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

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.

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.

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 did 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?”