Free The Assassin and the Underworld by Sarah J. Maas Page A

day’s fires, fishermen calling to each other from the nearby docks, young children rushing through the streets with bundles of wood or the morning papers or buckets of water. Behind her, the glass castle shimmered in the dawn.
    She hadn’t been to her new apartment since she’d returned from the desert, so she’d taken a few minutes to walk through the spacious rooms hidden on the upper floor of a fake warehouse. It was the last place anyone would expect her to purchase a home, and the warehouse itself was filled with bottles of ink—a supply no one was likely to break in and steal. This was a place that was hers and hers alone. Or it would be, as soon as she told Arobynn she was leaving. Which she’d do as soon as she finished this business with Doneval. Or sometime soon after that. Maybe.
    She inhaled the damp morning air, letting it wash through her. Seated on the roof ledge, she felt wonderfully insignificant—a mere speck in the vastness of the great city. Yet she also felt as if all of it were hers for the taking.
    Yes, the party had been delightful, but there was more to the world than that. Bigger things, more beautiful things, more
real
things. Her future was hers, and she had three trunks of gold hidden in her room that would solidify it. She could make of her life what she wanted.
    Celaena leaned back on her hands, drinking in the awakening city. And as she watched the capital, she had the joyous feeling that the capital watched her back.

Chapter Six
    Since she’d forgotten to do it at the party the night before, she meant to thank Sam for the music during their usual tumbling lesson after breakfast. But several of the other assassins were also in the training hall, and she had no desire to explain the gift to any of the older men. They would undoubtedly take it the wrong way. Not that they particularly cared about what she was up to; they did their best to stay out of her way, and she didn’t bother to get to know them, either. Besides, her head was throbbing thanks to staying up until dawn and drinking all that sparkling wine, so she couldn’t even think of the right words just now.
    She went through her training exercises until noon, impressing their instructor with the new ways she’d learned to move while she was in the Red Desert. She felt Sam watching her from the mats a few feet away. She tried not to look at his shirtless chest, gleaming with sweat, as he took a running jump, nimbly flipping through the air and landing almost soundlessly on the ground. By the Wyrd, he was fast. He’d certainly spent the summer training, too.
    â€œMilady,” the instructor coughed, and she turned to him, giving a glare that warned him not to comment. She slid into a backbend, then flipped out of it, her legs smoothly rising over her head and back to the floor.
    She landed in a kneel, and looked up to see Sam approaching. Stopping before her, he gave the instructor a sharp jerk of his chin, and the stocky, compact man found somewhere else to be.
    â€œHe was helping me,” Celaena said. Her muscles quivered as she stood. She’d trained hard this morning, despite how little sleep she’d gotten—which had nothing to do with the fact that she hadn’t wanted to spend a moment alone with Sam in the training hall.
    â€œHe’s here every other day. I don’t think you’re missing anything vital,” Sam replied. She kept her gaze on his face. She’d seen Sam shirtless before—she’d seen all of the assassins in various stages of undress thanks to their training—but this felt different.
    â€œSo,” she said, “are we breaking into Doneval’s house tonight?” She kept her voice down. She didn’t particularly like sharing anything with her fellow assassins. Ben she’d once told everything to, but he was dead and buried. “Now that we know the meeting time, we should get into that upstairs study and get