She smelled smoke before she saw the lights. Not campfires, but lights from a building rising up out of the trees, hugging the spine of the mountain slope. The stones were dark and ancient—hewn from something other than the abundant granite. Her eyes strained, but she didn’t fail to note the ring of towering rocks woven between the trees, surrounding the entirety of the fortress. It was hard not to notice them when they rode between two megaliths that curved toward each other like the horns of a great beast, and a zinging current snapped against her skin.
Wards—magic wards. Her stomach turned. If they didn’t keep out enemies, they certainly served as an alarm. Which meant the three figures patrolling each of the three towers, the six on the outer retaining wall, and the three at the wooden gates would now know they were approaching. Men and women in light leather armor and bearing swords, daggers, and bows monitored their approach.
“I think I’d rather stay in the woods,” she said, her first words in days. Rowan ignored her.
He didn’t even lift an arm in greeting to the sentries. He must be familiar with this place if he didn’t stoop to hellos. As they drew closer to the ancient fortress—which was little more than a few watchtowers woven together by a large connecting building, splattered with lichen and moss—she did the calculations. It had to be some border outpost, a halfway point between the mortal realm and Doranelle. Perhaps she’d finally have a warm place to sleep, even if just for the night.
The guards saluted Rowan, who didn’t spare them a passing glance. They all wore hoods, masking any signs of their heritage. Were they Fae? Rowan might not have spoken to her for most of their journey—he’d shown as much interest in her as he would in a pile of shit on the road—but if she were staying with the Fae . . . others might have questions.
She took in every detail, every exit, every weakness as they entered the large courtyard beyond the wall, two rather mortal-looking stable hands rushing to help them dismount. It was so still. As if everything, even the stones, was holding its breath. As if it had been waiting. The sensation only worsened when Rowan wordlessly led her into the dim interior of the main building, up a narrow set of stone stairs, and into what looked to be a small office.
It wasn’t the carved oak furniture, or the faded green drapes, or the warmth of the fire that made her stop dead. It was the dark-haired woman seated behind the desk. Maeve, Queen of the Fae.
Her aunt.
And then came the words she had been dreading for ten years.
“Hello, Aelin Galathynius.”
8
Celaena backed away, knowing exactly how many steps it would take to get into the hall, but slammed into a hard, unyielding body just as the door shut behind them. Her hands were shaking so badly she didn’t bother going for her weapons—or Rowan’s. He’d cut her down the instant Maeve gave the order.
The blood rushed from Celaena’s head. She forced herself to take a breath. And another. Then she said in a too-quiet voice, “Aelin Galathynius is dead.” Just speaking her name aloud—the damned name she had dreaded and hated and tried to forget . . .
Maeve smiled, revealing sharp little canines. “Let us not bother with lies.”
It wasn’t a lie. That girl, that princess had died in a river a decade ago. Celaena was no more Aelin Galathynius than she was any other person.
The room was too hot—too small, Rowan a brooding force of nature behind her.
She was not to have time to gather herself, to make up excuses and half truths, as she should have been doing these past few days instead of free-falling into silence and the misty cold. She was to face the Queen of the Fae as Maeve wanted to be faced. And in some fortress that seemed far, far beneath the raven-haired beauty watching her with black, depthless eyes.
Gods. Gods.
Maeve was fearsome in her perfection, utterly still, eternal and calm and radiating ancient grace. The dark sister to the fair-haired Mab.
Celaena had been fooling herself into thinking this would be easy. She was still pressed against Rowan as though he were a wall. An impenetrable wall, as old as the ward-stones surrounding the fortress. Rowan stepped away from her with his powerful, predatory ease and leaned against the door. She wasn’t getting out until Maeve allowed her.
The Queen of the Fae remained silent, her long fingers moon-white and folded in the lap of her violet gown, a white barn owl perched on the back of her chair. She didn’t bother with a crown, and Celaena supposed she didn’t need one. Every creature on earth would know who she was—what she was—even if they were blind and deaf. Maeve, the face of a thousand legends . . . and nightmares. Epics and poems and songs had been written about her, so many that some even believed she was just a myth. But here was the dream—the nightmare—made flesh.
This could work to your advantage. You can get the answers you need right here, right now. Go back to Adarlan in a matter of days. Just—breathe.
Breathing, as it turned out, was rather hard when the queen who had been known to drive men to madness for amusement was observing every flicker of her throat. That owl perched on Maeve’s chair—Fae or true beast?—was watching her, too. Its talons were curled around the back of the chair, digging into the wood.
It was somewhat absurd, though—Maeve holding court in this half-rotted office, at a desk stained with the Wyrd knew what. Gods, the fact that Maeve was seated at a desk. She should be in some ethereal glen, surrounded by bobbing will-o’-the-wisps and maidens dancing to lutes and harps, reading the wheeling stars like they were poetry. Not here.
Celaena bowed low. She supposed she should have gotten on her knees, but—she already smelled awful, and her face was likely still torn and bruised from her brawling in Varese. As Celaena rose, Maeve remained smiling faintly. A spider with a fly in its web.
“I suppose that with a proper bath, you’ll look a good deal like your mother.”
No exchanging pleasantries, then. Maeve was going right for the throat. She could handle it. She could ignore the pain and terror to get what she wanted. So Celaena smiled just as faintly and said, “Had I known who I would be meeting, I might have begged my escort for time to freshen up.”
She didn’t feel bad for one heartbeat about throwing Rowan to the lions.
Maeve’s obsidian eyes flicked to Rowan, who still leaned against the door. She could have sworn there was approval in the Fae Queen’s smile. As if the grueling travel were a part of this plan, too. But why? Why get her off-kilter?