If there was one person Celaena Sardothien could not stand, it was Lysandra… She hadn't actually ever learned her last name. She frowned as the person in question danced across the floor, all the way to Celaena herself, bowing before her and smirking wickedly.

Celaena leaned against the wall and started to pick at underneath her fingernails with a dagger just as sharp as the courtesan's smile. Neither said a word as Lysandra retreated to back to the center of the room. The piano piece reached a crescendo as Lysandra performed an arabesque. The music ended abruptly as she dropped to the floor.

It would be so easy for Celaena to throw the dagger right at her neck.

But the music started again once more and she rose, as if from the dead, slowly, elegantly, passionately. Watching her dance was similar to playing a sonata. There was the same emotion, the same concentration, the same drive.

It almost made Celaena forget that she hated her.

Lysandra practiced for hours. At least, that was what it felt like. In reality, she knew it was only one. That was all the time Madam Clarisse allowed her. Such a shame. She was quite talented. She might have been less insufferable if she had been a dancer as well.

She would have been beneath Celaena's notice anyway, and they wouldn't always be at each other's throats, claws poised but never swiping down for the killing cut.

"What a good guard dog you are," Lysandra said. "I feel so safe." Sarcasm dripped off her tongue like blood from a blade.

Celaena flicked her gaze up to see her standing right in front of her. How had she moved so silently? "Careful," she said. "Keep bothering to pay attention to me, and people might think you actually like me."

She scoffed. "I'm done, Sardothien. Let's go. Clarisse will be angry if I'm late again."

"I don't see how that's a problem for me," Celaena said as she pushed herself off of the wall. The two walked out of the studio, down a flight of stairs, and into the street, where their carriage stood waiting. The driver erected himself from a slumped position as he saw the girls exit the building. They pretended to not notice his negligence. Although, he really should have known better.

Celaena was willing to bet that he wouldn't last more than two months in Rifthold's underworld.

They unceremoniously climbed into the carriage, ignoring the footman with his hat tipped in respect who held the door open for them.

They didn't speak a word until the carriage started rolling towards Madam Clarisse's mansion. "Why do you suppose Clarisse was so adamant about assigning me as your guard?" Celaena wondered suddenly.

Lysandra was silent at first. Whether because she didn't want to deign to respond or because she hadn't heard the assassin, Celaena didn't know. Eventually, Celaena's heartrate returned to normal and she almost forgot she had asked the question when Lysandra replied, "Perhaps Clarisse was tired of my company."

The response startled Celaena. "It's probably because of her vanity," Celaena said without thinking. "She doesn't want anyone's beauty to surpass her own."

She was looking at the window, feeling her cheeks warm—from a mixture of anger and embarrassment and hatred—but she knew Lysandra was wearing a smirk as big as the glass castle which dominated Celaena's view. If not for her profession, it would have been the ugliest thing she'd laid eyes on.

It disappeared as the carriage turned a sharp corner into the depths of Rifthold.

Sam Cortland, a pupil who trained alongside Celaena, had been sent off on an assignment to Skull's Bay. In his place, he had left a vacancy, a position as Lysandra's personal guard for escorts and such, in which Clarisse had wanted another of Arobynn's assassins to fill.

The four of them, Clarisse, Arobynn, Lysandra, and Celaena, had all been in the room when Clarisse had insisted that he assign Celaena to be that personal guard. He had tried to evade giving a direct no, and that had been his downfall. Clarisse was clever, and she had refuted every argument of his and left the Assassin's Keep a smug woman that day.

Before it had even had a chance to stop before Clarisse's gargantuan house, the carriage started moving once more after Lysandra sprinted out of it, still looking flawless as ever.

When it turned onto the well-known path to the Keep, Celaena opened the window slot that separated the inside of the carriage and the driver. She ordered him to stop by a bookstore before he drove her home. Preferably one that sold whiskey too.

The next day, she waited for Lysandra for twenty minutes. The seconds ticked by slowly, each one twisting her patience until she finally sprung up from her seat, exited the carriage, and made her way down the path the Clarisse's door, her skirts rippling silently all the way.

She ordered the man who opened the door for her to take her to Lysandra's room. The inside of Clarisse's house was even more grotesque than the Keep was. Sculptures and paintings of eroticism covered the walls and were positioned in the alcoves with strategic placing. It was bright here, unlike in the Keep were it was assassins, who preferred to stay in the shadows, who dwelled there.

The Keep was morbid. Clarisse's house was cold.

Everything had a purpose. Everything was mapped out, and nothing was out of place. The art spoke of love, but there was none to be found.

Lysandra's quarters were on the third floor in the west wing. Celaena didn't have to look out her windows to know that they overlooked the street. She wondered if she had seen the carriage outside and simply hadn't cared.

When Celaena glided into her room, she saw the courtesan's body laid out on a sofa like a corpse on an altar. Her white silk dressing gown even resembled a shroud. "I knew I had forgotten something," she muttered.

"Are we going or not?" Celaena said sharply.

"I'm afraid I'm indisposed at the moment," Lysandra drawled. "Feel free to mock me or pay whatever insult your limited imagination can think of."

"I don't take advantage of the helpless," Celaena said.

"You're an assassin," she retorted. "It's in your job description."

"Is it your monthly?" Celaena said instead of replying.

"Or something," Lysandra waved. Her hand dropped back to her stomach forcefully as if it was too much of an effort to keep it raised.

