In the heavy, dark haze between a deep sleep and reality, limbs jerked outward as they individually remembered they were attached to a body. With consciousness slowly rising from its ashes of the night before, the little girl stretched all her limbs in unison to their limits. She savored their effortless glide across the silk sheet hindered only by the soothing weight of the down comforter.
Wait.
Reality and consciousness abruptly collided and knocked the wind from her.
The girl sat up sharply in the bed. Memories, dreams, and confusion overwhelmed her. The world momentarily paused in her inability comprehend any single thing at once. Then, it continued as she began to process everything in hideous clarity. She let out the breath she had gasped in her panic. She forced the memories to the back of her mind. She focused on forming questions to sort through her confusion.
First, where was she?
The man standing in the open door frame cleared his throat. The little girl's head snapped towards him. Her eyes went wide. She hadn't even heard the door open. Her breath caught in her throat again as she frantically looked around for any possible escape.
The room was small. There were two chairs by a hearth, and another next to the bed she was in which was in corner. A lit lamp hung on the wall next to her. A dresser stood against the wall facing the bed. The window was clearly for decorative purposes only; she could see no hinges or latch.
Her view of the hall was blocked by the trim figure of the man standing in the only doorway. She could barricade herself in the dresser, but that would only be useful for minutes at best. She was trapped.
As the man watched her panic rise, he gave as small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes and began to cross the room towards her carrying a tray. He closed the door behind him with a kick of his foot.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he assured her once he reached the bed. He set the tray next to her and eased himself into the chair by the bed. He looked supremely relaxed as he leaned back in the chair, crossing one leg over the other.
Since running or fighting would clearly be no use, she decided she must be brave. The little girl resisted the urge to move away from the man. Instead, she lifted her chin slightly and looked him in the eye.
He chuckled.
"I don't know why anyone would want to hurt a pretty little girl like you," the man confessed.
"I'm not little anymore," the girl snapped before she could stop herself, stiffening at his patronizing. This only caused the man to chuckle once again.
She studied him. He was old. Not as old as her parents, but certainly older than all the children she knew. Maybe in his late teens or early thirties. To an eight year old, anyone older than thirteen is simply old. He was tallish, but not a giant. About the height of her... She stopped that comparison and moved on in her mental assessment.
He had dark red hair. Or rusty brown hair? It was somewhere in the middle... auburn. That's the color she had heard ladies use for similar shades. His skin was tanned from being outside often, but not terribly dark. His eyes...
His eyes were grey, but seemed silver in the lamplight. They watched her study him with what might be amusement without a hint of warmth. Curiosity feeding calculations. Satisfaction. With her. With himself. With whatever the hell was going on.
"Who are you?" she demanded. She did her best to sound bold, but her voice shook a bit. His smile grew.
"A friend," he said simply, with a slight shrug. "I saw a lit--, a young woman floating in the river. I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I let you drown. I rescued you from the water and brought you here, to my home. The world is a dangerous place right now for a young woman to be out alone at night. Especially floating facing down in a river."
A visceral memory flood the girl's senses at the mention of the river, but she shoved it to the back of her mind once again. The man's explanation felt true, but not entirely. His voice was low, dripping with honey and reassurance, even as his eyes remained devoid of warmth.
"Before you ask another question," the man continued, interrupting her mental attempts to decide what question to ask next, "please, eat."
She blinked. Startled, she looked down at the tray he had placed on her bed. She hadn't paid the least bit attention to it, not even to note the fact it was filled with formerly hot, now cooling, food: an enormous bowl of soup, a plate of several breads, and another of various meats and cheeses. Additionally, there were several cups of fruits and an incredibly large slice of chocolate cake.
"I'm not hungry," she lied, salivating as she did so. Her stomach quickly gave her up, however, as the sent of meal pierced through the lingering panic coating her senses. The man chuckled once more. That chuckle was really starting to irritate her.
"I promise nothing is poisoned," he said. "I just told you I saved you. If I wanted you dead, I would have left you in the river and not wasted a perfectly good meal."
It made sense, but she still hesitated. He pressed his lips into a line.
"Point at anything you'd like to eat, and I'll take a bite first. How's that?" he offered. The girl considered briefly as her stomach growled once more, and nodded.
