d woken up in the past, but she was wrong. 

This wasn’t just sadness. This was devastation.

Chapter Text

The clock was chiming twelve. 

Celaena ran her hands over the hilts of the swords displayed in the armoury. The final tolls of midnight bell echoed through the palace, but she stood in the darkened room, weighing her options. 

She didn’t have her suit with her, didn’t have Goldryn or even one of the numerous knives she’d commissioned over the years that fit her grip perfectly. The dark tunic and pants she was wearing would have to do, and she’d have to be content with the weapons she found in the armoury. 

She’d wreaked hell on Endovier with only a pickaxe. She was plenty deadly with whatever was at hand, and if she was donning the moniker of Adarlan’s Assassin one last time, there was something she had to do,

That was perhaps more of Adarlan’s Assassin slipping through than Celaena had allowed in months—save for the brief and disastrous events in Skull’s Bay—but after that council meeting, she felt more like the assassin than the queen. 

“Darrow,” Celaena greeted coldly. She hadn’t forgotten the sting of his betrayal, how he had been willing to believe the worst about her before they’d even met, all because he couldn’t bear to give up his illusion of power. “It’s good to see you again, Murtagh,” she continued, and her expression softened somewhat. “How is Ren? He’d be about ten now, yes?”

“Er, he is, Your Highness,” Murtagh said, then amended, “Ten, I mean. And he was doing well, last I heard.”

She turned to the rest of the council and frowned. “I don’t remember your names.” She shrugged with an apology she only half meant. Some of them had voted against her, after all. “It’s been a while.”

That had been the beginning and the end of the pleasantries. What followed had been hours of tedious debate during which she had been forced to explain herself over and over again. Of course, she hadn’t told them everything—hadn’t even told them most things—but she’d managed to skirt around the truth by telling them, in vague terms, the barest bones of her story: Terrasen was conquered when she was eight, she escaped the slaughter and was taken in by a man in Adarlan—she’d been too much of a coward to tell them who had taken her and what she’d become—then ten years later sailed to Wendlyn to be be trained in her magic. She found out some information about the Valg wars—she didn’t dare mention the Wyrdkeys, not even when one of them hung around her mother’s neck—that Maeve would kill to get, had been captured by the dark queen and surrendered herself to let her court flee, then with a flash of light she didn’t know the origin of, had wound up eleven years in the past, bleeding out on the council room floor.

To the barely-hidden fury and annoyance of much of the council, she refused to go into further detail. Even her parents were staring at her with frowns on their faces, expressions tight and some emotion Celaena couldn’t decipher flickering in their eyes. 

But it was more than just the need for secrecy that kept Celaena’s mouth shut. Ever since seeing Marion, something cold and sharp had fractured within her, a hard lump of grief and shame she’d been carrying around since that night so long ago.

That night which, they told her, would be happening in just over a week, for Adarlan’s delegation was already on their way to Orynth. 

The torches may or may not have flared violently when she’d heard that.

Celaena wrapped her fingers around the grip of a slender scimitar with a blade of cool blue steel, drawing it from its sheath with a soft whine. Testing the edge against her callused thumb, she was satisfied at the small bead of blood that welled up. She buckled it at her belt and slipped on a bandolier of throwing knives. Without the numerous built-in sheaths and pockets of her suit, she would be limited in what she could bring—but unlike the last time she’d faced him, and all the many times before, she had her magic. She would not be afraid.

“Your Highness?”

Celaena whirled, a knife already in hand before she registered that the voice had come from Quinn. The Captain of the Guard held a torch aloft in one hand, the other on the sword at his own belt. Evidently, he’d heard something in the armory and had come to investigate. 

They stood in silence, watching each other wearily. Celaena didn’t know what Quinn thought was going on, but his throat bobbed as he swallowed, his eyes flitting from her dark clothes to the soft leather slippers she’d managed to find in Aedion’s closet that fit her well enough and would allow her traction on slick stones, to the assortment of blades on her body and the clear ease with which she wielded them. 

“What—”

“No, Quinn,” she said quietly. “Don’t ask me that.”

