Not even when Arghun wanted to know why the former King of Adarlan had deemed it necessary to enslave his people. And then put them down like animals. Why the man had not looked to the southern continent for education on the horrors and stain of slavery—and avoided instituting it.
Chaol had offered curt answers that verged on impolite. Sartaq, the only one of them beyond Kashin whom Chaol was inclined to like, had finally tired of his elder brother’s questioning and steered the conversation away. To what, Chaol had no idea. He’d been too busy fighting against the roaring in his ears over Arghun’s razor-sharp inquiries. And then too busy monitoring every face—royal, vizier, or servant—who made an appearance in the khagan’s great hall. No signs of black rings or collars; no strange behavior to remark on.
He’d given Kashin a subtle shake of his head at one point to tell him as much. The prince had pretended not to see, but the warning flared in his eyes: Keep looking.
So Chaol had, half paying attention to the meal unfolding before him, half monitoring every word and glance and breath of those around him.
Despite their youngest sister’s death, the heirs made the meal lively, conversation flowing, mostly in languages Chaol did not know or recognize. Such a wealth of kingdoms in that hall, represented by viziers and servants and companions—the now-youngest princess, Duva, herself wedded to a dark-haired, sad-eyed prince from a faraway land who kept close to his pregnant wife and spoke little to anyone around him. But whenever Duva smiled softly at him … Chaol did not think the light that filled the prince’s face was feigned. And wondered if the man’s silence was not from reticence but perhaps not yet knowing enough of his wife’s language to keep up.
Nesryn, however, had no such excuse. She’d been silent and haunted at dinner. He’d only learned that she’d bathed before it thanks to the shout and slamming door in her chambers, followed by a huffy-looking male servant scrambling out of her rooms. The man did not come back again, nor did a replacement arrive.
Kadja, the servant assigned to Chaol, had helped him dress for dinner, then undress for bed, and had brought breakfast this morning immediately upon his awakening.
The khagan certainly knew how to eat well.
Exquisitely spiced and simmered meats, so tender they fell right off the bone; herbed rice of various colors; flatbreads coated in butter and garlic; rich wines and liquors from the vineyards and distilleries across his empire. Chaol had passed on the latter, accepting only the ceremonial glass offered before the khagan made a half-hearted toast to his new guests. For a grieving father, it was a warmer welcome than Chaol had expected.
Yet Nesryn had a sip of her drink, barely a bite of her meal, and waited a scant minute until the feast was cleared before asking to return to their suite. He’d agreed—of course he’d agreed, but when they’d closed the suite doors and he’d asked if she wanted to talk, she had said no. She wanted to sleep and would see him in the morning.
He’d had the nerve to ask Nesryn if she wanted to share his room or hers.
The shutting of her door was emphasis enough.
So Kadja had helped him into bed, and he had tossed and turned, sweating and wishing he could kick off the sheets instead of having to throw them back. Even the cool breeze that drifted in through the cleverly crafted ventilation system—the air hauled from wind-snaring towers amid the domes and spires to be cooled by canals beneath the palace, then scattered amongst the rooms and halls—had not offered any reprieve.
He and Nesryn had never been good at talking. They’d tried, usually with disastrous results.
They’d done everything out of order, and he’d cursed himself again and again for not making it right with her. Not trying to be better.
She’d barely looked at him these past ten minutes they’d been waiting for the healer to arrive. Her face was haggard, her shoulder-length hair limp. She hadn’t put on her captain’s uniform, but rather returned to her usual midnight-blue tunic and black pants. As if she couldn’t stand to be in Adarlan’s colors.
Kadja had dressed him again in his teal jacket, even going so far as to polish the buckles down the front. There was a quiet pride to her work, not at all like the timidity and fear of so many of the castle servants in Rifthold.
“She’s late,” Nesryn murmured. Indeed, the ornate wooden clock in the corner announced the healer was ten minutes late. “Should we call for someone to find out if she’s coming?”
