Queen of Shadows

by Sarah J. Maas

  Three words—that was all that had been written on the note Aelin slipped her earlier that night; a note still tucked into the hidden pocket of her discarded underwear.

  He’s all yours.

  A gift, she knew—a gift from the queen who had nothing else to give a no-name whore with a sad story.

  Lysandra turned onto her side, staring now at the naked man sleeping inches away, at the red silk of his hair spilled across his face.

  He’d never once suspected who had fed Aelin the details about Cormac. But that had always been her ruse with Arobynn—the skin she’d worn since childhood. He had never thought otherwise of her vapid and vain behavior, never bothered to. If he had, he wouldn’t keep a knife under his pillow and let her sleep in this bed with him.

  He hadn’t been gentle tonight, and she knew she would have a bruise on her forearm from where he’d gripped her too tightly. Victorious, smug, a king certain of his crown, he hadn’t even noticed.

  At dinner, she’d seen the expression flash across his face when he caught Aelin and Rowan smiling at each other. All of Arobynn’s jabs and stories had failed to find their mark tonight because Aelin had been too lost in Rowan to hear.

  She wondered whether the queen knew. Rowan did. Aedion did. And Arobynn did. He had understood that with Rowan, she was no longer afraid of him; with Rowan, Arobynn was now utterly unnecessary. Irrelevant.

  He’s all yours.

  After Aelin had left, as soon as he’d stopped strutting about the house, convinced of his absolute mastery over the queen, Arobynn had called in his men.

  Lysandra hadn’t heard the plans, but she knew the Fae Prince would be his first target. Rowan would die—Rowan had to die. She’d seen it in Arobynn’s eyes as he watched the queen and her prince holding hands, grinning at each other despite the horrors around them.

  Lysandra slid her hand beneath the pillow as she sidled up to Arobynn, nestling against him. He didn’t stir; his breathing remained deep and steady.

  He’d never had trouble sleeping. The night he’d killed Wesley he slept like the dead, unaware of the moments when even her iron will couldn’t keep the silent tears from falling.

  She would find that love again—one day. And it would be deep and unrelenting and unexpected, the beginning and the end and eternity, the kind that could change history, change the world.

  The hilt of the stiletto was cool in her hand, and as Lysandra rolled back over, no more than a restless sleeper, she pulled it with her.

  Lightning gleamed on the blade, a flicker of quicksilver.

  For Wesley. For Sam. For Aelin.

  And for herself. For the child she’d been, for the seventeen-year-old on her Bidding night, for the woman she’d become, her heart in shreds, her invisible wound still bleeding.

  It was so very easy to sit up and slice the knife across Arobynn’s throat.

  CHAPTER

  45

  The man strapped to the table was screaming as the demon ran its hands down his bare chest, its nails digging in and leaving blood in their wake.

  Listen to him, the demon prince hissed. Listen to the music he makes.

  Beyond the table, the man who usually sat on the glass throne said, “Where are the rebels hiding?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know!” the man shrieked.

  The demon ran a second nail down the man’s chest. There was blood everywhere.

  Do not cringe, spineless beast. Watch; savor.

  The body—the body that might once have been his—had betrayed him entirely. The demon gripped him tightly, forcing him to watch as his own hands gripped a cruel-looking device, fitting it onto the man’s face, and began tightening.

  “Answer me, rebel,” the crowned man said.

  The man screamed as the mask tightened.

  He might have begun screaming, too—might have begun begging the demon to stop.

  Coward—human coward. Do you not taste his pain, his fear?

  He could, and the demon shoved every bit of delight it felt into him.

  Had he been able to vomit, he would have. Here there was no such thing. Here there was no escape.

  “Please,” the man on the table begged. “Please!”

  But his hands did not stop.

  And the man went on screaming.

  CHAPTER

  46

  Today, Aelin decided, was already forfeited to hell, and there was no use even trying to salvage it—not with what she had to do next.

