This is my first TOG fanfic, and I only finished the series so far recently. But I loved it, and there were so many ideas for an alternate plotline my mind was crammed with, that this was born. I suggest you don't read it if you haven't read The Assassin's Blade as well as the rest of the series, or it might not make sense. I'm not sure how far I will take this storyline.
Disclaimer: I don't own Celaena Sardothien, or any characters in the phenomenal Throne of Glass series. They, and most of the dialogue in this chapter at least, belong to Sarah J. Maas.
It was enough of a struggle for Celaena Sardothien to ignore the dozens upon dozens of guards in the room, stationed in every slightest nook and cranny; every window; every door; almost behind every seat that the jury sat in. Did they not feel uncomfortable with their overbearing guards breathing down their necks? she wondered. Did they not trust the chains of their famed Adarlanian steel to hold her, or did they think she would evaporate into shadows, and slit their throats with all the arrogance of a Queen passing down a sentence to a common criminal?
A Queen of Shadows. She smirked. She liked that.
It was enough that she had to bear the heated stares of those hateful Lords of Adarlan, who had watched, uncomplaining, as their King went and slaughtered their unthreatening neighbours for nothing more than the thrill of power. It was enough that Sam Cortland was dead, and it was all her fault.
But she had to look this hateful man, her enemy, in the eye, and plead guilty, or not guilty.
The King of Adarlan was much as she remembered from that one visit in her childhood: cold, threatening, unyielding, and with an intense gravity that had people shying away from him, just because he seemed to fill the room with him aggressive demeanour.
She couldn't look at him. Couldn't meet his hard gaze with her own incriminating irises. Even now she was drowning in the past as she heard screams of Terrasen's people from nine years ago, and smelt the smoke drifting over the meadows. No. She couldn't look at him. To look at him would be to break and fall to her knees before him, as so many nations had done before her.
She felt his chuckle before she heard it, a low rumble that vibrated deep in her chest and rubbed together two stones to release a spark of defiance.
"I didn't believe the rumours until now," the king said, "but it seems the guards were not lying about your age."
A scream developed in her throat and scraped her vocal cords, desperate for her to let it out. She clenched her jaw. She wished she could move to cover her ears, but the manacles were too tight.
"How old are you?"
She kept her mouth locked shut. Sam was gone. No act of compliance or hatred could ever bring him back.
"Did Rourke Farran get his claws in you, or are you just being wilful?"
She suppressed a shudder at the image of Farran's leering, scarred face grinning wickedly as he inspected her like a pig for slaughter. She remained silent.
"Very well, then," the king said, evidently unfazed by her lack of answer. He sifted through the papers, the rustling the only sound in the stark room. "Do you deny that you are Celaena Sardothien? If you do not speak, then I will take your silence for acquiescence, girl."
Still she said nothing.
"Then read the charges, Councillor Rensel."
A dutiful voice began to drone. "You, Celaena Sardothien, are hereby charged with the deaths of the following..." she zoned out as he read through her entire bloody history. Arobynn had never missed a chance to increase her notoriety, and after every successful kill he spread the word that Adarlan's Assassin had struck again. And now, after so many years of luxury that came from blood money, her right to that title would be the signature on her death warrant. She realised vaguely that the man had stopped talking. "Do you deny any of the charges?"
She controlled her breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
"Girl," said the councilman. "we will take your lack of response to mean that you do not deny them. Do you understand that?"
She didn't even bother to nod. She was fully prepared to spit on their pristine marble floor when another voice spoke up. "You are required to answer, Miss Sardothien."
The new speaker stumbled over her name. His voice was low and soft.
And utterly familiar.
She didn't move her head, but her eyes snapped up to meet identical replicas of themselves. She didn't spare the king a glance, zooming straight in on the bob of bright hair sitting to his left.
Aedion Ashryver.
Her cousin had changed. Gone was the surprisingly compassionate companion who had been her only peer she was friends with at nine years old. In his place was a hulking man of muscle and sinew, eye blue glass marbles shot through with strings of gold. He surveyed her with shallow indifference, but she analysed his expression further and saw shock and desperation writ there for her to see.
"Then I will decide your sentence," the king growled. For a moment she felt dizzy, before she understood the magnitude of the chance she'd just lost. Her cousin had given her a chance to beg for mercy, to survive, and in her shock she had missed it.
Though it was debatable whether she would have taken it anyway. Sam was dead. Her beloved cousin was a slave under the king's yoke. What was there for her to live for?
Footsteps sounded against the floor, the weight of which meant that she knew who it was instantly, even before the king reached her chair. "Look at me." She remained staring at his fancy leather boots, soaked with the blood of a continent. "Look at me." Should she? A final act of defiance. It was too tempting to let up, in her desperate situation. "Look at me."
Celaena Sardothien, once called Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, raised her head and looked the King of Adarlan in the eye.
She knew those dark eyes; she knew that weathered face. He had so often frequented her young nightmares after the banquet where he planted a worm of dark magic in her mind and almost caused her to self-combust. But now he wore no crown.
The impulse to flee was so unfamiliar that it was a moment before she recalled what it was, last felt on the night she abandoned Lady Marion for dead, had lost the Amulet of Orynth, and Terrasen had fallen.
I need to get away.
"Do you have any last requests before I announce your sentence?" He grinned triumphantly. Somehow, despite the protection of all the walls Arobynn had taught her to build, he knew he terrified her.
As he began to walk away, that rebellious fire flared up for what might be it's last time. "I do," she called out in a hoarse voice. She ignored her cousin, so she didn't have to analyse his expression, and focused solely on the king. She smiled her last darkly chaotic smile. "Make it quick."
It was a challenge and he knew it.
"Oh?" He turned to face her and the cold of his gaze instantly put the fire out. "If it's an easy death you desire, Celaena Sardothien -" even in her peripheral vision, she saw Aedion flinch "-I will certainly not give it to you. Not until you have adequately suffered."
Everyone held their breath.
"You, Celaena Sardothien, are sentenced to nine lives' worth of labour in the Salt Mines of Endovier."
What did you think? What do you think Aedion will do?