Crown of Midnight
Page 35

Celaena swallowed hard. Seeing that woman, feeling the sense of otherness that radiated from her, Celaena had no trouble believing that these witches were capable of consuming a human child until nothing but clean-picked bones remained.
Frozen down to her core now, she followed Dorian as he strode away from the carnival. While she’d been standing in front of that wagon, all she’d wanted, for some reason, was to get inside it. Like there was something waiting for her within. And that crown of stars the witch had been wearing … And then her amulet had started feeling heavy and warm, the way it had the night she’d seen that person in the hall.
If she ever came back to the carnival, she would bring Nehemia with her, just to see if Yellowlegs was indeed what she claimed to be. She didn’t give a damn about what was in the cages. Not anymore, not with Yellowlegs to hold her interest. She followed Dorian and Chaol without hearing a single word they said until they had somehow arrived at the royal stables, and Dorian was leading them inside.
“I was going to give it to you on your birthday,” he said to Chaol, “but why wait another two days?”
Dorian stopped before a stall. Chaol exclaimed, “Are you out of your mind?”
Dorian grinned—an expression she hadn’t seen in so long that it made her remember late nights spent tangled up with him, the warmth of his breath on her skin. “What? You deserve it.”
A night-black Asterion stallion stood within the pen, staring at them with ancient, dark eyes.
Chaol was backing away, hands raised. “This is a gift for a prince, not—”
Dorian clicked his tongue. “Nonsense. I’ll be offended if you don’t accept.”
“I can’t.” Chaol shifted pleading eyes to Celaena, but she shrugged.
“I had an Asterion mare once,” she admitted, and both of them blinked. Celaena went up to the stall and held out her fingers, letting the stallion sniff her. “Her name was Kasida.” She smiled at the memory, stroking the stallion’s velvet-soft nose. “It meant ‘Drinker of the Wind’ in the dialect of the Red Desert. She looked like a storm-tossed sea.”
“How did you get an Asterion mare? They’re worth even more than the stallions,” Dorian said. It was the first normal-sounding question he’d asked her in weeks.
She looked over her shoulder at them and flashed a fiendish grin. “I stole her from the Lord of Xandria.” Chaol’s eyes grew wide, and Dorian cocked his head. It was so comical that she started laughing. “I swear on the Wyrd it’s the truth. I’ll tell you the story some other time.” She backed away, nudging Chaol toward the pen. The horse huffed at his fingers, and beast and man looked at each other.
Dorian was still watching her with narrowed brows, but when she caught him staring, he turned to Chaol. “Is it too early to ask what you’ll be doing for your birthday?”
Celaena crossed her arms. “We have plans,” she said before Chaol could reply. She didn’t mean to sound so sharp, but—well, she’d been planning the night for a few weeks now.
Chaol looked at her over a shoulder. “We do?”
Celaena gave him a venomously sweet smile. “Oh, yes. It might not be an Asterion stallion, but …”
Dorian’s eyes flashed. “Well, I hope you have fun,” he interrupted.
Chaol quickly looked back at the horse as Celaena and Dorian faced each other. Whatever familiar expressions he’d once worn were now gone. And part of her—the part that had spent so many nights looking forward to seeing that handsome face—truly mourned it. Looking at him became difficult.
She left them in the stables with a brief good night, congratulating Chaol on his new gift. She didn’t dare turn in the direction of the carnival, where the sound of the crowd suggested that Hollin had made his appearance and unveiled the cages. Instead, she sprinted up the stairs to the warmth of her rooms, trying to shut out the image of the witch’s iron teeth, and the way she’d called after them with those words about fate, so similar to what Mort had said on the night of the eclipse …
Perhaps it was intuition, or perhaps it was because she was a miserable person who couldn’t even trust the advice of a friend, but she wanted to go back to the tomb. Alone. Maybe Nehemia was wrong about the amulet being irrelevant. And she was tired of waiting for her friend to find the time to research the eye riddle.
She’d go back just once, and never tell Nehemia. Because the hole in the wall was shaped like an eye, its iris removed to form a space that would perfectly fit the amulet she wore around her neck.
 
 
Chapter 20

“Mort,” Celaena said, and the skull knocker opened an eye. “It’s terribly rude to wake someone when they’re sleeping,” he said drowsily.
“Would you have preferred it if I had knocked on your face?” He glared at her. “I need to know something.” She held out the amulet. “This necklace—does it truly have power?”
“Of course it does.”
“But it’s thousands of years old.”
“So?” Mort yawned. “It’s magic. Magical things rarely age as normal objects do.”
“But what does it do?”
“It protects you, as Elena said. It guards you from harm, though you certainly seem to do your best to get into trouble.”
Celaena opened the door. “I think I know what it does.” Perhaps it was mere coincidence, but the riddle had been worded so specifically. Perhaps Davis had been looking for the same thing Elena wanted her to find: the source of the king’s power. This could be the first step toward uncovering that.
“You’re probably wrong,” Mort said as she walked by. “I’m just warning you.”
She didn’t listen. She went right up to the hollow eye in the wall and stood on tiptoe to look through. The wall on the other side was still blank. Unfastening her necklace, Celaena carefully lifted the amulet to the eye, and—
It fit. Sort of. Her breath caught in her throat, and Celaena leaned up against the hole, peering through the delicate gold bands.
Nothing. No change on the wall, or on the giant Wyrdmark. She turned the necklace upside down, but it was the same. She tried it on either side, backward, angled—but nothing. Just the same blank stone wall, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight from some vent above. She pushed against the stone, feeling for any door, any moveable panel.
“But it’s the Eye of Elena! ‘It is only with the eye that one can see rightly’! What other eye is there?”
“You could rip out your own and see if it fits,” Mort sang from the doorway.
“Why won’t it work? Do I need to say a spell?” She glanced at the sarcophagus of the queen. Perhaps the spell would be triggered by ancient words—words hiding right under her nose. Wasn’t that always how these things happened? She refitted the amulet into the stone. “Ah!” she called into the night air, reciting the words engraved at Elena’s feet. “Time’s Rift!”
Nothing happened.
Mort cackled. She snatched the amulet out of the wall. “Oh, I hate this! I hate this stupid tomb, and I hate these stupid riddles and mysteries!” Fine—fine. Nehemia was right that the amulet was a dead end. And she was a wretched, horrible friend for being so distrustful and impatient.