Spoilers for the Assassin's Blade and Empire of Storms.
I had intended to update the second chapter to Homeward Bound, but then this story just kind of spoke to me. I've always liked Ansel, and thought her to be a really interesting character. This took me like three days to write, and I would never have guessed it would end up this long, but here it is: My take on Ansel of Briarcliff.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Nullus. Zilch. It all belongs to Sarah J. Maas.
Her road to healing begins with the breaking.
She hides in a cupboard and bites her fist to keep down her scream as she hears the ghastly sounds of her father's and her sister's throats being cut. And something flares in her chest at the sound; an anger so profound that the minute, innocent part of her shudders with fear at the strength of it. An anger profound enough to shake the world.
But Ansel is twelve, and she is untrained, and she is scared, so she can do nothing with that anger for now.
Even so, the whine of steel, and the splash of blood are the most hideous sounds she has ever heard.
When the ring of steel against steel has faded, and the ring of sadistic laughter gone, she creeps out of her hiding place.
She cannot bring herself to look at the corpse of her sister, lying in a pool of blood, throat slit as she imagines that witch slit Maddy's throat so many years ago. But she edges around the crimson liquid and tiptoes to her father's prostrate body, his face still twisted in pain and desperation, even in death. The good and noble Lord of Briarcliff, dead in a matter of moments.
We already have a tyrant conquering everything east of the mountains - I don't want one in the west too.
She chokes on a sob as she slides his sword, with its wolf's head pommel, out of his grip. She's surprised they didn't take it for glory, or conquest, or both. But it doesn't matter, so long as she has it in her grip, a steady reassuring presence that her father, and her father's legacy, is not lost.
She is not lost.
But not even the heavy pommel in her hand, slippery with sweat and blood, can help her lock up the tears, and she runs. Out of Briarcliff Hall, down a road. Scenery and houses and peoples' frightened faces flash by, but they are nothing as she runs and runs and runs.
Soon enough her stomach growls for food, and her mind aches for sleep. She obliges to the second request, and drops beside the dusty road she's been running, allowing herself a brief freefall into the world of dreams, where her father and sister still live, before she is jerked out of her foray into bliss to resume her pilgrimage to anywhere but here.
Night falls, and day rises, and night falls again, before she needs to stop once more.
Now, her throat is parched. She dives into the small grove of woods she passes - she's sure she's read the name of it somewhere, but she can't remember - and falls to her knees beside a tiny stream she finds trickling there. She drinks clumsily until the cuffs of her sleeves and her face are soaked, and then gets up. She strips a nearby bush of its berries, and despite her not caring whether they're poisonous or not, she automatically checks that they're safe, as she'd always been taught for the fruit around this place. The berries are sweet yet sour, and are so ripe they stain her teeth red. She wipes the back of her hand against her mouth, and it comes away scarlet.
The colour of her father's and sister's blood.
She scrubs her hand in the scream until all the juice is washed away, and her skin is a raw pink from her efforts.
She doesn't blink at the cold as she pulls it out.
She just stalks out of the woods and continues running away from the terrible deeds that had occurred.
She sleeps and eats sparingly during her travels east, and doesn't stop for long enough to think beyond the pounding of her feet, or the aching of her limbs, or the flavour of the berries. She tries hunting once, setting up snares with vines she found and beheading the small creatures that stepped into them with her father's sword, but she wants to retch at the bright, bright blood on the blade, and leaves the carcass there for whatever predators can stomach it better than her.
And so her life passed in a haze for several weeks, without thought, without recollection, until she collapsed at the foothills of the White Fang mountains, her bones frail and prominent, her skin nothing but paper stretched so taut it will snap.
And for the first time in weeks, she seeks out human help as she waddles over to the light of the campfire she sees shining nearby. But it is not a human she finds there.
She is so exhausted that she feels no fear at the sight of the Ironteeth witch standing there, even as the witch stands and leers at her. She almost begs for death.
But the witch, face a glorious and powerful blend of age and youth, of power and deception, sheaths her iron teeth and nails, and instead orders her with a voice that possessed all the conviction Ansel doesn't have, to go south. To not let herself die, and visit the Silent Assassins in the Red Desert. And then the witch gifts her with a bag of gold, and points her on her way, because it is not her fate to die here.
But what better place to die, than at the hands of the kind whose territory her family rules - had ruled - and who she has hated since Maddy's death?
Nevertheless, she does as the witch says. With a newfound purpose, she no longer needs the constant running to distract her from the horrors that nipped at her heels, so instead of traversing the treacherous Bogdano jungle, she travels down to a rundown port town named Innish that - much like Briarcliff; much like the world - has seen better days. She purchases a voyage on a ship to Yurpa, and resolves to travel to find the sessiz suikast from there. She notes the hungry eyes of the bar patrons on her, who would no doubt love to get acquainted with a pretty preteen girl such as herself, sick bastards such as they are, but she looks at them, and perhaps they see something of the savage wolf of her symbol in her eyes, for they back off.
Nevertheless, she is beyond relieved when the ships finally departs.
The trip on the other side is tough, and she expends more of the witch's gold than she'd like trying to hire a guide brave enough to take her where she wants to go, but she succeeds eventually, and it's only two miles she has to walk on her own. After that horrendous - for looking back, it was horrendous - trip from Briarcliff to the White Fang Mountains, two miles through the Red Desert is nothing.
She is met at the perimeter of the fortress by an older assassin - or maybe they're a mentor? - and is led through various pools and fountains before she reaches the chamber. She holds her head high throughout, with al the confidence of a girl in her position: a girl with nothing to lose. When the Mute Master has his four assassins set on her, she fights them with a feral intensity. She uses no known fighting techniques, but that seedling of anger that was planted in her gut so many miles ago has blossomed, and here is a chance to vent it.
