The Assassin and the Desert (Throne of Glass 0.3)(30)

Celaena looked at the wolf-shaped hilt and the blood staining the steel. The one tie Ansel had left to her father, her family, and whatever twisted shred of hope burned in her heart.

Celaena turned the blade and handed it hilt-first to Ansel. The girl’s eyes were wide and damp as she took the sword. She opened her mouth, but Celaena cut her off. “Go home, Ansel.”

Ansel’s face went white again. She took the blade from Celaena and sheathed it at her side. She glanced at Celaena only once before she took off at a sprint, leaping over Mikhail’s corpse as if he were nothing more than a bit of debris.

Then she was gone.

Chapter Twelve

Celaena rushed to Ilias, who moaned as she turned him over. The wound in his stomach was still bleeding. She ripped strips from her tunic, which was already soaked with blood, and shouted for help as she bound him tightly.

There was a scrape of cloth over stone, and Celaena looked over her shoulder to see the Master trying to drag himself over the stones to his son. The paralytic must be wearing off.

Five bloodied assassins came rushing up the stairs, eyes wide and faces pale as they beheld Mikhail and Ilias. Celaena left Ilias in their care as she dashed to the Master.

“Don’t move,” she told him, wincing as blood from her face dripped onto his white clothes. “You might hurt yourself.” She scanned the podium for any sign of the poison, and rushed to the fallen bronze goblet. A few sniffs revealed that the wine had been laced with a small amount of gloriella, just enough to paralyze him, not kill him. Ansel must have wanted him completely prone before she killed him—she must have wanted him to know she was the one who had betrayed him. To have him conscious while she severed his head. How had he not noticed it before he drank? Perhaps he wasn’t as humble as he seemed; perhaps he’d been arrogant enough to believe that he was safe here. “It’ll wear off soon,” she told the Master, but she still called for an antidote to speed up the process. One of the assassins took off at a run.

She sat by the Master, one hand clutching her bleeding neck. The assassins at the other end of the room carried Ilias out, stopping to reassure the Master that his son would be fine.

Celaena nearly groaned with relief at that, but straightened as a dry, calloused hand wrapped around hers, squeezing faintly. She looked down into the face of the Master, whose eyes shifted to the open door. He was reminding her of the promise she’d made. Ansel had been given twenty minutes to clear firing range.

It was time.

Ansel was already a dark blur in the distance, Hisli galloping as if demons were at her hooves. She was heading northwest over the dunes, toward the Singing Sands, to the narrow bridge of feral jungle that separated the Deserted Land from the rest of the continent, and then the open expanse of the Western Wastes beyond them. Toward Briarcliff.

Atop the battlements, Celaena drew an arrow from her quiver and nocked it into her bow.

The bowstring moaned as she pulled it back, farther and farther, her arm straining.

Focusing upon the tiny figure atop the dark horse, Celaena took aim.

In the silence of the fortress, the bowstring twanged like a mournful harp.

The arrow soared, turning relentlessly. The red dunes passed beneath in a blur, closing the distance. A sliver of winged darkness edged with steel. A quick, bloody death.

Hisli’s tail flicked to the side as the arrow buried itself in the sand just inches behind her rear hooves.

But Ansel didn’t dare look over her shoulder. She kept riding, and she did not stop.

Celaena lowered her bow and watched until Ansel disappeared beyond the horizon. One arrow, that had been her promise.

But she’d also promised Ansel that she had twenty minutes to get out of range.

Celaena had fired after twenty-one.

The Master called Celaena to his chamber the following morning. It had been a long night, but Ilias was on the mend, the wound having narrowly missed puncturing any organs. All of Lord Berick’s soldiers were dead, and were in the process of being carted back to Xandria as a reminder to Berick to seek the King of Adarlan’s approval elsewhere. Twenty assassins had died, and a heavy, mourning silence filled the fortress.

Celaena sat on an ornately carved wooden chair, watching the Master as he stared out the window at the sky. She nearly fell out of her seat when he began speaking.

“I am glad you did not kill Ansel.” His voice was raw, and his accent thick with the clipped yet rolling sounds of some language she’d never heard before. “I have been wondering when she would decide what to do with her fate.”

“So you knew—”

The Master turned from the window. “I have known for years. Several months after Ansel’s arrival, I sent inquiries to the Flatlands. Her family had not written her any letters, and I was worried that something might have happened.” He took a seat in a chair across from Celaena. “My messenger returned to me some months later, saying that there was no Briarcliff. The lord and his eldest daughter had been murdered by the High King, and the youngest daughter—Ansel—was missing.”

“Why didn’t you ever . . . confront her?” Celaena touched the narrow scab on her left cheek. It wouldn’t scar if she looked after it properly. And if it did scar . . . then maybe she’d hunt down Ansel and return the favor.

“Because I hoped she would eventually trust me enough to tell me. I had to give her that chance, even though it was a risk. I hoped she would learn to face her pain—that she’d learn to endure it.” He smiled sadly at Celaena. “If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it—to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger. But Ansel let her pain become hate, and let it consume her until she became something else entirely—a person I don’t think she ever wished to be.”