High School Diaries (A Throne of Glass Fanfiction)

Chapter 28

The song gives me perfect Celaena/Aelin vibes.  ✌🏻👆🏻🔥

"I need to go to see Perrington."

Aelin didn't think twice before knocking open the door to Arobynn's house. On second thoughts, she should have.

Black hair carefully falling down the back like obsidian waterfall, tiny waist and pale skin almost let a sigh past her lips, thinking it was Kaltain. The woman was pressed against the wall, in what could've been a wanton gesture if not for the kitchen knife she was jamming against Arobynn's gut, and him frowning in her face.

Both refused to look away, and she would have left if the woman had not spoken up.

"You can come in, girl, we're done."

When the woman turned to look at her, she realized who it was.

"Come in, Celaena." Arobynn was not using her name. "Maeve and I were just having a little chat." He pulled back from her, and rested his palms against the couch, facing both of them now.

"Are we still on this? I told you I'll be one step ahead of you, Hamel?" Honey oozed from her words that masked the venom underneath them as she tapped Arobynn's cheek once, the mocking smile couldn't have been more condescending. Maeve turned to drop the knife on the kitchen counter, picked her bag and approached the door. She moved out of the way.

"I knew you were an interesting one when I saw you, Aelin." She made sure to say her name loudly, enough for Arobynn to hear, who was still glaring at her.

And then she left.

Aelin let out a breath and turned to her 'landlord' who was still glaring at the woman who left, lips tightly pursued. She decided to spare him today and closed the door shut with full force, the sound and blocked view jolting Arobynn out of his thoughts.

"Business deal gone sour?"

"A little misfortune breeding mistrust." His silver eyes met hers and she knew, she knew it in her heart, her head and every cell in her body that he was going to turn this around on her. And she couldn't let him do that. She already owed him one and was here to ask for another-

"The price I pay for helping you with Perrington." There it was.

"I love how you find a way to turn it all on me." She said through her teeth.

"The things we do for love." She chose to ignore that as Arobynn picked up the knife Maeve had left and threw it at her. Aelin ducked, her reflexes kicking in, as she caught the knife, not sharp enough to bury itself in the door.

And she felt it.

She felt it in each nerve of her body as she got up, the phantom bruises on her face and cuts on her body, throbbing with the brutal memory of Arobynn's knives that never missed their mark. The memory of the day echoed through her, when she had failed the mission to kill a child, refused to let Tern do it and later killed him to protect that child, who had escaped from Clarisse (through Elide's help.) She remembered the words Sam kept screaming at Arobynn as he tied her up and used her as a personal dart board and occasional punching bag until she had blacked out, the words that were somehow forgotten in the fog of pain:

"I'll kill you!"

Sam had said the words like he meant it. He'd bellowed it. Again and again and again.

When she raised herself, she thought she might, she hoped she might see even an inkling of that memory haunting Arobynn, but when she got up, any kind of primal emotion that Maeve had brought to the surface were buried again. Arobynn's face was again a mask of seduction and nonchalance.