There was one last thing she had to do. Perhaps the hardest and the worst of all the things she had done since Nehemia had died.
The moon was overhead, casting the world in silver. Even though they didn’t recognize her in her current attire, the night watch at the royal mausoleum hadn’t stopped her as she passed through the iron gates at the back of one of the castle gardens. Nehemia wouldn’t be entombed inside the white marble building, though; inside was for the royal family.
Celaena walked around the domed building, feeling as if the wyverns carved into the side stared at her as she passed.
The few people still active at this hour had quickly looked away as she made her way here. She didn’t blame them. A black dress and a sheer, flowing black veil spoke enough about her grief, and kept everyone at a long, long distance. As though her sorrow were a plague.
But she didn’t give a damn what the others thought; the mourning clothes weren’t for them. She rounded the back of the mausoleum and beheld the rows of graves in the gravel garden behind it, the pale and worn stones illuminated by the moon. Statues depicting everything from mourning gods to dancing maidens marked the resting places of distinguished nobility, some so lifelike they seemed to be people frozen in stone.
It had not snowed since before Nehemia’s murder, so it was easy enough to spot the grave by the upturned earth before it.
There were no flowers, not even a headstone. Just fresh soil and a sword thrust into the earth—one of the curved swords of Nehemia’s fallen guards. Apparently, no one had bothered to give her anything more, not when she would be retrieved and brought back to Eyllwe.
Celaena stared at the dark, tilled earth, a chill wind rustling her veil.
Her chest ached, but this was the one last thing she had to do, the one last honor she could give her friend.
Celaena tilted her head to the sky, closed her eyes, and began to sing.
Chaol had told himself that he was only following Celaena to make sure she didn’t hurt herself or anyone else, but as she’d neared the royal mausoleum, he followed for other reasons.
The night provided good cover, but the moon was bright enough to keep him back, far enough away so she wouldn’t see or hear his approach. But then he saw where she had stopped, and realized he had no right to be here for this. He’d been about to turn away when she lifted her face to the moon and sang.
It was not in any language that he knew. Not in the common tongue, or in Eyllwe, or in the languages of Fenharrow or Melisande or anywhere else on the continent.
This language was ancient, each word full of power and rage and agony.
She did not have a beautiful voice. And many of the words sounded like half sobs, the vowels stretched by the pangs of sorrow, the consonants hardened by anger. She beat her breast in time, so full of savage grace, so at odds with the black gown and veil she wore. The hair on the back of his neck stood as the lament poured from her mouth, unearthly and foreign, a song of grief so old that it predated the stone castle itself.
And then the song finished, its end as brutal and sudden as Nehemia’s death had been.
She stood there for a few moments, silent and unmoving.
He was about to walk away when she half turned to him.
Her thin silver circlet shimmered in the moonlight, weighing down a veil so concealing that only he had recognized her.
A breeze whipped past them, making the branches of the trees moan and creak, setting her veil and skirts billowing to one side.
“Celaena,” he pleaded. She didn’t move, her stillness the only sign that she’d heard him. And that she had no interest in talking.
What could he ever say to repair the rift between them, anyway? He’d kept information from her. Even if he hadn’t been directly responsible for Nehemia’s death, if either girl had been more alert, they might have had their own defenses prepared. The loss she felt, the stillness with which she watched him—it was all his fault.
If the punishment for that was losing her, then he’d endure it.
So Chaol walked away, her lament still echoing through the night around him, carried on the wind like the pealing of distant bells.