The Lost Heir

Chapter 5 - Chaol

It had been a couple of days since Aedion had arrived, and as far as Chaol knew, he hadn't seen or scented Celaena the whole time, and he thanked the gods for it. But what he didn't thank the gods for, was Aedion persuading his guards to leave their posts, only to go to his parties. So Chaol had tracked down Aedion's next party and followed him, hoping to catch Aedion doing something he wasn't meant to be doing, and politely ask him to stop telling his guards to leave their posts, with that bit if information to ensure it. What he found at the parties just made him even more furious, as Aedion, it seemed, didn't attend them for long, leaving them soon after they started, making sure everyone saw him doing something before staggering out the front door, drunk. Drunk that is, until he gets a block away, where he throws his hood on and starts prowling into the night, stone-cold sober. This was the second party where it had happened, and Chaol was determined to see where he was going, especially since he was probably going without the King's permission.

Chaol tracked Aedion as he left the wealthier district and strolled into the slums, taking alleys and crooked streets. He could have passed for a wealthy man seeking another sort of woman, and Chaol almost believed he was doing just that. Until Aedion had stopped outside a building and a cloaked figure with twin blades approached him. Chaol couldn't hear the words between Aedion and the stranger, but he could read the tension in their bodies well enough. After a moment, Aedion followed the newcomer, though not before he thoroughly scanned the alley, the rooftops, the shadows.

Chaol kept his distance. Perhaps Aedion was buying illicit substances, that might be enough to get him to calm down- to keep the parties at a minimum and stop inviting his guards. Chaol followed them, mindful of the eyes of every drunk and orphan and beggar he passed. On a forgotten street by the Avery's docks, Aedion and the cloaked figure slipped into a crumbling building. But it wasn't just any building, not with sentries posted on the corner, by the door and on the rooftop. Some were even milling about the street, trying to blend in. They weren't royal guards, or soldiers, that much was clear to Chaol, and it wasn't a place to purchase opiates or flesh, either. He'd been memorising the information Celaena had gathered about the rebels, and had stalked them as often as he'd trailed Aedion, mostly to no avail, but these habits positively reeked of their habits

He couldn't stop a shiver down his spine as he touched the Eye of Elena and realised the derelict building. Perhaps it wasn't mere coincidence that had led him here.

Chaol was so focused on his thundering heart and on what he had discovered, that he didn't have a chance to turn as a dagger pricked his side. But, even so, he didn't put up a fight.

The sentries matched those he had previously seen, their worn weapons, their fluid, precise movements. He'd never forget them, not after he'd spent a day being held prisoner in a warehouse by them - and witnessed Celaena cut through them as though they were stalks of wheat. They'd never known that it had been their lost queen who came to slaughter them. Celaena had claimed they'd been looking for a way to defeat the king's power. Larger implications aside, if he could find out not only how the king had stifled magic but also how to liberate it before he was dragged back to Anielle, then Dorian's secret might be less explosive. It might help him, somehow. And Chaol would always help him, his friend, his prince. But he knew he was as likely to receive death as he was answers, this time around.

            ~            ~            ~

The sentries forced him to his knees in an empty room that smelled of old hay. Chaol found Aedion and a familiar-looking old man staring down at him. The one who had begged Celaena to stop that night in the warehouse, he realised. There was nothing remarkable about the old man; his worn clothes were ordinary, his body lean but not yet withered. Beside him stood a young man Chaol knew by his soft, vicious laugh: the guard who had taunted him when he'd been held prisoner. Shoulder-length dark hair hung loose around a face that was more cruel than handsome, especially with the wicked scar slashing through his eyebrow and down his cheek. He dismissed the sentries with a jerk of his chin.