He tried to smile. Tried and failed.
Yrene pointed at a few, who rushed over. None looked up at him above the waist, or even bid him good morning.
Yrene lifted her voice as they crowded around her, making sure those assembled in the courtyard could also hear. “For patients completely immobilized, this may not be an option, but Lord Westfall retains the ability to move above his waist and can steer the horse with the reins. Balance and safety, of course, remain concerns, but another is that he retains use and sensation of his manhood—which also presents a few hiccups regarding the comfort of the brace itself.”
One of the younger girls let out a giggle at that, but most only nodded, looking directly at the area indicated, as if he had no clothes on whatsoever. Face heating, Chaol restrained the urge to cover himself.
Two young healers began unstrapping the brace, some examining the buckles and rods. Still they did not look him in the eye. As if he were some new toy—new lesson. Some oddity.
Yrene merely went on, “Mind you don’t jostle him too much when you—careful.”
He fought to keep his features distant, found himself missing the guards from the palace. Yrene gave the girls firm, solid directions as they tugged him down from the saddle.
He didn’t try to help the acolytes, or fight them, when they pulled at his arms, someone going to steady his waist, the world tilting as they hauled him downward. But the weight of his body was too great, and he felt himself slide farther from the saddle, the drop to the ground looming, the sun a brand on his skin.
The girls grunted, someone going to the other side to help move his leg up and over the horse—or he thought so. He only knew it because he saw her head of curls just peek over the horse’s side. She pushed, jutting his leg upward, and he hung there, three girls gritting their teeth while they tried to lower him, the others watching in observational silence—
One of the girls let out an oomph and lost her grip on his shoulder. The world plunged—
Strong, unfaltering hands caught him, his nose barely half a foot from the pale gravel as the other girls shuffled and grunted, trying to heft him up again. He’d come free of the horse, but his legs were now sprawled beneath him, as distant from him as the very top of the Torre, high above.
Roaring filled his head.
A sort of nakedness crept over him. Worse than sitting in his undershorts for hours. Worse than the bath with the servant.
Yrene, gripping his shoulder from where she’d just barely caught him in time, said to the healers, “That could have been better, girls. A great deal better, for many reasons.” A sigh. “We can discuss what went wrong later, but for now, move him to the chair.”
He could barely stand to hear her, listen to her, as he hung between those girls, most of whom were half his weight. Yrene stepped aside to let the girl who’d dropped him back into place, whistling sharply.
Wheels hissed on gravel from nearby. He didn’t bother to look at the wheeled chair that an acolyte pushed closer. Didn’t bother to speak as they settled him in it, the chair shuddering beneath his weight.
“Careful.” Yrene warned again.
The girls lingered, the rest of the courtyard still watching. Had it been seconds or minutes since this ordeal had begun? He clenched the arms of the chair as Yrene rattled off some directions and observations. Clenched the arms harder as one of the girls stooped to touch his booted feet, to arrange them for him.
Words rose up his throat, and he knew they’d burst from him, knew he could do little to stop his bellow to back off as that acolyte’s fingers neared the dusty black leather—
Withered brown hands landed on the girl’s wrist, halting her mere inches away.
Hafiza said calmly, “Let me.”
The girls peeled back as Hafiza stooped to help him instead.
“Get the ladies ready, Yrene,” Hafiza said over a slim shoulder, and Yrene obeyed, ushering them back into their lines.
The ancient woman’s hands lingered on his boots—his feet, currently pointing in opposite directions. “Shall I do it, lord, or would you like to?”
Words failed him, and he wasn’t certain he could use his hands without them shaking, so he gave the woman a nod of approval.
Hafiza straightened one foot, waiting until Yrene had walked a few steps away and begun giving stretching instructions to the ladies.
“This is a place for learning,” Hafiza murmured. “Older students teach the younger.” Even with her accent, he understood her perfectly. “It was Yrene’s instinct, Lord Westfall, to show the girls what she did with the brace—to let them learn for themselves what it is to have a patient with similar difficulties. To receive this training, Yrene herself had to venture out onto the steppes. Many of these girls might not have that opportunity. At least not for several years.”
Chaol met Hafiza’s eyes at last, finding the understanding in them more damning than being hauled off a horse by a group of girls half his weight.
“She means well, my Yrene.”
He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he had words.
Hafiza straightened his other foot. “There are many other scars, my lord. Beyond the one on her neck.”
He wanted to tell the old woman that he knew that too damn well.
But he shoved down that bareness, that simmering roar in his head.
He had made these ladies a promise to teach them, to help them.
Hafiza seemed to read that—sense it. She only patted his shoulder before she rose to her full height, groaning a bit, and walked back to the place left for her in line.
Yrene had turned toward him, stretching done, and scanned him. As if Hafiza’s lingering presence had indicated something she’d missed.
Her eyes settled on his, brows narrowing. What’s wrong?
