A man used to being obeyed, yes, but a man also inclined to care for others. Look after them. Driven to do it by a compulsion he couldn’t leash, couldn’t train out of him. Couldn’t have broken out of him.
Yrene parted her lips, a silent yielding.
Gently, he set the porcelain teacup against her mouth and tipped it for her.
She sipped once. He murmured in encouragement. She did so again.
So tired. She had never been so tired in her life—
Chaol pushed the cup against her mouth a third time, and she drank a full gulp.
Enough. He needed it more than she did—
He sensed she was likely to bark at him, withdrew the cup from her mouth, and merely sipped it. One gulp. Two.
He drained it and grabbed the other one, offering her the first sips again before he took the dregs.
Insufferable man.
Yrene must have said as much, because a half smile kicked up on one side of his face. “You’re not the first to call me that,” he said, his voice smoother. Less hoarse.
“I won’t be the last, I’m sure,” she muttered.
Chaol simply gave her that half smile again and stretched to refill both cups. He added the honey himself—less than Kadja had. The right amount. He stirred them, his hands steady.
“I can do it,” Yrene tried to say.
“So can I,” was all he said.
She managed to hold the cup this time. He made sure she was well onto drinking hers before he lifted his own to his lips.
“I should go.” The thought of getting out of the palace, let alone the trek to the Torre, then the walk up the stairs to her rooms …
“Rest. Eat—you must be starving.”
She eyed him. “You’re not?” He’d exercised heavily before she’d arrived; he had to be famished from that alone.
“I am. But I don’t think I can wait for dinner.” He added, “You could join me.”
It was one thing to heal him, work with him, let him serve her tea. But to dine with him, the man who had served that butcher, the man who had worked for him while that dark army was amassed down in Morath … There it was. That smoke in her nose, the crackle of flame and screaming.
Yrene leaned forward to set her cup on the table. Then stood. Every movement was stiff, sore. “I need to return to the Torre,” she said, knees wobbling. “The vigil is at sundown.” Still a good hour from now, thankfully.
He noted her swaying and reached for her, but she stepped out of his range. “I’ll leave the supplies.” Because the thought of lugging that heavy bag back …
“Let me arrange a carriage for you.”
“I can ask at the front gate,” she said. If someone was hunting her, she’d opt for the safety of a carriage.
She had to grip the furniture as she passed to keep upright. The distance to the door seemed eternal.
“Yrene.”
She could barely stand at the door, but she paused to look back.
“The lesson tomorrow.” The focus had already returned to those brown eyes. “Where do you want me to meet you?”
She debated calling it off. Wondered what she’d been thinking, asking him of all people to come.
But … five hours. Five hours of agony, and he had not broken.
Perhaps it was for that alone that she had declined dinner. If he had not broken, then she would not break—not in seeing him as anything but what he was. What he’d served.
“I’ll meet you in the main courtyard at sunrise.”
Mustering the strength to walk was an effort, but she did it. Put one foot in front of the other.
Left him alone in that room, still staring after her.
Five hours of agony, and she’d known it had not all been physical.
She had sensed, shoving against that wall, that the darkness had also showed him things on the other side of it.
Glimmers had sometimes shivered past her. Nothing she could make out, but they felt … they had felt like memories. Nightmares. Perhaps both.
Yet he had not asked her to stop.
And part of Yrene wondered, as she trudged through the palace, if Lord Chaol had not asked her to stop not just because he’d learned how to manage pain, but also because he somehow felt he deserved it.
Everything hurt.
Chaol did not let himself think about what he had seen. What had flashed through his mind as that pain had wracked him, burned and flayed and shattered him. What—and who he’d seen. The body on the bed. The collar on a throat. The head that had rolled.
He could not escape them. Not while Yrene had worked.
So the pain had ripped through him, so he had seen it, over and over.
So he had roared and screamed and bellowed.
She’d stopped only when she’d slid to the floor.
He’d been left hollow. Void.
She still had not wanted to spend more than a moment necessary with him.
He didn’t blame her.
Not that it mattered. Though he reminded himself that she’d asked him to help tomorrow.
In whatever way he could.
