The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas

Celaena tilted her head to the side, the only warning she gave that she was still ready to attack him. “Get out of my house.”

Arobynn just nodded slowly and left.




The Black Cygnet tavern was packed wall-to-wall, as it was most nights. Seated with Sam at a table in the middle of the busy room, Celaena didn’t particularly feel like eating the beef stew in front of her. Or like talking, even though Sam had told her all about the information he’d gathered on Farran and Jayne. She hadn’t mentioned Arobynn’s surprise visit.

A cluster of giggling young women sat nearby, tittering about how the Crown Prince was gone on a holiday to the Surian coast, and how they wished they could join the prince and his dashing friends, and on and on until Celaena contemplated chucking her spoon at them.

But the Black Cygnet wasn’t a violent tavern. It catered to a crowd who came to enjoy good food, good music, and good company. There were no brawls, no dark dealings, and certainly no prostitutes milling about. Perhaps that was what brought her and Sam back here for dinner most nights—it felt so normal.

It was another place she’d miss.

When they arrived home after dinner, the apartment feeling strangely not hers now that Arobynn had broken in, Celaena went straight to the bedroom and lit a few candles. She was ready for this day to be over. Ready to dispatch Jayne and Farran, and then leave.

Sam appeared in the doorway. “I’ve never seen you so quiet,” he said.

She looked at herself in the mirror above the dresser. The scar from her fight with Ansel had faded from her cheek, and the one on her neck was well on its way to disappearing, too.

“I’m tired,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. She began unbuttoning her tunic, her hands feeling strangely clumsy. Was this why Arobynn had visited? Because he’d known he’d impact her like this? She straightened, hating the thought so much that she wanted to shatter the mirror in front of her.

“Did something happen?”

She reached the final button of her tunic, but didn’t take it off. She turned to face him, looking him up and down. Could she ever tell him everything?

“Talk to me,” he said, his brown eyes holding only concern. No twisted agendas, no mind games …

“Tell me your deepest secret,” she said softly.

Sam’s eyes narrowed, but he pushed off the threshold and took a seat on the edge of the bed. He ran a hand through his hair, setting the ends sticking up at odd angles.

After a long moment, he spoke. “The only secret I’ve borne my entire life is that I love you.” He gave her a slight smile. “It was the one thing I believed I’d go to the grave without voicing.” His eyes were so full of light that it almost stopped her heart.

She found herself walking toward him, then placing one hand along his cheek and threading the other through his hair. He turned his head to kiss her palm, as if the phantom blood that coated her hands didn’t bother him. His eyes found hers again. “What’s yours, then?”

The room felt too small, the air too thick. She closed her eyes. It took her a minute, and more nerve than she realized, but the answer finally came. It had always been there—whispering to her in her sleep, behind every breath, a dark weight that she couldn’t ever escape.

“Deep down,” she said, “I’m a coward.”

His brows rose.

“I’m a coward,” she repeated. “And I’m scared. I’m scared all the time. Always.”

He removed her hand from his cheek to kiss the tips of her fingers. “I get scared, too,” he murmured onto her skin. “You want to hear something ridiculous? Whenever I’m scared out of my wits, I tell myself: My name is Sam Cortland … and I will not be afraid. I’ve been doing it for years.”

It was her turn to raise her brows. “And that actually works?”

He laughed onto her fingers. “Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. But it usually makes me feel better to some degree. Or it just makes me laugh at myself a bit.”

It wasn’t the sort of fear she’d been talking about, but …

“I like that,” she said.

He laced his fingers with hers and pulled her onto his lap. “I like you,” he murmured, and Celaena let him kiss her until she’d again forgotten the dark burden that would always haunt her.





CHAPTER

5




Rourke Farran was a busy, busy man. Celaena and Sam were waiting a block away from Jayne’s house before dawn the next morning, both of them wearing nondescript clothing and cloaks with hoods deep enough to cover most of their features without giving alarm. Farran was out and about before the sun had fully risen. They trailed his carriage through the city, observing him at each stop. It was a wonder he even had time to indulge in his sadistic delights, because Jayne’s business certainly took up plenty of his day.

He took the same black carriage everywhere—more proof of his arrogance, since it made him an easily marked target. Unlike Doneval, who was constantly guarded, Farran seemed to deliberately go without guards, daring anyone to take him on.

They followed him to the bank, to the dining rooms and taverns owned by Jayne, to the brothels and the black-market stalls hidden in crumbling alleys, then back to the bank again. He made several stops at Jayne’s house in between, too. And then he surprised Celaena once by going into a bookshop—not to threaten the owner or collect dues, but to buy books.