Lillian woke on what might be her last day. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. Glory wuffled at the foot of the bed over Dorian and Lillian's legs, where Chaol had banished her after too many licks to his face.
"I slept late," Lillian remarked.
"We can sleep longer," Dorian said. He was still wrapped around her, though he'd managed to grab a fistful of Chaol's nightshirt at some point.
"Or we could get up, get breakfast, and make sure Lillian has everything she needs to fight Cain tomorrow," Chaol said. Since he made no move himself - Lillian had used him as a pillow most of the night and continued to do so now - no one else did either.
Lillian's stomach rumbled after a few minutes.
"I am surrounded by morning people," Dorian muttered, though neither Chaol nor Lillian said anything, and got up, Glory following. "Stay there."
"If you insist," Chaol said.
"Is he actually making breakfast?" Lillian asked a few pleasantly drowsy moments later.
"I would call Dorian more of a breakfast gatherer than a breakfast maker," Chaol replied, which made Lillian turn over. His fingers traced absent patterns across her back.
"Do you cook?"
"Only in the direst of circumstances," Chaol said. "I actually mean that literally. If you're stuck in the woods I'm a good person to have on your side. You?"
"I can make oatmeal," Lillian said. "And rice." Her mother had been a competent but unimaginative and unenthusiastic cook. While her father was away with the army meals had been sandwiches, the aforementioned oatmeal, and the occasional meal from the cookhouse down the road. When he was home he liked to make balanced dinners, Leah, a shop can't survive on sandwiches alone.
Hence the cookhouse, Leah would reply, nose in the air.
"My father was good with fish," Lillian continued, "and he got creative with pickled vegetables. I never learned."
"Too busy sewing," Chaol suggested, and she shrugged. He said, "I don't think my father's cooked even over a campfire in… well, since before I was born."
"I think we know the king never did either."
Chaol frowned. "My mother said once that he courted Leanne by cooking for her, since she was a Galathynius cousin and was spoiled for choice in suitors. He had to make her like him."
Lillian wondered if it was better or worse to know that Dorian's father had - what, loved his mother? Wanted her enough to put in some effort, at least.
He wants a son to hold up as his legacy, and Dorian isn't cooperating. If he hated Dorian he would have just disappeared ages ago, Amerie had said. Some lingering fondness for Leanne, maybe?
Philippa had said, he doesn't love his children, not in any way that matters.
He'd killed Leanne no matter what feelings he had for her or their child.
Lillian supposed Amerie and Philippa could both be right. What did loving someone matter, if it didn't stop you from trying to hurt them?
"I really am sorry about your knee," she said.
Chaol didn't say anything for a long minute. "Lillian."
She waited.
"Go for the kill," he said finally. "With Cain. He's a decorated soldier, he's not going to take it easy on you - make sure he dies, and make sure you do it fast, and don't be sorry."
Celaena had said that not even she wanted to tangle with Cain, and Chaol hadn't seemed all that confident either, though Dorian had been confident in him.
"I'm serious," he said, when she was still silent. "No tricky maneuvers, no creative solutions - he's not going to play games. He's going to hit you until you fall, and then he will hit you again to make sure you don't get up."
Lillian didn't say that people had tried it before and only partially succeeded, in Endovier. There was no point in arguing, and she didn't totally disagree: she didn't want to die, and she wouldn't if she could help it unless the alternative was the mines.
"If it's me or Cain, Cain dies," she said. "I promise."
She just couldn't accept that there wasn't at least some way to try not killing the only father figure of a sixteen year old boy she knew personally.
After that Dorian and Chaol did a remarkable job of pretending that there wasn't a duel tomorrow that she might lose, except for the clinging. Lillian had become accustomed to some time alone, but she felt only the occasional twinges of irritation at the lack of it.
"I want to show you the tomb," she told them. She supposed the lack of arguing with her over anything was part of the anticipation of the duel, but since she had a few things to make sure of that was fine. "Bring some travel food and supplies."
"Absolutely, we can run off into the wilderness and never be seen again," Dorian said. "Chaol can cook. I can bargain for what we need for Lillian to sew and we can make a reasonable living. I can learn to clean floors and dust."
"How does bargaining and selling Lillian's sewing factor into never being seen again?" Chaol asked. "Also the idea that you could live off of the spoils of Lillian's reasonable earnings is laughable. You are not accustomed to modest living."
"Oh, and you are?" Dorian retorted.
