Crown of Midnight

by Sarah J. Maas

  It had taken all of her self-control not to scream when she’d heard the lock snap free the first time. Or the second.

  It was no wonder Nehemia and her family kept such power a secret. And no wonder the King of Adarlan had sought it out for himself.

  Staring down into the stairwell, Celaena touched Damaris, then looked at the two jeweled daggers hanging from her belt. She was fine. No reason to be nervous. What sort of evil did she expect to find in a library, of all places?

  Surely the king had better places to hide his dark dealings. At best, she’d find more hints as to whether he had any Wyrdkeys and where he kept them. At worst … she would run into the cloaked person she’d seen outside the library that night. But the glowing eyes she’d glimpsed on the other side of that door belonged to a rodent of some sort—nothing more. And if she was wrong … Well, whatever it was, after taking down the ridderak, this shouldn’t be too hard, right?

  Right. Celaena stepped forward, pausing on the landing.

  Nothing. No feelings of terror, no otherworldly warnings. Not a thing.

  She took another step, then another, holding her breath as she wound around the staircase until she could no longer see the top. She could have sworn that the etchings on the wall moved all around her, that the beautiful, feral faces of the Fae turned to look as she passed.

  The only noises were her footsteps and the whispering of the torch flame. A chill ran down her spine, and Celaena stopped as the dark void of the hallway came into view.

  She was at the sealed iron door a moment later. She didn’t give herself the luxury of reconsidering her plan as she took out her piece of chalk and traced two Wyrdmarks onto the door, whispering the accompanying words at the same time. They burned on her tongue, but as she finished speaking, she heard a faint, dull thud as something in the door slid open.

  She swore under her breath. The spell truly worked. She didn’t want to think about all that implied, about how it was able to work on iron, the one element supposedly immune to magic. And not when there were so many awful spells contained in The Walking Dead—spells to summon demons, to raise the dead, to torture others until they begged for death …

  With a firm tug, she yanked the door open, wincing as it whined across the gray stone floor. A stale, cold breeze ruffled her hair. She drew Damaris.

  After checking and double-checking that she could not be locked inside, she crossed the threshold.

  Her torch revealed a small staircase of about ten steps, which led down to another long, narrow passageway. Cobwebs and dust filled every inch of it, but it wasn’t the neglected look of the place that made her pause.

  Rather it was the doors, the dozens of iron doors that lined both sides of the hallway. All as nondescript as the door behind her, all revealing nothing of what might be behind them. At the opposite end of the hall, another iron door gleamed dully in the torchlight.

  What was this place?

  She descended the stairs. It was so silent. As if the very air held its breath.

  She held her torch high, Damaris in her other hand, and approached the first iron door. It had no handle, the surface marked only by a single line. The door across from it had two marks. Numbers one and two. Odd numbers on the left, even on the right. She kept moving, igniting torch after torch, brushing away the curtains of cobwebs. As she walked farther down the hall, the numbers on the doors rose.

  Is this some sort of dungeon?

  But the floor held no traces of blood, no remnants of bones or weapons. It didn’t even smell that bad—just dusty. Dry. She tried opening one of the doors, but it was firmly locked. All of the doors were locked. And some instinct told her to keep them that way.

  Her head throbbed slightly with the beginnings of a headache.

  The hallway went on and on, until she reached the door at the far end, the cells on either side numbered ninety-eight and ninety-nine.

  Beyond them was a final, unmarked door. She set her torch in a bracket beside the last door and grabbed the ring on the door to pull it open. This one was significantly lighter than the first, but also locked. And unlike the doors lining the hall, this one seemed to ask her to unlock it—as though it needed to be opened. So Celaena sketched the unlocking spell again, the chalk bone-white against the ancient metal. The door yielded without a sound.

  Perhaps these were Gavin’s dungeons. From the time of Brannon. That would explain the Fae depictions on the staircase above. Perhaps he’d used these iron-gated cells to imprison the demon-soldiers of Erawan’s army. Or the wicked things Gavin and his war band hunted down …

  Her mouth went dry as she passed through the second door and ignited the torches along the way. Again, the light revealed a small set of stairs leading down into a hallway. Yet this one veered to the right, and was significantly shorter. There was nothing in the shadows—just more and more locked iron doors on either side. It was so, so quiet …

  She walked until she reached the door on the other end of the hall. Sixty-six cells this time, all sealed shut. She unlocked the end door with the Wyrdmarks.

  She entered the third passageway, which also made a sharp right turn, and found it to be even shorter. Thirty-three cells.

  The fourth hallway veered right again, and she counted twenty-two cells. The slight throbbing in her head turned into a full-on pounding, but it was so far to her rooms, and she was here already …

  Celaena paused before the fourth end door.

  It’s a spiral. A labyrinth. Bringing you deeper and deeper inside, farther belowground …

  She bit her lip but unlocked the door. Eleven cells. She increased her pace, and swiftly reached the fifth door. Nine cells.

  She approached the sixth door and halted.

  A different sort of chill went through her as she stared at the sixth portal.

  The center of the spiral?