“Give her time.”
Nesryn paused before him, frowning deeply. “We need to begin immediately. There is no time to waste.”
Chaol took a breath. “I understand that you want to return home to your family—”
“I will not rush you. But even a day makes a difference.”
He noted the lines of strain bracketing her mouth. He had no doubt twin ones marked his own. Forcing himself to stop contemplating and dreading where Dorian might now be had been an effort of pure will this morning. “Once the healer arrives, why don’t you go track down your kin in the city? Perhaps they’ve heard from your family in Rifthold.”
A slicing wave of her slender hand. “I can wait until you’re done.”
Chaol lifted his brows. “And pace the entire time?”
Nesryn sank onto the nearest sofa, the gold silk sighing beneath her slight weight. “I came here to help you—with this, and with our cause. I won’t run off for my own needs.”
“What if I give you an order?”
She only shook her head, her dark curtain of hair swaying with the movement.
And before he could give that exact order, a brisk knock thudded on the heavy wood door.
Nesryn shouted a word that he assumed meant enter in Halha, and he listened to the footsteps as they approached. One set—quiet and light.
The door to the sitting room drifted open beneath the press of a honey-colored hand.
It was her eyes that Chaol noticed first.
She likely stopped people dead in the street with those eyes, a vibrant golden brown that seemed lit from within. Her hair was a heavy fall of rich browns amid flashes of dark gold, curling slightly at the ends that brushed her narrow waist.
She moved with a nimble grace, her feet—clad in practical black slippers—swift and unfaltering as she crossed the room, either not noticing or caring about the ornate furnishings.
Young, perhaps a year or two older than twenty.
But those eyes … they were far older than that.
She paused at the carved wooden chair across from the golden couch, Nesryn shooting to her feet. The healer—for there was no one else she could be, with that calm grace, those clear eyes, and that simple, pale blue muslin dress—glanced between them. She was a few inches shorter than Nesryn, built with similar delicacy, yet despite her slender frame … He didn’t look long at the other features the healer had been generously blessed with.
“Are you from the Torre Cesme?” Nesryn asked in Chaol’s own tongue.
The healer only stared at him. Something like surprise and anger lighting those remarkable eyes.
She slid a hand into the pocket of her gown, and he waited for her to withdraw something, but it remained there. As if she was grasping an object within.
Not a doe ready to bolt, but a stag, weighing the options of fighting or fleeing, of standing its ground, lowering its head, and charging.
Chaol held her gaze, cool and steady. He’d taken on plenty of young bucks during the years of being captain—had gotten them all to heel.
Nesryn asked something in Halha, no doubt a repeat of her question.
A thin scar sliced across the healer’s throat. Perhaps three inches long.
He knew what sort of weapon had given that scar. All the possibilities that burst into his head for why it might have happened were not pleasant ones.
Nesryn fell silent, watching them.
The healer only turned on her heel, walked to the desk near the windows, took a seat, and pulled a piece of parchment toward her from the neat stack in the corner.
Whoever these healers were, the khagan was right: they certainly did not answer to his throne. Or find it in themselves to be impressed with any manner of nobility and power.
She opened a drawer, found a glass pen, and held it poised over the paper.
“Name.”
She did not have an accent—or, rather, the accent of these lands.
“Chaol Westfall.”
“Age.”
The accent. It was from—
“Fenharrow.”
Her pen stalled. “Age.”
“You’re from Fenharrow?”
What are you doing here, so far from home?
She leveled a cool, unimpressed stare at him.
He swallowed and said, “Twenty-three.”
She scribbled something down. “Describe where the injury begins.”
Each word was clipped, her voice low.
Had it been an insult to be assigned his case? Had she other things to do when she was summoned here? He thought again of Hasar’s wicked smile the night before. Perhaps the princess knew that this woman was not praised for her bedside manner.
“What is your name?”
The question came from Nesryn, whose face was beginning to tighten.
