Heir of Fire (22 page)

Air rushed down her throat in a whoosh. She gasped it down in greedy gulps, hardly registering the agony as she shi
ft
ed back into her mortal form, the world going quiet and dull again.

“Does your lover know what you are?” A cold question.

She li
ft
ed her head, not caring how he'd found out. “He knows everything.” Not entirely true.

His eyes
fl
ickered—­with what emotion, she ­couldn't tell. “I won't be biting you again,” he said, and she wondered just what he'd tasted in her blood.

She growled, but the sound was muted. Fangless. “Even if it's the only way to get me to shi
ft
?”

He walked uphill—­to the ridge. “You don't bite the women of other males.”

She heard, more than felt, something die from her voice as she said, “We're not—­together. Not anymore. I let him go before I came ­here.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Why?” Flat, bored. But still, slightly curious.

What did she care if he knew? She'd curled her hand into a
fi
st in her lap, her knuckles white. Every time she glanced at the ring, rubbed it, caught it gleaming, it punched a hole right through her.

She should take the damn thing o
ff
. But she knew she ­wouldn't, if only because that near-­constant agony felt deserved. “Because he's safer if he's as repulsed by me as you are.”

“At least you've already learned one lesson.” When she cocked her head, he said, “
Th
e people you love are just weapons that will be used against you.”

She didn't want to recall how Nehemia had been used—­had used
herself
—­against her, to force her to act. Wanted to pretend she ­wasn't starting to forget what Nehemia had looked like.

“Shi
ft
again,” Rowan ordered, jerking his chin at her. “
Th
is time, try to—”

She was forgetting what Nehemia looked like.
Th
e shade of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the smell of her. Her laugh.
Th
e roaring in Celaena's head went quiet, silenced by that familiar nothingness.

Do not let that light go out
.

But Celaena didn't know how to stop it.
Th
e one person she could have told, who might have understood . . . She was buried in an unadorned grave, so far from the sun-­warmed soil that she had loved.

Rowan gripped her by the shoulders.
“Are you listening?”

She gave him a bored stare, even as his
fi
ngers dug into her skin. “Why don't you just bite me again?”

“Why don't I give you the lashing you deserve?”

He looked so dead set on it that she blinked. “If you
ever
take a whip to me, I will skin you alive.”

He let go of her and stalked around the clearing, a predator assessing its prey. “If you don't shi
ft
again, you're pulling double duty in the kitchens for the next week.”

“Fine.” At least working in the kitchens had some quanti
fi
able results. At least in the kitchens, she could tell up from down and knew what she was doing. But this—­this promise she'd made, the bargain she'd struck with Maeve . . . She'd been a fool.

Rowan paused his stalking. “You're worthless.”

“Tell me something I don't know.”

He went on, “You would probably have been more useful to the world if you'd actually died ten years ago.”

She just looked him in the eye and said, “I'm leaving.”

•

Rowan didn't stop her as she returned to the fortress and packed. It took all of a minute, as she hadn't even unloaded her satchel and had no weapons le
ft
. She supposed she could have ripped the fortress apart to
fi
nd where Rowan had stashed them, or stolen them from the demi-­Fae, but both would require time and bring more attention than she wanted. She didn't talk to anyone as she walked out.

She'd
fi
nd another way to learn about the Wyrdkeys and destroy the King of Adarlan and free Eyllwe. If she kept going like this, she'd have nothing le
ft
inside to
fi
ght with.

She'd marked the paths they'd taken on the way in, but as she entered the tree-­covered slopes, she mostly relied on the position of the cloud-­veiled sun to navigate. She'd make the trip back,
fi
nd food along the way, and
fi
gure out something ­else.
Th
is had been a fool's errand from the start. At least she hadn't been too long delayed—­though she might now have to be quicker about
fi
nding the answers she needed, and—

“Is this what you do? Run away when things get hard?” Rowan was standing between two trees directly in her path, ­having undoubtedly
fl
own ­here.

She brushed past him, her legs burning with the downhill walk. “You're free of your obligation to train me, so I have nothing more to say to you, and you have nothing more to say to me. Do us both a favor and go to hell.”

A growl. “Have you ever had to
fi
ght for anything in your life?”

She let out a low, bitter laugh and walked faster, veering westward, not caring about the direction as much as getting away from him. But he kept up easily, his long, heavily muscled legs devouring the mossy ground. “You're proving me right with every step you take.”

“I don't care.”

“I don't know what you want from Maeve—­what answers you're looking for, but you—”

“You don't know what I want from her?” It was more of a shout than a question. “How about saving the world from the King of Adarlan?”

“Why bother? Maybe the world's not worth saving.” She knew he meant it, too.
Th
ose lifeless eyes spoke volumes.

“Because I made a
promise
. A promise to my friend that I would see her kingdom freed.” She shoved her scarred palm into his face. “I made an unbreakable vow. And you and Maeve—­all you gods-­damned bastards—­are getting in the way of that.” She went o
ff
down the hillside again. He followed.

“And what of your own people? What of your own kingdom?”

“
Th
ey are better o
ff
without me, just as you said.”

His tattoo scrunched as he snarled. “So you'd save another land, but not yours. Why ­can't your friend save her own kingdom?”

“Because she is
dead
!” She screamed the last word so loudly it burned in her throat. “Because she is dead, and I am le
ft
with my
worthless
life!”

He merely stared at her with that animal stillness. When she walked away, he didn't come a
ft
er her.

