Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass #2) by Sarah J. Maas

“So, are you going to ask me whatever it is you dragged me out here to ask, or am I just going to enjoy freezing my ass off for the rest of the night?” Dorian said.

Chaol raised a brow, and Dorian gave him a slight smile.

“How is she?” Chaol asked. He’d heard that they’d had dinner—and that she hadn’t left his rooms until the middle of the night. Had it been a deliberate move on her part? Something to throw in his face, make him ache just a bit more?

“Coping,” Dorian said. “Coping as best she can. And since I know you’re too proud to ask it, I’ll just tell you that no, she hasn’t mentioned you. Nor do I think she will.”

Chaol took a long breath. How could he convince Dorian to stay away from her? Not because he was jealous, but because Celaena might be more of a threat than Dorian could ever imagine. Only the truth would work, but …

“Your father is curious about you,” Dorian said. “After the council meetings, he always asks me about you. I think he wants you back in Anielle.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to go with him?”

“Do you want me to?”

“It’s not for me to decide.”

Chaol clamped his teeth. He certainly wasn’t going anywhere, not while Celaena was here. And not just because of who she actually was. “I have no interest in being Lord of Anielle.”

“Men would kill for the kind of power that Anielle wields.”

“I’ve never wanted it.”

“No.” Dorian braced his hands on the balcony rail. “No, you’ve never wanted anything for yourself, save for the position you have now, and Celaena.”

Chaol opened his mouth, excuses already forming on his tongue.

“You think I’m blind?” Dorian asked, his gaze a frozen, ice blue. “Do you know why I approached her at the Yulemas ball? Not because I wanted to ask her to dance, but because I saw the way you two were looking at each other. Even then, I knew how you felt.”

“You knew, and yet you asked her to dance.” His hands clenched into fists.

“She’s capable of making up her own mind. And she did.” Dorian gave him a bitter smile. “About both of us.”

Chaol took a steadying breath, calming his rising anger. “If you feel the way you do, then why let her stay shackled to your father? Why not find a way to get her out of her contract? Or are you just afraid that if you set her free, she’ll never come back to you?”

“I’d be careful what you say,” Dorian said softly.

But it was true. Even though he couldn’t imagine a world without Celaena, Chaol knew he had to get her out of this castle. Yet he couldn’t tell if it was for Adarlan’s sake or her own.

“My father is temperamental enough to punish me—and her—if I try to broach that subject. I agree with you, I truly do: it’s not right to keep her here. But you should still mind what you say.” The Crown Prince of Adarlan stared him down. “And consider where your true loyalties lie.”

Once, Chaol might have argued. Once, he might have protested that his loyalty to the crown was his greatest asset. But that blind loyalty and obedience had started this descent.

And it had destroyed everything.



Celaena knew she’d only been out for a few seconds, but it was long enough for Yellowlegs to yank her arms behind her back and get the chain around her wrists. Her head was pounding, and blood slid down the side of her neck, trickling into her tunic. Nothing too bad—she’d had worse wounds. Her weapons were gone, though, discarded somewhere in the wagon. Even the ones in her hair and clothes. And boots. Clever woman.

So she didn’t give the witch a chance, not even a heartbeat, to realize she was conscious. With no warning, she surged her shoulders up, throwing back her head as hard as she could.

Bone cracked, and Yellowlegs howled, but Celaena had already twisted, getting her legs beneath her. Yellowlegs scrambled for the other end of the chain, fast as a viper. Celaena stomped on the length of chain between them, her other foot lashing out to meet Yellowlegs’s face.

The woman went flying, as though she were made of nothing but dust and wind, tumbling into the shadows between mirrors.

Swearing under her breath, Celaena’s wrists ached against the cold iron. But she’d been taught to free herself from worse. Arobynn had bound her up from head to toe and made her learn how to get loose, even if it meant spending two days prostrate on the ground in her own filth, or dislocating her shoulder to get out. So, not all that surprisingly, she had the chains off in a matter of seconds.

She yanked a handkerchief from her pocket and used it to snatch up a long mirror shard. Angling the glass, Celaena peered into the shadows where Yellowlegs had gone flying. Nothing. Just a smear of dark blood.

“Do you know how many young women I’ve trapped in this wagon in the past five hundred years?” Yellowlegs’s voice was everywhere and nowhere. “How many Crochan witches I destroyed? They were warriors, too—such talented, beautiful warriors. They tasted like summer grass and cool water.”

Confirming that Yellowlegs was a blue-blooded Ironteeth witch changed nothing, Celaena told herself. Nothing, except that she’d have to find a bigger weapon.

Celaena scanned the wagon—for the witch, for her lost daggers, for anything to use against the crone. Her gaze lifted to the shelves on the nearby wall. Books, crystal balls, paper, dead things in jars …