He made an oddly strangled sound as he swallowed again, like he was forcing down a scream. He had to clear his throat twice before he could get the words out. “Will you… will you be needing a horse, Your Highness?”

A violent shudder ripped through her at the memory of hooves on frozen ground. “No.”  The word came sharper than she intended. “No, not for this.”

She had run this distance before, with Rowan in Wendlyn. It would take several hours, but with her Fae speed and endurance, she could make a journey that would otherwise take all night on horseback. This time, she at least had the knowledge she could outrun any pursuers.

A quiet, traitorous part of her, the part that couldn’t forget how the freezing wind had torn through her thin nightgown, whispered, But that had never been the problem.

oO0Oo

The room was soaked in red. A corpse lay on the bed in front of her, so mutilated and broken that it no longer looked human. The scent of copper hung so heavy in the air that she wanted to gag, even despite her strong stomach, despite the knowledge that this man deserved it. 

Arobynn had taught her well in the art of torture, and she’d spent enough time lying beside Sam’s corpse, then later as a prisoner in Farren’s townhouse, to understand just how to replicate those injuries. Of course, she didn’t have all the proper tools—she couldn’t find most of them in the castle armory and she wasn’t willing to test her luck by roaming through the rest of the house to find them—but she’d made do.

She cut out Arobynn’s tongue first so he couldn’t call for help—not that any sound would penetrate the shields she had erected around the room. Cut out his tongue so he couldn’t manipulate her any more, couldn’t apologize in the same breath as he inflicted pain.

His dick had gone next—revenge for Lysandra, who would now never find herself at the mercy of this monster. 

And for Sam… for Sam she’d taken the longest, ripped him apart and used her fire to stop him from bleeding out as she did it. She’d spent the last eleven years at the mercy of sadists, and in some ways Endovier had taught her more about cruelty than Arobynn ever had.

That was another thing she made him pay for. 

She didn’t say a word throughout the ordeal, save for a hissed, “This is for us, all the children you turn into monsters,” when she bound him to the bed and made the first cut. After that, she was silent. She let him pull at the restraints in wordless panic, unsure who she was and why she was doing it, let him ruminate on his many, many sins, never knowing which one was the reason his talents were being turned against him.

Finally, when the grey light of dawn was just beginning to touch the horizon, she ended it the same way Lysandra had, leaving him to drown in his own hubris. Dropping the thin shield of magic, Celaena took a step back and surveyed her handiwork. 

Arobynn’s red hair was the only identifiable part of him. The rest was a mess of torn flesh and glistening bone drenched in a crimson so dark it looked black. But he had always been human—that was the worst part of it.

She had gone up against gods and demons and creatures from other worlds, yet it was a mortal man who had dealt the worst damage. 

After it was done, she had expected to feel some sort of grief or remorse—after all, she’d been unable to kill Arobynn last time because of it—but she was just deliciously numb. The killing calm flooded like ice water through her veins and there was a sort of detached fogginess to her thoughts, as though she’d sunk deep within herself while taking Arobynn apart and was now struggling to swim to the surface. It was all too much at once—her parents, Marion, the upcoming royal visit, Arobynn… She felt like she was the one being flayed alive, stripped layer by layer down to the bone, exposing the rot at the heart of her. She thought she’d come to terms with it all during the battle at Mistward, but being thrown back in time made the grief and pain as sharp as a new wound. 

A floorboard creaked behind her, ripping her from her thoughts, and she whirled, a dagger already flying. 

It slammed into the doorframe half an inch from the ear of a familiar man.

Chapter Text

He froze as he took her in—the blood on her knife, the black hooded cloak, the body soaked in crimson on the bed behind her. 

Gods, she’d never realized it, but Ben was nearly the same age right now as she was. She’d known, intellectually, when she’d seen the lack of crows’ feet by his eyes and the absence of silver in his hair, that Arobynn was young, but she’d never realized how young he was.

Or had been, before she’d slit his throat.

But he grew up—would have grown up—to be the man who’d lusted after her for years, who took away Lysandra’s innocence and Celaena’s free will, who abused and manipulated and broke them both until they were just shards of girls pretending to be whole. And Ben, as Arobynn’s Second, was guilty of that too. He’d stood by all those years, watching the blows fall, watching Arobynn’s eyes linger on them, without doing a thing. He’d listened to that silver tongue spin honeyed words and never revealed the poison beneath.

