Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)(138)

The door shut behind her, and then there was only the cold, dark air and the trees that led toward the path to the bridge. She staggered into a run. Her legs were leaden, her bare feet tearing on the ground. But she made it to the trees—just as there was a crash from the house.

She gripped a trunk, her knees buckling. Through the open window, she could see Lady Marion standing before a hooded, towering man, her daggers out but trembling. “You will not find her.”

The man said something that had Marion backing to the door—not to run, but to block it.

She was so small, her nursemaid. So small against him. “She is a child,” Marion bellowed. She had never heard her scream like that—with rage and disgust and despair. Marion raised her daggers, precisely how her husband had shown her again and again.

She should help, not cower in the trees. She had learned to hold a knife and a small sword. She should help.

The man lunged for Marion, but she darted out of the way—and then leapt on him, slicing and tearing and biting.

And then something broke—something broke so fundamentally she knew there was no coming back from it, either for her or Lady Marion—as the man grabbed the woman and threw her against the edge of the table. A crack of bone, then the arc of his blade going for her stunned form—for her head. Red sprayed.

She knew enough about death to understand that once a head was severed like that, it was over. Knew that Lady Marion, who had loved her husband and daughter so much, was gone. Knew that this—this was called sacrifice.

She ran. Ran through the barren trees, the brush ripping her clothes, her hair, shredding and biting. The man didn’t bother to be quiet as he flung open the kitchen door, mounted his horse, and galloped after her. The hoofbeats were so powerful they seemed to echo through the forest—the horse had to be a monster.

She tripped over a root and slammed into the earth. In the distance, the melting river was roaring. So close, but—her ankle gave a bolt of agony. Stuck—she was stuck in the mud and roots. She yanked at the roots that held her, wood ripping her nails, and when that did nothing, she clawed at the muddy ground. Her fingers burned.

A sword whined as it was drawn from its sheath, and the ground reverberated with the pounding hooves of the horse. Closer, closer it came.

A sacrifice—it had been a sacrifice, and now it would be in vain.

More than death, that was what she hated most—the wasted sacrifice of Lady Marion. She clawed at the ground and yanked at the roots, and then—

Tiny eyes in the dark, small fingers at the roots, heaving them up, up. Her foot slipped free and she was up again, unable to thank the Little Folk who had already vanished, unable to do anything but run, limping now. The man was so close, the bracken cracking behind, but she knew the way. She had come through here so many times that the darkness was no obstacle.

She only had to make it to the bridge. His horse could not pass, and she was fast enough to outrun him. The Little Folk might help her again. She only had to make it to the bridge.

A break in the trees—and the river’s roar grew overpowering. She was so close now. She felt and heard, rather than saw, his horse break through the trees behind her, the whoosh of his sword as he lifted it, preparing to cleave her head right there.

There were the twin posts, faint on the moonless night. The bridge. She had made it, and now she had only yards, now a few feet, now—

The breath of his horse was hot on her neck as she flung herself between the two posts of the bridge, making a leap onto the wood planks.

Making a leap onto thin air.

She had not missed it—no, those were the posts and—

He had cut the bridge.

It was her only thought as she plummeted, so fast she had no time to scream before she hit the icy water and was pulled under.




That.

That moment Lady Marion had chosen a desperate hope for her kingdom over herself, over her husband and the daughter who would wait and wait for a return that would never come.

That was the moment that had broken everything Aelin Galathynius was and had promised to be.

Celaena was lying on the ground—on the bottom of the world, on the bottom of hell.

That was the moment she could not face—had not faced.

For even then, she had known the enormity of that sacrifice.

There was more, after the moment she’d hit the water. But those memories were hazy, a mix of ice and black water and strange light, and then she knew nothing more until Arobynn was crouched over her on the reedy riverbank, somewhere far away. She awoke in a strange bed in a cold keep, the Amulet of Orynth lost to the river. Whatever magic it had, whatever protection, had been used up that night.

Then the process of taking her fear and guilt and despair and twisting them into something new. Then the hate—the hate that had rebuilt her, the rage that had fueled her, smothering the memories she buried in a grave within her heart and never let out.

She had taken Lady Marion’s sacrifice and become a monster, almost as bad as the one who had murdered Lady Marion and her own family.

That was why she could not, did not, go home.

She had never looked for the death tolls in those initial weeks of slaughter, or the years afterward. But she knew Lord Lochan had been executed. Quinn and his men. And so many of those children … such bright lights, all hers to protect. And she had failed.

Celaena clung to the ground.