She lifted her chin. "I've been shouting for you."
Sam shrugged, sauntering over to her. "I figured you could wait a few minutes, given that I saved the day and all." His brows rose high on his ash-covered face.
"Some hero." She gestured to the ruin of the tower around them. "I've never seen such sloppy work
No matter what I do, I really do love you Celaena."
The word hit her like a stone to the head. He'd never said that word to her before. Ever.
A long silence fell between them.
Arobynn's neck shifted as he swallowed. "I do the things that I do because I'm sacred ... and because I don't know how to express what I feel." He said it so quietly that she barely heard it. "I did all of those things because I was angry with you for picking Sam."
Arobynn's carefully cultivated mask fell, and the wound she'd given him flickered in those magnificent eyes. "Stay with me," he whispered. "Stay in Rifthold."
She swallowed, and found it particularly hard to do so. "I'm going."
"No," he said softly. "Don't go."
No.
That was what she'd said to him that night he'd beaten her, in the moment before he'd struck her, when she thought he was going to hurt Sam instead. And then he'd beaten her so badly she'd been knocked unconscious. Then he'd beaten Sam, too.
Don't.
That was what Ansel had said to her in the desert when Celaena had pressed the sword into the back of her neck, when the agony of Ansel's betrayal had been almost enough to make Celaena kill the girl she'd called a friend. But that betrayal had paled in comparison to what Arobynn had done to her when he'd tricked her into killing Doneval, a man who could have freed countless slaves.
He was using word as chains to bind her again. He'd had so many chances over the year to tell her that he loved her--he'd known how much she craved those words. But he hadn't spoken them until he needed to use them as weapons.
And now that she had Sam, Sam who said those words without expecting anything in return, Sam who loved her for reasons she still didn't understand...
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.
She didn't let herself finish that thought, though crippling nausea gripped her as she scanned the banks and docks and sewer depositories.
He would be waiting for her at home. And then he'd chide her and laugh at her and kiss her. And them she'd dispatch Jayne tonight, and then they'd set sail on this river and then out to the nearby sea, and then be gone.
He would be waiting at home.
He'd be home.
Home.
This was some dream, or she had gone to hell after all, because she couldn't exist in the world where this had been done to him, where she paced like an idiot all night while he suffered, while Farran tortured him, while he ripped out his eyes and--
Celaena vomited on the floor.
Footsteps, then Arobynn's hands were on her shoulder, on her waist, pulling her away.
He was dead.
Sam was dead.
She wouldn't leave him like this, in this cold, dark room.
She yanked out of Arobynn's grasp. Wordlessly, she unfastened her cloak and spread it over Sam, covering the damage that had been so carefully inflicted. She climbed onto the wooden table and lay out beside him, stretching an arm across his middle, holding him close.
The body still smelled faintly like Sam. And like the cheap soap she'd made him use, because she was so selfish that she couldn't let him have her lavender soap.
Celaena buried her face in his cold, stiff shoulder. There was a strange, musky scent all over him--a smell that was so distinctly not Sam that she almost vomited again. It clung to his golden-brown hair, to his torn, bluish lips.
She wouldn't leave him.
Footsteps heading toward the door--then the snick of it closing as Arobynn left.
Celaena closed her eyes. She wouldn't leave him.
She wouldn't leave him.
Sam was gone.
Reality opened wide and swallowed her whole.
She didn't move from the bed.
She didn't want to go out into a world where he didn't exist. So she watched the light shift and change, and let the world pass by without her.
Sarah J. MaasNow that Sam was dead, there wasn't anything left outside of the dungeons worth fighting for, anyway. Not when Adarlan's Assassin was crumbling apart, and her world with her.
Sarah J. MaasThe world balanced on the edge of a knife, slipping, slipping, slipping.
Sarah J. MaasAfter another moment of quietness, he asked, "Why did you do it?"
Arobynn's attention drifted back to the wagon, already a small dot in the rolling foothills above Rifthold. "Because I don't like sharing my belongings," was his only response.
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