High School Diaries (A Throne of Glass Fanfiction)

Chapter 30

"From the recording of your conversation with Perrington, Aedion and your observation, I do agree. He definitely knows something." Elide said, pausing the audio recording being played, looking at Aedion and Aelin.

"Yeah, but his voice drifted off several times midway. He stopped making sense and trailed away." Lysandra pointed out, taking a huge sip from her coffee. They all were sitting in the living room, gathered around the coffee table. It was 11 pm in the night, drinking coffee probably wasn't a good idea, but they all needed it. Evangeline was fast asleep and now was the best time to have this conversation.

"Prison could do that to you. Every single cell in your body screams at you to hold on to any shard of sanity you have. But the drab places chips away a little bit everyday and before you know it, nothing makes sense anymore." Aelin said, stirring a big spoon of sugar in her 'Queen of Shadows' cup. There was a pause before Aedion asked, not meeting her eye.

"What did you hold on to?"

"Pain. And revenge." Aelin replied, eyes distant, the stirring slowing down, her fingers tightening on the spoon. There was an uncomfortable silence again. Except for the haze of her nightmares, at peak immediately after her release from prison, Aelin had never liked to talk about the prison. They never pushed her, but snippets like this fell in the conversation often, but they knew quite well pressing the matter would have her all closing up again. So Aelin appreciated when Elide continued on.

"What about his cellmate? He mentioned him but the authorities said he didn't get any."

"The bed looked unused. The blanket was on Perrington's bed." Aedion, the only one above 21, was drinking rum, because beer was too cold.

"But then why keep a bed there if they weren't going to put it to use?"

"False hope. Even I didn't get any. But there was another bed." Aelin mentally kicked herself, reminding herself at the same time, again, that these people were her family, she could trust them.

"The thing is that while there wasn't anything concrete, Perrington made some points too strong to ignore." Elide said, raising her eyebrows.

"But there was literally nothing about Kaltain." Lysandra quipped in, taking a sip from Aedion's glass, wincing at the bitter taste.

"Not about Kaltain, about Sam."

"Maybe he was just playing around, to get you to waste time."

"Or he's gone mad." A dry chuckle from all of them followed but quieted after they heard shuffling from Lysandra's room. No one said a word. She got up once to check on the girl, gave them a thumbs up.

"Or there was someone spying and he tried to slip in information in between."

"That could be true, but why would he help us anyway?" Aedion said. There was a weird vibe about Perrington that he couldn't shake off, maybe because he was repeatedly picturing his cousin instead.

"Revenge, on the controllers from above." Elide shrugged.

"If they had anything to do with Kaltain, Arobynn wouldn't have helped you."

"I don't trust that man." Aedion crossed his arms, sinking back on the couch.

"No one does, he only does things that profit him." Aelin said, and they all clinked their cups and glasses to that.

"So, what are you going to do about it? Perrington implicated Arobynn's involvement in Sam's death." Elide turned to Aelin, knowing while they were all devastated, Aelin had been hit the hardest, especially being arrested and imprisoned for the same, only to be released, not because she was innocent, but due to lack of evidence. But Aelin didn't react. And everyone knew that it wasn't because of shock.