When they are finally called off, she is panting from the force of the fury coursing through her veins - not exertion. But one of the assassins, a boy looking to be about sixteen, smiles at her grimly.
She does not smile back. She has forgotten how.
She is led through the halls, to a room that is purely her own. She has no belongings to unpack, and she stinks to Hellas' realm from wearing the same clothes since that day, so she strips them off and slips into the thick white tunic they've provided for her. Her pants are stained with the blood from her last bleeding, sometime in the last month, though she cannot remember it. It appears to have been a light one, no doubt brought on by months of malnourishment.
She walks to the baths, and submerges herself completely. She likes ducking her head under the water, as the rush of water and the drowning of all sound empties her mind. She entertains for a moment the illusion that she can scrub off the memories that haunt her, but she is unsuccessful, as that horrific sound is still playing on loop in her head.
She glances at her knuckles, where she can detect the scars from where she bit down too hard, taste the coppery tang of blood in her mouth.
She vomits, quickly and quietly, in the corner of the bath houses.
When she returns to her rooms, she digs up those clothes she'd been wearing forever, and burned them.
An acolyte visits her the next morning to lead the way to training, a boy who looks barely younger than her. He's twelve, he says when she asks. Twelve is the oldest acolyte you will find, before they can begin proper training.
She's thirteen, she tells him. Yes; her thirteenth birthday has been sometime in the past few months. She is sure of it.
The acolyte - whose name she never learns - leads her to a room where the other teenagers, most older than her, are training. The one leading the class was the teenage assassin who'd smiled at her after he attacked her. He smiles at her now, but once again, she doesn't smile back.
His name is Mikhail, he tells her. She tells him hers is Ansel of Briarcliff. That her father has sent her here to learn some humility, and how to defend herself.
He buys the lie with a sloping grin, and begins to teach her various ways to defeat an opponent in hand to hand combat.
Mikhail jokes that perhaps the strenuous physical activity might lessen the anger and hardness he can already see in her face. He encourages her to punch him, hard, and she does so. She pretends that the exercise is making her feel better, and forces the tightened muscles in her face to loosen, until a half smile dances on her lips.
But in her heart, a dark thrill has reared its head.
Every time she punches him, that blossom of anger blooms brighter and brighter and brighter, until she is suffocating against the fire of it.
As the lesson finishes, he ruffles her hair and jokes, "Maybe if you keep practicing, you'll get strong enough that none of us here would dare piss you off, for fear of revenge."
The words ring in her mind, in her heart. Strong enough. . .
When she stays behind to practice, she punches the practice dummy so hard her knuckles split, and bright blood slides down the back of her hand.
For fear of revenge. . .
She sets her jaw at her resolution, and finds that the colour no longer disgusts and repulses her.
No, certainly not, she realises the next day, as she punches Mikhail so hard in the face she gives him a nosebleed. The scarlet is almost artistic in its garishness.
The next day, she travels to Xandria, and arrives on Market Day. She spends the last of the witch's money on a metalsmith's stall, and when she travels back to the Silent Assassins' fortress, her satchel is weighed down with elaborate armour modelled in the design of the wolf of her family's crest.
The wolf she knows she must become, if she wants to stand any chance of getting Briarcliff back.
So she stays there and trains, and trains, and trains. Every other trainee in her class is randomly selected for a training session with the Mute Master, and they come back glowing with pride, teaching the rest of them little tricks and moves that give them an edge above the rest. It continues until Ansel is the only one left who hasn't, and she hates it, hates it even as she loses every sparring match she participates in because of it.
She is fifteen when the Mute Master finally summons her to speak with him. Heart in her throat, she bows, and desperately hopes that this means she'll be trained by him. This is my chance.
But no, she realises, heart sinking. From his hand gestures, and what is written in the letter she holds, she gleans that he wants her to travel to Xandria, and visit the troublesome Lord there, who seems to have become a little too forward in his attempts to kill them all. Personally, she can't help but think that she doesn't blame the Lord for wanting the embargo on his city lifted, but she bites her tongue as she travels out. It's a miserable two days of trudging across the glaringly hot sand, and sleeping under her cloak when the midday sun becomes too much, before she reaches Xandria.
It's Market Day, and the city is a thriving mass of merchants and buyers and wanderers. She slips through the crowd, and approaches the guards to Lord Berick's castle. They let her in when she explains what she's doing there, and she is escorted to see the man she's meant to be meeting.
Lord Berick strikes her as one who has seen better days. Haggard and ragged, he grins at her with an implication that sent shudders up her spine. He asks for her name, once, and she replies curtly, "Ansel," before continuing with the negotiations.
He merely says he will consider the Mute Master's offer, before he waves her off. She leaves, not wanting to do anything that could warrant retribution, from either the Lord of Xandria or the Mute Master.
She keeps training, and she is asked to return to Xandria twice more in the next year. She does so, and both times is made uncomfortable by Lord Berick's scrutiny. At some point Mikhail asks to date her, and she agrees, if only because it means she gets extra attention in lessons, and (though most of her denies this fact) she knows that she needs to let just a little bit of love into her life.
When she next goes to visit the Lord of Xandria, she is seventeen. He grins at her and says, "Where are your parents, Ansel of Briarcliff? Where is your sister?"
She goes for her weapons as a reflex, before she remembers: the guards always, always, strip her of them whenever she comes in. Nevertheless, her hands curl into fists as she snarls at him.
His grins just widens, and he takes a jaunty step forwards, until she has to tilt back her head to look him in the eye. "I could help you take back Briarcliff, you know," he crooned. "High King Loch is being particularly resistant to my attempts at an alliance with him. I could lend you a thousand men to storm his stronghold, and take back your home."
