Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass #2)(68)

“Stop.” He gasped, winded from the blow she’d landed with her knee, trying to think past that blinding pain. “Celaena, stop.”

“Captain,” one of his men ventured.

“Stay back,” he snarled again.

Celaena threw her weight into the dagger she held aloft, and gained an inch. His arms strained. She was going to kill him. She was truly going to kill him.

He made himself look into her eyes, look at the face so twisted with rage that he couldn’t find her.

“Celaena,” he said, squeezing her wrists so hard that he hoped the pain registered somewhere—wherever she had gone. But she still wouldn’t loosen her grip on the blade. “Celaena, I’m your friend.”

She stared at him, panting through gritted teeth, her breath coming quicker and quicker before she roared, the sound filling the room, his blood, his world: “You will never be my friend. You will always be my enemy.”

She bellowed the last word with such soul-deep hatred that he felt it like a punch to the gut. She surged again, and he lost his grip on the wrist that held the dagger. The blade plunged down.

And stopped. There was a sudden chill in the room, and Celaena’s hand just stopped, as though it had been frozen in midair. Her eyes left his face, but Chaol couldn’t see who it was she hissed at. For a heartbeat, it seemed as if she was thrashing against some invisible force, but then Ress was behind her, and she was too busy struggling to notice as the guard slammed the pommel of his sword into her head.

As Celaena fell atop him, a part of Chaol fell along with her.

Chapter 31

Dorian knew that Chaol had no choice, no other way out of the situation, as his friend carried Celaena out of that bloody chamber, into the servants’ stairwell, and down, down, down, until they reached the castle dungeons. He tried not to look at Kaltain’s curious, half-mad face as Chaol laid Celaena in the cell beside hers. As he locked the cell door.

“Let me give her my cloak,” Dorian said, reaching to unfasten it.

“Don’t,” Chaol said quietly. His face was still bleeding. She’d gouged four lines across his cheek with her nails. Her nails. Gods above.

“I don’t trust her with anything in there except hay.” Chaol had already taken the time to remove her remaining weapons—including six lethal-looking hairpins from her braid—and checked her boots and tunic for any hidden ones.

Kaltain was smiling faintly at Celaena. “Don’t touch her, don’t talk to her, and don’t look at her,” Chaol said, as if there wasn’t a wall of bars separating the two women. Kaltain just huffed and curled up on her side. Chaol barked orders to the guards about food and water rations, and how often the watch was to be changed, and then stalked from the dungeon.

Dorian silently followed. He didn’t know where to begin. There was grief sweeping down on him in waves as he realized again and again that Nehemia was dead; there was the sickness and terror of what he’d seen in that bedroom; and there was the horror and relief that he’d somehow used his power to stop Celaena’s hand before she stabbed Chaol, and that no one except Celaena had noticed.

And when she’d hissed at him … he’d seen something so savage in her eyes that he shuddered.

They were halfway up the winding stone stairs out of the dungeons when Chaol suddenly slumped onto a step, putting his head in his hands. “What have I done?” Chaol whispered.

And despite whatever was changing between them, he couldn’t walk away from Chaol. Not tonight. Not when he, too, needed someone to sit next to. “Tell me what happened,” Dorian said quietly, taking a seat on the stair beside him and staring into the gloom of the stairwell.

So Chaol did.

Dorian listened to his tale of kidnapping, of some rebel group trying to use him to get Celaena to trust them, of Celaena breaking into the warehouse and cutting down men like they were nothing. How the king had told Chaol of an anonymous threat to Nehemia a week ago and ordered him to keep an eye on Nehemia. How the king wanted the princess questioned and told Chaol to keep Celaena away tonight. And then Archer—the man she’d been dispatched to kill weeks ago—explaining that it had been code for Nehemia being assassinated. And then how Celaena ran from the slums all the way back here, to find that she’d been too late to save her friend.

There were things Chaol still wasn’t telling him, but Dorian understood it well enough.

His friend was trembling—which was a horror in itself, another foundation slipping out from beneath their feet. “I’ve never seen anyone move like she did,” Chaol breathed. “I’ve never seen anyone run that fast. Dorian, it was like …” Chaol shook his head. “I found a horse within seconds of her taking off, and she still outran me. Who can do that?”

Dorian might have dismissed it as a warped sense of time due to fear and grief, but he’d had magic coursing through his veins only moments ago.

“I didn’t know this would happen,” Chaol said, resting his forehead against his knees. “If your father …”

“It wasn’t my father,” Dorian said. “I dined with my parents tonight.” He’d just come from that dinner when Celaena went flying past, hell burning in her eyes. That look had been enough for him to run after her, guards in tow, until Chaol nearly collided with them in the halls. “My father said he was going to talk to Nehemia later on, after dinner. From what I saw, this happened hours before that.”