The thing was, Lillian realized later, she didn't actually know the other candidates would be as bad as the king. She didn't even know if Dorian was the best of the bunch: she'd met Roland and Hollin and not been impressed, but Hollin was sixteen and there was still Rickard and Desmond to consider. Just because Georgina and Philippa liked Dorian best didn't mean he was automatically who she should be working for.
Admittedly he had taken her from Endovier, and she would be forever grateful, but that was tempered by the reality that he had thought he was getting a merciless assassin so he could kill everyone else if necessary. It wasn't exactly the sort of thing that meant you were a good person.
And even if he was a good person - she thought he was, probably, for certain values of good - it didn't mean he would be a good king.
"The others?" Nehemia asked, walking with Lillian and Glory around their courtyard.
For once Kaltain wasn't with them. Lillian had seen her only sparingly since their conversation about Celaena.
"The cousins," Lillian said. "They can't all be rotten, can they?"
"I've met them only at social events," Nehemia replied, holding out a hand for the stick Lillian held. Lillian obliged, and Nehemia threw it with too much enthusiasm so it bounced off the courtyard wall. That didn't stop Glory from tearing after it.
They watched as the dog, having tracked down her stick, trotted back.
"Such a fierce hunter," Lillian said, and Glory wagged her tail.
Nehemia let Lillian wrest the stick from Glory and throw it again.
"I worry for you, Lillian," Nehemia said in Eyllwean. "The prince sweeps in with you, keeps you sequestered most of the time-"
"Not anymore," Lillian protested.
"- and now you worry about his cousins? It isn't safe to play with Adarlanians."
"You and Kaltain get along fine."
"Kaltain isn't Adarlanian."
Not fully, anyway, Lillian thought, but neither am I.
"I haven't seen her father at court," Lillian said instead.
"With all the court functions you attend?" Nehemia asked lightly, but she let herself be sidetracked. "He is often on the king's business."
She let Lillian digest that, and said quietly, "I think she is afraid of him."
Kaltain isn't afraid of anything, Lillian thought, but remembered that she had something she didn't want people to know about or Celaena wouldn't have been able to control her. Lillian didn't think Kaltain would cave to mere death threats.
Glory returned, and Lillian once again fought for possession of the stick so she could throw it again.
"Where are your parents, Lillian?" Nehemia asked, as Glory tore off.
Lillian choked on air, and the resulting coughing fit made Glory leave her stick and get in their way as Nehemia guided Lillian to one of the benches along the walls. She didn't offer water.
When she was done Lillian dashed tears from her eyes. Glory complicated the process by licking her face. "Excuse me," she said. "I don't know what came over me."
"Your parents?" Nehemia prompted, watching her face.
"Oh, north of here," Lillian said as airily as she could, waving her handkerchief as dismissively as possible. She was not, she consoled herself, lying. Technically. The shop and the rooms over it were north of the palace.
It did nothing to assuage her conscience in regards to Nehemia or her parents.
"They aren't important enough for court," she added.
Nehemia, still watching her, said, "But they let you come."
"Oh, let," Lillian said, laughing in spite of herself, and saw Nehemia come to several logical conclusions all at once. "No no no no," she exclaimed, reaching out to grab Nehemia's wrist. "I want to be here."
"I'm not sure you would tell me if you didn't," Nehemia said, which Lillian had to concede - silently - was fair.
"Dorian doesn't lay a hand on me if I don't want him to," she assured Nehemia. "Chaol doesn't either."
Nehemia blinked, and Lillian realized how that sounded.
"I want to be here," Lillian repeated.
"If that changes…" Nehemia said, trailing off.
"I'll let you know," Lillian promised. She wasn't sure what Nehemia would do about it if Lillian said anything, but it was kind of her to worry. The same warm feeling rose in her chest as when Kaltain had asked if she had to kill anyone.
"I'll let you know," she said again, and Glory, tired of being ignored, licked her in the face again.
"If you're going to go through the passages unsupervised I suppose I have to show you the better concealed exits," Celaena said that night.
Lillian sighed and closed her bedroom door behind her. Celaena sat crosslegged on the bed, propped casually against the pillows.
"Servants or Kaltain?" Lillian asked.
