Rowan dutifully carried every bag and box Celaena bought save the chocolates, which she ate as she strolled around, one after another after another. When she offered one to him, he claimed he didn’t eat sweets. Ever. Not surprising.

The villagers wound up not knowing anything, which she supposed was good, because it meant that they hadn’t been lying, but the crab-­monger did say he’d found a few discarded knives—­small, sharp-­as-­death knives—­in his nets recently. He tossed them all back into the water as gifts for the Sea God. The creature had sucked these people dry, not cut them up. So it was likely that Wendlynite soldiers had somehow lost a trunk of their blades in some storm.

At sunset, the innkeeper even approached them about a suddenly vacant suite. The very best suite in town, he claimed, but Celaena was starting to wonder whether they might attract the wrong sort of attention, and she ­wasn’t particularly in the mood to see Rowan disembowel a would-­be thief. So she politely refused, and they set out down the street, the light turning thick and golden as they entered the forest once more.

Not a bad day, she realized as she nodded off under the forest canopy. Not bad at all.

•

Her mother had called her Fireheart.

But to her court, to her people, she would one day be Queen. To them, she was the heir to two mighty bloodlines, and to a tremendous power that would keep them safe and raise their kingdom to even greater heights. A power that was a gift—­or a weapon.

That had been the near-­constant debate for the first eight years of her life. As she grew older and it became apparent that while she’d inherited most of her mother’s looks, she’d received her father’s volatile temper and wildness, the wary questions became more frequent, asked by rulers in kingdoms far from their own.

And on days like this, she knew that everyone would hear of the event, for better or worse.

She was supposed to be asleep, and was wearing her favorite silk nightgown, her parents having tucked her in minutes ago. Though they had told her they ­weren’t, she knew they ­were exhausted, and frustrated. She’d seen the way the court was acting, and how her uncle had put a gentle hand on her father’s shoulder and told him to take her up to bed.

But she ­couldn’t sleep, not when her door was cracked open, and she could hear her parents from their bedroom in the suite they shared in the upper levels of the white castle. They thought they ­were speaking quietly, but it was with an immortal’s ears that she listened in the near-­dark.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do, Evalin,” her father said. She could almost hear him prowling before the giant bed on which she had been born. “What’s done is done.”

“Tell them it was exaggerated, tell them the librarians ­were making a fuss over nothing,” her mother hissed. “Start a rumor that someone ­else did it, trying to pin the blame on her—”

“This is all because of Maeve?”

“This is because she is going to be hunted, Rhoe. For her ­whole life, Maeve and others will hunt her for this power—”

“And you think agreeing to let those little bastards ban her from the library will prevent that? Tell me: why does our daughter love reading so much?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Tell me.” When her mother didn’t respond, her father growled. “She is eight—­and she has told me that her dearest friends are characters in books.”

“She has Aedion.”

“She has Aedion because he is the only child in this castle who isn’t petrified of her—­who hasn’t been kept away because we have been lax with her training. She needs training, Ev—­training, and friends. If she ­doesn’t have either, that’s when she’ll turn into what they’re afraid of.”

Silence, and then—­a huff from beside her bed.

“I’m not a child,” Aedion hissed from where he sat in a chair, arms crossed. He’d slipped in ­here after her parents had left—­to talk quietly to her, as he often did when she was upset. “And I don’t see why it’s a bad thing if I’m your only friend.”

“Quiet,” she hissed back. Though Aedion ­couldn’t shift, his mixed blood allowed him to hear with uncanny range and accuracy, better even than hers. And though he was five years older, he was her only friend. She loved her court, yes—­loved the adults who pampered and coddled her. But the few children who lived in the castle kept away, despite their parents’ urging. Like dogs, she’d sometimes thought. The others could smell her differences.

“She needs friends her age,” her father went on. “Maybe we should send her to school. Cal and Marion have been talking about sending Elide next year—”

“No schools. And certainly not that so-­called magic school, when it’s so close to the border and we don’t know what Adarlan is planning.”

Aedion loosed a breath, his legs propped on the mattress. His tan face was angled toward the cracked door, his golden hair shining faintly, but there was a crease between his brows. Neither of them took well to being separated, and the last time one of the castle boys had teased him for it, Aedion had spent a month shoveling ­horse dung for beating the boy into a pulp.

Her father sighed. “Ev, don’t kill me for this, but—­you’re not making this easy. For us, or for her.” Her mother was quiet, and she heard a rustle of clothing and a murmur of, “I know, I know,” before her parents started speaking too quietly for even her Fae ears.

Aedion growled again, his eyes—­their matching eyes—­gleaming in the dark. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. So what if you burned a few books? Those librarians deserve it. When ­we’re older, maybe we’ll burn it to the ground together.”

She knew he meant it. He’d burn the library, the city, or the ­whole world to ashes if she asked him. It was their bond, marked by blood and scent and something ­else she ­couldn’t place. A tether as strong as the one that bound her to her parents. Stronger, in some ways.

She didn’t answer him, not because she didn’t have a reply but because the door groaned, and before Aedion could hide, her bedroom flooded with light from the foyer.

Her mother crossed her arms. Her father, however, let out a soft laugh, his brown hair illuminated by the hall light, his face in shadow. “Typical,” he said, stepping aside to clear a space for Aedion to leave. “Don’t you have to be up at dawn to train with Quinn? You ­were five minutes late this morning. Two days in a row will earn you a week on stable duty. Again.”