55

The agony tore through him, unending and depthless.

He blacked out within a minute. Leaving him to free-fall into this place. This pit.

The bottom of the descent.

The hollow hell beneath the roots of a mountain.

Here, where all was locked and buried. Here, where all had come to take root.

The empty foundation, mined and hacked apart, crumbled away into nothing but this pit.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Worthless and nothing.

He saw his father first. His mother and brother and that cold mountain keep. Saw the stairs crusted with the ice and snow, stained with blood. Saw the man he’d gladly sold himself out to, thinking it would get Aelin to safety. Celaena to safety.

He’d sent the woman he’d loved to the safety of another assassination. Had sent her to Wendlyn, thinking it better than Adarlan. To kill its royal family.

His father emerged from the dark, the mirror of the man he might have become, might one day be. Distaste and disappointment etched his father’s features as he beheld him, the son that might have been.

His father’s asking price … he’d thought it a prison sentence.

But perhaps it had been a shot at freedom—at saving his useless, wayward son from the evil he likely suspected was about to be unleashed.

He had broken that promise to his father.

He hated him, and yet his father—that horrible, miserable bastard—had upheld his end of the bargain.

He … he had not.

Oath-breaker. Traitor.

Everything he had done, Aelin had come to rip it apart. Starting with his honor.

She, with her fluidity, that murky area in which she dwelled … He’d broken his vows for her. Broken everything he was for her.

He could see her, in the dark.

The gold hair, those turquoise eyes that had been the last clue, the final piece of the puzzle.

Liar. Murderer. Thief.

She basked in the sun atop a chaise longue on the balcony of that suite she’d occupied in the palace, a book in her lap. Tilting her head to the side, she looked him over with that lazy half smile. A cat being stirred from its repose.

He hated her.

He hated that face, the amusement and sharpness. The temper and viciousness that could reduce someone to shreds without so much as a word—only a look. Only a beat of silence.

She enjoyed such things. Savored them.

And he had been so bewitched by it, this woman who had been a living flame. He’d been willing to leave it all behind. The honor. The vows he’d made.

For this haughty, swaggering, self-righteous woman, he had shattered parts of himself.

And afterward, she had walked away, as if he were a broken toy.

Right into the arms of that Fae Prince, who emerged from the dark. Who approached that lounge chair on the balcony and sat on its end.

Her half smile turned different. Her eyes sparked.

The lethal, predatory interest honed in on the prince. She seemed to glow brighter. Become more aware. More centered. More … alive.

Fire and ice. An end and a beginning.

They did not touch each other.

They only sat on that chaise, some unspoken conversation passing between them. As if they had finally found some reflection of themselves in the world.

He hated them.

He hated them for that ease, that intensity, that sense of completion.

She had wrecked him, wrecked his life, and had then strolled right to this prince, as if she were going from one room to another.

And when it had all gone to hell, when he’d turned his back on everything he knew, when he had lied to the one who mattered most to keep her secrets, she had not been there to fight. To help.

She had only returned, months later, and thrown it in his face.

His uselessness. His nothingness.

You remind me of how the world ought to be. What the world can be.

Lies. The words of a girl who had been grateful to him for offering her freedom, for pushing and pushing her until she was roaring at the world again.

A girl who had stopped existing the night they’d found that body on the bed.

When she had ripped his face open.

When she had tried to plunge that dagger into his heart.

The predator he’d seen in those eyes … it had been unleashed.

There were no leashes that could ever keep her restrained. And words like honor and duty and trust, they were gone.

She had gutted that courtesan in the tunnels. She’d let the man’s body drop, closed her eyes, and had looked precisely as she had during those throes of passion. And when she had opened her eyes again …

Killer. Liar. Thief.

She was still sitting on the chaise, the Fae Prince beside her, both of them watching that scene in the tunnel, as if they were spectators in a sport.

Watching Archer Finn slump to the stones, his blood leaking from him, face taut with shock and pain. Watching Chaol stand there, unable to move or speak, as she breathed in the death before her, the vengeance.

As Celaena Sardothien ended, shattering completely.

He had still tried to protect her. To get her out. To atone.

You will always be my enemy.

She had roared those words with ten years’ worth of rage.

And she had meant it. Meant it as any child who had lost and suffered at Adarlan’s hand would mean it.

As Yrene meant it.

The garden appeared in another pocket of the darkness. The garden and the cottage and the mother and laughing child.

Yrene.

The thing he had not seen coming. The person he had not expected to find.

Here in the darkness … here she was.

And yet he had still failed. Hadn’t done right by her, or by Nesryn.

He should have waited, should have respected them both enough to end one and begin with another, but he supposed he had failed in that, too.

Aelin and Rowan remained on that chaise in the sunshine.

He saw the Fae Prince gently, reverently, take Aelin’s hand, turning it over. Exposing her wrist to the sun. Exposing the faint marks of shackles.

He saw Rowan rub a thumb over those scars. Saw the fire in Aelin’s eyes bank.

Over and over, Rowan brushed those scars with his thumb. And Aelin’s mask slid off.

There was fire in that face. And rage. And cunning.

But also sorrow. Fear. Despair. Guilt.

Shame.

Pride and hope and love. The weight of a burden she had run from, but now …

I love you.

I’m sorry.

She had tried to explain. Had said it as clearly as she could. Had given him the truth so he might piece it together when she had left and understand. She meant those words. I’m sorry.