Chaol ate his meal where Yrene had left him, still in his undershorts. Kadja didn’t seem to notice or care, and he was too aching and tired to bother with modesty.
Aelin would likely have laughed to see him now. The man who had stumbled out of her room after she’d declared that her cycle had arrived. Now sitting in this fine room, mostly naked and not giving a shit about it.
Nesryn returned before sundown, her face flushed and hair windblown. One look at her tentative smile told him enough. At least she’d been somewhat successful with Sartaq. Perhaps she’d manage to do what it seemed he himself was failing to: raising a host to bring back home.
He’d meant to speak to the khagan today—about the threat last night’s attack had posed. Meant to, and yet it was now late enough to prevent arranging such a meeting.
He barely heard Nesryn as she whispered about Sartaq’s possible sympathy. Her ride on his magnificent ruk. Exhaustion weighed on him so heavily he could hardly keep his eyes open, even while he pictured those ruks squaring off against Ironteeth witches and wyverns, even while he debated who might survive such battles.
But he managed to give the order that curdled on his tongue: Go hunting, Nesryn.
If one of Erawan’s Valg minions had indeed come to Antica, time was not on their side. Every step, every request might be reported back to Erawan. And if they were pursuing Yrene, either for reading up on the Valg or for healing the Hand of the King of Adarlan … He didn’t trust anyone here enough to ask them to do this. Anyone other than Nesryn.
Nesryn had nodded at his request. Had understood why he’d nearly spat it out. To let her go into danger, to hunt that sort of danger …
But she’d done it before in Rifthold. She reminded him of that—gently. Sleep beckoned, turning his body foreign and heavy, but he managed to make his final request: Be careful.
Chaol didn’t resist when she helped him into the chair, then wheeled him into his room. He tried and failed to lift himself into bed, and was only vaguely aware of her and Kadja hauling him onto it like a slab of meat.
Yrene—she never did such things. Never wheeled him when he could do so himself. Constantly told him to move himself instead.
He wondered why. Was too damn tired to wonder why.
Nesryn said she would make his apologies at dinner, and went to change. He wondered if the servants heard the whine of the whetstone against her blades from her bedroom door.
He was asleep before she left, the clock in the sitting room distantly chiming seven.
No one paid Nesryn much heed at dinner that night. And no one paid her any heed later, when she donned her fighting knives, sword, and bow and quiver, and slipped into the city streets.
Not even the khagan’s wife.
As Nesryn stalked by a large stone garden on her way out of the palace, a glimmer of white caught her eye—and sent her ducking behind one of the pillars flanking the courtyard.
Within a heartbeat, she removed her hand from the long knife at her side.
Clad in white silk, her long curtain of dark hair unbound, the Grand Empress strolled, silent and grave as a wraith, down a walkway wending through the rock formations of the garden. Only moonlight filled the space—moonlight and shadow, as the empress strode alone and unnoticed, her simple gown flowing behind her as if on a phantom wind.
White for grief—for death.
The Grand Empress’s face was unadorned, her coloring far paler than that of her children. No joy limned her features; no life. No interest in either.
Nesryn lingered in the shadows of the pillar, watching the woman drift farther away, as if she were wandering the paths of some dreamscape. Or perhaps some empty, barren hell.
Nesryn wondered if it was at all similar to the ones she herself had walked during those initial months after her mother’s passing. Wondered if the days also bled together for the Grand Empress, if food was ash on her tongue and sleep was both craved and elusive.
Only when the khagan’s wife strode behind a large boulder, vanishing from sight, did Nesryn continue on, her steps a little heavier.
Antica under the full moon was a wash of blues and silvers, interrupted by the golden glow of lanterns hanging from public dining rooms and the carts of vendors selling kahve and treats. A few performers plucked out melodies on lutes and drums, a few gifted enough to make Nesryn wish she could pause, but stealth and speed were her allies tonight.
She stalked through the shadows, sorting through the sounds of the city.
Various temples were interspersed amongst the main thoroughfares: some crafted of marble pillars, some beneath peaked wooden roofs and painted columns, some mere courtyards filled with pools or rock gardens or sleeping animals. Thirty-six gods watched over this city—and there were thrice as many temples to them scattered throughout.
