I name you Elentiya." She kissed the assassin's brow. "I give you this name to use with honour, to use when other names grow too heavy. I name you Elentiya, 'Spirit That Could Not Be Broken.

Nor had she missed when they zigzagged between levels, even though the building was a standard grid of hallways and stairwells. As if she'd lose her bearings that easily.

She might have been insulted if he wasn't trying so hard.

How long was I asleep?" she whispered. He didn't respond.
"How long was I asleep?" she asked again, and noticed a hint of red in his cheeks.
"You were asleep, too?"
"Until you began drooling on my shoulder.

With each day he felt the barriers melting. He let them melt. Because of her genuine laugh, because he caught her one afternoon sleeping with her face in the middle of a book, because he knew that she would win.

Right," Chaol said. "So you're just...memorizing that information now?"

"If you're suggesting that I have no reason to be here and to leave, then tell me to go."

"I'm just trying to figure out what's so boring that you dozed off 10 minutes ago."

She propped herself up onto her elbows. "I did not!"

His eyebrows rose. "I heard you snoring."

"You're a liar, Chaol Westfall." She threw her paper at him at ploppedback on the couch. "I only closed my eyes for a minute."

He shook his head again and went back to work.

Celaena blushed. "I didn't really snore, did I?"

His face was utterly serious as he said, "Like a bear.

The world slowed to the beat of an ancient, ageless drum.

Celaena behold the room.

The blood was everywhere.

Before the bed, Nehemia's bodyguards lay with their throats cut from ear to ear, their internal organs spilling out onto the floor.

And on the bed...

On the bed...

She could hear the shouts growing closer, reaching the room, but their words were somehow muffled, as though she were underwater, the sounds coming from the surface above.

Celaena stood in the center of the freezing bedroom, gazing at the bed, and the princess's broken body atop it.

Nehemia was dead.