She didn't know what it was that moved her to, but Celaena reached into a pocket—she always had her dresses made with numerous pockets—and pulled out a wrapped candy. Walking forward, she held her arm outstretched.

"I'm surprised you aren't running out the door by now. Do you not understand? You're free to go. You're dismissed."

"I can't believe you would turn down chocolate," Celaena said.

"Why didn't you say it was chocolate?" Lysandra nearly ripped Celaena's fingers off as she grasped the candy. It was in her mouth, the wrapper discarded to floor, in seconds.

Lysandra closed her eyes and moaned. Celaena could see why Clarisse invested so much time, and money, into her. If she didn't know her, she would have been tempted to make an appointment with her herself. Lysandra smiled as if she knew what Celaena was thinking about. She resembled a cat, feral and elegant and carefree, so much so that Celaena wouldn't have been at all surprised if she started purring.

Perhaps not a cat so much as a lynx or lioness, or even a ghost leopard.

"If you're going to stay, you might as well sit," Lysandra said.

Celaena did. On the coffee table.

"It's midday," she said. "Why aren't you dressed?"

Lysandra sat up slowly, her body tense. She swung her legs to floor and crossed her bare feet. She looked questioningly at Celaena and shrugged. "I wanted you to feel better about your questionable fashion choices."

Celaena snorted.

They spent the rest of the day sitting there, talking. Even laughing occasionally. And their smiles were not menacing.

Celaena dismissed the piano player the next day, and she played while Lysandra danced.

They did it again the next day.

And the next.

She tried to teach Lysandra, but Lysandra's fingers kept fumbling with the keys, playing one note instead of another, failing to keep a consistent tempo, pushing on wrong pedals. "At least there's something you aren't good at," Celaena laughed. She kicked Lysandra off the bench before she could permanently scar Celaena's ears.

Lysandra danced in a plain dark green dress. The simple cut suited her well. It accentuated her collarbone and breasts. Celaena stuck to playing pieces she had memorized so she could look at Lysandra while she danced instead of at music notes.

Sam came back two weeks later, and the girls pretended they still hated each other. They even nearly erupted into a physical fight in Clarisse's living room. "I don't want them to use us against each other," Lysandra explained later when they met secretly in a hat shop the next day. "I don't want to compete with you. Not anymore. Never again."

"Never again," Celaena echoed.

They continued to meet in secret. Time and clients and training did not always allow them to, but they rarely went several days without seeing each other.

They took walks in obscure parks and attended masquerades. They shopped in rarely visited stores and dined in charming, yet small, cafes. They could be seen together by everyone, but they were unknown to all of them.

"I wish we could appear in public together," Lysandra lamented during one of their rendezvouses in a bookstore. Celaena doubted they would be spotted in this part of town, but she kept watch as they browsed the shelves just in case. "We would be a formidable team," Lysandra continued. "No one would stand a chance against us."

"We can't," Celaena said. Celaena Sardothien did not have friends. She did not have weaknesses. Arobynn Hamel would have torn her apart long ago if she had.

"I know," Lysandra reassured her. "I just wish we could."

"I have to go," Celaena said. She dropped her hand from the book spine she had been stroking, turned on her heels, and started to leave.

Lysandra followed her. "Wait, Celaena," she said. "Please don't. We can talk about something else. Please don't—"

The shop door closed after she walked out, cutting off the rest of her words.

Celaena climbed into her carriage, but Lysandra scrambled in after her just before it took off. "Please don't shut me out."

"Don't you get it?" Celaena demanded. "Arobynn would use you against me if he found out. I've never had a friend before, and this—us—would delight him to no end."

"So you want to go back to before? You were miserable before. You hid it, but I knew you were—"

Celaena laughed. "How could you possibly—"

"Because I was the exact same. I was lost and confused, and everyone was trying to hurt me, so I built iron walls just like you. For years, I went through the motions, waking up and putting on a show and then crying myself to sleep."

"I—"

"I don't believe you," Lysandra said. Celaena didn't even know what she had been about to say.

She didn't know what she wanted to say next either.

So she kissed her.

She'd never kissed anyone before, which was sort of embarrassing to think about. She had been kissed before, but she had never initiated the motion.

But Lysandra knew how to kiss.

And she knew how to kiss back.

It wasn't a hard kiss of desperation, and it wasn't something soft and slow, unlike so many kisses were in all the books Celaena had read. It was a kiss that said You are my weakness, but you are also my strength.

They made each other better, and Celaena could see why Clarisse had been adamant about assigning Celaena to guard Lysandra. Their hate had torn each other down, and it had been a strong thing, one that worked in Clarisse's, and even Arobynn's, favor. They were both so powerful, and they had wasted all of that power, all of that strength, on trying to tear each other down. They'd worked so hard to beat each other, to please their masters like the dogs they'd been. Spending time in each other's company should have antagonized them even more.

But Clarisse had not counted on this.

They had been creatures of spite, but now their friendship empowered them.

This was something worth just as much as her freedom, which Celaena had yearned after for a near decade. Lysandra had yearned after her freedom too. Perhaps they could earn them together.

Lysandra's lips were soft, and her skin was soft, but Celaena could feel the power and strength in her body as she wrapped her arms around her waist, pulling Celaena onto her lap.

"Never again," Lysandra murmured.