The healer stilled as she took in Nesryn, blinking like she had not really noticed her. “You—are from here?”
“My father was,” Nesryn said. “He moved to Adarlan, wed my mother, and I now have family there—and here.” She impressively hid any trace of dread at the mention of them as she added coaxingly, “My name is Nesryn Faliq. I am the Captain of the Royal Guard of Adarlan.”
That surprise in the healer’s eyes turned wary. But she again gazed at him.
She knew who he was. The look conveyed it—the analysis. She knew he’d once held that title, and now was something else. So the name, the age … the questions were bullshit. Or some bureaucratic nonsense. He doubted it was the latter.
A woman from Fenharrow, meeting with two members from Adarlan’s court …
It didn’t take much to read her. What she saw. Where that mark on her throat might have come from.
“If you don’t want to be here,” Chaol said roughly, “then send someone else.”
Nesryn whirled on him.
The healer only held his stare. “There is no one else to do this.” The unspoken words said the rest: They sent their best.
With that steady, self-assured posture, he didn’t doubt it. She angled her pen again. “Describe where the injury begins.”
A sharp knock on the sitting room door cut through the silence. He started, cursing himself for not having heard the approach.
But it was Princess Hasar, clad in green and gold and smirking like a cat. “Good morning, Lord Westfall. Captain Faliq.” Her braided hair swaying with each swaggering step, Hasar strolled over to the healer, who looked up at her with an expression Chaol dared call exasperation, and leaned down to kiss her on either cheek. “You’re not usually so grumpy, Yrene.”
There—a name.
“I forgot my kahve this morning.” The thick, spiced, bitter drink Chaol had choked down with his breakfast. An acquired taste, Nesryn had said when he’d asked about it later.
The princess took up a perch along the edge of the desk. “You didn’t come to dinner last night. Kashin was sulking about it.”
Yrene’s shoulders tightened. “I had to prepare.”
“Yrene Towers locking herself in the Torre to work? I might die of shock.”
From the princess’s tone, he filled in enough. The best healer in the Torre Cesme had become so thanks to that grueling work ethic.
Hasar looked him over. “Still in the chair?”
“Healing takes time,” Yrene said mildly to the princess. Not an ounce of subservience or respect to the tone. “We were just beginning.”
“So you agreed to do it, then?”
Yrene cut the princess a sharp glare. “We were assessing the lord’s needs.” She jerked her chin toward the doors. “Shall I find you when I’m done?”
Nesryn gave Chaol an impressed, wary glance. A healer dismissing a princess of the most powerful empire in the world.
Hasar leaned forward to ruffle Yrene’s gold-brown hair. “If you weren’t gods-blessed, I’d carve out your tongue myself.” The words were honeyed venom. Yrene only offered a faint, bemused smile before Hasar hopped off the desk and gave him a mocking incline of the head. “Don’t worry, Lord Westfall. Yrene has healed injuries similar and far worse than your own. She’ll have you back on your feet and able to do your master’s bidding again in no time.” With that lovely parting shot, which left Nesryn cold-eyed, the princess vanished.
They waited a good few moments to make sure they heard the outer door shut.
“Yrene Towers,” was all Chaol said.
“What of it.”
Gone was the faint amusement. Fine.
“The lack of feeling and movement begins at my hips.”
Yrene’s eyes shot right to them, dancing over him. “Are you capable of using your manhood?”
He tried not to flinch. Even Nesryn blinked at the frank question.
“Yes,” he said tightly, fighting the heat rising in his cheeks.
She looked between them, assessing. “Have you used it to completion?”
He clenched his jaw. “How is that relevant?” And how had she gleaned what was between them?
Yrene only wrote something down.
“What are you writing?” he demanded, cursing the damned chair for keeping him from storming to rip the paper out of her hands.
“I’m writing a giant no.”
Which she then underlined.
He growled, “I suppose you’ll ask about my bathroom habits now?”
“It was next on my list.”