Sartaq’s jaw tightened, shadows crossing his face before he said, “They reported that Rifthold was full of terrors. People who were not people. Beasts from Vanth’s darkest dreams.”
Vanth—Goddess of the Dead. Her presence in this city predated even Silba’s healers, her worshippers a secretive sect that even the khagan and his predecessors feared and respected, despite her rituals being wholly different from the Eternal Sky to which the khagan and the Darghan believed they returned. Nesryn had walked swiftly past Vanth’s dark-stoned temple earlier, the entrance marked only by a set of onyx steps descending into a subterranean chamber lit with bone-white candles.
“I can see that none of this sounds outlandish to you,” said Sartaq.
“A year ago, it might have.”
Sartaq’s gaze swept over her weapons. “So you truly faced such horrors, then.”
“Yes,” Nesryn admitted. “For whatever good it did, considering the city is now held by them.” The words came out as bitterly as they felt.
Sartaq considered. “Most would have fled, rather than face them at all.”
She didn’t feel like confirming or denying such a statement, no doubt meant to console her. A kind effort from a man who did not need to do such things. She found herself saying, “I—I saw your mother earlier. Walking alone through a garden.”
Sartaq’s eyes shuttered. “Oh?”
A careful question.
Nesryn wondered if she perhaps should have held her tongue, but she continued, “I only mention it in case … in case it is something you might need, might want to know.”
“Was there a guard? A handmaiden with her?”
“None that I saw.”
That was indeed worry tightening his face as he leaned against the wall of the building. “Thank you for the report.”
It was not her place to ask about it—not for anyone, and certainly not for the most powerful family in the world. But Nesryn said quietly, “My mother died when I was thirteen.” She gazed up at the near-glowing Torre. “The old king … you know what he did to those with magic. To healers gifted with it. So there was no one who could save my mother from the wasting sickness that crept up on her. The healer we managed to find admitted to us that it was likely from a growth inside my mother’s breast. That she might have been able to cure her before magic vanished. Before it was forbidden.”
She had never told anyone outside of her family this story. Wasn’t sure why she was really telling him now, but she went on, “My father wanted to get her on a boat to sail here. Was desperate to. But war had broken out up and down our lands. Ships were conscripted into Adarlan’s service, and she was too sick to risk a land journey all the way down to Eyllwe to try to cross there. My father combed through every map, every trade route. By the time he found a merchant who would sail with them—just the two of them—to Antica … My mother was so sick she could not be moved. She would not have made it here, even if they’d gotten on the boat.”
Sartaq watched her, face unreadable, while she spoke.
Nesryn slid her hands into her pockets. “So she stayed. And we were all there when she … when it was over.” That old grief wrapped around her, burning her eyes. “It took me a few years to feel right again,” she said after a moment. “Two years before I started noticing things like the sun on my face, or the taste of food—started enjoying them again. My father … he held us together. My sister and I. If he mourned, he did not let us see it. He filled our house with as much joy as he could.”
She fell silent, unsure how to explain what she’d meant by starting down this road.
Sartaq said at last, “Where are they now? After the attack on Rifthold?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, blowing out a breath. “They got out, but … I don’t know where they fled, or if they will be able to make it here, with so many horrors filling the world.”
Sartaq fell quiet for a long minute, and Nesryn spent every second of it wishing she’d just kept her mouth shut. Then the prince said, “I will send word—discreetly.” He pushed off the wall. “For my spies to keep an eye out for the Faliq family, and to aid them, should they pass their way, in any form they can to safer harbors.”
Her chest tightened to the point of pain, but she managed to say, “Thank you.” It was a generous offer. More than generous.
Sartaq added, “I am sorry—for your loss. As long ago as it was. I … As a warrior, I grew up walking hand-in-hand with Death. And yet this one … It has been harder to endure than others. And my mother’s grief perhaps even harder to face than my own.” He shook his head, the moonlight dancing on his black hair, and said with forced lightness, “Why do you think I was so eager to run out after you into the night?”
