Lillian went wandering after her bath. She avoided the tomb, but the passages suited her mood. Celaena found her eventually, talking behind her without bothering to announce herself.
"You should have just killed him."
Lillian could maybe see what the king meant by calling her a blunt instrument.
"If I killed him, Hollin would hate us. He's a duke, technically. Eventually it would be a problem."
"That's not why you didn't do it."
"Well," Lillian said, shrugging one shoulder. "Also I just didn't want to. Sometimes you have to win the small battles, Celaena. They add up."
Lillian didn't think she imagined the tiniest brush of fingers against the nape of her neck before Celaena disappeared back into the tunnels.
"Keep it," Nehemia said when Lillian finally tried to return the staff. It was too late for social calls, but Nehemia's guards had let her in anyway. "I don't use it much anymore, and you need a good one. Think about-" she stopped.
Lillian had the sneaking suspicion Nehemia had been about to say 'home'.
"Think about your mother," Nehemia said finally. "Think about me."
"Don't die," Lillian said. "Don't kill anyone I don't have to."
Nehemia smiled. "Exactly."
"What did he want?" Dorian asked later, when Lillian finally crawled into bed, Glory following gleefully.
"He wanted me to work for him," she said, leaving out the girl who had looked more like her than she looked like Celaena. "He wants me to smooth things over."
"Will you?" Chaol asked.
Lillian grimaced, thinking of Nehemia and the king's blunt objects. Celaena wouldn't hurt her, but what about Erick? She had another day to think about it. She had a lot of days to think about it, actually, now that she didn't have to worry about being thrown back into Endovier.
"Let's talk about it tomorrow," she said.
In the tombs, the king of Adarlan stood alone in the watery sunlight, listening to the gulls outside the window and staring down at the open sarcophagus. "I thought so," he said, tapping it idly, and sighed. "What are you up to, Elena?"
No one answered.