"Don't look at me, I'm a city girl," Lillian said. "If I can't buy new needles on demand and wear pretty clothes and eat the occasional pastry when I want them I'm not participating in this plan. Anyway, you'll see when we get there - it's only technically a way out of the castle."
"We haven't even gotten you pastries the entire time you've been here," Dorian said, looking horrified beyond what Lillian thought appropriate but still sincere. "You like pastries? We can get a dozen. Two dozen! Two dozen every day!"
Lillian shared a look with Chaol.
"This is what I meant about him and modest living," Chaol said.
"We can take all my mother's jewelry, that will fund us for a while," Dorian said. "See? I'm not a total idiot. And Glory can hunt, and Philippa can sit and order us around because that's what she deserves."
"Where are we going to sell the jewels?" Lillian asked patiently.
"Glory hunts in a pack," Chaol said with less patience.
"And Philippa would never sit around and do nothing, this is a fantasy," Dorian retorted.
"Get a lantern," Lillian said. "Actually do grab some of the jewelry though, that could be a good emergency fund."
"Where would we sell them?" Dorian parroted back at her as he followed orders.
"Through my parents or in Eyllwe," Lillian said. "Eyllwe is better, people in Rifthold might recognize the jewels, though I suppose if we sold the individual stones-"
"Your parents," Dorian said, stopping dead with the lantern in his hand.
"Not right now," Lillian said. "Now we pack emergency bags. You can probably hole up in the tomb even if getting out of it would be difficult, since the king knows about the escape tunnel. And the tide factor. Then you can go through that later."
Dorian looked like he might protest, thought better of it, and followed her to the tunnel entrance.
It was drizzling again outside the tomb, though the skies were clear enough that Lillian could see stars. In Rifthold it was sunny and late morning, even though it had taken forever for Chaol to manage the stairs with crutches.
"Hunh," Dorian said, leaning out the window and staring, first down, then up. "That's disconcerting."
Lillian took the bags Chaol had insisted on carrying so he could join Dorian. She hid them with her older supplies - the food was probably no good anymore, but the other things would be.
"We could climb that if we had to," Chaol said.
Lillian craned around look incredulously at him. He was hanging almost entirely out the window, braced on his uninjured leg and looking up.
"He's insane," Lillian told Dorian.
"Don't look at me," Dorian said. "Anielle's all mountains and cliffs. His parents let him run wild, which is where, I assume, this apparent supernatural climbing ability comes from."
"You two are such city people," Chaol sighed, finally coming back inside. He looked past Lillian and stiffened, hand going immediately to the hilt of his sword and other arm stretching in front of Dorian.
"I could climb it," Celaena said from the doorway.
"What can't you do, though?" Lillian asked, glancing over her shoulder. Celaena was not in her Kaltain clothes or wig.
"Lillian?" Chaol asked.
"Chaol, Dorian, Celaena," Lillian said. "Celaena, Chaol and Dorian."
"I'm not going to kill the prince," Celaena told Chaol, as if the idea was preposterous.
Lillian caught Chaol's eye and gave her hand a see-saw 'probably' motion.
Celaena sighed. Lillian took it as a personal triumph that she bothered to emote so much. "Lillian."
"I annoy her because she knows I know she likes me and is much less likely to stab me in my sleep than she is most people," Lillian said cheerfully.
Briefly, Chaol and Celaena locked eyes, sharing a long-suffering look before remembering that they were wary of each other.
"Are we overlooking the fact that she let you get sent to Endovier?" Dorian asked. His tone was light but his glare was not.
Celaena said nothing. Lillian took it to mean she was still chastised from the other day.
"We are," she said. "Well, you are. Usually I do."
"She's not going back," Celaena said, note of finality clear.
"Do you have a plan to get her out of the city?" Dorian asked, suddenly friendlier. "She won't listen to us."
"You heard about the duel?" Lillian asked. Dorian huffed at being ignored, but everyone had relaxed a little. Chaol had even removed his arm from in front of Dorian, who stooped to pick up and hand Chaol the crutch he'd dropped.
"Remember, it's him or you," Celaena said. "If you die I will be disappointed in you."
"I'd like my staff back, then."
Celaena grimaced. It was much less notable than the sigh, which made Lillian think that maybe Celaena had been putting effort into exhibiting emotion before to try to set everyone at ease. Either way, it was answer enough.
"Ugh," Lillian said.
"You don't need that particular staff," Celaena said. "You'll be just as effective with any other."