It is tempting, oh so tempting. . . He bends down, until he is almost whispering in her ear.
"All I would need in return, was the Mute Master's head on a silver platter to offer to the King of Adarlan. Don't you understand why I might want to lift this embargo that's choking the life out of my city?"
She jerks back, and says flatly, "I can't afford a silver platter."
He only chuckles. "Think on it, at least. I know you'll come to the right decision in the end. You're a bright girl, Ansel." He flicks his hand. "You are dismissed. Leave."
She leaves.
She only withstands two more meetings of him pushing her to accept his offer, before she cracks. The vision of a free Flatlands, and her ruling it again from Briarcliff Hall, is too tempting to pass up. She says as much to him, and he smiles that serpent's smile of his, and says, "I knew you'd make the right choice."
They plan out the barest bones of their plan to sack the Silent Assassins' fortress. She returns to the place, and all of the long trek back she is dizzy with the visions of what could soon happen, and is distracted by her dreams of her future for the next two weeks.
Until she comes along.
The day Celaena Sardothien stalks into the Keep is the day everything changed.
Ansel is in the courtyard as she comes in, trailing behind a guide, just as Ansel had on her first day. The bright-haired girl's eyes are flicking around the place, noting and analysing with the speed of a well trained assassin. Ansel stops in her motions to study her, but she can make out little beyond the feline grace that marked her as an assassin, and the heavy but well-made cloak that suggested a significant penchant for the luxurious.
When the assassins are set on her, as they are on all newcomers, she dispatches them much quicker than Ansel had, even without the blinding rage Ansel had possessed then. Once that has occurred, they all cluster round to survey the newest addition, and Celaena's eyes roam over them with that same calculating air. They latch on Ansel, who shoots her a conspirators grin. The girl ignores it, but she studies Ansel for far longer than she does the others.
Once the Mute Master is finished with her, Ansel leads her through the halls. For some reason, she doesn't resent spending time with Celaena, though the ceaseless chattering of the other female assassins in the Keep often annoys her. Despite the fact Celaena stinks almost as badly as Ansel had the day she'd arrived, and the girl's evident readiness to fight, Ansel is almost disappointed to leave her at the baths, and to track down some clothes for her.
Especially since Celaena's parting smile bounces between them like a ray of light, when they are two mirrors. Looking at Celaena is like looking at another version of herself, and if that version can smile genuinely, if only sparingly, then this version sure as hell can as well.
It had almost felt wrong to lie to her, as she talked about Briarcliff.
When she goes to retrieve her before dinner, Ansel has to restrain from raising an eyebrow at the exquisite gold and cobalt tunic Celaena wears. But. . . it's pretty, and it doesn't stick out too much, so Ansel lets it slide by without a comment.
When they march into the dining hall, that jovial mood that had brought on the barrage of questions she'd had for Celaena is killed by the sight of all those assassins eating and laughing together, who might not live to see the next year. But Ansel swallows her guilt, tosses her hair, and resumes the part of cheerful, carefree girl that they all know. She swiftly introduces them, and they all tuck in.
Ansel notices that Celaena hasn't touched the food, and remarks cheerfully that it's not poisoned. During the summary of the current situation with Lord Berick, Ansel once again feels guilt rise, but she squashes it, and keeps eating, keeps laughing. She has to squash her rage as well, though, when they discuss the foreign dignitaries come to hire their services, and she bitterly thinks of how Briarcliff could have used even five of these assassins six years ago. She notices when Celaena falls quiet, but doesn't push to girl to talk, instead choosing to converse with Mikhail instead.
After a while, though, she notices Celaena looking at Ilias, who, funnily enough, was looking right back. She shoves forwards, to whisper in Celaena's ear, "That's Ilias. The Master's son."
Celaena doesn't react, and in that moment Ansel feels so at ease she even comments, in a voice too low for any but Celaena and Mikhail to hear, "I'm surprised you caught Ilias's eye. He's usually too focused on his training and meditating to notice anyone - even pretty girls."
Celaena raises her eyebrows, but doesn't look surprised by the insinuation that she's pretty. Why would she, when she looks like that? She has to know already. "I've him for years, and he's never been anything but aloof with me."
They continue to talk, Mikhail teasing about maybe Ilias has a thing for blondes, until Mikhail asks the question Ansel's been wondering herself, "So, when your master beat the living daylights out of you, did you actually deserve it?"
Ansel shoots him a dark look - yes, she's been wondering about it herself, but to just ask so bluntly - but Celaena meets his stare with a level gaze, acting like she doesn't know that even Ilias is listening in as she replies. "I suppose it depends who's telling the story."
Ansel chuckles at the roundabout answer, and is more than vaguely surprised when Celaena elaborates on it.
"If Arobynn Hamel is telling the story, then yes, I suppose I did deserve it. I cost him a good deal of money - a kingdom's worth of riches, probably. I was disobedient and disrespectful, and completely remorseless about what I did." Celaena pretends like she hasn't seen how Mikhail's face has dropped, even as she holds his stare. "But if the two hundred slaves that I freed are telling the story, then no, I suppose I didn't deserve it."
Ansel finds herself gaping. "Holy gods."
She'd compared herself to this person - thought that they are similar. Would she free two hundred slaves, risking her life in the process, and knowing what the punishment would be? She thinks she knows the answer.
And then her heart sinks as she thinks that perhaps they aren't so similar after all.
But then the morning comes, and Ansel is reminded exactly how similar they are when she finally sees Celaena crest the final sand dune and come to collapse by the oasis. Ansel offers her a date, and Celaena takes it. Ansel does not feel pity for her; she knows how much she would hate it in Celaena's position. So she doesn't comment, and thinks she sees gratitude glitter on Celaena's face for an instant, before she completely submerges herself in the oasis water.