Nesryn, despite herself, offered him a slight smile in return.
Sartaq lifted a brow. “Though it would help to know what, exactly, I’m supposed to be looking for.”
Nesryn debated what to tell him—debated his very presence here.
He gave a low, soft laugh when her hesitation went on a moment too long. “You think I’m the one who attacked that healer? After I was the one who told you about it this morning?”
Nesryn bowed her head. “I mean no disrespect.” Even if she’d seen another prince enslaved this spring—had fired an arrow at a queen to keep him alive. “Your spies were correct. Rifthold was … I would not wish to see Antica suffer through anything similar.”
“And you’re convinced the attack at the Torre was just the start?”
“I’m out here, aren’t I?”
Silence.
Nesryn added, “If anyone, familiar or foreign, offers you a black ring or collars, if you see anyone with something like it … Do not hesitate. Not for a heartbeat. Strike fast, and true. Beheading is the only thing that keeps them down. The person within them is gone. Don’t try to save them—or it will be you who winds up enslaved as well.”
Sartaq’s attention drifted to the sword at her side, the bow and quiver strapped to her back. He said quietly, “Tell me everything that you know.”
“I can’t.”
The refusal alone could end her life, but Sartaq nodded thoughtfully. “Tell me what you can, then.”
So she did. Standing in the shadows beyond the Torre walls, she explained everything she could, save for the keys and gates, and Dorian’s enslavement, as well as that of the former king.
When she’d finished, Sartaq’s face had not changed, though he rubbed at his jaw. “When did you plan to tell my father this?”
“As soon as he’d grant us a private meeting.”
Sartaq swore, low and creative. “With my sister’s death … It’s been harder for him than he’ll admit to return to our usual rhythms. He will not take my counsel. Or anyone else’s.”
It was the worry in the prince’s tone—and sorrow—that made Nesryn say, “I’m sorry.”
Sartaq shook his head. “I must think on what you told me. There are places within this continent, near my people’s homeland …” He rubbed at his neck. “When I was a boy, they told stories at the aeries of similar horrors.” He said, more to himself than her, “Perhaps it is time I paid my hearth-mother a visit. To hear her stories again. And how that ancient threat was dealt with, long ago. Especially if it is now stirring once more.”
A record of the Valg … here? Her family had never told her any such tales, but then her own people had hailed from distant reaches of the continent. If the ruk riders had somehow either known of the Valg or even faced them …
Footsteps scuffed on the street beyond, and they pressed into the walls of the alley, hands on their sword hilts. But it was only a drunk stumbling home for the night, saluting the Torre guards along the wall as he passed, earning a few laughing grins in return.
“Are there canals beneath here—nearby sewers that might connect to the Torre?” Her question was little more than a push of air.
“I don’t know,” Sartaq admitted with equal quiet. He smiled grimly as he pointed toward an ancient grate in the sloped stones of the alley. “But it would be my honor to accompany you in discovering one.”
14
Yrene didn’t care if someone came to murder her in her sleep.
By the time the solemn, candlelit vigil in the Torre courtyard had finished, by the time Yrene crawled to her room near the top of the Torre, two acolytes propping her between them after she’d collapsed at the base of the stairs, she didn’t care about anything.
Cook brought her dinner in bed. Yrene managed a bite before she passed out.
She awoke past midnight with her fork on her chest and spiced, slow-cooked chicken staining her favorite blue gown.
She groaned, but felt slightly more alive. Enough so that she sat up in the near-darkness of her tower room, and rose only to see to her needs and haul her tiny desk in front of the door. She stacked books and any spare objects she could find atop it, checked the locks twice, and stumbled back into bed, still fully clothed.
She awoke at sunrise.
Precisely when she said she’d meet Lord Chaol.
Cursing, Yrene hauled away the desk, the books, undid the locks, and flung herself down the tower stairs.