•

She lost track of how far she walked and in what direction she traveled. She didn't really care. She hadn't spoken the words—
she is dead
—­since the day a
ft
er Nehemia had been taken from her. But she
was
dead. And Celaena missed her.

Night swept in earlier due to the cloud cover, the temperature plummeting as thunder grumbled in the distance. She made weapons as she went,
fi
nding a sharp stone to whittle down branches into rudimentary spears: the longer one she used as a walking stick, and though they ­were little more than stakes, she told herself the two short ones ­were daggers. Better than nothing.

Each step was heavier than the last, and she had enough of a sense of self-­preservation le
ft
to start looking for a place to spend the night. It was almost dark when she found a decent spot: a shallow cave in the side of a granite ledge.

She swi
ft
ly gathered enough wood for a
fi
re.
Th
e irony of it ­wasn't wasted on her. If she had any control over her magic—­she shut down that thought before it
fi
nished. She hadn't made a
fi
re in years, so it took a few tries, but it worked. Just as thunder cracked above her little cave and the skies opened up.

She was hungry, and thankfully found some apples at the bottom of her satchel, along with old teggya from Varese that was still edible, if hard to chew. A
ft
er she ate as much of it as she could stand, she pulled her cloak around herself and nestled into the side of the cave.

She didn't fail to notice the small, glowing eyes that gathered, peering through the brambles or over boulders or around trees. None of them had bothered her since that
fi
rst night, and they didn't come closer. Her instincts, warped as they had felt these last few weeks, didn't raise any alarms, either. So she didn't tell them o
ff
, and didn't really mind them at all.

With the
fi
re and the pounding rain, it was almost cozy—­not like her freezing room.
Th
ough she was exhausted, she felt somewhat clearheaded. Almost like herself again, with her makeshi
ft
weapons. She'd made a smart choice to leave.
Do what needs to be done
, Elena had told her. Well, she'd needed to leave before Rowan shredded her into so many pieces that she would never stand a chance of putting herself back together.

Tomorrow, she'd start over. She'd spotted what looked like a crumbling, forgotten road that she could follow downhill. As long as she kept going toward the plains, she could
fi
nd her way back to the coast. And come up with a new plan as she went.

It was good she had le
ft
.

Exhaustion hit her so thoroughly that she was asleep moments a
ft
er she sprawled beside the
fi
re, one hand clasped around her spear. She probably would have dozed until dawn had a sudden silence not jerked her awake.

22

Celaena's
fi
re was still crackling, the rain still pounding beyond the cave mouth. But the forest had gone quiet.
Th
ose little watching eyes had vanished.

She uncoiled to her feet, spear in one hand and a stake in the other, and crept to the narrow cave entrance. With the rain and the
fi
re, she ­couldn't make out anything. But every hair on her body was standing, and a growing reek was slithering in from the forest beyond. Like leather and carrion. Di
ff
erent from what she'd whi
ff
ed at the barrows. Older and earthier and . . . hungrier.

Suddenly, the
fi
re seemed like the stupidest thing she had ever done.

No
fi
res.
Th
at had been Rowan's only rule while trekking to the fortress. And they had stayed o
ff
the roads—­veering away entirely from the forgotten, overgrown ones. Ones like the path she'd spied nearby.

Th
e silence deepened.

She slipped into the drenched forest, stubbing her toes on rocks and roots as her eyes adjusted to the dark. But she kept moving ahead—­curving down and away from the ancient path.

She'd made it far enough that her cave was little more than a glow on the hill above, a
fl
icker of light illuminating the trees. A gods-­damned beacon. She angled her stake and spear into better positions, about to continue on when lightning
fl
ashed.

Th
ree tall, lanky silhouettes lurked in front of her cave.

Th
ough they stood like humans, she knew, deep in her bones from some collective mortal memory, that they ­were not.
Th
ey ­were not Fae, either.

With expert quiet, she took another step, then another.
Th
ey ­were still poking around the cave entrance, taller than men, neither male nor female.

Skinwalkers are on the prowl
, Rowan had warned that
fi
rst day they'd trained,
searching for human pelts to bring back to their caves.
She had been too dazed to ask or care. But now—­now that carelessness, that wallowing, was going to get her killed. Skinned.

Wendlyn. Land of nightmares made
fl
esh, where legends roamed the earth. Despite years of stealth training, each step felt like a snap, her breathing too loud.

Th
under grumbled, and she used the cover of the sound to take a few bounding steps. She stopped behind another tree, breathing as quietly as she could, and peered around it to survey the hillside behind her. Lightning
fl
ashed again.

Th
e three
fi
gures ­were gone. But the leathery, rancid smell swarmed all around her now.
Human pelts.

She eyed the tree she'd ducked behind.
Th
e trunk was too slick with moss and rain to scale, the branches too high.
Th
e other trees ­weren't any better. And what good was being stuck up a tree in a lightning storm?

She darted to the next tree, carefully avoiding any sticks or leaves, cursing silently at the slowness of her pace, and—
Damn it all to hell.
She burst into a run, the mossy earth treacherous underfoot. She could make out the trees, some larger rocks, but the slope was steep. She kept her feet under her, even as undergrowth cracked behind, faster and faster.

She didn't dare take her focus o
ff
the trees and rocks as she hurtled down the slope, desperate for any
fl
at ground. Perhaps their hunting territory ended somewhere—­perhaps she could outrun them until dawn. She veered eastward, still going downhill, and grabbed on to a trunk to swing herself around, almost losing her balance as she slammed into something hard and unyielding.