Heir of Fire (61 page)

A clopping issued from outside—­faint, but the world was so silent that they heard the lone ­horse. It was still dark. Lady Marion scanned the kitchen windows, listening to the ­horse slowly circling, until—

Th
ey ­were under the table in a
fl
ash, Marion pressing her into the freezing
fl
oor, covering her with her delicate body.
Th
e ­horse headed toward the darkened front of the ­house.

Th
e front, because—­because the kitchen light might suggest to whoever it was that someone was inside.
Th
e front was better for sneaking in . . . to
fi
nish what had begun the night before.

“Aelin,” Marion whispered, and small, strong hands found her face, forcing her to look at the white-­as-­snow features, the bloodred lips. “Aelin, listen to me.”
Th
ough Marion was breathing quickly, her voice was even. “You are going to run for the river. Do you remember the way to the footbridge?”

Th
e narrow rope and wood bridge across the ravine and the rushing River Florine below. She nodded.

“Good girl. Make for the bridge, and cross it. Do you remember the empty farm down the road? Find a place to hide there—­and do not come out, do not let yourself be seen by
anyone
except someone you recognize. Not even if they say they're a friend. Wait for the court—­they will
fi
nd you.”

She was shaking again. But Marion gripped her shoulders. “I am going to buy you what time I can, Aelin. No matter what you hear, no matter what you see, don't look back, and don't stop until you
fi
nd a place to hide.”

She shook her head, silent tears
fi
nding their way out at last.
Th
e front door groaned—­a quick movement.

Lady Marion reached for the dagger in her boot. It glinted in the dim light. “When I say run, you run, Aelin. Do you understand?”

She didn't want to, not at all, but she nodded.

Lady Marion brushed a kiss to her brow. “Tell my Elide . . .” Her voice broke. “Tell my Elide that I love her very much.”

A so
ft
thud of approaching footsteps from the front of the ­house. Lady Marion dragged her from under the table and eased open the kitchen door only wide enough for her to squeeze through.

“Run
now
,” Lady Marion said, and shoved her into the night.

Th
e 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.
Th
rough the open window, she could see Lady Marion standing before a hooded, towering man, her daggers out but trembling. “You will not
fi
nd her.”

Th
e 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.

Th
e 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 sacri
fi
ce.

She ran. Ran through the barren trees, the brush ripping her clothes, her hair, shredding and biting.
Th
e man didn't bother to be quiet as he
fl
ung open the kitchen door, mounted his ­horse, and galloped a
ft
er her.
Th
e hoo
fb
eats ­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
fi
ngers 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 sacri
fi
ce—­it had been a sacri
fi
ce, and now it would be in vain.

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

Tiny eyes in the dark, small
fi
ngers 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.
Th
e 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.
Th
e 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 li
ft
ed it, preparing to cleave her head right there.

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

Th
e breath of his ­horse was hot on her neck as she
fl
ung 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.

•

Th
at.

Th
at 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.

Th
at 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.

Th
at was the moment she could not face—­had not faced.

For even then, she had known the enormity of that sacri
fi
ce.

Th
ere was more, a
ft
er 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.

Th
en the pro­cess of taking her fear and guilt and despair and twisting them into something new.
Th
en 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 sacri
fi
ce and become a monster, almost as bad as the one who had murdered Lady Marion and her own family.

Th
at 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 a
ft
erward. 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.

It was what she had not been able to tell Chaol, or Dorian, or Elena: that when Nehemia arranged for her own death so it would spur her into action, that sacri
fi
ce . . . that worthless sacri
fi
ce . . .

She could not let go of the ground.
Th
ere was nothing beneath it, nowhere ­else to go, nowhere to outrun this truth.

She didn't know how long she lay on the bottom of wherever this was, but eventually the Valg princes started up again, barely more than shadows of thought and malice as they stalked from memory to memory as if sampling platters at a feast. Little bites—­sips.
Th
ey did not even look her way, for they had won. And she was glad of it. Let them do what they wanted, let Narrok carry her back to Adarlan and throw her at the king's feet.