She’d ordered the brace for his horse to be brought directly to the castle courtyard, and she’d left her supplies at his room yesterday, so there was nothing for her to take beyond her own frantic self as she hurtled down the endless spiral of the Torre, scowling at the carved owls passing silent judgment while she flew by doors now beginning to open to reveal sleepy-faced healers and acolytes blinking blearily at her.
Yrene thanked Silba for the restorative powers of deep, dreamless sleep as she sprinted across the complex grounds, past the lavender-lined pathways, through the just-opened gates.
Antica was stirring, the streets mercifully quiet as she raced for the palace perched on its other side. She arrived in the courtyard thirty minutes late, gasping for breath, sweat pooling in every possible crevice of her body.
Lord Westfall had started without her.
Gulping down air, Yrene lingered by the towering bronze gates, the shadows still lying thick with the sun so low on the horizon, and watched the unfolding mounting.
As she’d specified, the patient-looking roan mare was on the shorter side—the perfect height for him to reach the saddle horn with an upraised hand. Which he was currently doing, Yrene noted with no small degree of satisfaction. But the rest …
Well, it seemed he’d decided not to use the wooden ramp that she’d also ordered crafted in lieu of a stepped mounting block. The mounting ramp now sat by the still-shadowed horse pens against the eastern wall of the courtyard—as if he’d outright refused to even go near it, and instead had them bring over the horse. To mount the mare on his own.
It didn’t surprise her one bit.
Chaol did not look at any of the guards clustered around him—at least, more than was necessary. With their backs to her, she could only identify one or two by name, but—
One stepped in silently to let Chaol brace his other hand on his armor-clad shoulder as the lord pushed himself upright in a mighty heave. The mare stood patiently while his right hand gripped the saddle horn to balance himself—
She stepped forward just as Lord Westfall pushed off the guard’s shoulder and into the saddle, the guard stepping in close as he did it. It left him sitting sidesaddle, but Chaol still did not give the guard much thanks beyond a tight nod.
Instead, he silently studied the saddle before him, assessing how he was to get one leg over the other side of the horse. Color stained his cheeks, his jaw a tight line. The guards lingered, and he stiffened, tighter and tighter—
But then he moved again, leaning back in the saddle and hauling his right leg over the horn. The guard who’d helped him lunged to support his back, another darting from the other side to keep him from tumbling off, but Chaol’s torso remained solid. Unwavering.
His muscle control was extraordinary. A man who had trained that body to obey him no matter what, even now.
And—he was in the saddle.
Chaol murmured something to the guards that had them backing off as he leaned to either side to buckle the straps of the brace around his legs. It had been set into the saddle—the fit perfect based on the estimations she’d given the woman in the workshop—designed to stabilize his legs, replacing where his thighs would have clamped to keep him steady. Just until he became used to riding. He might very well not need them at all, but … it was better to be safe for this first ride.
Yrene wiped her sweaty forehead and approached, offering a word of thanks to the guards, who now filtered back to their posts. The one who’d directly helped Lord Westfall turned in her direction, and Yrene gave him a broad smile as she said in Halha, “Good morning, Shen.”
The young guard returned her smile as he continued toward the small stables in the far shadows of the courtyard, winking at her as he passed by. “Morning, Yrene.”
She found Chaol sitting upright in the saddle when she faced ahead once more—that stiff posture and clenched jaw gone as he watched her approach.
Yrene straightened her dress, realizing just as she reached him that she still wore yesterday’s clothes. Now with a giant red splotch on her chest.
Chaol took in the stain, then her hair—oh, gods, her hair—and only said, “Good morning.”
Yrene swallowed, still panting from her run. “I’m sorry I’m late.” Up close, the brace indeed blended in enough for most people not to notice. Especially with the way he carried himself.
