Tower of Dawn

Sartaq escorted them to their room and offered them a somewhat stiff good night. More restrained than his words and smiles of earlier. Chaol didn’t blame him. There were likely eyes everywhere.

Even if the prince’s own lingered mostly on Nesryn as she bid Sartaq farewell and she and Chaol slipped into their suite.

The suite was mostly dark, save for a colored glass lantern Kadja had left burning on the foyer table. Their bedroom doors loomed like cavern mouths.

The pause in the dim foyer went on for a heartbeat too long.

Nesryn silently stepped toward her room.

Chaol grabbed her hand before she could make it a foot.

Slowly, she looked back over her shoulder, her dark hair shifting like midnight silk.

Even in the dimness, he knew Nesryn read what lay in his eyes.

His skin tightened around his bones, his heart a thundering beat, but he waited.

She said at last, “I think I am needed elsewhere than this palace right now.”

He maintained his grip on her hand. “We shouldn’t discuss this in the hall.”

Nesryn’s throat bobbed, but she nodded once. She made to push his chair, but he moved before she could, steering himself into his bedroom. Letting her follow.

Letting her shut the door behind them.

Moonlight leaked in through the garden windows, spilling upon the bed.

Kadja had not lit the candles, either anticipating the use of this room after the party for purposes other than sleeping or that he might not return at all. But in the dark, in the humming from the cicadas in the garden trees …

“I need you here,” Chaol said.

“Do you?” A stark, honest question.

He gave Nesryn the respect of considering her question. “I … We were supposed to do this together. Everything.”

She shook her head, short hair shifting. “Paths change. You know that as much as anyone.”

He did. He really damn did. But it still … “Where do you mean to go?”

“Sartaq mentioned that he wishes to seek out answers amongst his people, about whether the Valg made it to this continent before. I … I am tempted to go with him, if he will let me. To see if there are indeed answers to be found, and if I might convince him to perhaps go against his father’s orders. Or at least speak on our behalf.”

“To go with him to where, though? The ruk riders in the south?”

“Perhaps. He mentioned at the party that he’ll leave in a few days. But you and I have a slim enough shot. Maybe I can better our odds with the prince, find information of value amongst the rukhin. If one of Erawan’s agents is in Antica … I trust the khagan’s guard to protect this palace and the Torre, but you and I, we must gather what forces we can before Erawan can send more against us.” She paused. “And you … you are making good progress. I would not interfere with that.”

Unspoken words ran beneath her offer.

Chaol scrubbed at his face. For her to leave, to simply accept it, this fork in the path before them … He blew out a breath. “Let’s wait until morning before we decide anything. No good comes from choices made late at night.”

Nesryn fell silent, and he hoisted himself onto the mattress before removing his jacket and boots. “Will you sit with me? Tell me about your family—about the celebration today with them.” He had only received the barest of details, and perhaps it was guilt that now fueled him, but …

Their eyes met in the dark, a nightingale’s hymn flitting through the closed doors. He could have sworn he saw understanding shine in her face, then settle, a rock dropped into a pool.

Nesryn approached the bed on silent feet, unbuttoning her jacket and slinging it over a chair before toeing off her boots. She climbed onto the mattress, a pillow sighing as she leaned against it.

I saw, he could have sworn he read flickering in her gaze. I know.

But Nesryn spoke of the dockside ceremony, how her four little cousins had chucked flower wreaths into the sea and then run shrieking from the gulls that swarmed them to steal the little almond cakes out of their hands. She told him of her uncle, Brahim, and her aunt, Zahida, and their beautiful house, with its multiple courtyards and crawling flowers and lattice screens.

With every glance, those unspoken words still echoed. I know. I know.

Chaol let Nesryn talk, listened until her voice lulled him to sleep, because he knew, too.

22

Yrene debated not showing up the next day.

What had happened on the couch last night …

She’d returned to her room overheated and frantic, unable to settle. Peeling off Hasar’s gown and jewels, she’d folded them neatly on her chair with shaking hands. Then she’d pushed her trunk in front of the door, just in case that murdering demon had spied her inhaling ungodly amounts of that smoke and thought to catch her out of her wits.

Because she had been. Utterly out of her mind. All she had known was the heat and smell and comforting size of him—the scrape of his calluses against her skin and how she wanted to feel them elsewhere. How she had kept looking at his mouth and it was all she could do to keep from tracing it with her fingers. Her lips.

She hated those parties. The smoke that made one abandon any sort of common sense. Inhibitions. Precisely why the nobility and wealthy loved to bring it out, but …

Yrene had paced her tower room, running her hands over her face until she smudged the cosmetics Hasar had personally applied.

She’d washed her face thrice. Slipped into her lightest nightgown and then tossed and turned in bed, the fabric clinging and chafing against her sweaty, burning skin.

Counting down the hours, the minutes, until that smoke’s grip loosened. Cleared away.

It didn’t let go easily. And it was only during the quietest, blackest hours of the night that Yrene took matters into her own hands.

A stronger dose than usual had been put out tonight. It crawled all over her, running talons along her skin. And the face it summoned, the hands she imagined brushing over her skin—

Release left her hollow—unsatisfied.

Dawn broke, and Yrene scowled at her haggard reflection in the sliver of mirror above the washbasin.

The opiate’s grip had vanished with the few hours of sleep she’d managed to steal, but … Something twisted low in her gut.

She washed and dressed and packed Hasar’s finery and jewels in a spare satchel. It was best to get it over with. She’d return the princess’s clothes and jewels after. Hasar had been smug as a Baast Cat at the information Yrene had given her, the lie Chaol had fed her to hand to the princess.

She had debated not telling him, but even before the smoke, before that madness … When he’d offered to sit with her to avoid refusing Kashin, after a day spent wandering the city in unhurried ease, she’d decided. To trust him. And then lost her mind entirely.

Yrene could barely look the guards, the servants, the viziers and nobility in the face as she entered the palace and made her way to Lord Westfall’s rooms. There was no doubt some had spied her on the couch with him. Some hadn’t—though they might have heard.

She’d never shown such behavior at the palace. She should tell Hafiza. Let the Healer on High hear of her brazenness before it reached the Torre from other lips.

Not that Hafiza would scold her, but … Yrene could not escape the feeling that she needed to confess. To make it right.

She’d keep today’s session brief. Or as brief as they could, when she lost all sense of time and place in that dark, raging hell of his wound.

Professional.

Yrene entered the suite, telling Kadja, “Ginger, turmeric, and lemon,” before walking to Chaol’s bedroom. Kadja seemed inclined to object, but Yrene ignored her and pushed open the bedroom door.

Yrene halted so fast she nearly stumbled.

It was the rumpled sheets and pillows she noticed first. Then his naked chest, his hips barely covered by a swath of white silk.

Then a dark head, facedown on the pillow beside his. Still sleeping. Exhausted.

Chaol’s eyes instantly flew open, and all Yrene managed was a silent, “Oh.”

Shock and—something else flared in his gaze, his mouth opening.

Nesryn stirred beside him, brows knotting, her shirt wrinkled.

Chaol grabbed fistfuls of the sheet, the muscles of his chest and abdomen shifting as he rose up on his elbows—