~29~
Deep in the dungeon cells beneath the castle of Orynth, the three prisoners immured there were unaware of what had been happening up above at ground level these last few days. They were completely unaware that witnesses being called, depositions were being prepared for their trial, which was due to begin any day now.
However, none of them noticed the passage of time much anymore or lack of guards bringing food, mainly due to the fact that none of the on duty guards could stand being down there due to the constant screaming matches that were all too frequently held.
For now that Lyria had finally begun to relax her magical hold over Sam Cortland, he was simply growing angrier and angrier with her with every passing hour. He didn't understand why Lyria hadn't freed him from her clutches earlier. Sam was completely and utterly convinced that if he had been set free earlier, than he would have been better able to accomplish his goal, and even earlier than Lyria would have.
Their whole goal had been to win back the loves of their lives, had it not? And yet, all of Lyria's plotting and scheming had come to nothing. She had not managed to bring his Celaena back to him, had not even managed to win back her own lost love. Yet Sam was beyond certain that if he had been the architect of their planning, he would have been able to win back his Celaena months earlier. He was convinced of it, and refused to hear of any other alternative.
Sam was furious about the wasted months, months in which he could have had Celaena back in his arms and taken her back to Adarlan with him to resume their lives together. Sam strongly believed that if he had just been able to take that Fae bastard his woman had supposedly given her heart to out of the picture, than she would have come happily back to him.
Sam couldn't give a damn about Terrasen or its people, all he cared about, all he had ever cared about, was his beloved Celaena, for she would never be Aelin to him, she would always be the same old Celaena to him. He didn't give a damn if she felt she had a responsibility to her supposed husband or their child or her people or her kingdom. Once Celaena was back in his arms, she would once again fall in love with him, and it would be just like the old days, back when they were children. Back when they were young and in love, and the world was at their feet.
For in Sam's eyes, that was nothing to the responsibility that she owed to him. He didn't give a damn if she had thought him dead for the last four years, she still should have instinctively known the truth. Celaena had known what Arobynn Hamel was like, she should have been able to realise the truth – should have realised that he was still alive.
The fact of it was that he believed that Celaena should be with him, and he was willing to do whatever it took to win her back. Once he got her back, he would let her give birth, but then he would force her to give the child to its father and Lyria. They would be more than willing to look after the child, he was sure.
And after that, Celaena would be able to finally begin her new life with him, a new life for both of them. A new life that they clearly both so desperately needed.
But at the moment, he was just angry and pissed off that he hadn't seen Celaena since he had arrived in the city, and even more angry and even more pissed off that he had been locked in a dungeon cell for the entirety of his stay there so far. He was beyond furious that his Celaena had given the order for it, and she would have to be punished for it once he managed to free himself and her. There were so many things that he would have to punish his Celaena for, no matter how much the thought sickened him. Celaena was his first and only love, they belonged together forever, and because of that, he hated the thought of punishing her, but he would if he had to.
But Lyria refused to heart any of his objections. Sam was infuriated by Lyria's complete faith, her complete confidence in her own pathetic plans. He was completely enraged by her complete lack of interest in anything and everything that didn't have to do with her.
In Lyria's mind, Sam's estrangement from Celaena did not have anything to do with her, so she was not interested by it. All she cared about, it seemed, was winning back that stupid Fae bastard of hers. Sam had to wonder if that had been her plan all along. Use and swindle him to get what she wanted, and once she had what she wanted, to then abandon him to whatever fate had in store for him.
On the other hand, Lyria couldn't understand what Sam was so worked up about. As far as she was concerned, the very moment her plans came through, and she constantly assured Sam they would, he would have his precious Celaena back. And much more importantly to her, she would have her darling Rowan back as well.
Lyria flat out refused to believe it when Sam told her that he hated and blamed her for being locked up in those dungeon cells. What on earth was the stupid boy thinking when he came up with that conclusion, Lyria thought angrily. It was blatantly obvious that it was all his own damn fault! If only Sam hadn't been so foolhardy, so stupid and gullible, than none of them would have been captured in the first place!
All Sam had had to do in the first place, was gain the trust of her darling Rowan and the pathetic little two-bit whore. It should have been an easy task for him, right? Dead wrong! It all would have gone a lot better for them in the first place if Sam had just kept his mouth shut and not insulted anybody. It's not as though that were a particularly difficult thing to do for most people! It should have been a fairly easy task for most people!
