Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3)(85)

There was a faint ringing in her ears that turned into a roar. And beneath it, a sudden wave of numbness, a too-­familiar lack of sight or sound or feeling. She didn’t know why it happened, because she had been so dead set on hating him, but . . . it would have been nice, she supposed. It would have been nice to have one person who knew the absolute truth about her—­and didn’t hate her for it.

It would have been really, really nice.

She walked away without another word. With each step she took back to her room, that flickering light inside of her guttered.

And went out.

34

Celaena did not remember curling up in her bed, boots still on. She did not remember her dreams, or feel the pangs of hunger or thirst when she awoke, and she could barely respond to anyone as she trudged down to the kitchen and set about helping with breakfast. Everything swirled past in dull colors and whispers of sound. But she was still. A bit of rock in a stream.

Breakfast passed, and when it was done, in the quiet of the kitchen, the sounds sorted out into voices. A murmur—­Malakai. A laugh—­Emrys.

“Look,” Emrys said, coming up to where Celaena stood at the kitchen sink, still staring out at the field. “Look what Malakai bought me.”

She caught the flash of the golden hilt before she understood Emrys was holding out a new knife. It was a joke. The gods had to be playing a joke. Or they just truly, truly hated her.

The hilt was engraved with lotus blossoms, a ripple of lapis lazuli edging the bottom like a river wave. Emrys was smiling, eyes bright. But that knife, the gold polished and bright . . .

“I got it from a merchant from the southern continent,” Malakai said from the table, his satisfied tone enough to tell her that he was beaming. “It came all the way from Eyllwe.”

The numbness snapped.

Snapped with such a violent crack that she was surprised they didn’t hear it.

And in its place was a screaming, high-­pitched and keening, loud as a teakettle, loud as a storm wind, loud as the sound the maid had emitted the morning she’d walked into Celaena’s parents’ bedroom and seen the child lying between their corpses.

It was so loud that she could hardly hear herself as she said, “I do not care.” She ­couldn’t hear anything over that silent screaming, so she raised her own voice, breath coming fast, too fast, as she repeated, “I. Do. Not. Care.”

Silence. Then Luca warily said from across the room, “Elentiya, don’t be rude.”

Elentiya. Elentiya. Spirit that cannot be broken.

Lies, lies, lies. Nehemia had lied about everything. About her stupid name, about her plans, about every damn thing. And she was gone. All that Celaena would have left of her ­were reminders like this—­weapons similar to the ones the princess had worn with such pride. Nehemia was gone, and she had nothing left.

Trembling so hard she thought her body would fall apart at the seams, she turned. “I do not care about you,” she hissed to Emrys and Malakai and Luca. “I do not care about your knife. I do not care about your stories or your little kingdom.” She pinned Emrys with a stare. Luca and Malakai ­were across the room in an instant, stepping in front of the old man—­teeth bared. Good. They should feel threatened. “So leave me alone. Keep your gods-­damned lives to yourselves and leave me alone.”

She was shouting now, but she ­couldn’t stop hearing the screaming, ­couldn’t hone the anger into anything, ­couldn’t tell which way was up or down, only that Nehemia had lied about everything, and her friend once had sworn an oath not to—­sworn an oath and broken it, just as she’d broken Celaena’s own heart the day she let herself die.

She saw the tears in Emrys’s eyes then. Sorrow or pity or anger, she didn’t care. Luca and Malakai ­were still between them, growling softly. A family—­they ­were a family, and they stuck together. They would rip her apart if she hurt one of them.

Celaena let out a low, joyless laugh as she took in the three of them. Emrys opened his mouth to say what­ever it was he thought would help.

But Celaena let out another dead laugh and walked out the door.

•

After an entire night of tattooing the names of the fallen onto Gavriel’s flesh and listening to the warrior talk about the men he’d lost, Rowan sent him on his way and headed for the kitchen. He found it empty save for the ancient male, who sat at the empty worktable, hands wrapped around a mug. Emrys looked up, his eyes bright and . . . grieving.

The girl was nowhere to be seen, and for a heartbeat, he hoped she’d left again, if only so he didn’t have to face what he’d said yesterday. The door to the outside was open—­as if someone had thrown it wide. She’d probably gone that way.

Rowan took a step toward it, nodding his greeting, but the old male looked him up and down and quietly said, “What are you doing?”

“What?”

Emrys didn’t raise his voice as he said, “To that girl. What are you doing that makes her come in ­here with such emptiness in her eyes?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

Emrys pressed his lips into a tight line. “What do you see when you look at her, Prince?”

He didn’t know. These days, he didn’t know a damn thing. “That’s none of your concern, either.”