Ansel tries to lift Celaena's spirits a little at dinner by recounting her disastrous first run, and though she can tell Celaena resents the phrase "You'll do better tomorrow", it proves to be true. And so the days blur together into an easy, friendly routine of running and training, and Ansel begins to think she might have made an actual friend, one who she doesn't want to leave at the end of the month.
She ignores the nagging guilt at the back of her mind that tells her that Celaena will get caught up in her scheme with Lord Berick. She refuses to think about it.
She doesn't know why she asks Celaena to come with her to Xandria. There's no way she can let the girl come into the meeting with her. Not only would it be the worst idea possible, but Lord Berick would never allow it.
But for the first time since she came to the home of the Silent Assassins, she finds that she doesn't want to go alone.
Thankfully, Celaena agrees, and that night they lie together under the thousands of stars one finds in the Red Desert, lighting up the night as effectively as the flaming arrows they'd fired at Lord Berick's soldiers the previous night.
Ansel laughs to herself as Celaena starts grumbling yet again, and comments, more to the stars than Celaena, "Are you sure you're Celaena Sardothien? Because I don't think she'd actually be this fussy. I bet she's used to roughing it."
"I'm plenty used to roughing it," Celaena bites back. Ansel swallows her laugh. "That doesn't mean I have to enjoy it. I suppose that someone from the Western Wastes would find this luxurious."
Ansel chuckles, but the sound feels hollow in her throat. Her mind flashes back to the months of roughing it she'd done on the trip to the Red Desert, and murmurs, "You have no idea."
Ansel feels the question seize Celaena before it does, and yet is still surprised as her friend asks, "Are your lands as cursed as they claim?"
She has a bitter taste in her mouth as she talks about the Ironteeth witches, and the Crochan Queens, and the curse Rhiannon Crochan had cast with her dying breath. She has to swallow bile as she recounts the story of how her sister's friend Maddy had been dragged to her death and had the flesh stripped off her bones, and is infinitely grateful to Celaena for intercepting her tale with the right words, at the right times. Even so, she can't help the bitter words from pouring out as she says, "You know, these assassins have been here for ages, but what do they do? The Flatlands would prosper if they had an army of assassins to defend them. But no, they just sit in their oasis, silent and thoughtful, and whore themselves out to foreign courts. If I were the Master, I'd use our numbers for greatness - for glory. We'd defend every unprotected realm out there."
"So noble of you," Celaena says drily. "Ansel of Briarcliff, Defender of the Realm."
Ansel doesn't think she's imagining the edge of wistfulness to Celaena's tone as she said that, and she can't help but wonder what fallen kingdom Celaena's from. But soon enough, her musings drag her asleep.
The next day, Ansel extinguishes her guilt at leaving Celaena all alone in the bright noonday sun amongst the bustling market, and spends the hours without her friend discussing the final tactics for their plan with Lord Berick. He tells her that the attack on the fortress two days before was a diversion, to lull them into a false sense of security, and she grudgingly admits to the veracity of that plan. He gives her the instructions of which horses to steal, and how to get out of the city safely, even going so far as to slyly add that there is one for her friend too. How he knows about Celaena, Ansel doesn't care. So long as he leaves her alone.
She slips out of the castle, and it's painfully easy to lead Celaena round the back into the stables. Celaena's genuine admiration of Kasida, the dapple grey mare, tugs at Ansel's heart, and she grits her teeth. Reflections they may be, with enough secrets between them to fill a thousand mystery novels, but at least some of her feelings are real. Ansel wears a constant mask of deception, even towards her. Her only friend.
"Are you a strong rider?" She asks, and though she still hates herself for the lies, there's that thrill sparking in her blood at the prospect of what they're about to do.
"Of course."
"Good." Ansel doesn't give herself time to think as she unlocks Hisli's stall, and swings herself into the saddle. "Because you're going to have to ride like hell."
With that, Hisli starts galloping, and Ansel only hears a muffled curse before Celaena is also galloping, following her and Hisli wherever they plan to go. They shoot through the gate, the guards' cries nothing but noise swept away by the rushing wind, and Ansel lets out a whoop as that same wind caresses her wine red locks, rippling them behind her like spilled blood.
Sand sprays, twinkling like bright coral jewels in the summer sun. Ansel can still hear Celaena's curses behind her, and she laughs as her friend shouts, "Are you out of your damned mind?!"
"I don't want to walk home! We're taking the shortcut!" She shouts back, which only triggers another set of grumbles curses. "Live a little, Sardothien!"
And just like that, the glittering turquoise expanse of the Gulf of Oro reveals itself, and Ansel feels Celaena's demeanour change. Suddenly she's looser, freer, and she laughs a bright, shining laugh as they ride, just before Ansel veers off to the left, never breaking pace, but heading for the massive Desert Cleaver.
She hears Celaena's panicked "What are you doing?" and almost falters, but then she forces herself to keep going.
So she lets the adrenaline coursing through her body take over as she slants Celaena a fiendish grin. "We're going through it. What good is an Asterion horse if it can't jump?"
"You can't be serious."
Ansel glances over her shoulder then, at her friend and her drop dead terrified expression. For a heartbeat she allows her resolve to falter, then she says, "They'll chase us to the doors of the fortress otherwise!" And that was that.
"You planned this all along!"
Ansel doesn't allow the truth of those words to hit home as she dives into the canyon fast approaching. She hears Celaena swear colourfully, then she too plunges in.