Ben’s eyes widened and she was on him before he could make a sound, slamming him against the wall with her forearm pressed against his throat, cutting off his air before he could call for help. How long did she have before someone else came to investigate the noise? Who else lived here aside from Arobynn and Ben? She’d been so young, so lost in the fog of grief that those first few months were little more than a blur. 

Ben’s honey-brown eyes flickered with fear, face rapidly reddening from lack of oxygen. He might have been a big man, well trained in the art of killing, but there were still those primal instincts in him, the ones that warned when a predator was near.

And a predator she was. He was not the master assassin he’d been when he died, wouldn’t likely have been able to beat her even if she hadn’t been in her Fae form or trained by Rowan, if she really had just been Celaena Sardothien.

Celaena Sardothien… who would never exist now. 

The roaring in her ears eased and she was left staring at… well, at a young man, only twenty-two, who would one day bandage her broken hand and sneak her candy, who could coax a smile out of her on her darkest days, who was kind and compassionate and gentle, and who would die by Arobynn’s machinations.

She had no proof of that, had been captured too soon after his death to know for certain, but it made a disturbing amount of sense. Ben wouldn’t have stood for Arobynn’s business ventures in the sale of human flesh, she’d known that much when she and Sam had gone to Skull’s Bay. Perhaps that was why Arobynn had killed him. 

Arobynn had always refused to tolerate anything less than complete obedience and submission.

All of a sudden it wasn’t Ben she was pinning against the wall but Sam. Sam, who had also been too young, barely a man, when Arobynn beat him bloody and left him on the office floor. Sam, who had been kind and gentle and sweet. Sam, who had wanted to run away with her. Sam, who had also been killed by Arobynn—simply for the crime of daring to love her.

Sam—who was alive.

The realization of it shocked her to the core. Sam was alive right now, likely in the very keep below her. He’d already been training with Arobynn when he’d found her on the banks of the Florrine, which meant he was here and he was alive.

“You’re going to do something for me,” Celaena said, and her voice was deadly quiet. Without the distorting mask that had once been part of her uniform, she sounded human, not like a demon, but there was enough violence in the words that Ben stayed silent. She felt his throat bob against her forearm as he swallowed.

“Is there a boy here named Sam Cortland?” When Ben didn’t answer, she pressed her arm tighter against his throat.

His face was nearly purple now, but he managed to gasp out, “Yes.”

“Bring him to me. Tell him to pack all his belongings and bring a sturdy pair of boots and a warm cloak.” 

Oh, this was impulsive. And stupid. Probably one of the stupidest things she’d ever done—and that was saying something.   

She kept her arm on Ben’s throat for another few moments, to let the threat of violence sink in, then stepped back. He coughed and gasped, sucking in air through whistling breaths. Already a red mark was swelling on his throat, indicating that it would soon be a dark bruise, but in Celaena’s opinion he was lucky her knife had merely been intended as a warning. His gaze flickered to the small blade still buried in the wood of the doorframe, and she knew he was thinking the same. 

“Go,” she urged. To speed him along, she drew another knife from her belt and began scraping the dried blood from beneath her nails. 

He took the hint and disappeared into the darkened hall. Five minutes later he returned, a small bag in hand and a bleary-eyed little boy trailing behind him.

The sight of Sam, all of nine years old and half-asleep and alive, was enough to make Celaena’s knees go weak. A thick black cloak far too big for him, belonging likely to Ben or Arobynn, was hastily thrown over a rumpled sleep shirt and matching loose pants, the hood pulled up, hiding his messy brown hair. He was pale with exhaustion, making his freckles stand out all the more starkly. 

