Another long silence, then a sigh. "Not in one way," Chaol said. "I bet he would have wanted you to survive--to live. So you didn't fail him, not in that regard

And she was snarling, snarling like some kind of animal as she snapped for his neck. He reared back, throwing her against the marble floor again. "Stop."

But the Celaena he knew was gone. The girl he'd imagined as his wife, the girl he'd shared a bed with for the past week, was utterly gone. Her clothes and hands were caked with the blood of the men in the warehouse.

Celaena threw her weight into the dagger she held aloft, and gained an inch. His arms strained. She was going to kill him. She truly going to kill him.

He made himself look into her eyes, look at the face so twisted with rage that he couldn't find her.

"Celaena," he said, squeezing her wrists so hard that he hoped the pain registered somewhere- wherever she had gone. But she still wouldn't lossen her grip on the blade. "Celaena, I'm your friend."

She stared at him, panting through gritted teeth, her breath coming quicker and quicker before she roared, the sound filling the room, his blood, his world: "You will never be my friend. You will always be my enemy."

She bellowed the last word with such soul-deep hated that he felt it like a punch to the gut. She surged again, and he lost his grip on the wrist that held the dagger. The blade plunged down.

If she picked Roland over you, that makes her the greatest fool who ever lived.

Celaena," Chaol said gently. And then she heard the scraping noise as his hand came into view, sliding across the flagstones. His fingertips stopped just at the edge of the white line. "Celaena," he breathed, his voice laced with pain—and hope. This was all she had left—his outstretched hand, and the promise of hope, of something better waiting on the other side of the line.

Dorian could only stare at her. This was different from the feral creature she'd become the night Nehemia had died. What she was right now, the edge on which she was balancing... Wyrd help them all.

But than Chaol was at her chair, grasping her elbow. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Celaena looked up at him and smiled sweetly. "Your job, apparently." She shook off his grip with a thrash, then got up from her seat, stalking around the table.