The beating hooves echo off of the walls like firecrackers as they twist and turn with the rock, and then that fatal drop looms before them. Ansel doesn't allow herself to pause as she and Hisli go barrelling towards it and then they're flying, and Ansel is loosing a great joyous cry, and then they're landing, and Ansel can feel the ground crumbling beneath Hisli's hooves even as they continue.
A similar scream, and almighty thud alerts Ansel to Celaena's subsequent landing. They shoot off like arrows.
When Ansel turns, Celaena is right next to her. They slow their pace, and ride for a few minutes, before they stop. Ansel turns to Celaena with a brilliant grin. "Wasn't that wonderful?"
She expected the punch that knocks her off her horse. She only clutches her jaw and laughs.
They walk for a bit, letting the horses rest, then they make camp for the night. After a dashed meal of dates, they lie next to each other under the stars again, and Ansel comments that she thinks they would have learned different constellations to each other.
Celaena is silent for a moment, before she points, and begins to talk through the constellations she knows of. Ansel feels a wistful smile drift onto her face, but she makes sure she's listening as Celaena says, a raw, painful longing in her voice, "That's the stag. The Lord of the North."
Ansel's heart skips at the emotion in Celaena's voice, and has a sinking feeling that she knows what it means. "Why does he get a fancy title? What about the swan and the dragon?"
Celaena snorts. "Because the stag remains constant - no matter the season, he's always there."
Ansel aches at the thought of having that sort of solidarity in her life. "Why?"
Celaena takes a long breath, and Ansel knows what this means to her. "So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home. So they can look up at the sky, no matter where they are, and know Terrasen is forever with them."
Ansel hardly dares to ask, but, "Do you ever want to return to Terrasen?" At Celaena's look, she adds, "You talk about Terrasen the way my father used to talk about our land."
Celaena is silent for a moment and Ansel knows she's caught those horrible words. Used to. She takes a deep breath, and explains, "I lied to the Master when I came here." For some reason, venting to Celaena feels liberating, and her friend doesn't say anything as she speaks. "My father never sent me to train. And there is no Briarcliff, or Briarcliff hall. There hasn't been for five years.
"I was twelve when Lord Loch took several territories around Briarcliff, and then demanded we yield to him as well - that we bow to him as High King of the Wastes. My father refused. He said there was already one tyrant conquering everything east of the mountains - he didn't need one in the west, too." She takes a deep shuddering breath, and isn't ashamed to feel the tears pricking at her eyes as she continues her story. Celaena is silent the whole way, and Ansel is unbelievably grateful for that.
She wipes her eyes as she says, "So I've been here ever since, training for the day when I'm strong enough and fast enough to return to Briarcliff and take back what is mine. Someday, I'll march into High King Loch's hall and repay him for what he did to my family. With my father's sword." Her hand drifts down, and brushes the elaborate hilt. "This sword will end his life. Because this sword is all I have left of them."
She looks over at Celaena, whose eyes glisten with unshed tears, and grips her hand. And then her eyes trace her face, clear now, but marred with ghastly bruises when she first arrived. "Where do men find it in themselves to do such monstrous things? How do they find it acceptable?"
A heartbeat of silence, then Celaena's firm hand is gripping hers right back. "We'll make them pay for it in the end," she promises, and her voice cracks. "We'll see to it that they pay."
"Yes." And in that moment, Ansel knows there's no way she can sell out her friend. She knows she must find a way to get her out. "Yes, we will."
They lie there for who knows how long, hands clasped tightly together like children in a folktale, just two young but solemn girls lying together in silence under the bright, bright stars.
When they return home, Ansel is so focused on both keeping up the charade that she isn't about to betray the entirety of the Silent Assassins, and on keeping Celaena safe, that she can't find it in her to feel resentful that her friend had so quickly made the cut and was taken to train with the Mute Master. Even the original stab of jealousy on the day was drowned out by self hatred - even Celaena was nice enough to take the fall for her. Would she have done it back?
Again, she doesn't want to know the answer.
The days pass briefly, and the mornings spent clearing up the stables with Celaena are almost fun. She begins to dread the ticking of the clock, and the passing of time.
Although she doesn't want to admit it, guilt envelops her during the night she spends dancing with Mikhail. She notices Celaena dancing briefly with Ilias, but the knowing smiles exchanged between her fellow assassins as they cast her and Mikhail suggestive glances grate on her nerves.
Her nerves are almost grated to nonexistence the next morning. With the eventful day only a few days away, she's been steadily growing more and more nervous as time trickles by like sand in an hourglass. She passes Mikhail on her way to meet Celaena in the stables, where he's talking to a fellow assassin, who's clapping him on the back and congratulating him. Said assassin then spots her, and catcalls after her as she walks. She ignores him, but it's the final straw, as a dark, resentful thing spreads its wings over her mood.
When she meets Celaena, she's in that point of no return when she will say nothing but what's on her mind, no matter however dark and terrible her thoughts are. As they talk, and as they argue, she watches the cheery exhaustion in Celaena's face harden to anger, like how sand hardens to sculpted glass. She knows that what she's saying is wrong, but she's so angry, all the time, and she's been so nervous and upset and just generally on edge recently, and she just wants to let it all out. . .
But the words Celaena speaks are poison in her ears. "You want to know the truth about you, Ansel? The truth is, even if you go home and get what you want, no one will give a damn if you take back your speck of territory - no one will even hear about it. Because no one except for you will care."
That is the final spark that lights the inferno.
Ansel throws down her shovel, even as she feels her lips go white with anger. She stalks out, into the bright desert sun, and does not look back.
The next morning, she wakes only to realise that Celaena still hasn't returned from her lesson with the Master. It strikes her then - not just the guilt, but the knowledge: that if she wanted to get Celaena out, today would be the last chance to do it.
