Crown of Midnight (44 page)

Still gripped by the creature’s talons, Celaena couldn’t even move as Dorian made a sudden lunge for Damaris. The creature tried again to break free, and the prince swung, making direct contact with its wrist. Its shriek penetrated her bones, but the door slammed shut completely. Celaena stumbled, the beast’s dismembered hand protruding from her shoulder, but she shoved back against the door as the creature again launched itself at it.

“What the hell is it?” Dorian barked, throwing his weight back against the iron.

“I don’t know,” Celaena breathed. Not having the luxury of a healer, she ripped the filthy hand from her shoulder, biting down on her scream. “It was down there,” she panted. Another thud from behind the door. “You can’t seal that door with magic. We need to—need to seal this another way.” And find something that would outsmart whatever unlocking spells this creature knew—some way to keep it from getting out. She choked on the blood running from her nose into her mouth, and spat it onto the floor. “There is a book—
The Walking Dead
. It’ll have the answer.”

Their eyes met and held. A line stretched taut between them—a moment of trust, and a promise of answers from both of them.

“Where’s the book?” Dorian asked.

“In the library. It’ll find you. I can hold this for a few moments.”

Not needing it to make sense, Dorian bolted upstairs. He ran through stack after stack, his fingers reading the titles, faster and faster, knowing each second drained her strength. He was about to bellow his frustration when he ran past a table and beheld a large black volume resting upon its surface.

The Walking Dead
.

She had been right. Why was she always right, in her own odd way? He grabbed the book and hurtled to the secret chamber. She had shut her eyes, and her teeth were red with her own blood as she gritted them.

“Here,” Dorian said. Without needing her to ask, he shoved himself into the door as she dropped to the floor and grabbed the book to her. Her hands trembled as she flipped a page, then another, and another. Her blood splattered onto the text.

“‘To bind or to contain,’” she read aloud. Dorian peered down at the dozens of symbols on the page.

“This will work?” he asked.

“I hope so,” she wheezed, already moving, clutching the open book in one hand. “Once the spell is cast, just passing over that threshold will hold it in place long enough to kill it.” She dipped her fingers into the wounds on her chest, and he could only gape as she made the first mark, and then the second, turning her battered body into an inkwell as she drew mark after mark around the door.

“But for it to pass over the threshold,” Dorian panted, “we’d have to—”

“Open the door,” she finished for him, nodding.

He shifted so she could reach to draw above his head, their breath mingling.

Celaena let out a long breath as she made the last mark, and suddenly, they glowed a faint blue. He held himself against the door, even as he felt the iron go rigid.

“You can let go,” she breathed, angling the sword. “Let go, and get the hell behind me.”

At least she didn’t insult him by telling him to flee.

With a final breath, he leapt away.

The creature slammed into the door, flinging it open.

And, just like she had said, it froze on the threshold, its animalistic eyes wild as its head jutted out into the hall. There was a pause then, a pause during which Dorian could have sworn that Celaena and the creature looked at each other—and its wildness calmed, just for a moment. Just for a moment, and then Celaena moved.

The sword flashed in the torchlight, and there was the squish of flesh and crunch of bone. The neck was too thick to sever in one blow, so before Dorian could draw another breath, she struck again.

The head hit the ground with a thud, black blood spraying from the severed neck—from the body that still stood paralyzed in the doorway.

“Shit,” Dorian breathed. “Shit.”

Celaena moved again, slamming her sword down onto the head, skewering it, as if she thought it could still bite.

Dorian was still spewing a steady stream of curses as Celaena reached out to the bloody marks around the door and swiped a finger through one of them.

The creature’s headless body collapsed, the holding spell broken.

It had barely finished falling before Celaena made four strikes: three to sever the emaciated torso in two, and a fourth to stab through where its heart would be. His bile rose up again as she angled her blade a fifth time, prying open the chest cavity of the creature.

Whatever she saw made her face go even paler. Dorian didn’t want to look.

With grim efficiency, she kicked the too-human head through the
threshold, sending it knocking into the withered corpse of the creature. Then she shut the iron door and traced a few more marks over the threshold that glowed and then faded.

Celaena faced him, but Dorian looked at the door again, now sealed.

“How long does that—that
spell
hold?” He almost choked on the word.

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “Until I remove the marks, I think.”

“I don’t think we can let anyone else know about this,” he said carefully.

She laughed, a bit wildly. Telling others, even Chaol, would mean answering difficult questions—questions that could earn them both a trip to the butchering block.

“So,” Celaena said, spitting blood onto the stones, “do you want to explain yourself first, or should I?”

Celaena went first, because Dorian desperately needed to change his filthy tunic, and talking seemed like a good idea while he stripped naked in his dressing room. She sat on his bed, not looking much better herself—which was why they’d taken the dark servants’ passages back to his tower.

“Beneath the library stretches an ancient dungeon, I think,” Celaena said, trying to keep her voice as soft as possible. She caught a gleam of golden skin through the half-open door to his dressing room, and looked away. “I think … I think someone kept the creature in there until it broke out of its cell. It’s been living under the library ever since.”

