Heir of Fire(3)
A land of plenty, of opportunity, where men didn’t just take what they wanted, where no doors were locked and people smiled at you in the streets. But she didn’t particularly care if someone did or didn’t smile at her—no, as the days wore on, she found it suddenly very difficult to bring herself to care about anything at all. Whatever determination, whatever rage, whatever anything she’d felt upon leaving Adarlan had ebbed away, devoured by the nothingness that now gnawed at her.
It was four days before Celaena spotted the massive capital city built across the foothills. Varese, the city where her mother had been born; the vibrant heart of the kingdom.
While Varese was cleaner than Rifthold and had plenty of wealth spread between the upper and lower classes, it was a capital city all the same, with slums and back alleys, whores and gamblers—and it hadn’t taken too long to find its underbelly.
On the street below, three of the market guards paused to chat, and Celaena rested her chin on her hands. Like every guard in this kingdom, each was clad in light armor and bore a good number of weapons. Rumor claimed the Wendlynite soldiers were trained by the Fae to be ruthless and cunning and swift. And she didn’t want to know if that was true, for about a dozen different reasons. They certainly seemed a good deal more observant than the average Rifthold sentry—even if they hadn’t yet noticed the assassin in their midst. But these days, Celaena knew the only threat she posed was to herself.
Even baking in the sun each day, even washing up whenever she could in one of the city’s many fountain-squares, she could still feel Archer Finn’s blood soaking her skin, into her hair. Even with the constant noise and rhythm of Varese, she could still hear Archer’s groan as she gutted him in that tunnel beneath the castle. And even with the wine and heat, she could still see Chaol, horror contorting his face at what he’d learned about her Fae heritage and the monstrous power that could easily destroy her, about how hollow and dark she was inside.
She often wondered whether he’d figured out the riddle she’d told him on the docks of Rifthold. And if he had discovered the truth . . . Celaena never let herself get that far. Now wasn’t the time for thinking about Chaol, or the truth, or any of the things that had left her soul so limp and weary.
Celaena tenderly prodded her split lip and frowned at the market guards, the movement making her mouth hurt even more. She’d deserved that particular blow in the brawl she’d provoked in last night’s taberna—she’d kicked a man’s balls into his throat, and when he’d caught his breath, he’d been enraged, to say the least. Lowering her hand from her mouth, she observed the guards for a few moments. They didn’t take bribes from the merchants, or bully or threaten with fines like the guards and officials in Rifthold. Every official and soldier she’d seen so far had been similarly . . . good.
The same way Galan Ashryver, Crown Prince of Wendlyn, was good.
Dredging up some semblance of annoyance, Celaena stuck out her tongue. At the guards, at the market, at the hawk on the nearby chimney, at the castle and the prince who lived inside it. She wished that she had not run out of wine so early in the day.
It had been a week since she’d figured out how to infiltrate the castle, three days after arriving in Varese itself. A week since that horrible day when all her plans crumbled around her.
A cooling breeze pushed past, bringing with it the spices from the vendors lining the nearby street—nutmeg, thyme, cumin, lemon verbena. She inhaled deeply, letting the scents clear her sun-and-wine-addled head. The pealing of bells floated down from one of the neighboring mountain towns, and in some square of the city, a minstrel band struck up a merry midday tune. Nehemia would have loved this place.
That fast, the world slipped, swallowed up by the abyss that now lived within her. Nehemia would never see Wendlyn. Never wander through the spice market or hear the mountain bells. A dead weight pressed on Celaena’s chest.