So she drags herself out of bed, and resolves herself that after their fight, she will be the only one in the stables today. She is not surprised when Celaena doesn't walk through the door.
When she returns to their rooms, Ansel's heart is beating hard in her throat. The two goblets of wine shake in her hands and she wills them to still, taking a deep breath, and pushing open the door.
Celaena is still asleep. Ansel shakes her awake, and smiles fondly to herself at her friend's grumbling. The subsequent apologies they exchange are painful, and Ansel doesn't breathe as she says, "To making amends - and fond memories."
Her heart breaks even further as Celaena says, "To being the most fearsome and imposing girls the world has ever seen." And then she drinks.
For a heartbeat, a glimmer of realisation shines bright in her friends eyes - along with the hints of betrayal. Then she slumps to the side, unconscious.
Ansel rides with her out on Kasida whilst everyone is at dinner. She told Mikhail earlier that she was tired and would probably go to bed early instead of coming down, so no one looks for her as she leaves Celaena in the sand under her cloak, with Kasida standing over her keeping watch. As she trudges back to the fortress, she makes sure to leave the door unlocked for Lord Berick's troops. She will check on it later.
The night falls, and it passes both slowly and quickly, the lights of the fortress bright against the gathering darkness.
Celaena does not return, and Ansel is glad.
As the first dregs of dawn begin to turn the horizon into a purple bruise, Ansel quickly and quietly slits the throats of the assassins on the night watch. They are a few of the older ones, and one of them she recognises as one who had trained her once, years ago. She does not spend too long studying their faces as she hides the bodies.
She looks out across the sand, and though it is still too dark to make anything out with any certainty, she sees the flicker of hundreds of shadows, and knows that Lord Berick's men are approaching, like crows on a battlefield.
The doors are still unlocked, and Ansel ensures they remain so even as the first early rising assassin lets out a piercing cry that shakes the world.
Ansel moves.
She swipes up the water pitcher, which she spiked earlier with a hint of gloriella. Not enough to kill him, but enough to paralyse him effectively enough so that there will be no fight when she takes off his head in one severing blow.
She is walking towards the Master's chamber, briskly, but steadily, steps at the same tempo as her beating heart, when Mikhail comes out of his rooms and spots her. She sees his clothes, and knows that he was the one who raised the cry, and that he is going out to fight.
He smiles when he sees her, his face grim set and eyes grave, but then he glances at the pitcher in her hands, and sees some of the darkness in her face. He steps in front of her, blocking her off from the Master's chamber, and says, "Don't do it."
How he figured it out, she doesn't care. She snarls at him. "Get out of my way."
They meet eyes, and she knows he sees the situation: he will have to kill her, or she'll kill him.
She sets down the pitcher of poisoned water, and slashes at him. He dodges, but back up - right to the stairs that lead up to where she needs to go. Good.
He has taught her all she knows. But she lets some of that wild, angry, feral nature within her spring forth, and she slits his throat, just as Lord Loch and his monsters of men slit her father's and sister's throats so long ago.
He sags back. She cannot look away as she sees that light in his eyes, ever shining, and always, always unfailingly right, die.
She ascends the stairs. Ilias, alerted to her presence no doubt by the clash of steel on steel, is standing at the top of the stairwell. Surprise flickers in his eyes as she recognises her, then he sees the blood on her sandy clothes where it had sprayed from Mikhail's throat, and then those sea green eyes he shares with his father narrow. He pointedly places one foot behind the other, and as his eyes meet hers, they are both braced to fight.
But she can see hesitation there. He does not want to kill her. So she utilises that, and strikes first, driving her sword into his belly. He lets out a choking sob of pain, and falls to the floor.
Somehow, the Master has not detected the chaos going on below, even as the first few soldiers breach the walls and shouts ring out. He turns as she comes in, his eyes widening at the blood on her, then his ears prick at the screams emanating from below.
She schools her features into an expression of innocence. "L- Lord Berick's men are attacking," she gasps out. "They've breached the walls."
The Mute Master stands, and drinks from the pitcher of water she offers him without a second thought.
He freezes just after he swallows it. His mouth moves as his eyes meet hers, as then he looks past her and sees his son, crawling to try to protect his father. His mouth moves again, like he wants to speak, but has forgotten how.
She lifts her sword - her father's sword - and starts babbling. She isn't even entirely sure what she's saying, only that the words pour out like tears, and every step takes her closer to eternal damnation.
She can do this. For her father's memory, for her sister's memory, she could do this. She could accept those one thousand men Lord Berick was offering her in return for a job well done, and use them not only to conquer and take back the Flatlands, and proclaim herself Queen of the Wastes, but also to send a message to the conquering tyrants lording it over their empires around the world. That they did meet their end, and that they weren't invincible. That she is that title Celaena had whispered jokingly in the middle of a distant desert, with only the two of them, the horses, the sand and the stars to hear. She is Ansel of Briarcliff, Defender of the Realm, and she will stop at nothing to meet her goals.
She lifts the sword to severe the Master's head from his neck as he lies before her, prostrate and helpless.
Then the dagger strikes her arm, and she screams.
She whirls to see Celaena stalking towards her, and the rage is a living thing on her friend's beautiful face. Ansel turns to face her, but Celaena lunges in a motion limned with fluid, feline grace. . . and then they're wrestling, kicking, scratching like two alley cats. . .
And then Celaena flings herself back, breathing heavily, and parrots the words Mikhail said to her before he died. "Don't do it."
Ansel's breath is a ragged flame in her throat as she laughs, and there is nothing funny about the situation. "I thought I told you to go home."
Celaena is facing her now, and her blade is shaking - with adrenaline, or fear, or anger, Ansel doesn't know. "Why?" She asks, and her voice is quiet as the first beam of bright sunlight strikes through the window.