Th
ere was a scrape and crunch of shoes, then a small, smooth hand slid toward her. But it was not Chaol or Sam or Nehemia who lay across from her, watching her with those sad turquoise eyes.

Her cheek against the moss, the young princess she had been—­Aelin Galathynius—­reached a hand for her. “Get up,” she said so
ft
ly.

Celaena shook her head.

Aelin strained for her, bridging that ri
ft
in the foundation of the world. “Get up.” A promise—­a promise for a better life, a better world.

Th
e Valg princes paused.

She had wasted her life, wasted Marion's sacri
fi
ce.
Th
ose slaves had been butchered because she had failed—­because she had not been there in time.

“Get up,” someone said beyond the young princess. Sam. Sam, standing just beyond where she could see, smiling faintly.

“Get up,” said another voice—­a woman's. Nehemia.

“Get up.” Two voices together—­her mother and father, faces grave but eyes bright. Her uncle was beside them, the crown of Terrasen on his silver hair. “Get up,” he told her gently.

One by one, like shadows emerging from the mist, they appeared.
Th
e faces of the people she had loved with her heart of wild
fi
re.

And then there was Lady Marion, smiling beside her husband. “Get up,” she whispered, her voice full of that hope for the world, and for the daughter she would never seen again.

A tremor in the darkness.

Aelin still lay before her, hand still reaching.
Th
e Valg princes turned.

As the demon princes moved, her mother stepped toward her, face and hair and build so like her own. “You are a disappointment,” she hissed.

Her father crossed his muscular arms. “You are everything I hated about the world.”

Her uncle, still wearing the antler crown long since burned to ash: “Better that you had died with us than shame us, degrade our memory, betray our people.”

Th
eir voices swirled together. “Traitor. Murderer. Liar.
Th
ief. Coward.” Again and again, worming in just as the King of Adarlan's power had wriggled in her mind like a maggot.

Th
e king hadn't done it merely to cause a disruption and hurt her. He had also done it to separate her family, to get them out of the castle—to take the blame away from Adarlan and make it look like an outside attack.

She had blamed herself for dragging them to the manor ­house to be butchered. But the king had planned it all, every minute detail. Except for the mistake of leaving her alive—­perhaps because the power of the amulet did indeed save her.

“Come with us,” her family whispered. “Come with us into the ageless dark.”

Th
ey reached for her, faces shadowed and twisted. Yet—­yet even those faces, so warped with hatred . . . she still loved them—­even if they loathed her, even if it ached; loved them until their hissing faded, until they vanished like smoke, leaving only Aelin lying beside her, as she had been all along.

She looked at Aelin's face—­the face she'd once worn—­and at her still outstretched hand, so small and unscarred.
Th
e darkness of the Valg princes
fl
ickered.

Th
ere was solid ground beneath her. Moss and grass. Not hell—earth.
Th
e earth on which her kingdom lay, green and mountainous and as unyielding as its people.
Her
people.

Her people, waiting for ten years, but no longer.

She could see the snow-­capped Staghorns, the wild tangle of Oakwald at their feet, and . . . and Orynth, that city of light and learning, once a pillar of strength—­and her home.

It would be both again.

She would not let that light go out.

She would
fi
ll the world with it, with her light—­her gi
ft
. She would light up the darkness, so brightly that all who ­were lost or wounded or broken would
fi
nd their way to it, a beacon for those who still dwelled in that abyss. It would not take a monster to destroy a monster—­but light, light to drive out darkness.

She was not afraid.

She would remake the world—­remake it for them, those she had loved with this glorious, burning heart; a world so brilliant and prosperous that when she saw them again in the A
ft
erworld, she would not be ashamed. She would build it for her people, who had survived this long, and whom she would not abandon. She would make for them a kingdom such as there had never been, even if it took until her last breath.