High School Diaries (A Throne of Glass Fanfiction)

Chapter 7

Aelin’s arms were trembling as she took Arobynn’s hand and was hauled out of the pit. Her master crushed her fingers in a lethal grip, pulling her close in what anyone else would have thought was an embrace.

“You were not supposed to kill him.”

“Bloodlust got the better of me, it seems.” She eased back, her left arm aching from the vicious bite the asshat had given her. Bastard. She could almost feel its blood seeping through the thick leather of her boot, feel the weight of the gore clinging onto the toe. But that was least of her worries.

“What will I tell Ioan Jayne? His second in command killed in a mere brawl?”

“Don’t worry, Master, you won't have the need to tell him anything. Farran wanted to climb up too soon. 2 dead tonight, their business yours to take over.”

Anger, pure force of her buried emotions had made her kill Farran, not this stupid business thing for Arobynn. But she was never good at hiding emotions when it came to Arobynn. So she baited him something else, so that his shrewd eyes could not see what she had figured out.

Aedion was making his way toward a her, shoving through the crowd, eyes meeting hers in mixture of worry and temper. Aelin looked toward Lysandra, whose attention wasn’t on the corpse being hauled out of the pit by the grunts, but fixed—with predatory focus—on the other investors talking within themselves. Aelin cleared her throat, and Lysandra blinked, her expression smoothing into unease and repulsion. Aelin made to slip out, but Arobynn said,

“Aren’t you the least bit curious where we buried Sam?”

He’d known his words would register like a blow. He’d had the upper hand, the sure-kill shot, the entire time. Even Lysandra recoiled a bit. Aelin slowly turned.

“Is there a price for learning that information?”

A flick of his attention to the pit as he waved his hand towards Farran's body. “You just paid it.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you to give me a fake location and have me bring stones to the wrong grave.”

Not flowers—never flowers in her family. Instead, they carried small stones to graves to mark their visits, to tell the dead that they still remembered. They occasionally painted them, to wish them a good after life.

Stones were eternal— flowers were not.

“You wound me with such accusations.”

Arobynn’s elegant face told another story. He closed the distance between them.

She bared her teeth. “I thought he was burned by the police after autopsy because you couldn't go to collect it and there wasn't anyone else?” Wrong. Arobynn didn't go to even identify the body so mutilated and forbid anyone else to go. Aelin and her friends, were, well preoccupied with police investigation after someone tipped them off.

He said smoothly, “You forget what my considerable influences are, and what I might have to offer you and yours during a time when you are so desperate."

It was never pure sympathy with Arobynn, always an exchange.

“Just tell me where you buried Sam and let me leave. I need to clean my shoes.” He smiled, satisfied that he’d won and she’d accepted his little offering—no doubt soon to make another bargain, and then another, for whatever she needed from him. He named the location, a small graveyard by the river’s edge. Not even near his own house.

Still, she choked out, “He was your son. Even though adopted."

"He was an assassin. He wasn't careful. He got caught. He suffered." She wasn't sure if the crack in Arobynn's voice was intentional or unintentional.