“You have been studying, my wise child.”
The woman kissed her daughter on her sweaty brow.
He felt the kiss—the love in it—even as a ghost at the gate.
For it was love that shaded the entirety of the world here, gilded it. Love and joy.
Happiness.
The sort he had not known with his own family. Or anyone else.
The girl had been loved. Deeply. Unconditionally.
This was a happy memory—one of a few.
“And what is that bush, there by the wall?” the woman asked the girl.
Her brow scrunched in concentration. “Gooseberries?”
“Yes. And what do we do with gooseberries?”
The girl braced her hands on her hips, her simple dress blowing in the dry, warm breeze. “We …” She tapped her foot with impatience—at her own mind, for not recalling. The same irritation he’d seen outside that old man’s house in Antica.
Her mother crept up behind her, sweeping the girl into her arms and kissing her cheek. “We make gooseberry pie.”
The girl’s squeal of delight echoed across the amber grasses and clear streams, even into the tangled, ancient heart of Oakwald.
Perhaps even to the White Fangs themselves, and the cold city nestled at their edge.
He opened his eyes.
And found his entire foot pressing into the couch cushions.
Felt the silk and embroidery scratching against the bare arch of his foot. His toes.
Felt.
He bolted upright, finding Yrene not at his side.
Nowhere near.
He gaped at his feet. Below the ankle … He shifted and rotated his foot. Felt the muscles.
Words stalled in his throat. His heart thundered. “Yrene,” he rasped, scanning for her.
She wasn’t in the suite, but—
Sunlight on brown-gold caught his eye. In the garden.
She was sitting out there. Alone. Quietly.
He didn’t care that he was half dressed. Chaol heaved himself into the chair, marveling at the sensation of the smooth wood supports beneath his feet. He could have sworn even his legs … a phantom tingling.
He wheeled himself into the small, square garden, breathless and wide-eyed. She’d repaired another fraction, another—
She’d settled herself in an ornate little chair before the circular reflection pool, her head propped up by her fist.
At first, he thought she was sleeping in the sun.
But he inched closer and caught the gleam of light on her face. On the wetness there.
Not blood—but tears.
Streaming silently, unendingly, as she stared at that reflection pool, the pink lilies and emerald pads covering most of it.
She stared as if not seeing it. Not hearing him.
“Yrene.”
Another tear rolled down her face, dripping onto her pale purple dress. Another.
“Are you hurt,” Chaol said hoarsely, his chair crunching over the pale white gravel of the garden.
“I’d forgotten,” she whispered, lips wobbling as she stared and stared at the pool and did not move her head. “What she looked like. Smelled like. I’d forgotten—her voice.”
His chest strained as her face crumpled. He hauled his chair beside her own but did not touch her.
Yrene said quietly, “We make oaths—to never take a life. She broke that oath the day the soldiers came. She had hidden a dagger in her dress. She saw the soldier grab me, and she … she leaped on him.” She closed her eyes. “She killed him. To buy me time to run. And I did. I left her. I ran, and I left her, and I watched … I watched from the forest as they built that fire. And I could hear her screaming and screaming—”
Her body shook.
“She was good,” Yrene whispered. “She was good and she was kind and she loved me.” She still did not wipe her tears. “And they took her away.”
The man he had served … he had taken her away.
Chaol asked softly, “Where did you go after that?”
Her trembling lessened. She wiped at her nose. “My mother had a cousin in the north of Fenharrow. I ran there. It took me two weeks, but I made it.”
At eleven. Fenharrow had been in the middle of conquest, and she’d made it—at eleven.
“They had a farm, and I worked there for six years. Pretended to be normal. Kept my head down. Healed with herbs when it wouldn’t raise suspicions. But it wasn’t enough. It … There was a hole. In me. I was unfinished.”
“So you came here?”
“I left. I meant to come here. I walked through Fenharrow. Through Oakwald. Then over … over the mountains …” Her voice broke into a whisper. “It took me six months, but I made it—to the port of Innish.”
He’d never heard of Innish. Likely in Melisande, if she’d crossed—
She’d crossed mountains.
This delicate woman beside him … She had crossed mountains to be here. Alone.
“I ran out of money for the crossing. So I stayed. I found work.”
He avoided the urge to look at the scar on her throat. To ask what manner of work—
“Most girls were on the streets. Innish was—is not a good place. But I found an inn by the docks and the owner hired me. I worked as a barmaid and a servant and … I stayed. I meant to only work for a month, but I stayed for a year. Let him take my money, my tips. Increase my rent. Put me in a room under the stairs. I had no money for the crossing, and I thought … I thought I would have to pay for my education here. I didn’t want to go without funds for tuition, so … I stayed.”
He studied her hands, now clutching each other tightly in her lap. Pictured them with a bucket and mop, with rags and dirty dishes. Pictured them raw and aching. Pictured the filthy inn and its inhabitants—what they must have seen and coveted when they beheld her.
“How did you make it here?”
Yrene’s mouth tightened, her tears fading. She loosed a breath. “It is a long story.”
“I have time to listen.”
