But then there was rock under them, solid rock. She gripped Kasida tighter as they landed in the narrow passage on the other side, the impact exploding through her bones, and kept galloping.
Back across the ravine, the guards had pulled to a halt, and cursed at them in a language she was grateful she didn’t understand.
Ansel let out another whoop when they came out the other end of the Cleaver, and she turned to find Celaena still riding close behind her. They rode across the dunes, heading west, the setting sun turning the entire world bloodred.
When the horses were too winded to keep running, Ansel finally stopped atop a dune, Celaena pulling up beside her. Ansel looked at Celaena, wildness still rampant in her eyes. “Wasn’t that wonderful?”
Breathing hard, Celaena didn’t say anything as she punched Ansel so hard in the face that the girl went flying off her horse and tumbled onto the sand.
Ansel just clutched her jaw and laughed.
Though they could have made it back before midnight, and though Celaena pushed her to continue riding, Ansel insisted on stopping for the night. So when their campfire was nothing but embers and the horses were dozing behind them, Ansel and Celaena lay on their backs on the side of a dune and stared up at the stars.
Her hands tucked behind her head, Celaena took a long, deep breath, savoring the balmy night breeze, the exhaustion ebbing from her limbs. She rarely got to see stars so bright—not with the lights of Rifthold. The wind moved across the dunes, and the sand sighed.
“You know,” Ansel said quietly, “I never learned the constellations. Though I think ours are different from yours—the names, I mean.”
It took Celaena a moment to realize that by “ours” she didn’t mean the Silent Assassins—she meant her people in the Western Wastes. Celaena pointed to a cluster of stars to their left. “That’s the dragon.” She traced the shape. “See the head, legs, and tail?”
“No.” Ansel chuckled.
Celaena nudged her with an elbow and pointed to another grouping of stars. “That’s the swan. The lines on either side are the wings, and the arc is its neck.”
“What about that one?” Ansel said.
“That’s the stag,” Celaena breathed. “The Lord of the North.”
“Why does he get a fancy title? What about the swan and the dragon?”
Celaena snorted, but the smile faded when she stared at the familiar constellation. “Because the stag remains constant—no matter the season, he’s always there.”
“Why?”
Celaena took a long breath. “So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home. So they can look up at the sky, no matter where they are, and know Terrasen is forever with them.”
“Do you ever want to return to Terrasen?”
Celaena turned her head to look at Ansel. She hadn’t told her she was from Terrasen. Ansel said, “You talk about Terrasen the way my father used to talk about our land.”
Celaena was about to reply when she caught the word. Used to.
Ansel’s attention remained on the stars. “I lied to the Master when I came here,” she whispered, as if afraid someone else would hear them in the emptiness of the desert. Celaena looked back to the sky. “My father never sent me to train. And there is no Briarcliff, or Briarcliff Hall. There hasn’t been for five years.”
A dozen questions sprung up, but Celaena kept her mouth shut, letting Ansel speak.
“I was twelve,” Ansel said, “when Lord Loch took several territories around Briarcliff, and then demanded we yield to him as well—that we bow to him as High King of the Flatlands. My father refused. He said there was one tyrant already conquering everything east of the mountains—he didn’t want one in the west, too.” Celaena’s blood went cold as she braced herself for what she was certain was coming. “Two weeks later, Lord Loch marched into our land with his men, seizing our villages, our livelihood, our people. And when he got to Briarcliff Hall . . .”
Ansel drew a shuddering breath. “When he arrived at Briarcliff Hall, I was in the kitchen. I saw them from the window and hid in a cupboard as Loch walked in. My sister and father were upstairs, and Loch stayed in the kitchen as his men brought them down and . . . I didn’t dare make a sound as Lord Loch made my father watch as he . . .” She stumbled, but forced it out, spitting it as if it were poison. “My father begged on his hands and knees, but Loch still made my father watch as he slit my sister’s throat, then his. And I just hid there, even as they killed our servants, too. I hid there and did nothing.”
“And when they were gone, I took my father’s sword from his corpse and ran. I ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore, at the foothills of the White Fang Mountains. And that’s when I collapsed at the campfire of a witch—one of the Ironteeth. I didn’t care if she killed me. But she told me that it was not my fate to die there. That I should journey south, to the Silent Assassins in the Red Desert, and there . . . there I would find my fate. She fed me, and bound my bleeding feet, and gave me gold—gold that I later used to commission my armor—then sent me on my way.”
Ansel wiped at her eyes. “So I’ve been here ever since, training for the day when I’m strong enough and fast enough to return to Briarcliff and take back what is mine. Someday, I’ll march into High King Loch’s hall and repay him for what he did to my family. With my father’s sword.” Her hand grazed the wolf-head hilt. “This sword will end his life. Because this sword is all I have left of them.”
Celaena hadn’t realized she was crying until she tried to take a deep breath. Saying that she was sorry didn’t feel adequate. She knew what this sort of loss was like, and words didn’t do anything at all.
Ansel slowly turned to look at her, her eyes lined with silver. She traced Celaena’s cheekbone, where the bruises had once been. “Where do men find it in themselves to do such monstrous things? How do they find it acceptable?”
“We’ll make them pay for it in the end.” Celaena grasped Ansel’s hand. The girl squeezed back hard. “We’ll see to it that they pay.”
“Yes.” Ansel shifted her gaze back to the stars. “Yes, we will.”