He sat tall and proud on that horse, shoulders squared, hair still wet from his morning bath. Yrene swallowed again and inclined her head toward the unused mounting ramp across the courtyard. “That was also meant for your use, you know.”
He lifted his brows. “I doubt there will be one readily available on a battlefield,” he said, mouth twisting to the side. “So I might as well learn to mount on my own.”
Indeed. But even with the crisp golden dawn around them, what she’d glimpsed within his wound, the army they might both face, flashed before her, stretching the long shadows—
Motion caught her eye, snapping Yrene to alertness as Shen led a small white mare from those same shadows. Saddled and ready for her. She frowned at her dress.
“If I’m riding,” Chaol said simply, “so are you.” Perhaps that was what he’d muttered to the guards before they’d dispersed.
Yrene blurted, “I’m not—it’s been a while since I rode one.”
“If I can let four men help me onto this damned horse,” he said simply, the color still blooming in his cheeks, “then you can get on one, too.”
From the tone, she knew it must have been—embarrassing. She’d seen the expression on his face just now. But he’d done it. Gritted his teeth and done it.
And with the guards helping him … She knew there were multiple reasons why he could barely glance at them. That it was not just the lone reminder of what he’d once been that made him tense up in their presence, refuse to even consider training with them.
But that was not a conversation to be had now—not here, and not with the light starting to return to his eyes.
So Yrene hitched up her hem and let Shen help her onto the horse.
The skirts of her dress hiked up enough to reveal most of her legs, but she’d seen far more revealed here. In this very courtyard. Neither Shen nor any other guards so much as glanced her way. She turned to Chaol to order him to go ahead, but found his eyes on her.
On the leg exposed from ankle to midthigh, paler than most of her golden-brown skin. She darkened easily in the sun, but it had been months since she’d gone swimming and basked in any sunlight.
Chaol noticed her attention and snapped his eyes up to hers. “You have a good seat,” he told her, as clinically as she often remarked on the status of her patients’ bodies.
Yrene gave him an exasperated look before nodding her thanks to Shen and nudging her horse into a walk. Chaol snapped the reins and did the same.
She kept one eye on him as they rode toward the courtyard gates.
The brace held. The saddle held.
He was peering down at it—then at the gates, at the city awakening beyond them, the tower jutting high above it all as if it were a hand raised in bold welcome.
Sunlight broke through the open archway, gilding them both, but Yrene could have sworn it was far more than the dawn that shone in the captain’s brown eyes as they rode into the city.
It was not walking again, but it was better than the chair.
Better than better.
The brace was cumbersome, going against all his instincts as a rider, but … it held him firm. Allowed him to guide Yrene through the gates, the healer clutching at the pommel every now and then, forgetting the reins entirely.
Well, he’d found one thing she wasn’t so self-assured at.
The thought brought a small smile to his lips. Especially as she kept adjusting her skirts. For all she’d chided him about his modesty, flashing her legs had given her pause.
Men in the streets—workers and peddlers and city guards—looked twice. Looked their fill.
Until they noticed his stare and averted their eyes.
And Chaol made sure they did.
Just as he’d made sure the guards in the courtyard had kept their attention polite the moment she’d run in, huffing and puffing, sun-kissed and flushed. Even with the stain on her clothes, even wearing yesterday’s dress and coated in a faint sheen of sweat.
It had been mortifying to be helped into the saddle like unruly baggage after he’d refused the mounting ramp—mortifying to see those guards in their pristine uniforms, the armor on their shoulders and hilts of their swords glinting in the early morning sunlight, all watching him fumble about. But he’d dealt with it. And then he found himself forgetting that entirely at the appreciative glances the guards gave her. No lady, beautiful or plain, young or old, deserved to be gawked at. And Yrene …
Chaol kept his mare close beside hers. Met the stare of any man who glanced their way as they rode toward the towering spire of the Torre, the stones pale as cream in the morning light. Every single man swiftly found somewhere else to gape. Some even looked apologetic.