But she shook her head again and at last looked at him. There was a … clarity to her face. Those eyes. And it did not falter as she said, “I know who gave you that wound.”
Chaol went wholly still.
The man who had taken away the mother she so deeply loved; the man who had sent her fleeing across the world.
He managed to nod.
“The old king,” Yrene breathed, studying the pool again. “He was—he was possessed, too?”
The words were hardly more than a whisper, barely audible even to him.
“Yes,” he managed to say. “For decades. I—I’m sorry I did not tell you. We’ve deemed that information … sensitive.”
“For what it might mean about the suitability of your new king.”
“Yes, and open the door to questions that are best kept unasked.”
Yrene rubbed at her chest, her face haunted and bleak. “No wonder my magic recoils so.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. It was all he could think to offer.
Those eyes slid to him, any lingering fog clouding them clearing away. “It gives me further reason to fight it. To wipe away that last stain of him—of it forever. Just now, it was waiting for me. Laughing at me again. I managed to get to you, but then the darkness around you was too thick. It had made a … shell. I could see it—everything it showed you. Your memories, and his.” She rubbed her face. “I knew then. What it was—who gave you the wound. And I saw what it was doing to you, and all I could think to stop it, to blast it away …” She pursed her lips, as if they might start trembling again.
“A bit of goodness,” he finished for her. “A memory of light and goodness.” He didn’t have the words to convey his gratitude for it, for what it must have been like to offer up that memory of her mother against the demon that had destroyed her.
Yrene seemed to read his thoughts, and said, “I am glad it was a memory of her that beat the darkness back a little further.”
/>
His throat tightened, and he swallowed hard.
“I saw your memory,” Yrene said quietly. “The—man. Your father.”
“He is a bastard of the finest caliber.”
“It was not your fault. None of it.”
He refrained from commenting otherwise.
“You were lucky that you did not fracture your skull,” she said, scanning his brow. The scar just barely visible, covered by his hair.
“I’m sure my father considers it otherwise.”
Darkness flashed in her eyes. Yrene only said, “You deserved better.”
The words hit something sore and festering—something he had locked up and not examined for a long, long time. “Thank you,” he managed to say.
They sat in silence for long minutes. “What time is it?” he asked after a while.
“Three,” she said.
Chaol started.
But Yrene’s eyes went right to his legs. His feet. How they had moved with him.
Her mouth opened silently.
“Another bit of progress,” he said.
She smiled—subdued, but … it was real. Not like the one she’d plastered on her face hours and hours ago. When she’d walked into his bedroom and found him there with Nesryn, and he’d felt the world slipping out from under him at the expression on her face. And when she had refused to meet his stare, when she’d wrapped her arms around herself …
He wished he’d been able to walk. So she could see him crawl toward her.
He didn’t know why. Why he felt like the lowest sort of low. Why he’d barely been able to look at Nesryn. Though he knew Nesryn was too observant not to be aware. It had been the unspoken agreement between them last night—silence on the subject. And that reason alone …
Yrene poked at his bare foot. “Do you feel this?”
Chaol curled his toes. “Yes.”
She frowned. “Am I pushing hard or soft?”
She ground her finger in.
“Hard,” he grunted.
Her finger lightened. “And now?”
“Soft.”
She repeated the test on the other foot. Touched each of his toes.
“I think,” she observed, “I’ve pushed it down—to somewhere in the middle of your back. The mark is still the same, but it feels like …” She shook her head. “I can’t explain it.”
“You don’t need to.”
It had been her joy—the undiluted joy of that memory—that had won him that bit of movement. What she’d opened up, given up, to push back the stain of that wound.
“I’m starving,” Chaol said, nudging her with an elbow. “Will you eat with me?”
And to his surprise, she said yes.
CHAPTER
24
Nesryn knew.
She knew it hadn’t been mere interest that had prompted Chaol to ask her to talk to him last night, but guilt.
She was fine with it, she told herself. She had been a replacement for not one, but two of the women in his life. A third one … She was fine with it, she repeated as she returned from stalking through Antica’s streets—not a whisper of Valg to be found—and entered the palace grounds.
Nesryn braced herself as she peered up at the palace, not quite ready to return to their suite to wait out the brutal late afternoon heat.
A massive figure atop a minaret caught her eye, and she smiled grimly.
She was out of breath when she reached the aerie, but mercifully, Kadara was the only one present to witness it.
The ruk clicked her beak at Nesryn in greeting and went back to ripping at what appeared to be an entire slab of beef. Ribs and all.
“I heard you were headed here,” Sartaq said from the stairs behind her.
Nesryn whirled. “I—how?”
The prince gave her a knowing smile and stepped into the aerie. Kadara puffed her feathers with excitement and dug back into her meal, as if eager to finish and be in the skies. “This palace is crawling with spies. Some of them mine. Is there anything you wanted?”
He scanned her—seeing the face that yesterday her aunt and uncle had complained looked tired. Worn out. Unhappy. They’d crammed her with food, then insisted she take their four children back down to the docks to select fish for their evening meal, then shoved more food down her throat before she’d returned to the palace for the feast. Still peaky, Zahida clucked. Your eyes are heavy.