During the time of her incarceration the only thing that Lyria had come to regret was using Sam Cortland as an ally. Lyria had so wound up in her problems that she had failed to see just how broken and battered Sam had been when she had found him. She had failed to see that in his mental state, he was of no use to anyone, least of all to her. But she had so desperate to find an ally who knew this wretched continent, that she had forgotten to shop around. Instead, she had just accepted the first ally that she had found and completely disregarded his broken mental state. Had disregarded the fact that he would not be a reliable, or even decent, accomplice for her to have.
In all honesty, Sam Cortland had been a fairly useless ally to her. He had failed to ingratiate himself with his targets, had gotten himself – and eventually her – locked up in a dungeon cell, had instantly vetoed any plan of hers that meant a quick and easy victory. He had been irritating, maddening and infuriating, had constantly questioned her. And by the way that Sam Cortland had jumped and gone scuttling the moment that Athril had snapped his fingers, he had been quite eager to get away from her for quite some time before that.
But still, Lyria mused, trusting Sam Cortland had not been a complete failure. It was his failures that had gotten her here to Rowan in the end, hadn't it?
Yes, it had brought them together in the end, even if not in the way she had expected. But she supposed that Rowan would soon realise the mistakes he had made and allow her out of the dungeons. She hated it in these pathetic dungeon cells. She knew that she didn't really belong there, and Rowan would realise it soon.
He would realise what a mistake he had made all those centuries ago and come back to her. Her constant proximity would surely bring him out of whatever fog, whatever enchantment that bitch queen had placed over him. He would fall in love with her all over again, they were true soul mates, no one would ever be able convince her otherwise. It was impossible to fake or manipulate a real and true mating bond.
And so, as Lyria and Sam continued to believe in their own warped versions of what had happened they continued to argue over it. Argue over who was really in the right, over who was the one who deserved to be allowed out of the dungeons more, over who deserved to be with their lost love more.
It was no small wonder that the guards tended to avoid the section of the dungeon cells that they currently occupied, and when they did, they quickly reported the ever increasing volume of the prisoners' arguments, their stubborn idiocy and the continued strength of their ironclad convictions and beliefs, as well as what they believed was the beginning of the two prisoners disintegration.
As the arguments continued to swell in volume and become all the more all-consuming, it became easier and easier to ignore, and almost forget about the third prisoner in the cells. For Dorian Haviliard was indeed still there, slowing being driven mad by the ignorance and forgetfulness of the guards and by the road of absolute craziness and nuttiness that was Sam Cortland and his supposed wife, Lyria.
As Dorian's mind slowly broke, he was filled with the regrets of the past year, of which there was many. He regretted ignoring the rumours about the threats against his friends, Aelin and Rowan. He regretted not doing more to help them. He regretted not doing more to help them. Dorian regretted allowing his beloved fiancée, Manon, to slip through his fingers. Dorian regretted being sucked in and drawn in by Lyria's lies.
All of Dorian's life, he had hated and despised his father. The last thing he had ever wanted was to one day act like and become his father. And yet, to Dorian's utmost horror, in the last year, that was exactly what he had become. To Dorian's utter disgust and revulsion, he had started to become his villainous father, without even the excuse or the justification of being infested by the Valg demons at the time.
There was so much that Dorian regretted so much, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do in order to fix it. He so desperately wished there was, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing.
Finally alone in the silence of his own mind, Dorian vaguely wondered why Lyria had lessoned her influence over Sam Cortland's mind, but not his own. One would think that she would show some mercy at least to her husband, whether or not she even liked him. For Dorian was very well aware of the level of his supposed wife's antipathy for him.
Despite his fracturing mind, Dorian was still aware of the antipathy of the guards bringing his food and water. He couldn't find it in himself to blame them. He had the last several spent months plotting the murder of their Queen and the destruction of their kingdom, after all. If he were in their shoes, he would be beyond furious with himself as well. In fact, Dorian was furious with himself. He blamed himself for everything. He should have seen better, known better, somehow.
Dorian wondered what would happen to him now. Would it be life imprisonment, or death? How ironic, it seemed, for his father to have once held Aelin's future in his hands, to have sentenced her to the slave mines of Endovier as Celaena Sardothien. And now, it was Aelin herself who held his fate, his continued existence in her hands. He wondered what she would decide.
He felt that he would more than deserve it if she decided to have him executed.
Dorian felt himself wondering why there had been no news of their fates yet. All of this sitting around in a dungeon cell, waiting, wasn't exactly helping his state of mind. If you even thought that he still had much of a mind left.