  As the chalk met the iron door to form the Wyrdmarks, a voice in the back of her mind told her to run. And though she wanted to listen, she opened the door anyway.

  Her torch revealed a hallway in ruin. Parts of the walls had caved in, and the wooden beams were left in splinters. Cobwebs stretched between the broken shafts of wood, and tattered scraps of cloth, impaled upon rock and beam, swayed in the slight breeze.

  Death had been here. And not too long ago. If this place were as ancient as Gavin and Brannon, most of the cloth would be dust.

  She looked at the three cells that lined the short hallway. There was one more door at the end, which hung crookedly on its one remaining hinge. Darkness filled the void beyond.

  But it was the third cell that held her interest.

  The iron door to the third cell had been smashed, its surface dented and folded in upon itself. But not from the outside.

  Celaena raised Damaris before her as she faced the open cell.

  Whoever had been within had broken loose.

  A quick sweep of her torch across the threshold revealed nothing save for bones—piles of bones, most of them splintered beyond recognition.

  She snapped her attention back to the hallway. Nothing moved.

  Gingerly, she stepped into the cell.

  Iron chains dangled from the walls, broken off where manacles would have been. The dark stone was covered in white marks; dozens and dozens of long, deep gouges in groups of four.

  Fingernails.

  She turned around to face the broken cell door. There were countless marks on it.

  How could someone make such lines in iron? In stone?

  She shuddered and quickly stepped out of the cell.

  She glanced back the way she had come, which glowed with the torches she’d lit, and then at the dark, open space that led onward.

  You’re near the center of the spiral. Just see what it is—see if it yields any answers. Elena said to look for clues …

  She swung Damaris in her hand a few times—only to loosen her wrist, of course. Rolling her neck, she entered the gloom.

  There were no torch brackets here.
The seventh portal revealed only a short passageway and one open door. An eighth gate.

  The walls on either side of the eighth door were damaged and claw-marked. Her head gave a violent throb, then quieted as she stepped nearer.

  Beyond the portal lay a spiral staircase that led upward, so high that she couldn’t see the top. A straight ascent into darkness.

  But to where?

  The stairwell stank, and she held Damaris before her as she ascended the steps, taking care to avoid the fallen stones that littered the ground.

  Up and up and up she climbed, grateful for all her training. Her headache only grew worse, but when she reached the top, she forgot about fatigue, forgot about pain.

  She raised the torch. Shimmering obsidian walls surrounded her, reaching high, high, high—so high that she couldn’t see the ceiling. She was inside some sort of chamber at the bottom of a tower.

  Twining through the strange stone walls, greenish veins glittered in the torchlight. She had seen this material before. Seen it—

  The king’s ring. The ring on Perrington’s finger. And Cain’s …

  She touched the stone, and a shock went through her, her head pounding so badly she gagged. The Eye of Elena gave a pulse of blue light but quickly died, as if the light itself had been sucked toward the stone and devoured.

  She staggered back toward the stairs.

  Gods above. What is this?

  As if in response, a boom shuddered through the tower, so loud that she jumped back. It echoed and echoed, turning metallic.

  She raised her gaze to the darkness above.

  “I know where I am,” she whispered as the sound subsided.

  The clock tower.

  Chapter 44

  Dorian stared at the odd spiral staircase. Celaena had found the legendary catacombs beneath the library. Of course she had. If there were anyone in Erilea who could find something like that, it would be Celaena.

  He’d been just about to go to lunch when he’d seen Celaena strut into the library, a sword strapped across her back. Perhaps he would have let her go about her own business were it not for her braided hair. Celaena never tied back her hair unless she was fighting. And when she was about to get messy.

  It wasn’t spying. And it wasn’t sneaking. Dorian was merely curious. He followed her through long-forgotten hallways and rooms, always staying far behind, keeping his steps silent as Chaol and Brullo had taught him years ago. He’d followed until Celaena had disappeared down that staircase with a suspicious glance over her shoulder.

  Yes, Celaena was up to something. And so Dorian had waited. One minute. Five minutes. Ten minutes before following after her. To make it seem like an accident if their paths crossed.

  And now what did he see? Nothing but junk. Old parchment and books tossed around. Beyond was a second spiral staircase, lit in the same manner as the previous one.

  A chill went through him. He didn’t like any of this. What was Celaena doing here?

  As if in answer, his magic screamed at him to run in the opposite direction—to find help. But the main library was a long way off, and by the time he could get there and back, something might happen. Something might already have happened …

  Dorian quickly descended the staircase and found a dimly lit hallway with a single door left ajar, two marks written on it in chalk. When he saw the cell-lined hallway beyond, he froze. The iron reeked, somehow—and made his stomach turn.

  “Celaena?” he called down the hallway. No response. “Celaena?” Nothing.

  He had to tell her to get out. Whatever this place was, neither of them should be here. Even if the power in his blood wasn’t screaming it, he would have known. He had to get her out.

  Dorian descended the staircase.

  Celaena half ran, half jumped down the stairs, getting away from the interior of the clock tower as fast as she could. Though it had been months since she had encountered the dead during the duel with Cain, the memory of being slammed into the dark wall of the tower was still too near. She could see the dead grinning at her, and recalled Elena’s words on Samhuinn about the eight guardians in the clock tower and how she should stay far from them.