"Why?" Ansel feels her face twist in hatred; at the thought of what she'd done, at the thought of what she will do, at the light shining around Celaena, crowning her as the Princess of Goodness. She is a vision in that moment, with her gold hair, and gold rimmed eyes, and the fire sparking there. Despite the darkness she wields as an assassin, despite her love for the stars and the night, Ansel knows that she belongs here, in this moment, with the light of the lost goddess Mala shining on her, and willing her to do the right thing, in spite of the anger that haunts her over the downfall of Terrasen.
Ansel knows that she will never, ever, be that nice, that honest, that inherently good. And she hates it.
Her voice is low and vicious as she says, "Because Lord Berick promised me a thousand men to march into the Flatlands, that's why. Stealing those horses was exactly the public excuse he needed to attack this fortress. And all I had to do was take care of the guards and leave the gate open last night. And bring him this," she gestures with her hand. "The Master's head." She takes a deep breath, then looks her friend straight in the eye. "Put your sword down, Celaena." Don't make me kill you, too.
"Go to hell."
Ansel chuckles. "I've been to hell. I spent some time there when I was twelve, remember? And when I march into the Flatlands with Lord Berick's troops, I'll make sure High King Loch sees a little bit of hell, too. But first. . ."
The back and forth they exchange is painful to Ansel's ears, and heart. Acutely aware of the battle raging outside, and the bright sun sliding through the clouds on the horizon like sand through her fingers, she is only half listening as Celaena presses a hand to her heart. "Because I know what it feels like." She shakes her head; she doesn't want to here words condolence, or pity, or to hear that her actions, whilst wrong, are understandable to Celaena. Celaena is good. Ansel is a monster.
And it will take a monster to drive out a monster.
"I know what it feels like to have that kind of hate, Ansel. I know how it feels. And this isn't the way. This," she gestures around her wildly, at the corpses and blood and everything evil. Everything Ansel. "This is not the way."
"Says the assassin," Ansel snaps back, but the words are weak, just as her will is weak, she is weak. . .
Celaena's next words fall on deaf ears. And Ansel's words are deathly quiet.
"These men," she chokes out, lifting her sword. Alarm flashes in Celaena's eyes, but she remains steady in the face of the storm of love and loss roaring between them. "These men destroy everything."
"I know."
"You know and yet you do nothing! You're just a dog chained to your master." She steps forward, like she can't bear the distance, and her sword arm sags. Celaena's eyes are relieved, but still wary. Always wary, always able to spot the monsters of the world.
"You could come with me." Her hand grazes Celaena's cheek, the edge of the long faded bruise there. "The two of us alone could conquer the Flatlands, and with Lord Berick's troops. . . I would make you my right hand. We'd take the Flatlands back."
"I can't." Celaena chokes, and though the next words they exchange are acid, her refusal genuinely hurts Ansel.
She takes a breath. "So be it."
She strikes, and though the girls grapple fiercely, it's their words that hit harder than anything else as they converge and dodge. And yet when Ansel holds Celaena in an unbreakable grip, and presses her father's sword to her throat, even as she spits, "Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right here" she knows she can't do it.
The question is, does Celaena know she can't?
And though Ansel laughs and mocks Celaena's vanity as she struggles to get some distance between Ansel's sword and her face, she doesn't want to, and it still hurts like hell when Celaena breathes, "You're insane." She snorts, feigning that nonchalance the old Ansel had sported, but it was overrun with the bitter tinge of regret when her friend said her next words. "Who killed Mikhail?"
"I did." She is proud of herself, for not letting her voice waver as she talks Celaena through what she did, even though she can feel the disgust rolling off Celaena in waves.
"Ansel?" Celaena asks. Ansel spits her reply. But the last thing she expects Celaena to say is, "You want to know what the Master taught me during all those lessons?"
The question makes her freeze up, so she is tense as Celaena whispers, "This," and strikes.
In half a moment, Celaena is on top of Ansel, her own sword pressed to her neck, and a girlish "Don't," slips out, with that carefree voice she had always used around the assassins in the fortress.
She knows it affects Celaena, as her friend croaks, "Was it ever real?"
Ansel closes her eyes against the reality of it as she whispers back, "There were some moments where it was. The moment where I sent you away, that was real."
She feels Celaena make her decision even before she lifts the sword a fraction of an inch off her neck. "You have twenty minutes to pack up your things and leave the fortress." She says quietly. "Because in twenty minutes, I'm going up to the battlements, and I'm going to fire an arrow at you. And you'd better hope that you're out of range by then, because if you're not, that arrow is going straight through your neck."
When Celaena removes her sword, Ansel gets to her feet, waiting. Celaena hands out her father's sword, the wolf shaped pommel first. How Celaena knew what she was waiting for, Ansel doesn't want to consider. She feels her eyes dampen, and she opens her mouth to say something - anything, thank you - but Celaena cuts her off. "Go home, Ansel."
So with those bitter parting words, Ansel hops over Mikhail's corpse like he's a piece of fallen debris, and runs away.
She counts in her head as she runs to her rooms, and shoves a few sets of clothes into a saddlebag. She throws in a few weapons for good measure, then she's running to the stables to saddle Hisli, even as the counting in her head reaches ten minutes. It takes agonisingly long for her to fit Hisli in riding gear, but then they're off, the Red Desert a blur of blood beneath the mare's hooves.
She presses on and on and on, faster faster faster. When the counter has reached twenty minutes, her heart sinks, even as Hisli keeps thundering on.
She knows she is not out of range.
She prays that Celaena is skilled enough to grant her a quick, painless death, though it is far less than she deserves. The thud of hooves grates at her nerves as she counts away the twentieth minute.
