Read Mistborn #02 The Well of Ascension for Free Online

"Vin, you're pushing yourself too hard. You can't keep prowling the city at night and then staying up all day. Even Allomancers need rest."
    She nodded quietly. In his arms, she didn't seem to him like the powerful warrior who had slain the Lord Ruler. She felt like a woman past the edge of fatigue, a woman overwhelmed by events—a woman who probably felt a lot like Elend did.
    She let him hold her. At first, there was a slight stiffness to her posture. It was as if a piece of her still expected to be hurt—a primal sliver that couldn't understand that it was possible to be touched out of love rather than anger. Then, however, she relaxed. Elend was one of the few she could do that around. When she held him—really held him—she clung with a desperation that bordered on terror. Somehow, despite her powerful skill as an Allomancer and her stubborn determination, Vin was frighteningly vulnerable. She seemed to need Elend. For that, he felt lucky.
    Frustrated, at times. But lucky. Vin and he hadn't discussed his marriage proposal and her refusal, though Elend often thought of the encounter.
    Women are difficult enough to understand , he thought, and I had to go and pick the oddest one of the lot . Still, he couldn't really complain. She loved him. He could deal with her idiosyncrasies.
    Vin sighed, then looked up at him, finally relaxing as he leaned down to kiss her. He held it for a long moment, and she sighed. After the kiss, she rested her head on his shoulder. "We do have another problem," she said quietly. "I used the last of the atium tonight."
    "Fighting the assassins?"
    Vin nodded.
    "Well, we knew it would happen eventually. Our stockpile couldn't last forever."
    "Stockpile?" Vin asked. "Kelsier only left us six beads."
    Elend sighed, then pulled her tight. His new government was supposed to have inherited the Lord Ruler's atium reserves—a supposed cache of the metal comprising an amazing treasure. Kelsier had counted on his new kingdom holding those riches; he had died expecting it. There was only one problem. Nobody had ever found the reserve. They had found some small bit—the atium that had made up the bracers that the Lord Ruler had used as a Feruchemical battery to store up age. However, they had spent those on supplies for the city, and they had actually contained only a very small bit of atium. Nothing like the cache was said to have. There should still be, somewhere in the city, a wealth of atium thousands of times larger than those bracers.
    "We'll just have to deal with it," Elend said.
    "If a Mistborn attacks you, I won't be able to kill him."
    "Only if he has atium," Elend said. "It's becoming more and more rare. I doubt the other kings have much of it."
    Kelsier had destroyed the Pits of Hathsin, the only place where atium could be mined. Still, if Vin did have to fight someone with atium. . .
    Don't think about that , he told himself. Just keep searching. Perhaps we can buy some. Or maybe we'll find the Lord Ruler's cache. If it even exists . . ..
    Vin looked up at him, reading the concern in his eyes, and he knew she had arrived at the same conclusions as he. There was little that could be accomplished at the moment; Vin had done well to conserve their atium as long as she had. Still, as Vin stepped back and let Elend return to his table, he couldn't help thinking about how they could have spent that atium. His people would need food for the winter.
    But, by selling the metal , he thought, sitting, we would have put more of the world's most dangerous Allomantic weapon into the hands of our enemies . Better that Vin used it up.
    As he began to work again, Vin poked her head over his shoulder, obscuring his lamplight. "What is it?" she asked.
    "The proposal blocking the Assembly until I've had my right of parlay."
    "Again?" she asked, cocking her head and squinting as she tried to make out his handwriting.
    "The Assembly rejected the last version."
    Vin frowned. "Why don't you just tell them that