  Her head ached so badly that she could barely focus on the steps beneath her feet.

  What had been in there? This had nothing to do with Gavin, or Brannon. Maybe the dungeon had been built then, but this—all of this—had to be connected to the king. Because he had built the clock tower; built it out of—

  Obsidian the gods forbade

  And stone they greatly feared.

  But—but the keys were supposed to be small. Not mammoth, like the clock tower. Not—

  Celaena hit the bottom of the clock stairs and froze as she beheld the passage that contained the destroyed cell.

  The torches had been extinguished. She looked behind her, toward the clock tower. The darkness seemed to expand, reaching for her. She wasn’t alone.

  Clutching her own torch, keeping her breathing steady, she crept along the ruined passage. Nothing—no sounds, no hint of another person in the passage. But …

  Halfway down, she stopped again and set down the torch. She’d marked all the turns, counted her steps as she came here. She knew the way in the dark, could find her way back blindfolded. And if she wasn’t alone down here, then her torch was a beacon. And she was in no mood to be a target. She put out the torch with a grind of her heel.

  Complete darkness.

  She lifted Damaris higher, adjusting to the dark. Only it wasn’t wholly black. A faint glow issued from her amulet—a glow that allowed her to see only dim shapes, as if the darkness were too strong for the Eye. The hair on the back of her neck rose. The only other time she’d seen the amulet glow like that … Feeling along the wall with her other hand, not daring to turn around, she eased back toward the library.

  There was a scrape of nail against stone, and then the sound of breathing.

  It was not her own.

  It peered out from the shadows of the cell, clutching at its cloak with taloned hands. Food. For the first time in months. She was so warm, so teeming with life. It skittered out of the cell past her as she continued her blind retreat.

  Since they had locked it down here to rot, since they had gotten tired of playing with it, it had forgotten so many things. It had forgotten its own name, forgotten what it used to be. But it now knew more useful things—better things. How to hunt, how to feed, how to use those marks to open and close doors. It had paid attention during the long years; it had watched them make the marks.

  And once they had left, it had waited until it knew they weren’t coming back. Until he was looking elsewhere and had taken all his other things with him. And then it had begun opening the doors, one after another. Some shred of it remained mortal enough to always seal those doors shut, to come back here and form the marks that again locked the doors, to keep it contained.

  But she had come here. She had learned the marks. Which meant she had to know—to know what had been done to it. She had to have been a part of it, the breaking and shattering and then the brutal rebuilding. And since she had come here …

  It ducked into another shadow and waited for her to walk into its claws.

  Celaena stopped her retreat as the breathing halted. Silence.

  The blue light around her grew brighter.

  Celaena put a hand to her chest.

  The amulet flared.

  It had been stalking the little men who lived above for weeks now, contemplating how they would taste. But there was always that cursed light near them, light that burned its sensitive eyes. There was always something that sent it skittering back here to the comfort of the stone.

  Rats and crawling things had been its only food for too long, their blood and bones thin and tasteless. But this female … it had seen her twice before. First with that same faint, blue light at her throat—then a second time, when it hadn’t seen her as much as smelled her from the other side of that iron door.

  Upsta
irs, the blue light had been enough to keep it away—the blue light that had tasted of power. But down here, down in the shadow of the black, breathing stone, that light was diminished. Down here, now that it had put out the torches she’d ignited, there was nothing to stop it, and no one to hear her.

  It had not forgotten, even in the twisted pathways of its memory, what had been done to it on that stone table.

  With a dripping maw, it smiled.

  The Eye of Elena burned bright as a flame, and there was a hiss in her ear.

  Celaena whirled, striking before she could get a good look at the cloaked figure behind her. She glimpsed only a flash of withered skin and jagged, stumpy teeth before she sliced Damaris across its chest.

  It screamed—screamed like nothing she had ever heard as the ragged cloth ripped, revealing a bony, misshapen chest peppered with scars. It slammed a clawed hand into her face as it fell, its eyes gleaming from the light of the amulet. An animal’s eyes, capable of seeing in the dark.

  The person—creature—from the hallway. From the other side of the door. She didn’t even see where she had wounded it as she hit the ground. Blood rushed from her nose and filled her mouth. She staggered into a sprint back toward the library.

  She leapt over fallen beams and chunks of stone, letting the Eye light her way, barely keeping her footing as she slipped on bones. The creature barreled after her, tearing through the obstacles as if they were no more than gossamer curtains. It stood like a man, but it wasn’t a man—no, that face was something out of a nightmare. And its strength, to be able to shove aside those fallen beams as though they were stalks of wheat …

  The iron doors had been there to keep this thing in.

  And she had unlocked all of them.

  She dashed up the short stairs and through the first doorway. As she veered left, it caught her by the back of her tunic. The cloth tore. Celaena slammed into the opposite wall, ducking as it lunged for her.

  Damaris sang, and the creature roared, falling back. Black blood squirted from the wound across its abdomen. But she hadn’t cut deep enough.