She pointed at the chocolate cake. The man took the fork from the tray and took carved off a piece of the cake. Her lips twitched in slight annoyance that he had taken such a big bite, but she said nothing, and carefully watched him put the whole bite in his mouth, chew, and swallow it. He even opened his mouth to let her inspect the chocolate crumbles covering his teeth as he offered her the fork back.
She hesitated just a little longer, in case it was a slow moving poison that needed a moment to kick in. When she could detect no ill effects, she snatched the fork out of the man's hand and promptly scarfed down the rest of the cake.
Once finished with the cake, they repeated the process with every dish on the tray. Although she tried to remain vigilant, the time she allowed to lapse between the man's bite of her food and reclaiming the fork steadily decreased. The man patiently obliged, retaining a faint air of amusement throughout.
"Now that you're finished," the man began once the little girl had swallowed her last bite and laid down her fork, "we can have a proper conversation. What you said earlier was quite right. You're not little. After what you've been through, you're not a child anymore. So I'm not going to treat you like a child. I'm going to talk to you like an adult, because you're grown now. Do you understand?"
The girl straightened in the bed and rolled her shoulders back.
"Yes," she said solemnly.
"Good," the man nodded. "I'm going to tell you a lot of things. Don't interrupt until I'm finished. I'll tell you when you can ask your questions. Do you understand?"
The girl briefly hedged, but nodded.
"Good," he said again. "Right now we are in Terrasen. In the last week, Adarlan attacked Terrasen and killed the entire royal line. The king is dead. The crown prince and his wife are dead. Their daughter is dead. Any members of the court who survived are in hiding or currently fighting against Adarlan's army. They will loose. Some may negotiate a surrender and swear loyalty to Adarlan. Some the king will accept, others he will execute. Terrasen has fallen. It is under Adarlan's control. Do you understand?"
Yes. No. She knew it was true. She felt it. But she still couldn't—wouldn't?--believe it. She couldn't wrap her mind around it. Everyone— everyone?— dead. Her entire kingdom. Gone. Under foreign control. She knew it was true. But did she understand?
The man waited for her answer. She could feel her body begin to tremble. She tried to force it to stop. The more she tried to control it, the fiercer the shaking became. It would only stop when she relaxed. So she took several deep breaths through her nose, and nodded.
"Good. Now. Not only has Terrasen fallen, but magic is gone."
The girl's mouth fell open. "But—"
"Somehow, the king of Adarlan has destroyed magic. Here, at least. There is no magic anymore. No healing magic, no water magic, no shifting magic, no fire magic. None. It's all gone. It's gone from Adarlan. It's gone from Terrasen. It's apparently gone from the entire continent."
The girl's head was spinning. Terrasen, her home, was a land and a people. It's fall was devastating but... possible. Excruciatingly possible. The fall of magic shouldn't be possible. She had known the king had forbade the use of magic in Adarlan, but how can even a king forbid its existence? Furthermore, how could he stop magic not just in his kingdom, but in the entire continent?
"It's unclear how he did this, but he did. It helped him defeat Terrasen."
Of course. The royal family of Terrasen had magic. Not as much as they used to, but still. So did many members of the court. Unlike in Adarlan, the development of those with magic was encouraged and nurtured in Terrasen. They even built a school specially designed to house and train children with magic. It should have been near impossible for the king of Adarlan to defeat Terrasen since Adarlan shunned magic. But if magic was gone for everyone, the fight would have been leveled. And some had whispered that Terrasen had grown too reliant on magic to protect themselves... Wait, what had happened to the school if there was no more magic and Adarlan invaded?
"Anymore details are unimportant right now," the man said sharply, cutting through the girl's spiraling thoughts. "These are the facts. There is no more royal family of Terrasen. Adarlan controls the kingdom. Magic is gone."
The man stared hard at the girl. Any feint of warmth, consolation, or compassion was gone. His face was completely neutral, with maybe only a hint of expectation, as if waiting to see if she would prove worthy of his rescue.