No need to tell him that she was starting to believe the king had
created
it. The clock tower had been built by the king himself—so he
had to know what it connected to. She knew that the creature had been made, because in its chest had been a human heart. Celaena was willing to bet that the king had used at least one Wyrdkey to make both tower and monster.

“What I don’t understand,” Dorian said from the dressing room, “is why this thing can now break through the iron doors when it couldn’t before.”

“Because I was an idiot and broke the spells on them when I walked through.”

A lie—sort of. But she didn’t want to explain,
couldn’t
explain, why the creature had been able to break out before and had never hurt anyone until now. Why it had been in the hallway that night and disappeared, why the librarians were all alive and unhurt.

But perhaps the man that the creature had once been … Perhaps he hadn’t been entirely lost. There were so many questions now, so many things left unanswered.

“And that last spell you did—on the door. It’ll keep forever?” Dorian appeared in a new tunic and pants, still barefoot. The sight of his feet felt strangely intimate.

She shrugged, fighting the urge to wipe her bloody, filthy face. He’d offered her his private bath, but she’d refused.
That
felt too intimate, too.

“The book says it’s a permanent binding spell, so I don’t think anyone but us will be capable of getting through.”

Unless the king wants to get in and uses one of the Wyrdkeys
.

Dorian ran a hand through his hair, sitting down beside her on the bed. “Where did it come from?”

“I don’t know,” she lied. The king’s ring flashed in her memory. That couldn’t be the Wyrdkey, though; Yellowlegs had said they were slivers of black rock, not—not forged into shapes. But he could have made the ring using the key. She understood now why Archer and his
society both coveted and sought to destroy it. If the king could use it to
make
creatures …

If he had made
more
…

There had been so many doors. Well over two hundred, all locked. And both Kaltain and Nehemia had mentioned wings—wings in their dreams, wings flapping through the Ferian Gap. What was the king brewing there?

“Tell me,” Dorian pressed.

“I don’t know,” she lied again, hating herself for it. How could she make him understand a truth that might shatter everything he loved?

“That book,” Dorian said. “How did you know it would help?”

“I found it one day in the library. It seemed to … trail me. Showed up in my rooms when I hadn’t brought it there, reappeared in the library; it was full of those kinds of spells.”

“But it’s not magic,” Dorian said, paling.

“Not the magic that you have. This is different. I didn’t even know if that spell would work. Speaking of which,” she said, meeting his eyes, “you have … magic.”

He scanned her face, and she quelled the urge to fidget.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me how you have magic,” she breathed. “Tell me how
you
have it and the rest of the world doesn’t. Tell me how you discovered it, and what manner of magic it is. Tell me everything.” He started to shake his head, but she leaned forward. “You just saw me break at least a dozen of your father’s laws. You think I’m going to turn you over to him when you could just as easily destroy me?”

Dorian sighed. After a moment, he said, “A few weeks ago, I … erupted. I got so mad at a council meeting that I stormed out and punched a wall. And somehow, the stone cracked, and then the window nearby shattered, too. Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out where it comes from, what kind of power it is, exactly. And how to control it. But it just … happens. Like—”

“Like when you used it to stop me from killing Chaol.”

His neck bobbed as he swallowed hard.

She couldn’t meet his stare as she said, “Thank you for that. If you hadn’t stopped me, I …” No matter what had happened between her and Chaol, no matter what she now felt for him, if she had killed him that night, there would have been no coming back from it, no recovering. In some ways … in some ways, it might have made her into just another version of that thing in the library. It made her sick to even think about it. “No matter what your magic might be, it saved more lives than his that night.”

Dorian shifted. “I still need to learn to control it—or else it might happen anywhere. In front of anyone. I’ve gotten lucky so far, but I don’t think that luck will last.”

“Does anyone else know? Chaol? Roland?”

“No. Chaol doesn’t know, and Roland just left with Duke Perrington. They’re going to Morath for a few months to … to oversee the situation in Eyllwe.”

It all had to be tied together: the king, the magic, Dorian’s power, the Wyrdmarks, even the creature. The prince went to his bed and hoisted up the mattress, pulling out a concealed book. Not the best hiding place, but a valiant effort. “I’ve been looking through the genealogy charts for Adarlan’s noble families. We’ve hardly had any magic-users in the past few generations.”

There were so many things she could tell him, but if she did, it would just result in too many questions. So Celaena merely studied the pages he displayed for her, flipping through one after another.

“Wait,” she said. The puncture wounds in her shoulder gave a burst of pain when she lifted her hand to the book. She scanned the page he’d stopped on, her heart pounding as another clue about the king and his plans slipped into place. She let him continue on.

“See?” Dorian said, closing the book. “I’m not quite sure where it comes from.”

He was still watching her, warily. She met his gaze and said quietly, “Ten years ago, many of the people I … people I loved were executed for having magic.” Pain and guilt flickered in his eyes, but she went on. “So you’ll understand when I say that I have no desire to see anyone else die for it, even the son of the man who ordered those deaths.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “So, what do we do now?”