Queen Of Glass

Chapter 5

At dawn the next morning they departed.
After Celaena had agreed to Prince Dorian's offer, Lord Chaol had brought in her handmaids to show her to her room. It had taken them nearly three quarters of an hour to remove Celaena's dress, clean her face, and brush out her hair, and, despite the fact that she was ready to fall asleep, they brought her a dinner large enough for all four of the she- men.
Her disappointment, however, had been extreme and genuine when she had taken a few hurried bites of the food, run to the bathroom, and thrown up. It had been two and a half years since Celaena Sardothien had eaten a real meal, and her stomach, unused to rich food and excessive quantities of it, wouldn't hold more than a little bit at a time. She had eaten gruel—even when the guards had sneaked her extra—and shoveling chicken and fruits and duck and soup and vegetables and rice and bread and butter and wine down her throat was almost impossible to do. It would take her weeks, maybe even a month or so, to regain both her appetite and the weight she had lost.
Celaena looked at the table full of food and clutched at her throat, her eyes welling in frustration.
She had been overworked, underfed, and had had to sleep on hard wooden floors with only a dirty cloth for a blanket and an arm for a pillow. It wasn't fair. She now had this food, this marvelous, incredibly aromatic food, and she couldn't eat it. Celaena looked at the roast chicken. She'd have to be careful about what she ate. It would have to be foods rich in fat and protein—foods that would make her regain weight. Celaena waited until her stomach calmed, took a handful of small bites of the duck, waited, waited, ate a bit more, and decided to stop as her nausea returned.
If she were going to be in Renaril with twenty other women, she'd be eating well—she didn't need to consume all of this food at once. She had to be patient, smart...
Celaena popped a berry, sweet, tart, and so succulent that it made her heart dance a merry jig, into her mouth and left the table.
Naturally, when Celaena finally got into bed, it felt as if she were sleeping on a cloud. She had forgotten what luxury was, what food other than soggy oats tasted like, and what clean clothes and a clean body could do to a person.
When Lord Chaol came to awake her in the morning, Celaena nearly cried at the first thing she saw. Sunlight.

Pure, fresh, warm sunlight. She hadn't seen the sun in so long. It leaked in through the drapes in lines and smears across her room. Celaena ran to the window, threw open the curtains and looked out at the bleakness of Endovier. The guards positioned beneath her windows didn't bother to look up as she stared at the blue sky, her face breaking into a full smile. Thankfully, despite poor health care and many fights, her teeth were still intact. It would have been disastrous if she had been missing several.
Her mood was delightfully cheerful; she didn't even mind when her handmaids had insisted upon coiling her long, braided hair onto the back of her head to make her look more "lady-like." They had urged in their quiet, gentle voices that her riding habit took away from her femininity (they disapproved of the pants, blouse, boots, and cape so much that Lord Chaol had to demand that Celaena wear it) and that an ornate hairstyle would bring back the woman that was lost within the male clothing.
To Celaena, it was hardly male clothing. Her white blouse was frilly and billowy enough that she felt like it would blow away in the wind. But they made her breasts, now bound beneath bandages for her back, look larger than they actually were, so the assassin considered it to be the most glorious shirt she had ever put on. The pants were a warm oak color and had the feel of velvet, but did not have the rich, shining appearance of the material. Her boots were just about the one masculine thing on her, but even they were crafted for a woman's foot. Made from soft, brown leather, they would have made any huntsman proud.
However, the only item of clothing that Celaena really loved was her cape. A beautiful shade of forest green with delicate, little light green vines and pink and blue flowers along the trim that must have taken its maker ages to embroider, Celaena's cape was truly fit for a queen. The dark green inside of the large hood was lined with velvet that she kept on stroking, running her fingers across the smooth, silky surface as if she were petting an animal. Adarlan's assassin wondered if she had ever owned such a wonderful piece of clothing.
So, with all of this lovely clothing, it was hard for Celaena not to look as dazzling as she had the night before, if not more because of her shining, smiling face. It was awkward for her, as an assassin, to be treated so finely—and she wondered if her handmaidens knew who and what she was.
Her breakfast was as large as her dinner had been, and the assassin carefully chose the most fattening and nutritional foods on the table, taking her time and controlling her portions. It would not do to vomit all over her clothing. Celaena, despite the small amount of food she had consumed, was so full by the time Chaol dragged her from her rooms that she had difficulty walking.
However, the sunshine and the budding sky made her so happy that Celaena Sardothien was still all smiles when she mounted her horse, feeling as if she could have flown from her saddle into the sapphire blanket above them.
It was a rather large company. There were twenty all together; the prince riding at the front with, to Celaena's extreme disappointment, Duke Perringtonn at his side. Behind them followed a band of eight soldiers, two of them each bearing Adarlan's royal flag. Between this group of guards and the next group of eight that took up the rear, were Celaena and Lord Chaol, who rode side by side atop large, bay geldings. Lord Chaol, as Celaena gathered, was responsible for the prince's protection. This meant that for the entire journey, he was to be her shadow, watching her every move in case she did anything naughty.
After doing a final check on their supplies, they left Endovier behind, passing the large hills and their gaping mouths, passing the carts full of salt crystals, passing the whips and the chains until they finally passed between the massive, black iron-wrought gates and departed from her doom.
Celaena barely thought of how disappointed the guards would be when they learned that their favorite slave was gone, or of how her overseer would scratch his bald head before yelling for someone else to torment, and a dark cloud passed from her heart as the company walked down the large road, the sounds of conversation and horses filling the air.
As the morning worn on, it revealed a glorious day; the sky was a crisp blue with hardly a cloud to be seen for miles. It was all Celaena could do to keep from laughing aloud with joy at the wonderful autumn day before them—especially as they got further and further from the dismal mines.
Conversation between the assassin and the young lord was rare; Celaena was too busy taking in the world around her to want to talk to him anyway. By mid-morning they had entered the Forest of Glamasil, a wood that surrounded Endovier and spread across a huge chunk of the empire. Some maps claim it stretched from Trasien all the way to Finntierland, others from Trasien's North Sea to Eyputiusunn's Gulf of Oro. Either way, it was a massive forest that often served as a continental divide between the 'civilized' countries of the East and the largely unpopulated,