He ignored the question within her look—ignored the bit of worry. Shoved whatever he felt down deep and rolled his chair toward her. Inch by inch. The gravel was not ideal, but he gritted his teeth. He’d given these ladies his word. He would not back down from it.
“Where did we leave off the last lesson?” Yrene asked a girl in the front.
“Eye gouge,” she said with a broad smile.
Chaol nearly choked.
“Right,” Yrene said, rubbing her hands together. “Someone demonstrate for me.”
He watched in silence as hands shot up, and Yrene selected one—a smaller-boned girl. Yrene took up the stance of attacker, grabbing the girl from the front with surprising intensity.
But the girl’s slim hands went right to Yrene’s face, thumbs to the corners of her eyes.
Chaol started from his chair—or would have, had the girl not pulled back.
“And next?” Yrene merely asked.
“Hook in my thumbs like this”—the girl made the motion in the air between them for all to see—“and pop.”
Some of the girls laughed quietly at the accompanying pop the girl made with her mouth.
Aelin would have been beside herself with glee.
“Good,” Yrene said, and the girl strode back to her place in line. Yrene turned to him, that worry again flashing as she beheld whatever was in his eyes, and said, “This is our third lesson of this quarter. We have covered front-based attacks only so far. I usually have the guards come in as willing victims”—some snickers at that—“but today I would like for you to tell us what you think ladies, young and old, strong and frail, could do against any sort of attack. Your list of top maneuvers and tips, if you’d be so kind.”
He’d trained young men ready to shed blood—not heal people.
But defense was the first lesson he’d been taught, and had taught those young guards.
Before they’d wound up hanging from the castle gates.
Ress’s battered, unseeing face flashed into his mind.
What good had it done any of them when it mattered?
Not one. Not one of that core group he’d trusted and trained, worked with for years … not one had survived. Bru
llo, his mentor and predecessor, had taught him all he knew—and what had it earned any of them? Anyone he’d encountered, he’d touched … they’d suffered. The lives he’d sworn to protect—
The sun turned bleaching, the gurgle of the twin fountains a distant melody.
What good had any of it done for his city, his people, when it was sacked?
He looked up to find the lines of women watching him, curiosity on their faces.
Waiting.
There had been a moment, when he had hurled his sword into the Avery. When he had been unable to bear its weight at his side, in his hand, and had chucked it and everything the Captain of the Guard had been, had meant, into the dark, eddying waters.
He’d been sinking and drowning since. Long before his spine.
He wasn’t certain if he’d even tried to swim. Not since that sword had gone into the river. Not since he’d left Dorian in that room with his father and told his friend—his brother—that he loved him, and knew it was good-bye. He’d … left. In every sense of the word.
Chaol forced himself to take a breath. To try.
Yrene stepped up to his side as his silence stretched on, again looking so puzzled and concerned. As if she could not figure out why—why he might have been the least bit … He shoved the thought down. And the others.
Shoved them down to the silt-thick bottom of the Avery, where that eagle-pommeled sword now lay, forgotten and rusting.
Chaol lifted his chin, looking each girl and woman and crone in the face. Healers and servants and librarians and cooks, Yrene had said.
“When an attacker comes at you,” he said at last, “they will likely try to move you somewhere else. Never let them do it. If you do, wherever they take you will be the last place you see.” He’d gone to enough murder sites in Rifthold, read and looked into enough cases, to know the truth in that. “If they try to move you from your current location, you make that your battleground.”
“We know that,” one of the blushing girls said. “That was Yrene’s first lesson.”
Yrene nodded gravely at him. He again did not let himself look at her neck.
“Stomping on the instep?” He could barely manage a word to Yrene.
“First lesson also,” the same girl replied instead of Yrene.
“What about how debilitating it is to receive a blow to the groin?”
Nods all around. Yrene certainly knew her fair share of maneuvers.
Chaol smiled grimly. “What about ways to get a man my size or larger flipped onto their backs in less than two moves?”
Some of the girls smiled as they shook their heads. It wasn’t reassuring.
CHAPTER
15
Yrene felt the anger simmering off Chaol as if it were heat rippling from a kettle.
Not at the girls and women. They adored him. Grinned and laughed, even as they concentrated on his thorough, precise lesson, even as the events in the library hung over them, the Torre, like a gray shroud. There had been many tears last night at the vigil—and a few red eyes still in the halls this morning as she’d hurtled past.
Mercifully, there had been no sign of either when Lord Chaol called in three guards to volunteer their bodies for the girls to flip into the gravel. Over and over.
The men agreed, perhaps because they knew that any injuries would be fussed over and patched up by the greatest healers outside Doranelle.
Chaol even returned their smiles, ladies and, to her shock, guards alike.
But Yrene … she received none of them. Not one.