"That's not the point," Lillian retorted, but she sighed and finished covering the bags with rubble.
"Are we friends here?" Chaol asked finally.
Celaena ignored him and perched on the edge of Elena's sarcophagus. It was Lillian's turn to grimace.
"Have you looked at the walls, Lillian?" Dorian asked, apparently deciding to ignore Celaena in return.
"Why would I? I was busy with the sarcophagi and the window that looks out into a different place."
"There are carvings on the walls, Lillian."
"Go look at them if you want," she said. "I'm a simple shopgirl turned assassin, I don't care about the walls."
"There's two of them," Chaol muttered, sinking onto one of the other sarcophagi.
"What is that you're humming?" Dorian asked as he held his lamp up to the mess of grime and dust covering whatever he was trying to look at. "Oh, I think this is an inlay. Bronze maybe?"
"The one you sang?" Lillian said, making it a question. She didn't think she was humming it that out of tune.
"I don't sing," he said. "I'm really bad at it. Here, look at this." He used his sleeve to wipe away some of the gunk on the walls. Lillian winced, thinking of how difficult her own clothes had been to clean the first time she was down here, but joined him. Celaena and Chaol stayed sitting, trying not to look like they were watching each other from the corners of their eyes.
It was a metal inlay of some sort, and it was probably bronze. Dorian had wiped away a swath of the top layer rather than trying to clean a smaller part entirely, and the result looked like it might be a scowling face, mouth and eyes wide and forbidding.
"It's one of the old Brannon faces," Dorian said.
Celaen stopped looking at Chaol, arriving beside Lillian and Dorian in a couple of her impossibly long-legged strides.
"They're warnings," Celaena said before Lillian could ask. "Royal tombs, temples, the standing stones at Orynth."
Lillian gestured back at Elena's admittedly empty sarcophagus.
"This is an Adarlanian tomb, Lillian," Celaena said.
Dorian scratched absently at his injured cheek before Lillian snagged his wrist. "Don't do that, your hands are filthy. Look, you broke the scabs."
"Two of you," he muttered, which made Chaol crack a laugh from where he sat. Dorian rolled his eyes, and Lillian let go of his wrist since he wasn't resisting. He went back to feeling around the inlay, and Lillian heard the same distinct pop she'd heard when she'd not-so-accidentally opened Elena's sarcophagus.
Lillian grabbed Dorian and Celaena by the collars and heaved all three of them back as a section of the wall shuddered back with an awful grinding noise, as whatever mechanism labored to life after centuries and centuries of disuse.
"Hunh," said Dorian, when nothing further happened.
"Last time there was bad air," Lillian explained.
Celaena plucked Lillian's hand from her and stepped forward, peering into the gloom. Lillian looked past her as Dorian handed Celaena the lantern and Chaol heaved himself up and over to them, crutches making muted clicks.
Celaena held the lantern up and walked forward, and the light fell against a large, pale block of faestone, except for a dark and glittering stain across the top and one side, as if it was wet.
Lillian couldn't move. It didn't feel like a panic attack, but her vision was going dark and she couldn't move her hand even off of Dorian, except when he tried to step forward she clutched at him convulsively without trying.
"Lillian?" Chaol asked, wary.
"I can't go in there," she said. It sounded mostly like her voice, but oddly toneless.
"Okay," Dorian said. "Look, we're backing away."
Lillian felt her body move with him, and the darkness melted away when they reached the door to the tomb itself.
"I should probably remind you that the place is haunted and mention that a ghost spoke to me there once," she said. She didn't feel any worse for wear, except the general discomfort of having felt like she had no control over her body. She moved her fingers now just to prove she could.
Dorian shot a nervous glance back at the tomb, and Lillian remembered his worries about an ancestor stealing his soul. It seemed less silly at the moment.
Celaena came back out a moment later. "The blood was wet," she said, as if it was a perfectly normal thing to say.
"I'm sorry, the what?" Chaol asked.
"The blood on the altar," she said impatiently. "Someone was there before us, obviously. They must have been the ones to move Elena's body."
Lillian realized she was humming - again - and stopped. "The tombs are a last resort from here on out."
"Yes," Dorian and Chaol agreed in unison. Celaena looked unimpressed by their decision and set off on whatever other business she had without another word.
Chaol and Dorian looked at Lillian.
"She does that," she said. "Let's go eat lunch on my balcony where there is sunlight and no creepy secret rooms."