"Both," Celaena replied. "The prince's mistress can't wander the halls in trousers covered in muck and not have it commented on."
"It was maybe one cross section," Lillian protested. "I didn't enter from the halls."
"Where did you enter?"
Lillian hesitated, considering, but, well. Celaena couldn't get in through the passage, and it wasn't like she needed to use it anyway. "Dorian's room has an entrance."
"That seems like poor planning."
"You can't get back through it when it closes," Lillian said. "That's why I had to leave through the one near Kaltain's rooms. Do you know anything about tombs in the passages?"
"What," Celaena said flatly.
"Near the river, I think," Lillian said, thinking, that's a no, but pressing on anyway.
"Adarlan burns their dead," Celaena said, which Lillian filed away too - was Celaena not Adarlanian? Her accent wasn't pitch-perfect Adarlan Noble, but neither was Lillian's.
"Now we do, but did we maybe not before?"
"I don't know what Adarlan did with their dead people before I started making them dead," Celaena retorted, crossing her arms.
Lillian raised her hands in surrender.
Celaena glared at her a moment longer before moving off the bed in a blink. "Come on. There's one in the walls."
"They're all in the walls," Lillian muttered, but she followed Celaena off the balcony.
"This is significantly less convenient," Lillian told Celaena after clambering around what seemed like half the outside of the castle. Maybe it was two thirds of the castle, but then presumably Celaena would have come from the other direction so they only went around one third.
Maybe not. Lillian needed to stop expecting Celaena to make sense.
Celaena stopped at a window and looked in. It was lit inside and pitch black outside, which meant that without close scrutiny whoever was inside couldn't see anyone outside. Lillian squeezed in next to her to see what caught her attention.
Nehemia was sitting at a vanity, wiping cosmetics from her face. Lillian jerked back.
"I am not spying on Princess Nehemia," she hissed.
Celaena said, "I want to know what news her messenger brings her."
"How-"
Nehemia looked up, as if someone had knocked on the door, and apparently called for them to enter. One of her Adarlanian maids bobbed a quick curtsey and allowed another woman past her into the room. At a gesture from Nehemia, she left and shut the door behind her.
The new woman said something that made Nehemia stiffen and Celaena frown. Could Celaena hear the messenger somehow, or did she read lips?
"The labor camps at Calaculla," Celaena murmured. "There were riots."
"They put mostly Eyllwean malcontents in there," Celaena said. "Easier to transport, when you can toss your rebels somewhere nearby. They're overflowing these days."
The messenger said something else, and Nehemia bowed her head for a moment before looking up again and nodding a dismissal.
The messenger left. Nehemia stood, staring at the wall.
"What did she say?" Lillian asked in spite of herself.
"The guards closed the gates and starved them into surrender," Celaena replied. Lillian could hear no emotion in her voice, and this time she tried. "Then they killed them."
Lillian couldn't think of anything to say. She wanted to leave: there was something unnatural about Nehemia's stillness, something that made it seem like she should be moving but couldn't. Nehemia deserved to grieve alone if that was what she wanted. She shouldn't be spied on by two people with no connection to what happened.
But she did have a connection, Lillian realized, jolting. Celaena shot her a look for the movement. Lillian's aunt was on the border. Her cousins. Who was in those labor camps? Celaena had called them malcontents, but unhappiness wasn't a crime any more than looking like Celaena was. How many prisoners of Calaculla were like Lillian, thrown away for the king's convenience? How many weren't, and still didn't deserve to be murdered?
It is not the nobles thrown into Calaculla, Lillian, Nehemia had said.
Nehemia strode to a side table and picked up a glass bottle. It was, as with all glassware in the palace, beautifully crafted, some details visible even from the window. A wyvern was wrapped around it, mantling its wings and hissing. Nehemia examined it for a brief moment, nodded, and hurled it at the wall. It broke, glass splinters glinting in the candlelight as they fell. She picked up another and threw that too.
Lillian, feeling greatly daring, reached out and grabbed Celaena's wrist. "We should go."
Celaena resisted, but only for a moment. Lillian's last glance, before she followed Celaena to the next window ledge, was of Nehemia systematically shattering every piece of glasswork she could get her hands on.