“I heard you rode with him this morning to the Torre. Did he not come back with you?”
She tried to keep the pleading expression off her face as she bobbed a curtsy. “I have to go. Thank you again for the concern—and the guards, Prince.”
The title hung between them, pealing like a struck bell.
But Yrene walked on, feeling Kashin’s stare until she rounded a corner.
She leaned against the wall, closing her eyes and exhaling deeply. Fool. So many others would call her a fool and yet—
“I almost feel bad for the man.”
She opened her eyes to find Chaol, breathless and eyes still smoldering, wheeling himself around the corner.
“Of course,” he went on, “I was far back enough that I couldn’t hear you, but I certainly saw his face when he left.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yrene said blandly, and resumed walking toward his suite. Slower.
“Don’t check your pace on my account. You made impressive time.”
She sliced him a glare. “Did I do something to offend you today?”
His level stare revealed nothing, but his powerful arms kept working the wheels of his chair as he pushed himself along.
“Well?”
“Why do you shove away the prince? It seems like you two were once close.”
It was not the time or the place for this conversation. “That is none of your business.”
“Indulge me.”
“No.”
He easily kept pace with her as she increased her own. All the way to the doors to his suite.
Kadja was standing outside, and Yrene gave her an inane order—“I need dried thyme, lemon, and garlic”—that might have very well been one of her mother’s old recipes for fresh trout.
The servant vanished with a bow, and Yrene flung open the suite doors, holding one wide for him to pass.
“Just so you know,” Yrene hissed as she shut the doors loudly behind him, “your piss-poor attitude helps no one and nothing.”
Chaol slammed his chair to a halt in the middle of the foyer, and she winced at what it must have done to his hands. He opened his mouth, but shut it.
Right as the door to the other bedroom opened and Nesryn emerged, hair wet and gleaming.
“I was wondering where you went,” she said to him, then gave Yrene a nod of greeting. “Early morning?”
It took Yrene a few heartbeats to reorder the room, the dynamic with Nesryn now in it. Yrene was not the primary … person. She was the help, the secondary … whatever.
Chaol shook out his hands—indeed red marks marred them—but said to Nesryn, “I went to the Torre to help the girls with a defense lesson.”
Nesryn looked at the chair.
“On horseback,” he said.
Nesryn’s eyes now shot to Yrene, bright and wide. “You—how?”
“A brace,” Yrene clarified. “We were just about to resume our second attempt at healing.”
“And you could truly ride?”
Yrene felt Chaol’s inward flinch—mostly because she flinched as well. At the disbelief.
“We didn’t try out anything more than a fast walk, but yes,” he said calmly. Evenly. Like he expected such questions from Nesryn. Had grown used to it. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll try a trot.”
Though without leverage from his legs, the bouncing … Yrene went through her mental archives on groin injuries. But she stayed quiet.
“I’ll go with you,” Nesryn said, dark eyes lighting. “I can show you the city—perhaps my uncle’s home.”
Chaol only replied, “I would like that,” before Nesryn pressed a kiss to his cheek.
“I’m seeing them now for an hour or two,” said Nesryn. “Then meeting with—you know. I’ll be back this afternoon. And resume my … duties afterward.”
Careful words. Yrene didn’t blame her. Not with the weapons stacked on the desk in Nesryn’s bedroom—barely visible through the ajar door. Knives, swords, multiple bows and quivers … The captain had a small armory in her chamber.
Chaol just grunted his approval, smiling slightly as Nesryn strode for the suite doors. The captain paused in the threshold, her grin broader than any Yrene had seen before.
Hope. Full of hope.
Nesryn shut the door with a click.
Alone in the silence again, still feeling very much the intruder, Yrene crossed her arms. “Can I get you anything before we begin?”
He just wheeled forward—into his bedroom.
“I’d prefer the sitting room,” she said, snatching her supply bag from where Kadja had set it on the foyer table. And likely rifled through it.
“I’d prefer to be in bed while in agony.” He added over his broad shoulder, “And hopefully you won’t pass out on the floor this time.”
He easily moved himself from the chair onto the bed, then began unbuckling his jacket.
“Tell me,” Yrene said, lingering in the doorway. “Tell me what I did to upset you.”
He peeled off his jacket. “You mean beyond displaying me like some broken doll in front of your acolytes and having them haul me off that horse like a limp fish?”
She stiffened, pulling out the bit before dumping the supply bag on the floor. “Plenty of people help you here in the palace.”
“Not as many as you’d think.”
“The Torre is a place of learning, and people with your injury do not come often—not when we usually have to go to them. I was showing the acolytes things that might help with untold numbers of patients in the future.”
“Yes, your prized, shattered horse. Look how well broken I am to you. How docile.”
“I did not mean that, and you know it.”
He ripped off his shirt, nearly tearing it at the seams as he hauled it over his head. “Was it some sort of punishment? For serving the king? For being from Adarlan?”
“No.” That he believed she could be that cruel, that unprofessional—“It was precisely what I just said: I wanted to show them.”
“I didn’t want you to show them!”
Yrene straightened.
Chaol panted through his gritted teeth. “I didn’t want you to parade me around. To let them handle me.” His chest heaved, the lungs beneath those muscles working like bellows. “Do you have any idea what it is like? To go from that”—he waved a hand toward her, her body, her legs, her spine—“to this?”
Yrene had the sense of the ground sliding from beneath her. “I know it is hard—”
“It is. But you made it harder today. You make me sit here mostly naked in this room, and yet I have never felt more bare than I did this morning.” He blinked, as if surprised he’d vocalized it—surprised he’d admitted to it.
“I—I’m sorry.” It was all she could think to say.
His throat bobbed. “Everything I thought, everything I had planned and wanted … It’s gone. All I have left is my king, and this ridiculous, slim scrap of hope that we survive this war and I can find a way to make something of it.”
“Of what?”
“Of everything that crumbled in my hands. Everything.”
His voice broke on the word.
Her eyes stung. Shame or sorrow, Yrene didn’t know.
And she didn’t want to know—what it was, or what had happened to him. What made that pain gutter in his eyes. She knew, she knew he had to face it, had to talk about it, but …
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. She added stiffly, “I should have considered your feelings on the matter.”
He watched her for a long moment, then removed the belt from his waist. Then took off his boots. Socks.
“You can leave the pants on, if—if you want.”
He removed them. Then waited.
Still brimming with anger. Still gazing at her with such resentment in his eyes.
Yrene swallowed once. Twice. Perhaps she should have scrounged up breakfast.
But walking away, even for that … Yrene had a feeling, one she couldn’t quite place, that if she walked away from him, if he saw her back turn …
Healers and their patients required trust. A bond.