And then, precisely after the twenty first, she hears a bowstring twang.
An arrow turns over and over as it arcs through the air, and embeds itself in the sand inches behind Hisli's back hooves.
And even though hatred and vengeance swirl in Ansel's heart as she rides away, she knows enough to recognise that act of mercy for what it is.
A gift, from one friend, to another.
Despite this, she doesn't stop riding, not until sundown, when Hisli is exhausted and she stops to rest and consume some of her meagre food supplies. In the following days, time whirls by like the sand in a gale, and she cannot be bothered to pay attention to it.
The years fly by. That moment when she marches into Briarcliff with her army of her father's old supporters, in hiding, but no longer, is one she revels in. The years she spent training, and the training regimes she passes onto her troops, cut through the horde of men High King Loch has defending him with ease, and when Ansel faces him alone, with nothing but his sword between them, she laughs, and slits his throat.
The sound of the blood splattering on the floor is a revulsive mixture of music to her ears, and something far too like the sound of her sister's blood falling to the ground.
When she hears that Celaena was sent to Endovier, only a few weeks later, she feels the knowledge of it settle heavy in her soul. Her friend, the assassin who paid for a healer's education, the assassin who saved hundreds of lives, and spared her own, the last person to deserve such a fate, had been thrown into a death camp.
If Celaena had been caught, something must have gone very, very wrong.
Ansel can almost feel the pull across the Wastes, urging her to repay her life debt, and save her, but she knows she can't. Her throne and popularity is tenuous at best here, and she still has to fight off rebel contenders who still supported Lord Loch on an almost daily basis. Gallivanting off to free assassins surely dead would not enamour her to her people.
But if anyone can survive Endovier, Celaena can.
When the winter begins to die, and Ansel deems it safe to cross the Wastes and break her friend out, she immediately sets off. She has reached the foothills of the White Fang Mountains, near to where she'd encountered the Ironteeth witch so many years ago, and the spring buds are just beginning to wither, when she hears from a passing tradesman that Celaena Sardothien has won the competition to become the King's Champion, and has now been put to work dispatching his enemies.
Mourning her friend's new form of enslavement, Ansel is forced to return.
Months later, even she hears it, on the very western tip of the Wastes, when Aelin Galathynius, the lost Queen of Terrasen, makes her stand in Mistward in Wendlyn. The messenger is one of Murtaugh Allsbrook's original dispatches, and despite the many weeks he must have been spreading the knowledge, despite the long, arduous trip get there, his eyes have not lost their feverish gleam. Hope, that gleam is called. Hope.
And for Terrasen, for the country of her estranged friend, Ansel allows herself to hope as well.
After weeks of silence, though everyone is desperate for news of Aelin, and her movements, finally, someone brings Ansel the sort of message she's been waiting for.
A red haired young woman, one with superior fighting abilities, had been using her name. In pit fights.
And so Ansel quickly and quietly moves the bulk of her army to the edge of the Anascual Mountains, seizing with both hands the chance to repay her life debt. Leaving behind a few legions to defend her territory, she camps with them, awaiting the orders that her overly bossy friend is sure to send.
She is not disappointed.
Soon enough, she receives a letter from Celaena, explaining that in fact, she was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, and that if Ansel and her new subjects didn't assist with her cause, she'd soon find an irate princess-turned-assassin-turned-queen on her doorstep, ready to reclaim the life she'd passed up the chance to end all those years ago.
Ansel laughs as she reads it.
Then she receives the second dispatch, ordering her to go to a spot in the Gulf of Oro. She's just heard about the fall of Rifthold, and how Aelin's glass wall had been shattered, and knows that this is war. This will not be pretty, and this will not be pleasant.
But she looks forward to meeting her friend all the same.
She sends half of her army North to Terrasen, and takes the other half South.
She takes a great amount of pleasure in the sacking of Melisande's capital, though she doubts that their queen is equally thrilled. Ansel takes her sweet time with the interrogation in the dungeons, and even enjoys seeing the young queen bleed and suffer for the monstrosity she'd allied herself with. Of her own free will, as her wiles and manipulations had ensured, and without the influence of those rings or collars.
Ansel offers a final insult by mounting her wolf flag, and Terrasen's flag side by side on the battlements, and stealing Kasida as a gift to Aelin when she next saw her.
Then they sailed south - to the beach described in Aelin's letter.
When they land on the sand, at first there is no one and nothing to greet them. Then Ansel's sharp eyes spot the small boat from the Dead Islands docked a few hundred metres down, and knows that all she had to do is wait.
Sure enough, soon a convoy made of equal parts Fae and human, crests the dunes, and takes in her assembled fleet. She sees the fear as they balk at seeing their enemy's ships, and grins to herself as Aelin, a dramatic shadowy figure marching down the dunes, approaches without fear, terrifying the shit out of her subjects with her apparent recklessness.
As her old friend draws closer, Ansel grins that full, laughing grin of hers, and calls out, "Who you permission to use my name in pit fights, Aelin?"
Aelin doesn't miss a beat as she strides, and replies smoothly, "I gave myself permission, Ansel, the day I spared your life instead of ending you like the coward you are."
Though the words are harsh, there is no venom behind them. "Hello, bitch," she purrs.
"Hello, traitor," Aelin purrs right back. She surveys the gathered fleet, and Ansel sees it then: the queenliness that the both of them had lacked when they last met, and that they had both since learned to possess. "Looks like you made it on time after all."
Standing there together again, on the edge of the world, just at the cusp between ancient and fresh, beginning and ending, Ansel had never felt so empowered.
To being the most fearsome and imposing girls the world has ever seen.
And so as Ansel grins at her friend, her ally, her fellow queen, the future has never looked so bright.