“Then what use are you? Brannon just made you to piss everyone off?”
“He did have a sense of humor like that.”
The thought of Mort actually having known the ancient Fae king made her quake inside. “I thought you had powers. You can’t just speak some nonsense words and have the meaning of the riddle be revealed to me?”
“Of course not. And isn’t the journey more important than the end?”
“No,” she spat. Spewing a concoction of curses that could have curdled milk, Celaena tucked the paper into her pocket. She would need to study this riddle at length.
If these items were things that Nehemia was looking for, things that she’d lied about to keep secret … Celaena might be able to accept that Archer and his friends were capable of good, but she certainly didn’t trust them to hold an object with the power that the riddle mentioned. If they were already looking, then perhaps it was in her best interest to find the items before anyone else. Nehemia hadn’t figured out that the eye riddle referred to Damaris, but had she known what the three objects were? Maybe she’d pursued the eye riddle because she was trying to find the objects before the king did.
The king’s plans—had they been to find these things?
She picked up her candle and strode from the room.
“Has the questing spirit seized you at last?”
“Not yet,” she said as she walked by. Once she found out what the three items were, then maybe she’d consider finding a way to go after them. Even if the only volcanoes she knew about were in the Desert Peninsula, and there was no way in hell the king would let her go off on her own for such a long trip.
“It’s a pity that I’m attached to this door,” sighed Mort. “Imagine all the trouble you’ll get into while trying to solve the riddle!”
He was right; and as Celaena walked up the winding stair, she found herself wishing that he actually could move about. Then she’d at least have one person to discuss this with. If she did have to go hunt these things down, whatever they were, then she’d have no one to go with her. There was no one who knew the truth.
The truth.
She snorted. What truth was there now? That she had no one left to talk to? That Nehemia had lied through her teeth about so many things? That the king might be searching for an earth-shattering source of power? That he might already have something like this? Archer had mentioned a source of power outside of magic; was that what these things were? Nehemia had to have known…
Celaena slowed, the candle guttering in a damp breeze through the stairwell, and slumped onto a step, bracing her arms on her knees.
“What else were you hiding, Nehemia?” she whispered into the darkness.
Celaena didn’t need to turn to know who sat behind her when something silver and glimmering shone in the corner of her eye.
“I thought you were too exhausted to come here,” she said to the first Queen of Adarlan.
“I can only stay for a few moments,” Elena said, her dress rustling as she took a seat a few steps up from Celaena. It seemed a distinctly un-queenlike thing to do.
Together, they stared into the gloom of the stairwell, Celaena’s breathing the only sound. She supposed Elena didn’t need to breathe—didn’t make any sounds unless she wanted to.
Celaena gripped her knees. “What was it like?” she asked quietly.
“Painless,” Elena said with equal quiet. “Painless, and easy.”
“Were you frightened?”
“I was a very old woman, surrounded by my children, and their children, and their children’s children. I had nothing to be afraid of when the time came.”
“Where did you go?”
A soft laugh. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
Celaena’s lips wobbled. “She didn’t die an old woman in her bed.”
“No, she didn’t. But when her spirit left her body, there was no more pain—no more fear. She is safe now.”
Celaena nodded. Elena’s dress rustled again, and then she was on the step beside her, an arm around her shoulders. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until she found herself leaning into Elena’s warmth.
The queen didn’t say anything as Celaena buried her face in her hands and wept at last.