Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3)(16)

8

Celaena backed away, knowing exactly how many steps it would take to get into the hall, but slammed into a hard, unyielding body just as the door shut behind them. Her hands ­were shaking so badly she didn’t bother going for her weapons—­or Rowan’s. He’d cut her down the instant Maeve gave the order.

The blood rushed from Celaena’s head. She forced herself to take a breath. And another. Then she said in a too-­quiet voice, “Aelin Galathynius is dead.” Just speaking her name aloud—­the damned name she had dreaded and hated and tried to forget . . .

Maeve smiled, revealing sharp little canines. “Let us not bother with lies.”

It ­wasn’t a lie. That girl, that princess had died in a river a de­cade ago. Celaena was no more Aelin Galathynius than she was any other person.

The room was too hot—­too small, Rowan a brooding force of nature behind her.

She was not to have time to gather herself, to make up excuses and half truths, as she should have been doing these past few days instead of free-­falling into silence and the misty cold. She was to face the Queen of the Fae as Maeve wanted to be faced. And in some fortress that seemed far, far beneath the raven-­haired beauty watching her with black, depthless eyes.

Gods. Gods.

Maeve was fearsome in her perfection, utterly still, eternal and calm and radiating ancient grace. The dark sister to the fair-­haired Mab.

Celaena had been fooling herself into thinking this would be easy. She was still pressed against Rowan as though he were a wall. An impenetrable wall, as old as the ward-­stones surrounding the fortress. Rowan stepped away from her with his powerful, predatory ease and leaned against the door. She ­wasn’t getting out until Maeve allowed her.

The Queen of the Fae remained silent, her long fingers moon-­white and folded in the lap of her violet gown, a white barn owl perched on the back of her chair. She didn’t bother with a crown, and Celaena supposed she didn’t need one. Every creature on earth would know who she was—­what she was—­even if they ­were blind and deaf. Maeve, the face of a thousand legends . . . and nightmares. Epics and poems and songs had been written about her, so many that some even believed she was just a myth. But ­here was the dream—­the nightmare—­made flesh.

This could work to your advantage. You can get the answers you need right ­here, right now. Go back to Adarlan in a matter of days. Just—­breathe.

Breathing, as it turned out, was rather hard when the queen who had been known to drive men to madness for amusement was observing every flicker of her throat. That owl perched on Maeve’s chair—Fae or true beast?—­was watching her, too. Its talons ­were curled around the back of the chair, digging into the wood.

It was somewhat absurd, though—­Maeve holding court in this half-­rotted office, at a desk stained with the Wyrd knew what. Gods, the fact that Maeve was seated at a desk. She should be in some ethereal glen, surrounded by bobbing will-­o’-­the-­wisps and maidens dancing to lutes and harps, reading the wheeling stars like they ­were poetry. Not ­here.

Celaena bowed low. She supposed she should have gotten on her knees, but—­she already smelled awful, and her face was likely still torn and bruised from her brawling in Varese. As Celaena ­rose, Maeve remained smiling faintly. A spider with a fly in its web.

“I suppose that with a proper bath, you’ll look a good deal like your mother.”

No exchanging pleasantries, then. Maeve was going right for the throat. She could handle it. She could ignore the pain and terror to get what she wanted. So Celaena smiled just as faintly and said, “Had I known who I would be meeting, I might have begged my escort for time to freshen up.”

She didn’t feel bad for one heartbeat about throwing Rowan to the lions.

Maeve’s obsidian eyes flicked to Rowan, who still leaned against the door. She could have sworn there was approval in the Fae Queen’s smile. As if the grueling travel were a part of this plan, too. But why? Why get her off-­kilter?

“I’m afraid I must bear the blame for the pressing pace,” Maeve said. “Though I suppose he could have bothered to at least find you a pool to bathe in along the way.” The Queen of Faedom lifted an elegant hand, gesturing to the warrior. “Prince Rowan—”

Prince. She swallowed the urge to turn to him.

“—is from my sister Mora’s bloodline. He is my nephew of sorts, and a member of my ­house­hold. An extremely distant relation of yours; there is some ancient ancestry linking you.”

Another move to get her on uneven footing. “You don’t say.”

Perhaps that ­wasn’t the best reply. She should probably be on the floor, groveling for answers. And she had a feeling she’d likely get to that point very, very soon. But . . .

“You must be wondering why it is I asked Prince Rowan to bring you ­here,” Maeve mused.

For Nehemia, she’d play this game. Celaena bit her tongue hard enough to keep her gods-­damned smart-­ass mouth shut.

Maeve placed her white hands on the desk. “I have been waiting a long, long while to meet you. And as I do not leave these lands, I could not see you. Not with my eyes, at least.” The queen’s long nails gleamed in the light.

There ­were legends whispered over fires about the other skin Maeve wore. No one had lived to tell anything beyond shadows and claws and a darkness to devour your soul.