Tomorrow.
She was leaving tomorrow.
And Chaol had come up with the idea? But why? She wanted to demand answers, wanted to know what he was thinking when he’d come up with this plan. She’d never told him the truth about the king’s threats—that he would execute Chaol if she didn’t return from a mission, if she failed. And she could fake the deaths of petty lords and merchants, but not the King and Crown Prince of Wendlyn. Not in a thousand lifetimes could she find a way out of it.
She paced and paced, knowing Chaol wouldn’t be back in his rooms yet, and wound up going down to the tomb, if only to give herself something to do.
She expected Mort to lecture her about the portal—which he did, thoroughly—but she didn’t expect to find Elena waiting for her inside the tomb. “You have enough power to appear to me now, but you couldn’t help close the portal last night?”
She took one look at the queen’s frown and began pacing again.
“I could not,” Elena said. “Even now, this visit is draining me faster than it should.”
Celaena scowled at her. “I can’t go to Wendlyn. I—I can’t go. Chaol knows what I’m doing for you—so why would he make me go there?”
“Take a breath,” Elena said softly.
Celaena glared at her. “This ruins your plans, too. If I’m in Wendlyn, then I can’t deal with the Wyrdkeys and the king. And even if I pretended to go and instead went questing across this continent, it wouldn’t take long for the king to realize I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”
Elena crossed her arms. “If you are in Wendlyn, then you will be near Doranelle. I think that’s why the captain wants you to go.”
Celaena barked a laugh. Oh, what a tangled mess he’d gotten her into! “He wants me to go hide with the Fae and never come back to Adarlan? That’s not going to happen. Not only will he be killed, but the Wyrdkeys—”
“You will sail to Wendlyn tomorrow.” Elena’s eyes glowed bright. “Leave the Wyrdkeys and the king for now. Go to Wendlyn, and do what needs to be done.”
“Did you plant this idea in his head somehow?”
“No. The captain is trying to save you the only way he knows how.”
Celaena shook her head, looking at the sunlight pouring into the tomb from the shaft above. “Will you ever stop giving me commands?”
Elena let out a soft laugh. “When you stop running from your past, I will.”
Celaena rolled her eyes, then let her shoulders droop. A shard of memory sliced through her. “When I spoke to Nehemia, she mentioned … mentioned that she knew her own fate. That she had embraced it. That it would set things in motion. Do you think she somehow manipulated Archer into …” But she couldn’t finish saying it, couldn’t let herself voice what the horrible truth might be: that Nehemia had engineered her own death, knowing that she might change the world—change Celaena—more through dying than living.
A cold, slender hand grasped hers. “Cast that thought into the far reaches of your mind. Knowing the truth, whatever it may be, will not change what you must do tomorrow—where you must go.”
And even though Celaena knew the truth in that moment, knew it just from Elena’s refusal to answer at all, she did as the queen commanded. There would be other moments, other times to take out that truth to examine every dark and unforgiving facet. But right now—right now …
Celaena studied the light pouring into the tomb. Such a little light, holding the darkness at bay. “Wendlyn, then.”
Elena smiled grimly and squeezed her hand. “Wendlyn, then.”