Crown of Midnight

Page 74

 
Celaena went first, because Dorian desperately needed to change his filthy tunic, and talking seemed like a good idea while he stripped naked in his dressing room. She sat on his bed, not looking much better herself—which was why they’d taken the dark servants’ passages back to his tower.
“Beneath the library stretches an ancient dungeon, I think,” Celaena said, trying to keep her voice as soft as possible. She caught a gleam of golden skin through the half-open door to his dressing room, and looked away. “I think … I think someone kept the creature in there until it broke out of its cell. It’s been living under the library ever since.”
No need to tell him that she was starting to believe the king had created it. The clock tower had been built by the king himself—so he had to know what it connected to. She knew that the creature had been made, because in its chest had been a human heart. Celaena was willing to bet that the king had used at least one Wyrdkey to make both tower and monster.
“What I don’t understand,” Dorian said from the dressing room, “is why this thing can now break through the iron doors when it couldn’t before.”
“Because I was an idiot and broke the spells on them when I walked through.”
A lie—sort of. But she didn’t want to explain, couldn’t explain, why the creature had been able to break out before and had never hurt anyone until now. Why it had been in the hallway that night and disappeared, why the librarians were all alive and unhurt.
But perhaps the man that the creature had once been … Perhaps he hadn’t been entirely lost. There were so many questions now, so many things left unanswered.
“And that last spell you did—on the door. It’ll keep forever?” Dorian appeared in a new tunic and pants, still barefoot. The sight of his feet felt strangely intimate.
She shrugged, fighting the urge to wipe her bloody, filthy face. He’d offered her his private bath, but she’d refused. That felt too intimate, too.
“The book says it’s a permanent binding spell, so I don’t think anyone but us will be capable of getting through.”
Unless the king wants to get in and uses one of the Wyrdkeys.
Dorian ran a hand through his hair, sitting down beside her on the bed. “Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know,” she lied. The king’s ring flashed in her memory. That couldn’t be the Wyrdkey, though; Yellowlegs had said they were slivers of black rock, not—not forged into shapes. But he could have made the ring using the key. She understood now why Archer and his society both coveted and sought to destroy it. If the king could use it to make creatures …
If he had made more …
There had been so many doors. Well over two hundred, all locked. And both Kaltain and Nehemia had mentioned wings—wings in their dreams, wings flapping through the Ferian Gap. What was the king brewing there?
“Tell me,” Dorian pressed.
“I don’t know,” she lied again, hating herself for it. How could she make him understand a truth that might shatter everything he loved?
“That book,” Dorian said. “How did you know it would help?”
“I found it one day in the library. It seemed to … trail me. Showed up in my rooms when I hadn’t brought it there, reappeared in the library; it was full of those kinds of spells.”
“But it’s not magic,” Dorian said, paling.
“Not the magic that you have. This is different. I didn’t even know if that spell would work. Speaking of which,” she said, meeting his eyes, “you have … magic.”
He scanned her face, and she quelled the urge to fidget.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Tell me how you have magic,” she breathed. “Tell me how you have it and the rest of the world doesn’t. Tell me how you discovered it, and what manner of magic it is. Tell me everything.” He started to shake his head, but she leaned forward. “You just saw me break at least a dozen of your father’s laws. You think I’m going to turn you over to him when you could just as easily destroy me?”
Dorian sighed. After a moment, he said, “A few weeks ago, I … erupted. I got so mad at a council meeting that I stormed out and punched a wall. And somehow, the stone cracked, and then the window nearby shattered, too. Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out where it comes from, what kind of power it is, exactly. And how to control it. But it just … happens. Like—”
“Like when you used it to stop me from killing Chaol.”
His neck bobbed as he swallowed hard.
She couldn’t meet his stare as she said, “Thank you for that. If you hadn’t stopped me, I …” No matter what had happened between her and Chaol, no matter what she now felt for him, if she had killed him that night, there would have been no coming back from it, no recovering. In some ways … in some ways, it might have made her into just another version of that thing in the library. It made her sick to even think about it. “No matter what your magic might be, it saved more lives than his that night.”
Dorian shifted. “I still need to learn to control it—or else it might happen anywhere. In front of anyone. I’ve gotten lucky so far, but I don’t think that luck will last.”
“Does anyone else know? Chaol? Roland?”
“No. Chaol doesn’t know, and Roland just left with Duke Perrington. They’re going to Morath for a few months to … to oversee the situation in Eyllwe.”
It all had to be tied together: the king, the magic, Dorian’s power, the Wyrdmarks, even the creature. The prince went to his bed and hoisted up the mattress, pulling out a concealed book. Not the best hiding place, but a valiant effort. “I’ve been looking through the genealogy charts for Adarlan’s noble families. We’ve hardly had any magic-users in the past few generations.”
There were so many things she could tell him, but if she did, it would just result in too many questions. So Celaena merely studied the pages he displayed for her, flipping through one after another.
“Wait,” she said. The puncture wounds in her shoulder gave a burst of pain when she lifted her hand to the book. She scanned the page he’d stopped on, her heart pounding as another clue about the king and his plans slipped into place. She let him continue on.
“See?” Dorian said, closing the book. “I’m not quite sure where it comes from.”
He was still watching her, warily. She met his gaze and said quietly, “Ten years ago, many of the people I … people I loved were executed for having magic.” Pain and guilt flickered in his eyes, but she went on. “So you’ll understand when I say that I have no desire to see anyone else die for it, even the son of the man who ordered those deaths.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “So, what do we do now?”
“Eat a giant meal, see a healer, take a bath. In that order.”
He snorted and playfully nudged her with a knee.
She leaned forward, clasping her hands between her legs. “We wait. We keep an eye on that door to make sure no one tries to go in, and … just take it day by day.”
He took one of her hands in his own, staring toward the window. “Day by day.”