  Armed to the teeth, she tried not to think about Rowan’s words from the night before as they took the carriage across the city. But she heard them beneath every clop of the horses’ hooves, just as she’d heard them all night long while she lay awake in bed, trying to ignore his presence. Don’t touch me like that.

  She sat as far from Rowan as she could get without hanging out the carriage window. She’d spoken to him, of course—distantly and quietly—and he’d given her clipped answers. Which made the ride truly delightful. Aedion, wisely, didn’t ask about it.

  She needed to be clear-headed, relentless, in order to endure the next few hours.

  Arobynn was dead.

  Word had come an hour ago that Arobynn had been found murdered. Her presence was requested immediately by Tern, Harding, and Mullin, the three assassins who had seized control of the Guild and estate until everything was sorted out.

  She’d known last night, of course. Hearing it confirmed was a relief—that Lysandra had done it, and survived it, but …

  Dead.

  The carriage pulled up in front of the Assassins’ Keep, but Aelin didn’t move. Silence fell as they looked up at the pale stone manor looming above. But Aelin closed her eyes, breathing in deep.

  One last time—you have to wear this mask one last time, and then you can bury Celaena Sardothien forever.

  She opened her eyes, her shoulders squaring and her chin lifting, even as the rest of her went fluid with feline grace.

  Aedion gaped, and she knew there was nothing of the cousin he’d come to know in her face. She glanced at him, then Rowan, a cruel smile spreading as she leaned over to open the carriage door.

  “Don’t get in my way,” she told them.

  She swept from the carriage, her cloak flapping in the spring wind as she stormed up the steps of the Keep and kicked open the front doors.

  CHAPTER

  47

  “What the rutting hell happened?” Aelin roared as the front doors to the Assassins’ Keep banged behind her. Aedion and Rowan followed on her heels, both concealed beneath heavy hoods.

  The front hall was empty, but a glass crashed from the closed sitting room, and then—

  Three males, one tall, one short and slender, and one monstrously muscled, stalked into the hall. Harding, Tern, and Mullin. She bared her teeth at the men—Tern in particular. He was the smallest, oldest, and the most cunning, the ringleader of their little group. He’d probably hoped that she’d kill Arobynn that night they ran into each other in the Vaults.

  “Start talking now,” she hissed.

  Tern braced his feet apart. “Not unless you do the same.”

  Aedion let out a low growl as the three assassins looked over her companions. “Never mind the guard dogs,” she snapped, drawing their attention back to her. “Explain yourselves.”

  There was a muffled sob from the sitting room behind the men, and she flicked her eyes over Mullin’s towering shoulder. “Why are those two pieces of whoring trash in this house?”

  Tern glowered. “Because Lysandra was the one who woke up screaming next to his body.”

  Her fingers curled into claws. “Was she, now?” she murmured, such wrath in her eyes that even Tern stepped aside as she stalked into the sitting room.

  Lysandra was slumped in an armchair, a handkerchief pressed to her face. Clarisse, her madam, stood behind the chair, her face pale and tight.

  Blood stained Lysandra’s skin and matted her hair, and patches had soaked through the thin silk robe that di
d little to hide her nakedness.

  Lysandra jerked upright, her eyes red and face splotchy. “I didn’t—I swear I didn’t—”

  A spectacular performance. “Why the hell should I believe you?” Aelin drawled. “You’re the only one with access to his room.”

  Clarisse, golden-haired and aging gracefully for a woman in her forties, clicked her tongue. “Lysandra would never harm Arobynn. Why would she, when he was doing so much to pay off her debts?”

  Aelin cocked her head at the madam. “Did I ask for your gods-damned opinion, Clarisse?”

  Poised for violence, Rowan and Aedion kept silent, though she could have sworn a hint of shock flashed in their shadowed eyes. Good. Aelin flicked her attention to the assassins. “Show me where you found him. Now.”

  Tern gave her a long look, considering her every word. A valiant effort, she thought, to try to catch me in knowing more than I should. The assassin pointed to the sweeping stairs visible through the open sitting room doors. “In his room. We moved his body downstairs.”

