immzies-adventures-through-books:

 Celaena Sardothien was nine years old, and she was already lethal.

Or rather, the girl was nine, but the name was not. The name and the person the girl was becoming was barely a year old, a creation as fictional as the characters in the books the girl had loved for years.

But she couldn’t think of who she really was- it just caused pain and fear. Arobynn had told her almost every day, never to bring it up.

She was Celaena, and that was all she would ever be.

She stared up at him now, the man that had trained her for that long year, who had put her, and a smile spread across her face. He was holding a letter.

A target.

She knew it without asking, her first target.

She could barely stand still, and she was hopping from one foot to the other as he handed it to her, along with a picture of the man.

Arobynn smiled at her, and though it seemed indulgent, it didn’t stop the child from remembering the night he locked her in a tiny room with almost no floor- to make sure she could stay still and stay awake for as long as was needed. But at this moment, he was happy, and happy was what she wanted to keep him.

Because maybe one day he might care for her enough. If she kept training and kept up what she was doing, maybe he would love her like a daughter.

Training was not on her mind at that moment though. Instead it was the face in the picture, the way she was going to kill him.

She was nine, and the past she could not think of had changed her, until she did not think of her job as a job, but a game. This man was just the first pawn in a game back to a new family.

It only took her days to find him. She used the small knife Arobynn had given her as a present for her first target, and it slid into the mans skin like butter.

Easy.

Death was so easy, so simple.

And it terrified her.

Because his blood coated her hands and it reminded her of blood of someone else, people she couldn’t think of. It reminded her how much she had lost. Family, title, kingdom.

Herself.

Because as the man died in front of her, she realised one last thing.

Celaena, the fictional character they had made up to keep her safe, was becoming real, and Aelin Galathynius was slipping through her fingers and disappearing, leaving nothing but stains of blood like the man she had just killed.