Chaol’s face only went hard, eyes glinting with frost, whenever she stepped in to ask a question or watch him walk an acolyte through the motions. He was commanding, his unrelenting focus missing nothing. If they had so much as one foot in the wrong position, he caught it before they moved an inch.
The hour-long lesson ended with each one of them flipping a guard onto his back. The poor men limped off, smiling broadly. Mostly because Hafiza promised them a cask of ale each—and her strongest healing tonic. Which was better than any alcohol.
The women dispersed as the bells chimed ten, some to lessons, some to chores, some to patients. A few of the sillier girls lingered, batting their eyelashes toward Lord Westfall, one even looking inclined to perch in his lap before Hafiza drily reminded her of a pile of laundry with her name on it.
Before the Healer on High hobbled after the acolyte, Hafiza merely gave Yrene what she could have sworn was a warning, knowing look.
“Well,” Yrene said to Chaol when they were again alone—despite the gaggle of girls peering out one of the Torre windows. They noticed Yrene’s stare and snapped their heads back in, slamming the window with riotous giggles.
Silba save her from teenage girls.
She’d never been one—not like that. Not so carefree. She hadn’t even kissed a man until last autumn. Certainly had never giggled over one. She wished she had; wished for a lot of things that had ended with that pyre and those torches.
“That went better than expected,” Yrene said to Chaol, who was frowning up at the looming Torre. “I’m sure they’ll be begging me next week for you to return. If you’re interested, I suppose.”
He said nothing.
She swallowed. “I would like to try again today, if you’re up for it. Would you prefer I find a room here, or shall we ride back to the palace?”
He met her stare then. His eyes were dark. “The palace.”
Her stomach twisted at the icy tone. “All right,” was all she managed to say, and walked off in search of the guards and their horses.
They rode back in silence. They’d been quiet during portions of the ride over, but this was … pointed. Heavy.
Yrene wracked her memory for what she might have said during the lesson—what she might have forgotten. Perhaps seeing the guards so active had reminded him of what he did not currently have. Perhaps just seeing the guards themselves had set him down this path.
She mused over it as they returned to the palace, while he was aided by Shen and another guard into the awaiting chair. He offered only a tight smile in thanks.
Lord Chaol looked up at her over a shoulder, the morning heat rising enough to make the courtyard stifling. “Are you going to push it, or shall I?”
Yrene blinked.
“You can move it yourself just fine,” she said, her proverbial heels digging in at that tone.
“Perhaps you should ask one of your acolytes to do it. Or five of them. Or whatever number you deem fit to deal with an Adarlanian lord.”
She blinked again. Slowly. And didn’t give him any warning as she strode off at a clip. Not bothering to wait to see if he followed, or how fast he did.
The columns and halls and gardens of the palace passed in a blur. Yrene was so intent on reaching his rooms that she barely noticed someone had called her name.
It wasn’t until it was repeated a second time that she recognized it—and cringed.
By the time she turned, Kashin—clad in armor and sweating enough to reveal he’d likely been exercising with the palace guards—had reached her side.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, his brown eyes immediately going to her chest. No—to the stain still on her dress. Kashin’s brows lifted. “If you want to send that to the laundry, I’m sure Hasar can lend you some clothes while it is cleaned.”
She’d forgotten she was still in it—the stained, wrinkled dress. Hadn’t really felt like she was quite as much of a mess until now. Hadn’t felt like a barnyard animal.
“Thank you for the offer, but I’ll manage.”
She took a step away, but Kashin said, “I heard about the assailant in the library. I arranged for additional guards to arrive at the Torre after sundown every night and stay until dawn. No one will get in without our notice.”
It was generous—kind. As he had always been with her. “Thank you.”
His face remained grave as he swallowed. Yrene braced herself for the words he’d voice, but Kashin only
said, “Please be careful. I know you made your thoughts clear, but—”
“Kashin.”
“—it doesn’t change the fact that we are, or were, friends, Yrene.”
Yrene made herself meet his eyes. Made herself say, “Lord Westfall mentioned your … thoughts about Tumelun.”
For a moment, Kashin glanced to the white banners streaming from the nearby window. She opened her mouth, perhaps to finally offer her condolences, to try to mend this thing that had fractured between them, but the prince said, “Then you understand how dire this threat may be.”
She nodded. “I do. And I will be careful.”
“Good,” he said simply. His face shifted into an easy smile, and for a heartbeat, Yrene wished she’d been able to feel anything beyond mere friendship. But it had never been that way with him, at least on her part. “How is the healing of Lord Westfall? Have you made progress?”
“Some,” she hedged. Insulting a prince, even one who was a former friend, by striding off was not wise, but the longer this conversation went on … She took a breath. “I would like to stay and talk—”
“Then stay.” That smile broadened. Handsome—Kashin was truly a handsome man. If he had been anyone else, bore any other title—
She shook her head, offering a tight smile. “Lord Westfall is expecting me.”
“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.