  “You moved it before I could study the scene myself?”

  It was tall, quiet Harding who said, “You were told only as a courtesy.”

  And to see if I’d done it.

  She stalked from the sitting room, pointing a finger behind her at Lysandra and Clarisse. “If either of them tries to run,” she said to Aedion, “gut them.”

  Aedion’s grin shone from beneath his hood, his hands hovering within casual reach of his fighting knives.

  Arobynn’s bedroom was a bloodbath. And there was nothing feigned as she paused on the threshold, blinking at the blood-drenched bed and the blood pooled on the floor.

  What the hell had Lysandra done to him?

  She clenched her hands against their trembling, aware that the three assassins at her back could see it. They were monitoring her every breath and blink and swallow. “How?”

  Mullin grunted. “Someone sliced his throat open and let him choke to death on his own blood.”

  Her stomach turned—honestly turned. Lysandra, it seemed, hadn’t been content to let him go quickly. “There,” she said, and her throat closed. She tried again. “There’s a footprint in the blood.”

  “Boots,” Tern said at her side. “Big—probably male.” He gave Aelin’s slender feet a pointed look. Then he studied Rowan’s feet where the prince loomed behind her, even though he’d probably already examined them. The little shit. Of course, the footprints Chaol had deliberately left were made with boots different from what any of them wore.

  “The lock shows no sign of tampering,” she said, touching the door. “Does the window?”

  “Go check,” Tern said.

  She would have to walk through Arobynn’s blood to reach it. “Just tell me,” she said quietly. Wearily.

  “Lock’s broken from the outside,” Harding said, and Tern shot him a glare.

  She stepped back into the cool darkness of the hall. Rowan silently kept his distance, his Fae heritage still undetected beneath that hood—and it would remain that way so long as he didn’t open his mouth to reveal his elongated canines. Aelin said, “No one reported signs of anything being amiss?”

  Tern shrugged. “There was a storm. The murderer probably waited until then to kill him.” He gave her another long look, wicked violence dancing in his dark eyes.

  “Why don’t you just say it, Tern? Why don’t you ask me where I was last night?”

  “We know where you were,” Harding said, coming to tower over Tern. There was nothing kind on his long, bland face. “Our eyes saw you at home all night. You were on the roof of your house, and then you went to bed.”

  Exactly as she’d planned.

  “Are you telling me that detail because you’d like me to hunt down your little eyes and blind them?” Aelin replied sweetly. “Because after I sort out this mess, that’s exactly what I plan to do.”

  Mullin sighed sharply through his nose and glared at Harding, but said nothing. He was always a man of few words—perfect for dirty work.

  “You don’t touch our men, and we won’t touch yours,” Tern said.

  “I don’t make bargains with piece-of-shit, second-rate assassins,” she chirped, and gave him a nasty smile as she swept down the hall, past her old room, and down the stairs, Rowan a step behind.

  She gave Aedion a nod as she entered the sitting room. He kept up his watchful position, still smiling like a wolf. Lysandra hadn’t moved an inch. “You can go,” she said to her. Lysandra’s head snapped up.

  “What?” Tern barked.

  Aelin pointed to the door. “Why would these two money-grubbing whores kill their biggest client? If anything,” she said over her shoulder, “I’d think you three would have more to gain.”

  Before they could start barking, Clarisse coughed pointedly.

  “Yes?” Aelin hissed.

  Clarisse’s face was deathly pale, but she held her head high as she said, “If you would allow it, the Master of the Bank will be here soon to read Arobynn’s will. Arobynn …” She dabbed at her eyes, the perfect portrait of grief. “Arobynn informed me that we were named. We would like to remain until it has been read.”

  Aelin grinned. “Arobynn’s blood hasn’t yet dried on that bed, and you’re already swooping in for your bequest. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Maybe I’ve dismissed you as his murderer too soon, if you’re that eager to snatch whatever he’s left you.”

  Clarisse paled again, and Lysandra began shaking. “Please, Celaena,” Lysandra begged. “We didn’t—I would never—”

  Someone knocked on the front door.

