Crown of Midnight
Page 23

Her insides twisted up at the memory, but she nodded.
“Very well,” he said, standing up.
“Are you going to tell the king?”
He crossed his arms, coming to the edge of the bed and staring down at her. “No.” Again, that volatile temper burned in his eyes. “Because I don’t feel like having to argue that you’re still capable of spying without getting caught. My men will keep their mouths shut, too. But the next time you do anything like this, I am going to throw you in the dungeons.”
“For killing him?”
“For scaring the hell out of me!” He ran his hands through his hair, pacing for a moment, then whirled, pointing at her. “Do you know what you looked like when you showed up?”
“I’ll hazard a guess and say … bad?”
A flat stare. “If I hadn’t burned your dress, I’d make you look at it right now.”
“You burned my dress?”
He splayed his arms. “You want proof of what you did lying around?”
“You could get in trouble for covering for me like this.”
“I’ll deal with it if it comes to that.”
“Oh? You’ll deal with it?”
He leaned over the bed, bracing his hands on the mattress as he snarled in her face. “Yes. I’ll deal with it.”
She gulped, but her mouth was so dry she had nothing to swallow. Beyond his anger, there was enough lingering fear in his eyes that she winced. “It was that bad?”
He slumped onto the edge of the mattress. “You were sick. Really sick. We didn’t know how much gloriella was in the wound, so the healers erred on the safe side and gave you a strong dose of the antidote—which caused you to spend a few hours with your head in a bucket.”
“I don’t remember any of that. I barely remember getting back to the castle.”
He shook his head and stared at the wall. Dark smudges lay under his eyes, stubble coated his jaw, and utter exhaustion lined every inch of his body. He probably hadn’t fallen asleep until a little while ago.
She’d hardly known where she was going while the gloriella tore through her; all she’d known was that she had to get someplace safe.
And somehow, she had wound up exactly where she knew she’d be safest.
 
 
Chapter 14

Celaena absolutely hated that it took a fair amount of courage to enter the royal library after coming upon that … thing a few nights ago. And more than that, she hated that the encounter had turned her favorite place in the castle into something unknown and possibly deadly. She felt a little foolish as she shoved open the towering oak doors to the library, armed to the teeth—most of her weapons concealed from sight. No need to have someone start asking why the King’s Champion was going into the library looking like she was walking onto a killing field.
Not feeling at all inclined to go into Rifthold after last night, she’d opted to spend the day digesting what she’d learned in Davis’s office and searching for any connection between that book of Wyrdmarks and the king’s plans. And since she’d only seen one hint of something being amiss in the castle … Well, she’d steeled her nerve to try to learn what that thing had been looking for in the library. Or if there was any hint of where it had gone.
The library looked as it had always had: dim, cavernous, achingly beautiful in its ancient stone architecture and endless corridors lined with books. And totally silent.
She knew there were a few scholars and librarians about, but they mostly kept to their private studies. The size of the place was overwhelming; it was a castle in itself.
What had that thing been doing here?
She craned her head back to take in the two upper levels, both bordered with ornate railings. Iron chandeliers cast light and shadow throughout the main chamber in which she stood. She loved this room—loved the scattering of heavy tables and red velvet chairs, and the worn couches sprawled before massive hearths.
Celaena paused beside the table she had always used when researching the Wyrdmarks—a table at which she’d spent hours with Chaol.
Three levels that she could see. Plenty of places to hide on all of them—rooms and alcoves and half-crumbling staircases.
What about beneath this level? The library was probably too far away to connect to the tunnels attached to her rooms, but there could be more forgotten places beneath the castle. The polished marble floor gleamed under her feet.
Chaol had said something once about a legend regarding a second library underground—in catacombs and tunnels. If she were doing something that she didn’t want others to find out about, if she were some foul creature who needed a place to hide …
Maybe she was a fool for looking into it, but she had to know. Maybe this thing would be able to give her some clues as to what was going on in this castle.
She headed for the nearest wall and was soon swallowed up in the gloom of the stacks. It took her a few minutes to reach the perimeter wall, which was interspersed with bookcases and chipped writing desks. She pulled a piece of chalk from her pocket and drew an X on one of the desks. Most of the library would probably look the same after a while; it would be helpful to know when she’d made a full sweep of the perimeter. Even if it took her hours to cover it all.
She passed stack after stack of books, some of the cases plain, some of them ornately carved. Sconces were few and far enough apart that she often had to take several steps in near darkness. The floor had turned from gleaming marble to ancient gray blocks, and the scrape of her boots against stone was the only sound. It felt as if it’d been the only sound for a thousand years.
But someone must have come down this passageway to light the sconces. So if she became lost, she might not stay that way forever.
Not that getting lost was a possibility, she reassured herself as the silence of the library became a living thing. She’d been trained to mark and remember pathways and exits and turns. She’d be fine.
Odds were that she had to go as far back into the library as possible—to a place where even the scholars didn’t bother going.
There had been a day, she recalled—a day when she’d been poring over The Walking Dead, and she’d felt something under her boots. Chaol had later revealed that he’d been dragging his dagger along the floor to spook her, but the initial vibration had been … different.
Like someone drawing a claw along stone.
Stop it, she told herself. Stop it now. Your imagination is absurd. It was just Chaol teasing you.
She didn’t know how long she’d been walking when she finally hit another wall: a corner. The bookcases here were all carved from ancient wood, their ends shaped into sentries—guards forever protecting the books held between them. It was here that the sconces ran out—and a glance down the back wall of the library revealed utter darkness.
Thankfully, one of the scholars had left a torch beside the last sconce. It was small enough that it wouldn’t burn the whole damn library down, but also too small to last long.
She could end it now, and go back to her rooms to contemplate ways to pry information from Archer’s clients. One wall had been explored—one wall that revealed nothing. She could do the back wall tomorrow.
But she was here already.
Celaena picked up the torch.