Chaol told Aedion that Aelin was alive and he immediately got on a boat for Wendlyn, nuf said I guess.
Celaena was woken abruptly by someone rapping her door with their fist. She groaned, rolling out of the bed she shared with Rowan and walking out of the bedroom and through the sitting room and to the door that led out to the corridor.
“What time is it?” She asked opening the door, knowing it was Whitethorn. Only he would dare wake her up at dawn, or himself wake up even earlier than that.
“Get dressed and meet me at the stairs in ten minutes” He replied, bluntly ignoring her question. There was a light in his pine green eyes, what form of torture did he have planned out today?
“I thought you said I could have the day off from training, I was very much looking forward to sleeping for five more hours.” She made the best sarcastic puppy dog eyes she could at the early hour, knowing he would win in the end.
He started walking away from their door, a slight grin on his face that looked suspiciously like a smirk. “We’re not training, someone’s here to see you.”
“Who?” She called down the hall as he walked away, he just told her to hurry up in response.
Buzzard. Celaena muttered as she hastily braided her hair down her back and slid into clothes. A green tunic with a white undershirt, black pants and plain brown leather boots had become her usual wardrobe since coming to Mistward. She looked at the amethyst ring on the vanity, one of the only pieces of furniture other than the bed and a small desk in the bedroom, and unceremoniously tossed it into the drawer before heading outside.
Rowan was waiting at the top of the stairs as promised wearing very much the same as her, albeit a blue tunic rather than her green one. He set a brisk pace down the stairs and the dim halls that led outside. She yawned as her muscles and brain finally began to wake.
“So who came to visit?” She asked sweetly, batting her eyes up at him. He just glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and kept walking. Well then.
The pair reached the heavy oak door that led out to the courtyard which he silently pushed open without so much as a grunt. Once, as a punishment he made her open and close that door over and over for an hour. Her muscles hurt at the memory of it.
Celaena shielded her face as the rising sun shone on their faces, as her eyes adjusted she scanned her surroundings out of instinct and curiosity more than anything else. There were a few guards on the walls and patrolling the courtyard, and the occasional Mistward occupant milling about in the morning light.
Her eyes scanned towards the archway carved out of the wall, the main entrance for Mistward. There was a blonde male leaning against it, buff and large with a sword strapped across his back. She almost looked right passed him before he glanced up.
His eyes were near identical to hers, a brilliant turquoise ringed with gold around the pupil. Aedion Ashryver looked so different now, he’d become a man rather than the boy who had always trailed Aelin a decade ago. But they still looked so similar to eachother, different sides of the same coin.
“Aedion,” she whispered, as if he were a spirit that would disappear if she spoke his name too loud.
He pushed off the wall and started walking towards Rowan and her, that was all she needed to dispel the spirit from her mind as she broke away from Rowan and sprinted toward her cousin.
She crashed into him, winding herself as her chest crushed into his ribcage and she disintegrated. She was weeping but she didn’t care, he was here, he was alive.
The pair stood there for a moment, breathing in each others scents that had changed so much over ten years before she pulled away. Celaena held him at an arm’s length taking in his tanned face before finally reaching up to wipe her tears away.
“How did you-?” She started not knowing what to ask first. How did you find me? Why did you come here? How did you get here?
“Chaol told me,” he said, his own eyes shimmering. He paused taking her in again. “You were dead, you died in the river and Adarlan came in and-” she put a silencing finger to his lips before pulling him in again.
“I’m alive, you’re alive,” she whispered in his ear. “We survived” When Celaena was sure her knees would hold her she looked back to where Rowan stood. She gave him a questioning look and he nodded. Go ahead. She smiled and turned back to her cousin.
“Come on blondie.” She chirped behind her shoulder as she walked across the courtyard towards the back gate of the fort. He laughed at the childhood nickname she had given him when she was six. At the time he had hated it given the fact that she was arguably more blonde than him, but now he just slung his arm around her shoulder as they walked into the forest.
“So you want to go first or should I?” Celaena asked, leaning against a crumbled stone wall in the ruins of Mala’s temple. They had walked here in silence, needing to be in each other’s company after a decade apart.
She also had a sneaking suspicion that he was scanning her for any injuries just as she was him, but she’d let him fuss over her. At least for now.
“You first,” he answered, looking around yet still keeping an eye on her, making sure she didn’t disappear before his eyes. She nodded, and she told him everything.
She talked of freeing slaves and fighting lords, of stealing asterion horses and finding a friend. She told him all of it, the good and the bad, she told him of Sam’s death and being betrayed, a year in Endovier and getting out. She spoke of befriending princes and captains and defeating monsters, Nehemia’s death and being sent away, she talked until her voice turned hoarse and she had to take long gulps from her canteen. Then he talked.
He told her about fighting on battlefields at fourteen and being trained by anyone who would bother, he spoke of helping Terrasen’s people get to safety and of looking for her body for days. He told her the exact day he gave up hope for her, when he stopped believing the rumors that she had shown up in different countries around the continent. He had won the sword of Orynth back for her, and had acted as a traitor to his blood by strutting about like a proud fool. Chaol had told him who she was in exchange for his life and hers.
When they were both done talking -occasionally adding in little details they had missed- they began to compare scars. Bragging about who had the worst marks upon their bodies. He seemed to think he had her beat with a long white line across his abdomen, stark against his tanned skin. But she pulled up the back of her shirt to show him the long lines down her back. -She had long ago shucked her tunic against a rock- He had sucked his breath in when he saw them, but she just laughed at her victory.
The sun was setting as they laid on their backs, each of them filling their lungs with the scent of the other. Not wanting to face the long trek back to Mistward in the dark, she stood up, her tired joints groaning in protest. Kicking a half asleep Aedion in the side with the tip of her boot she started walking the path back to the fortress.
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