Glass of Revenge

~15~

Sam was staring in disbelief. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. This couldn't be real. It just couldn't be. He had to be imagining things. He just had to be. He was definitely hallucinating. He just had to be hallucinating at the moment. After everything he had endured, his mind had finally broken, and he was hallucinating.

Sam had to be hallucinating, because he just couldn't be standing in front of Celaena right now. After the way she had abandoned him to the whims of Arobynn Hamel four years before, there was no way on earth she would dare face him again. And even if she did want to attempt to 'make things right between them' there was no way on earth that Manon and Athril would make him agree to face her. Not when they knew and understood everything that he had endured these last four years.

However, coming face to face with Sam Cortland for the first time in four years was just as hard for Aelin as it was for Sam. The worries that she had only recently expressed to Rowan and the inner members of her court were tightly hidden behind her smoothly calm façade.

Unfortunately for them, the calm façade that she presented was fooling Sam into believing that she didn't care about him. That their former relationship meant absolutely nothing to her. As of right now, Sam was truly starting to believe that Celaena would have willingly helped Hamel fake his death, just so she could move on with her life, and reclaim her throne, conveniently forgetting the year she had spent in the slave mines of Endovier along the way.

Athril, Manon and the Thirteen, along with Rowan and the few members of Aelin's court that were present remained silent – give the two of them a chance to work things out between themselves, and if things started to get a bit heated would they step in. And only then. But deep down, under their momentary vow of restraint, beneath their momentary vow of doing what they could to keep the peace, they were all hoping that a peaceful outcome was a foregone conclusion, despite the odds against it.

And in the moment before Sam spoke, Athril knew that the worry and concern that he'd felt in regards to this first meeting between Sam and Aelin spoke true. Sam wasn't ready for it, not mentally at least. Athril was more than right to be concerned, because Sam was simply itching for a fight. He was just longing for it.

"Looks like you've done pretty well for yourself, Celaena," Sam said bitterly, resentfully. "Maybe this was all part of some grand scheme you had all along – to grow old enough and strong enough to reclaim your throne, regardless of how much it hurt the people you left behind. The people who thought you cared about them."

"Aelin," Aelin snapped back, annoyed. Why did so many people insist on dragging up the past, insisting that she failed them in some way? At least this time she felt as though Sam had some right to be angry. She had certainly failed him. Several times. "My name is Aelin. Not Celaena. My name never was Celaena. Deep down, I have always been Aelin. I always hated being called Celaena, because I'm not her. I'm Aelin."

"So I've heard," Sam said, the bitterness still lacing his tone. "But I want to ask you some personal questions about all of this. What on earth has been your motive these last past twelve years? If you had such a great inheritance as a Queen, why on earth was Arobynn raising you? Knowing you the way I did, I would have thought that you would have preferred to have this entire bloody freezing kingdom fawning all over you and spoiling you every moment of every day. We both know how brutal Arobynn's style of parenting was, even if he cared about the person as much as he cared about you?"

"You want to know what my motive was for the last twelve years?" Aelin snapped back, suddenly angrier than ever. "My motive was to do whatever it took to stay alive. Do you have any idea whatsoever what my life was like for the ten years between the Adarlanian conquest and the day I took back my throne?"