A lump formed in Celaena’s throat. There was no attraction to this boy, nothing but a quiet wistfulness of what he would never grow up to be for a girl who would no longer exist, but seeing this child in front of her, all round cheeks and nobbly knees, she ached for the Sam she’d known. If they hadn’t tried to run from Arobynn, if she’d killed him earlier and never reclaimed her throne, if Sam hadn’t died— Well, this little boy was what their son might have looked like. For a moment, she could almost picture it: a simple life in Rifthold, running the Assassin’s Guild and teaching the next generation of professional killers—or maybe they would still have left, settled quietly in Eyllwe or Fenharrow or even Terrasen, and their children would never have sword callouses on their palms and whipping scars on their backs. 

But Sam hadn’t lived past eighteen and she wasn’t Celaena Sardothien anymore, not really. She loved Rowan with everything she had and knew that right now, somewhere in Wendlyn, there was a grumpy, brooding male who was waiting for the mate he didn’t know he had. Perhaps if Sam had still been alive when she’d met Rowan, everything might have played out very differently, but she’d never know now.

All that aside, she wouldn’t leave him here, even with Arobynn dead. She would never deliberately leave another child to grow up as she had. That made her think about Lysandra and Clarisse, and she made a mental note to look into that later, but at the moment she had to get this little boy away from this house of killers.

She knelt down in front of Sam and looked into those warm brown eyes. “Do you know who I am?”

Sam squeaked quietly, a soft blush spread across his baby-fat cheeks. He shuffled uncertainly in place and looked to Ben for help. Arobynn’s Second studied her in silence for a long time, then said in a low voice, “Evalin Ashryver Galathynius, princess of Terrasen.” 

Another terrified noise came out of Sam, but Celaena just tilted her head, reassessing Ben. She’d expected him to answer ‘an assassin,’ but apparently he was more perceptive than she’d given him credit for. Then again, Arobynn’s estate was within a short ride’s distance from her parents’ summer home, so perhaps it wasn’t a surprise he could identify a member of the royal family on sight.

“Close, but not quiet.” A flickering crown of flame appeared on her head. “Wrong princess.”

Ben stumbled back a step, reaching for the knife at his belt. “Princess Aelin… But you’re supposed to be—”

“—eight, I know. There was an incident with time.” She gave him a grim smile. “And it’s Queen Aelin, actually.”

She could see him turning everything over in his mind, fitting that information into the picture he was making of her skill with weapons, the grudge she apparently held against Arobynn, and her familiarity with both him and Sam. Whatever conclusion he came to, he let go of his knife, apparently realizing that a single blade would be no match for her. That he would be no match for her.

Sam looked between them, trying to figure out what was going on, but he was nine and half-asleep, his brain wasn’t making the connections. She turned her attention back to him now, giving him a soft smile. “It’s a really long story, Sam, but I know you, even if you don’t know me. I’ll explain more when we get back to Orynth.”

“Uh…” Sam glanced at Ben, but the older assassin only folded his arms. 

“I can’t stop you, can I? He’ll be safe there, well-looked after?” 

She huffed a laugh. “That’s why you were my favourite: you actually cared about us. But yes, he will. I swear it on my crown.”

Ben gave a jerky nod, his eyes falling on the mutilated body on the bed. He didn’t appear overly distressed at the sight of his dead friend, only grimacing at the blood soaking the sheets and congealing on the wooden floor. “I’m going to have to deal with that, aren’t I?”

It wasn’t really a question, and they both knew it. Celaena just gave him a wicked grin as she stood. “Well, I’d imagine it’d put a damper on the atmosphere. Or maybe not,” she amended with a tilt of her head. “This is an assassin’s keep. Blood goes well with the turn of the century decor.”

With a sigh, he handed her Sam’s bag. “I’ll keep your secrets,” he said quietly. “The laws of the guild demand it.”

A lump formed in her throat. Those laws about secrecy surrounding assassinations and identities were only concerned with those who were enrolled in the guild; those assassins who betrayed the confidence of their fellows were hunted down and killed—slowly. It was as good an admission as any that Ben had figured out, at least partially, what she was—what the eight-year-old princess became.  

“Thank you,” she said with equal quiet. She ushered Sam out the window, pausing momentarily to make sure he had a grip on the slick stone wall, and slipped out after him, glancing back only long enough to see Ben blanch when he noticed Arobynn’s missing… appendage.  

In all the hours it took to run back to the palace with her Fae speed, the wicked, satisfied grin never left her face.