And with each one Nesryn passed, she wondered if those gods were peering out from the pillars or behind the carved rocks; if they watched from the eaves of that sloped roof, or from behind the spotted cat’s eyes where it lay half awake on the temple steps.
She beseeched all of them to make her feet swift and silent, to guide her where she needed to go while she prowled the streets.
If a Valg agent had come to this continent—or worse, a possible Valg prince … Nesryn scanned the rooftops and the gargantuan pillar of the Torre. It gleamed bone white in the moonlight, a beacon watching over this city, the healers within.
Chaol and Yrene had made no progress today, but—it was fine. Nesryn reminded herself, again and again, that it was fine. These things took a while, even if Yrene … It was clear she had some personal reservations regarding Chaol’s heritage. His former role in the empire.
Nesryn paused near an alley entrance while a band of young revelers staggered past, singing bawdy songs that would surely make her aunt scold them. And later hum along herself.
As she monitored the alley, the bordering, flat rooftops, Nesryn’s attention snagged on a rough carving in the earthen brick wall. An owl at rest, its wings tucked in, those unearthly large eyes wide and eternally unblinking. Perhaps no more than vandalism, yet she brushed a gloved hand over it, tracing the lines etched into the building’s side.
Antica’s owls. They were everywhere in this city, tribute to the goddess worshipped perhaps more than any other of the thirty-six. No chief god ruled the southern continent, yet Silba … Nesryn again studied the mighty tower, shining brighter than the palace on the opposite end of the city. Silba reigned unchallenged here. For anyone to break into that Torre, to kill one of the healers, they had to be desperate. Or utterly insane.
Or a Valg demon, with no fear of the gods—only of their master’s wrath if they should fail.
But if she were a Valg in this city, where to hide? Where to lurk?
Canals ran beneath some of the homes, but it was not like the vast sewer network of Rifthold. Yet perhaps if she studied the Torre’s walls …
Nesryn aimed for the gleaming tower, the Torre looming with each nearing step. She paused in the shadows beside one of the homes across the street from the solid wall that enclosed the Torre’s entire compound.
Torches flickered along brackets in the pale wall, guards stationed every few feet. And atop it. Royal guards, judging from their colors, and Torre guards in their cornflower blue and yellow—so many that none would get by without notice. Nesryn studied the iron gates, now sealed for the night.
“Were they open last night, is the answer no guard wants to yield.”
Nesryn whirled, her knife angled low and up.
Prince Sartaq leaned against the building wall a few feet behind her, his gaze on the looming Torre. Twin swords peeked above his broad shoulders, and long knives hung from his belt. He’d changed from the finery of dinner back into his flying leathers—again reinforced with steel at the shoulders, silver gauntlets at his wrists, and a black scarf at his neck. No, not scarf—but a cloth to pull over his mouth and nose when the heavy hood of his cloak was on. To remain anonymous, unmarked.
She sheathed her knife. “Were you following me?”
The prince flicked his dark, calm eyes to her. “You didn’t exactly try to be inconspicuous when you left through the front gate, armed to the teeth.”
Nesryn turned toward the Torre walls. “I have no reason to hide what I’m doing.”
“You think whoever attacked the healers is just going to be strolling around?” His boots were barely a scrape against the ancient stones as he approached her side.
“I thought to investigate how they might have gotten in. Get a better sense of the layout and where they’d likely find appealing to hide.”
A pause. “You sound as if you know your prey intimately.” And didn’t think to mention this to me during our ride this morning, was the unspoken rest.
Nesryn glanced sidelong at Sartaq. “I wish I could say otherwise, but I do. If the attack was made by whom we suspect … I spent much of this spring and summer hunting their kind in Rifthold.”
Sartaq watched the wall for a long minute. He said quietly, “How bad was it?”
Nesryn swallowed as the images flickered: the bodies and the sewers and the glass castle exploding, a wall of death flying for her—
“Captain Faliq.”
A gentle prod. A softer tone than she’d expect from a warrior-prince.
“What did your spies tell you?”