“I …” Nesryn surveyed the view beyond, the city simmering in the late afternoon heat. “I just wanted some quiet.”
“Then I’ll let you have it,” Sartaq said, and turned to the open archway into the stairwell.
“No,” she blurted, reaching toward him. She halted her hand, dropping it immediately as it came within skimming distance of his leather jacket. No one grabbed a prince. No one. “I didn’t mean you had to leave. I … I don’t mind your company.” She added quickly, “Your Highness.”
Sartaq’s mouth quirked up. “It’s a bit late to be throwing in my fancy title, isn’t it?”
She gave him a pleading look. But she’d meant what she said.
Last night, talking with him at the party, even talking with him in the alley outside the Torre a few nights before that … She had not felt quiet or aloof or strange. She had not felt cold or distant. He’d done her an honor in giving her such attention, and in escorting her and Chaol back to their rooms. She did not mind company—quiet as she could be, she enjoyed being around others. But sometimes …
“I spent most of yesterday with my family. They can be … tiring. Demanding.”
“I know how you feel,” the prince said drily.
A smile tugged at her lips. “I suppose you do.”
“You love them, though.”
“And you do not?” A bold, brash question.
Sartaq shrugged. “Kadara is my family. The rukhin, they are my family. My bloodline, though … It’s hard to love one another, when we will one day contend with each other. Love cannot exist without trust.” He smiled at his ruk. “I trust Kadara with my life. I would die for her, and she for me. Can I say the same of my siblings? My own parents?”
“It’s a shame,” Nesryn admitted.
“At least I have her,” he said of the ruk. “And my riders. Pity my siblings, who have none of those blessings.”
He was a good man. The prince … he was a good man.
She strode for the open archways overlooking the deadly drop to the city far, far below.
“I am going to leave soon—for the mountains of the rukhin,” Sartaq said softly. “To seek the answers you and I discussed the other night in the city.”
Nesryn peered over her shoulder at him, trying to gather the right words, the nerve.
His face remained neutral, even as he added, “I’m sure your family will have my head for offering, but … would you like to accompany me?”
Yes, she wanted to breathe. But she made herself ask, “For how long?”
For time was not on her side. Their side. And to hunt for answers while so many threats gathered close …
“A few weeks. No more than three. I like to keep the riders in line, and if I go absent for too long, they pull at the leash. So the journey will serve two purposes, I suppose.”
“I—I would need to discuss. With Lord Westfall.” She’d promised him as much last night. That they’d consider this precise path, weighing the pitfalls and benefits. They were still a team in that regard, still served under the same banner.
Sartaq nodded solemnly, as if he could read everything on her face. “Of course. Though I leave soon.”
She then heard it—the grunt of servants coming up the aerie stairs. Bringing supplies.
“You leave now,” Nesryn clarified as she noted the spear leaning against the far wall near the supply racks. His sulde. The russet horsehair tied beneath the blade drifted in the wind weaving through the aerie, the dark wood shaft polished and smooth.
Sartaq’s onyx eyes seemed to darken further as he strode to his sulde, we
ighing the spirit-banner in his hands before resting it beside him, the wood thunking on the stone floor. “I …” It was the first she’d seen him stumble for words.
“You weren’t going to say good-bye?”
She had no right to make such demands, expect such things, tentative allies or no.
But Sartaq leaned his sulde against the wall again and began braiding back his black hair. “After last night’s party, I had thought you would be … preoccupied.”
With Chaol. Her brows rose. “All day?”
The prince gave her a roguish smile, finishing off his long braid and picking up his spear once more. “I certainly would take all day.”
By some god’s mercy, Nesryn was saved from replying by the servants who appeared, panting and red-faced with the packs between them. Weapons glinted from some of them, along with food and blankets.
“How far is it?”
“A few hours before nightfall, then all day tomorrow, then another half day of travel to reach the first of the aeries in the Tavan Mountains,” Sartaq said as he handed his sulde to a passing servant, and Kadara patiently allowed them to load her with various packs.
“You don’t fly at night?”
“I tire. Kadara doesn’t. Foolish riders have made that mistake—and tumbled through the clouds in their dreams.”
She bit her lip. “How long until you go?”
“An hour.”
An hour to think …
She had not told Chaol. That she’d seen his toes move last night. She’d seen them curl and flex in his sleep.
She had cried, silent tears of joy sliding onto the pillow. She hadn’t told him. And when he’d awoken …
Let’s have an adventure, Nesryn Faliq, he’d promised her in Rifthold. She had cried then, too.
But perhaps … perhaps neither of them had seen. The path ahead. The forks in it.
She could see down one path clearly.
Honor and loyalty, still unbroken. Even if it stifled him. Stifled her. And she … she did not want to be a consolation prize. Be pitied or a distraction.
But this other path, the fork that had appeared, branching away across grasslands and jungles and rivers and mountains … This path toward answers that might help them, might mean nothing, might change the course of this war, all carried on a ruk’s golden wings …