Realm Of Ashes (Throne of Glass #7)

Chapter 16

Guys I'm so sorry I haven't updated in ages, schools been hectic. But here is chapter 16, please don't kill me:

~HeirOfTheBookstore

Aelin was in Doranelle and she didn't like it one bit. She supposed she should have been grateful not to be back in the iron coffin, but this was a worse kind of punishment. She had realised, after re-examining the ink and pen, that the ink had dried and the pen was stiff. Unused for what looked like months. This must have been his old room. After that realisation had smashed her already broken heart, she had smelt it. Smelt him.  How had she not it before? Every single item in this room smelt of pine and snow, of memories and love, of home. Memories that made her heart bleed with longing, the pure agony of missing him was like a dagger continuously slicing her heart. It was worse than when Cairn’s whip had ruined her back, her soul. It was worse than when she has learned of the mass slaughter of slaves at Endovier.

Before she could have her third mental breakdown of the day, there was a loud knock on her door. How she hadn't sensed or heard the person approaching she didn’t know. Perhaps she needed to work on controlling herself a bit more. The hand knocked again and this time she stood up, stretched her muscles and put her face into a neutral expression, or what she thought was one anyway. Her emotions were confusing her.

“Wh-who is it?” she asked, stumbling over the words, she hadn’t realised how dry her throat was. The door opened and she took a step back, bracing herself in the well know pounce position. She was a cat in the night, she could not be tamed. She was not afraid.

A small girl entered, no more than 8, her face invisible behind the starch black locks that seemed to grow from her head in a mass of uncontrollable vines. The girl didn’t look up, didn't even speak, she just took a few small and uncertain steps into the room, placed the tray she was carrying and left, never once turning her back on Aelin. Smart girl. Just as the door swung closed, Aelin snapped out of her unwelcome stupor, lunging for the door the mass of black had just disappeared from but it had already locked itself.

She turned her attention to the tray now sat on the little coffee table by her door. There was a cup of what she assumed was some delicacy of Doranelle, a bowl of soup, brown and lumpy, and a slip of paper. She snatched up the cup and gulped it down, not even bothering to take a sip to see if it was okay. The lumpy liquid slip down her throat, barely. He stomach repulsed as it was forced to digest the brown substance and she barely managed to keep it down. She didn’t care though, she was just glad that the burning in her oesophagus had lessoned, even if only slightly. She felt as she had when she had first started to control her fire. Rowan had demanded that she control the bonfire, the largest and the smaller ones. She had spat at the idea then, deeming it stupid and was anxious of her lack of power. What if one of the dancers leaping over the fire got harmed because of her, she couldn’t handle the scream of burning flesh, she wasn’t ready. Ironic, she supposed, to be afraid to kill people but then earning the title of Aderlans most most notorious assassin.

Next she turned her attention to the note, considering it to be more demanding than figuring out what was in the bowl of goop. It was folded over; sealed with a wax marking. An owl. Maeve. She reconsidered the bowl next to it, contemplating whether eating the mass of goop was a better option than opening the letter and decided not to risk it, whatever the letter said, it was better than living in a room with piles of sick nesting in the corner. She doubted that anyone would come to clean the room, after all. She hesitantly fingered the letter, breaking the wax seal with ease and unfolding it. Written in an elegant scrawl, the message read:

Up at 7am, don't be late.

Why would Maeve want her up at 7am? What was her end game. This was probably some weird kind of torture, she supposed. She wondered if anyone would come if she didn’t wake up and then cursed herself. Maeve was the queen of fae, not Chaol Westfall. She wasn’t some naive guard trying to protect his prince and best friend from an assassin; she was a queen trying to protect her realm from the Queen of Fire, she wouldn't get Aelin up with a firm shake and piercing gaze, she would have way worse methods. Thinking about that possibility made her stomach churn and so she pushed away and locked it in a box, just like so many other thoughts her mind conjured. Sighing, she looked back at the bowl of mush and found that she had lost her appetite. She shook her head and decided it was time to go to bed. As she turned to the large queen-size bed, her heart stopped in her chest; that was Rowans bed… that was his life before her and it still smelt like him, still radiated that calming scent of home. She couldn't just sleep in his bed, couldn't just erase the last piece of him that was here. It made her heart ache to just think about.

She remembered the first night she had been freed from Endovier, freed in the loosest sense of the word, it was more like she had been moved to a larger cage,one which contained much more lethal tigers. That night she had tossed and turned in the soft silk of her sheets and eventually decided that the floor was a better option. That was what she would do, the floor was a better alternative than the bed. She grabbed a pillow off the bed and pulled the top quilt off the bed. Gods, the scent of him was everywhere. As she lay down and curled herself into the blanket, she inhaled the sweet aroma of her mate, and for the first time in what felt like a millennia, Aelin did not have any nightmares.