She wasn't looking at him anymore. She stared without focus at the empty tray. The girl felt her eyes fill with tears. She fought it. The tears weren't for a loss of magic. She had never been terribly fond of it; it scared her most often. The tears were for everything. If the king of Adarlan could destroy Terrasen, could destroy magic, what couldn't he do?
She could feel the man evaluating her, waiting for her reaction. What could she do? On the inside, she wanted to scream. She wanted to collapse into sobs. She wanted her mother. Her father. She wanted to give up. Kings could kill old men and little girls, destroy countries and magic. Why did she want to live in a world like this?
But she did want to live. She might want to give up right now, but she did not want to die. She wanted to live. This man had said he was a friend. While he didn't exactly emanate trustworthiness, she was short on friends at the moment.
She took slow, deep breathes once again. She forced down her wild panic once more. She ignored the crumpled little girl inside her, raised her head, and squared her shoulders. Tears that had welled too large too fast to suppress slipped down her cheeks, but she managed to school her face into neutrality as she turned to the man and simply said, "Continue."
A ghost of a satisfied smile crossed the man's lips; the only sign her composure impressed him."Now you must listen very, very carefully. I am not going to repeat myself and we will never have nor speak of this conversation every again." His silver eyes gleamed almost viciously in the lamplight. "Do you understand?"
Realization caused the girl's eyes to widen. This sudden need for secrecy all but confirmed her suspicions. The man definitely knew who she was. She tensed. He had said he was a friend and so far hadn't poisoned her. Was that enough to warrant trust? She supposed it had to be. She nodded warily.
"I am an assassin." The girl's jaw dropped. This is not where she had expected the conversation to go. The man raised his eyebrows and that ghost smile appeared again, briefly. "I take it you know what that is."
She nodded again. She had read about them in her adventure books. Well, not hers really. In the adventure books written for older children she smuggled out of the library and hid under her mattress. This man killed people for money. An entirely new wariness washed over her.
"You have two choices. You can leave. When we finish this conversation, you can walk out of this room, this house and I will not tell anyone you were here. Nor will I help you. If you leave, you will be entirely on your own." The girl was sure the following pause was for dramatic effect. Her jaw clenched in frustration.
"Or, you can stay. I can teach you how to protect yourself. I can teach you how to be self-reliant. I can teach you how to take revenge on those who have wronged you." His eyebrows raised slightly, as if in challenge. "But it will not be easy. It will not happen quickly. You will have to work hard. Likely harder than you have ever worked in your entire life. I will not go easy on you because you're a girl. Nor will anybody else. Most likely boys and men will see you as an easy target and single you out. I can help you become the best, but it will be difficult. And it will be painful.
If you choose to stay, you cannot be who you were before the river. That little girl died. You are a new person. If you leave, whatever you do is not my concern."
He paused again, letting his words sink in. And perhaps again for dramatic effect.
"You can only make this choice once. If you leave and I see you again, I will do whatever is in my best interest. If you stay, you cannot leave without completing your training. You may choose, but you may never change your mind."
When he finished his speech, the man looked at her expectantly. She gazed back steadily, not wanting to give him any reason to think she was intimidated. That little girl had died in the river whether she stayed or not. The choice before her wasn't even a choice, really.
"I'll stay."
The man broke out in his first sincere smile. The sincerity came from the natural way the smile spread across his face, not from any hint of joy. It was a smile of self-satisfaction. He looked like he had just won back the fallen kingdom.
"Excellent!" He exclaimed. "Now I can properly introduce myself. Arobynn Hamel."
Arobynn extended his hand. It was covered in scars; some fine and nearly faded, others larger and permanently marring. His hand offered the first peek at her new future, she supposed. She took it.
"And you are?" he prompted quietly. Seriously.
She looked at their clasped hands. She thought of her old adventure books, the ones with assassins. She thought of all the times she had imagined herself having adventures like the ones she read about. She thought of the imaginary name she had called herself so she didn't have to be who she was in her imaginations. Now, she could finally be that girl. She could be the girl that explored the world, meeting Fae and shapeshifters and goddesses and assassins. That girl was everything she never thought she could be. Now that girl was all she could be. And all she wanted to be.
She looked up from their hands, and straight into Arobynn's eyes.
"Celaena," she said, "Celaena Sardothien."