He found himself wishing that Sam and Lyria would just stop screaming their heads off. As far as he was concerned, they were both at fault for this. They deserved the fate that was going to be dealt them as much as he did. In fact, as the instigators of this whole debacle, Dorian felt that they deserved it far more than he did.
Dorian hated Lyria. It was as plain and simple as that. He hated the woman that he had supposedly married. He couldn't stand her self-absorption, her arrogance, her unerring belief in her own rightness. Her belief that she was the only one whose opinion mattered, her willingness to murder in cold blood, her willingness to destroy ancient cultures and kingdoms simply in order to get what she wanted… A distant pipedream of a goal that would never come to fruition…
In his opinion, Lyria should just accept the fact that Rowan no longer loved her, and move on with her life. Besides, Rowan had spent the last two centuries, believing Lyria was dead – brutally murdered. After that, no one could really blame him for forging a new life for himself. He couldn't understand Lyria's continual obsession, not after all these years.
And as for Sam Cortland, Dorian couldn't stand him either. Dorian was aware that he had spent the last few years as a prisoner in the Assassin's Guild. But despite the years of imprisonment, Sam Cortland was too proud, too arrogant. Just by looking at him, and talking to him, you wouldn't have thought that he was a victim of abuse at all. You wouldn't have thought that he had spent years as a slave, virtually locked up in a cellar.
Now, after being locked up in a dungeon cell, Sam Cortland's behaviour had barely changed at all from the spoiled, arrogant young man he had been while he was free. Free or imprisoned, Sam was still the exact same person. He was still a spoiled, arrogant, young brat. Dorian hated the boy's guts intensely. In fact he wished that Sam Cortland would simply vanish from his life.
In fact, Dorian couldn't even begin to understand why Aelin Galathynius, as Celaena Sardothien, had ever fallen in love with Sam Cortland in the first place. He was aware that Aelin had grieved for him when she thought him dead, but it seemed apparent that he was not the type of young man that would hold her heart for eternity. She may have loved him at sixteen, at seventeen years of age, but even if she had known that he lived, she would have moved on from him and fallen in love with someone else anyway.
But, much the same as Lyria, Sam Cortland was far too much of a fool to ever be able to see it. Perhaps because of the years of imprisonment, Dorian thought that Sam Cortland's mind was still the mind of a spoilt, stuck up, teenage boy, not the mind of a young man.
Sam and Lyria were like extremely selfish children to him. Aelin and Rowan were the adults that they would never be.
Now, at the last, Dorian finally allowed himself to think of the fate of his kingdom. He was aware that there were many across the kingdoms that his father had conquered, and Aelin had freed, that would want Adarlanian territory to be split up between the neighbouring kingdoms. That being Fenharrow and Melisande to the south, and possibly even Terrasen to the north, though he did not know if Aelin would sanction it. Knowing Manon the way he did, it seemed unlikely to him that the Witch Kingdom would snap up any Adarlanian land.
But now, at long last, Dorian wanted a different fate for his kingdom. He wanted Adarlan to thrive under a different ruler. Under a different monarch – a much better monarch than either he or his father would ever or could ever be – he was sure that Adarlan would not just survive, but begin to thrive.
And that different king would not be Dorian's younger brother, Hollin. Hollin would be the absolute worst ruler in Adarlan's thousand year history. Hollin would be a complete nightmare if he gained the throne. A spoilt child like Hollin would never, could never ever make a good king.
No, Dorian knew who he wanted to ascend to Adarlan's throne after he exited this world. He wanted someone who was steadfast and loyal, who would do what he felt it took to ensure Adarlan to thrive. He wanted someone like Chaol Westfall to become Adarlan's next king. Yes, if he was given a say in who would govern Adarlan after him, he would give Chaol Westfall his dying voice. It was only what seemed right to him.
As the chaos in the dungeons continued to unfold, disorder and confusion unfolded in the palace above. A different sort of chaos, happy, yet slightly stressed at the same time, as Rowan paced outside the front doors to his and Aelin's palace suite, waiting for her to give birth. It felt like he had been waiting for hours on end already. Why was it taking so long? Was it normal for a birth to take so long? He had no idea, and it was taking so long.
Suddenly there was one last cry coming from the bedroom, and finally, at long last, the sound of a newborn baby's wail. Shortly after came another wail. Two babies? Twins? Was such a thing even possible?
"By the gods!" came the sound of the midwife's voice. "A prince and princess to secure our kingdom's future for the next generation!"
Rowan felt his heart soar. He couldn't wait to embrace his mate and wife and meet his son and daughter for the very first time.