“This.” Celaena twisted, slamming her shoulder into Ansel’s torso. Her bones connected against the armor with a jarring thud, and the sword cut into Celaena’s neck, but Ansel lost her balance and teetered back. Celaena hit Ansel’s fingers so hard they dropped the sword right into Celaena’s waiting hand.
In a flash, like a snake turning in on itself, Celaena pinned Ansel facedown on the ground, her father’s sword now pressed against the back of her neck.
Celaena hadn’t realized how silent the room was until she was kneeling there, one knee pinning Ansel to the ground, the other braced on the floor. Blood seeped from where the sword tip rested against Ansel’s tan neck, redder than her hair. “Don’t do it,” Ansel whispered, in that voice that she’d so often heard—that girlish, carefree voice. But had it always been a performance?
Celaena pushed harder and Ansel sucked in a breath, closing her eyes.
Celaena tightened her grip on the sword, steadying her breathing, willing steel into her veins. Ansel should die; for what she’d done, she deserved to die. And not just for all those assassins lying dead around them, but also for the soldiers who’d spent their lives for her agenda. And for Celaena herself, who, even as she knelt there, felt her heart breaking. Even if she didn’t put the sword through Ansel’s neck, she’d still lose her. She’d already lost her.
But maybe the world had lost Ansel long before today.
Celaena couldn’t stop her lips from trembling as she asked, “Was it ever real?”
Ansel opened an eye, staring at the far wall. “There were some moments when it was. The moment I sent you away, it was real.”
Celaena reined in her sob and took a long, steadying breath. Slowly, she lifted the sword from Ansel’s neck—only a fraction of an inch.
Ansel made to move, but Celaena pressed the steel against her skin again, and she went still. From outside came cries of victory—and concern—in voices that sounded hoarse from disuse. The assassins had won. How long before they got here? If they saw Ansel, saw what she had done . . . they’d kill her.
“You have five minutes to pack your things and leave the fortress,” Celaena said quietly. “Because in twenty minutes, I’m going up to the battlements and I’m going to fire an arrow at you. And you’d better hope that you’re out of range by then, because if you’re not, that arrow is going straight through your neck.”
Celaena lifted the sword. Ansel slowly got to her feet, but didn’t flee. It took Celaena a heartbeat to realize she was waiting for her father’s sword.
Celaena looked at the wolf-shaped hilt and the blood staining the steel. The one tie Ansel had left to her father, her family, and whatever twisted shred of hope burned in her heart.
Celaena turned the blade and handed it hilt-first to Ansel. The girl’s eyes were wide and damp as she took the sword. She opened her mouth, but Celaena cut her off. “Go home, Ansel.”
Ansel’s face went white again. She took the blade from Celaena and sheathed it at her side. She glanced at Celaena only once before she took off at a sprint, leaping over Mikhail’s corpse as if he were nothing more than a bit of debris.
Then she was gone.
Chapter Twelve
Celaena rushed to Ilias, who moaned as she turned him over. The wound in his stomach was still bleeding. She ripped strips from her tunic, which was already soaked with blood, and shouted for help as she bound him tightly.
There was a scrape of cloth over stone, and Celaena looked over her shoulder to see the Master trying to drag himself over the stones to his son. The paralytic must be wearing off.
Five bloodied assassins came rushing up the stairs, eyes wide and faces pale as they beheld Mikhail and Ilias. Celaena left Ilias in their care as she dashed to the Master.
“Don’t move,” she told him, wincing as blood from her face dripped onto his white clothes. “You might hurt yourself.” She scanned the podium for any sign of the poison, and rushed to the fallen bronze goblet. A few sniffs revealed that the wine had been laced with a small amount of gloriella, just enough to paralyze him, not kill him. Ansel must have wanted him completely prone before she killed him—she must have wanted him to know she was the one who had betrayed him. To have him conscious while she severed his head. How had he not noticed it before he drank? Perhaps he wasn’t as humble as he seemed; perhaps he’d been arrogant enough to believe that he was safe here. “It’ll wear off soon,” she told the Master, but she still called for an antidote to speed up the process. One of the assassins took off at a run.
She sat by the Master, one hand clutching her bleeding neck. The assassins at the other end of the room carried Ilias out, stopping to reassure the Master that his son would be fine.
Celaena nearly groaned with relief at that, but straightened as a dry, calloused hand wrapped around hers, squeezing faintly. She looked down into the face of the Master, whose eyes shifted to the open door. He was reminding her of the promise she’d made. Ansel had been given twenty minutes to clear firing range.
It was time.
Ansel was already a dark blur in the distance, Hisli galloping as if demons were at her hooves. She was heading northwest over the dunes, toward the Singing Sands, to the narrow bridge of feral jungle that separated the Deserted Land from the rest of the continent, and then the open expanse of the Western Wastes beyond them. Toward Briarcliff.
Atop the battlements, Celaena drew an arrow from her quiver and nocked it into her bow.
The bowstring moaned as she pulled it back, farther and farther, her arm straining.
Focusing upon the tiny figure atop the dark horse, Celaena took aim.
In the silence of the fortress, the bowstring twanged like a mournful harp.
The arrow soared, turning relentlessly. The red dunes passed beneath in a blur, closing the distance. A sliver of winged darkness edged with steel. A quick, bloody death.
Hisli’s tail flicked to the side as the arrow buried itself in the sand just inches behind her rear hooves.
But Ansel didn’t dare look over her shoulder. She kept riding, and she did not stop.
Celaena lowered her bow and watched until Ansel disappeared beyond the horizon. One arrow, that had been her promise.
But she’d also promised Ansel that she had twenty minutes to get out of range.
Celaena had fired after twenty-one.
The Master called Celaena to his chamber the following morning. It had been a long night, but Ilias was on the mend, the wound having narrowly missed puncturing any organs. All of Lord Berick’s soldiers were dead, and were in the process of being carted back to Xandria as a reminder to Berick to seek the King of Adarlan’s approval elsewhere. Twenty assassins had died, and a heavy, mourning silence filled the fortress.
Celaena sat on an ornately carved wooden chair, watching the Master as he stared out the window at the sky. She nearly fell out of her seat when he began speaking.
“I am glad you did not kill Ansel.” His voice was raw, and his accent thick with the clipped yet rolling sounds of some language she’d never heard before. “I have been wondering when she would decide what to do with her fate.”
“So you knew—”