  Aelin slid her hands into her pockets. “Well, well. What good timing.”

  The Master of the Bank looked as if he might vomit at the sight of blood-covered Lysandra, but then he sighed with something like relief when he spied Aelin. Lysandra and Clarisse now sat in twin armchairs while the Master took a seat behind the little writing desk before the towering bay windows, Tern and his cronies hovering like vultures. Aelin leaned against the wall beside the doorway, arms crossed, Aedion flanking her left side and Rowan her right.

  As the Master went on and on with his condolences and apologies, she felt Rowan’s eyes on her.

  He took a step nearer, as if to brush his arm against hers. She sidled out of reach.

  Rowan was still staring at her when the Master opened a sealed envelope and cleared his throat. He spouted some legal jargon and offered his condolences again, which gods-damned Clarisse had the audacity to accept as though she were Arobynn’s widow.

  Then came the long list of Arobynn’s assets—his business investments, his properties, and the enormous, outrageous fortune left in his account. Clarisse was practically drooling on the carpet, but Arobynn’s three assassins kept their faces carefully neutral.

  “It is my will,” the Master read, “that the sole beneficiary of all my fortune, assets, and holdings should be my heir, Celaena Sardothien.”

  Clarisse whipped around in her chair, fast as an adder. “What?”

  “Bullshit,” Aedion blurted.

  Aelin just stared at the Master, her mouth a bit open, her hands falling slack to her sides. “Say that again,” she breathed.

  The Master gave a nervous, watery smile. “Everything—all of it, is left to you. Well, except for … this sum to Madam Clarisse, to settle his debts.” He showed Clarisse the paper.

  “That’s impossible,” the madam hissed. “He promised I was in that will.”

  “And you are,” Aelin drawled, pushing off the wall to peer over Clarisse’s shoulder at the small number. “Don’t get greedy, now.”

  “Where are the duplicates?” Tern demanded. “Have you inspected them?” He stormed around the table to examine the will.

  The Master flinched, but held up the parchment—signed by Arobynn and utterly legal. “We verified the copies in our vaults this morning. All identical, all dated from three months ago.”

  When she’d been in Wendlyn.

 
She stepped forward. “So, aside from that teensy sum for Clarisse … all of this—this house, the Guild, the other properties, his fortune—it’s all mine?”

  The Master nodded again, already scrambling to pack up his case. “Congratulations, Miss Sardothien.”

  Slowly, she turned her head toward Clarisse and Lysandra. “Well, if that’s the case …” She bared her teeth in a vicious smile. “Get your whoring, blood-sucking carcasses the hell off my property.”

  The Master choked.

  Lysandra couldn’t move fast enough as she rushed for the door. Clarisse, however, remained seated. “How dare you—” the madam began.

  “Five,” Aelin said, holding up five fingers. She lowered one, and reached for her dagger with her other hand. “Four.” Another. “Three.”

  Clarisse hauled ass from the room, bustling after a sobbing Lysandra.

  Then Aelin looked at the three assassins. Their hands hung limp at their sides, fury and shock and—wisely enough—something like fear on their faces.

  She said too quietly, “You held Sam back while Arobynn beat me into oblivion, and then didn’t raise a finger to stop it when Arobynn beat him, too. I don’t know what role you played in his death, but I will never forget the sounds of your voices outside my bedroom door as you fed me the details about Rourke Farran’s house. Was it easy for you three? To send me to that sadist’s house, knowing what he’d done to Sam and what he was aching to do to me? Were you just following orders, or were you more than happy to volunteer?”

  The Master had recoiled in his chair, trying to make himself as invisible as possible in a room full of professional killers.

  Tern’s lip curled. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Pity. I might have been willing to listen to some paltry excuses.” She looked at the clock on the mantel. “Pack your clothes and get the hell out. Right now.”

  They blinked. “What?” Tern said.

  “Pack your clothes,” she said, enunciating each word. “Get the hell out. Right now.”