“Yes, anything,” Yrene said, fluffing out her wrinkled clothes. “It’s likely because of anything that you’re limping worse than before.”
Chaol let her fall into step beside him, and balanced on his cane long enough to press a kiss to her temple. He didn’t care who saw. Who reported on it. They could all go to hell. But behind them, he could have sworn Shen and the other guards were grinning from ear to ear.
Chaol winked at her. “Then you’d better heal me, Yrene Towers, because I plan to do a great deal of anything with you tonight.”
She flushed even deeper, but angled her chin upward, prim and proper. “Let’s focus on these scrolls first, you rogue.”
Chaol grinned, broad and unrestrained, and felt it in every inch of his aching body as they strode back inside the palace.
Any joy was short-lived.
Chaol picked up on the humming threads of something amiss the moment they entered their quiet wing. The moment he saw the guards murmuring, the servants scurrying about. Yrene only shared a glance with him, and they hurried along as fast as he could manage. Strands of fire shot along his back, down his thighs, but if something had happened—
The doors to his suite were ajar, with two guards posted outside, who gave him looks full of pity and dread. His stomach turned.
Nesryn. If she had come back, if something had happened with that Valg hunting them—
He stormed into the suite, his protesting body going distant, his head full of roaring silence.
Nesryn’s door was open.
But no body lay sprawled on the bed. No blood stained the carpet, or splattered the walls.
His room was the same. But both bedrooms … Trashed.
Shredded, as if some great wind had shattered the windows and torn through the space.
The sitting room was worse. Their usual gold couch—gutted. The pictures, the art overturned or cracked or slashed.
The desk had been looted, the carpets flipped over—
Kadja was kneeling in the corner, gathering pieces of a broken vase.
“Be careful,” Yrene hissed, striding to the girl as she plucked up pieces with her bare hands. “Get a broom and dustpan rather than use your own hands.”
“Who did this,” Chaol asked quietly.
Fear glimmered in Kadja’s eyes as she rose. “It was like this when I came in this morning.”
Yrene demanded, “You didn’t hear anything at all?”
The sharp doubt in those words made him tense. Yrene hadn’t trusted the servant girl for an instant, making up tasks that would keep her away, but for Kadja to do this—
“With you gone, my lord, I … I took the night to visit my parents.”
He tried not to cringe. A family. She had family here, and he’d never bothered to ask—
“And can your parents swear to the fact that you were with them all night?”
Chaol whirled. “Yrene.”
Yrene didn’t so much as glance at him as she studied Kadja. The servant girl withered under that fierce stare. “But I suppose leaving the door unlocked for someone would have been smarter.”
Kadja cringed, shoulders curving inward.
“Yrene—this could have been from anything. Anyone.”
“Yes, anyone. Especially someone who was looking for something.”
The words clicked at the same moment the disarray of the room did.
Chaol faced the servant girl. “Don’t clean any more of the mess. Everything in here might offer some proof of who did this.” He frowned. “How much did you manage to clean already?”
From the state of the room, not much.
“I only just started. I thought you wouldn’t return until tonight, so I didn’t—”
“It’s fine.” At her cringe, he added, “Go to your parents. Take the day off, Kadja. I’m glad you weren’t here when this happened.”
Yrene gave him a frown that said the girl might very well have been the cause of this, but kept her mouth shut. Within a minute, Kadja had left, closing the hall doors with a quiet click.
Yrene ran her hands over her face. “They took everything. Everything.”
“Did they?” He limped to the desk, peering into the drawers as he braced a hand on the surface. His back ached and writhed—
Yrene stormed to the gold couch, lifting the ruined cushions. “All those books, the scrolls …”
“It was common knowledge that we’d be gone.” He leaned fully against the desk, nearly sighing at the weight it took off his back.
Yrene carved a path through the room, inspecting all the places she’d ferreted away those books and scrolls. “They took it all. Even The Song of Beginning.”
“What about the bedroom?”
She vanished instantly. Chaol rubbed at his back, hissing softly. More rustling, then, “Ha!”
She emerged again, waving one of his boots in the air. “At least they didn’t find this.”
That first scroll. He rallied a smile to his mouth. “At least there’s that.”
Yrene held his boot to her chest as if it were a babe. “They’re getting desperate. That makes people dangerous. We shouldn’t stay here.”
He surveyed the damage. “You’re right.”
“Then we’ll go directly to the Torre.”
He glanced through the open doors to the foyer. To Nesryn’s bedroom.
She was due back soon. And when she did return, to find him gone, with Yrene … He’d treated her abominably. He’d let himself forget what he’d promised, what he’d implied, in Rifthold. On the ship here. And Nesryn might not hold him to any promises, but he’d broken too many of them.
“What is it?” Yrene’s question was barely more than a whisper.
Chaol closed his eyes. He was a bastard. He’d dragged Nesryn here, and this was how he’d treated her. While she was off hunting for answers, risking her life, while she sought some shred of hope for raising an army … He’d send that message—immediately. To return as fast as she could.
“It’s nothing,” Chaol said at last. “Perhaps you should stay at the Torre tonight. There are enough guards there to make anyone think twice.” He added when hurt flickered in her eyes, “I can’t appear to be running away. Especially with the royals now starting to think I might be someone of interest. That Aelin continues to be such a source of worry and intrigue … perhaps I should use that to my advantage.” He fiddled with the cane, tossing it from one hand to another. “But I should stay here. And you, Yrene, you should go.”
She opened her mouth to object, but paused, straightening. A steely glint entered her eyes. “I’ll take Hafiza the scroll myself, then.”
He hated the edge to her voice as he nodded, the dimming of those eyes. He’d done wrong by her, too. In not first ending things with Nesryn, to make it clear. He’d made a mess of it.
A fool. He’d been a fool to think he could rise above this. Move beyond the person he’d been, the mistakes he’d made.
A fool.
CHAPTER
53
Yrene stormed up the Torre steps, careful not to crush the scroll in her fist.
The trashing of his room had rattled him. Rattled her, too, but …
It wasn’t fear of harm or death. Something else had shaken him.
In her other hand, she clutched the locket, the metal warm against her skin.
Someone knew they were close to discovering whatever it was they wanted to keep secret. Or at the very least suspected they might learn something and had destroyed any possible sources. And after what they’d started to piece together in the ruins amid Aksara …
Yrene checked her temper as she reached the top landing of the Torre, the heat smothering.
Hafiza was in her private workshop, tutting to herself over a tonic that rippled with thick smoke. “Ah, Yrene,” she said without looking up while she measured in a drop of some liquid. Vials and basins and bowls covered the desk, scattered between the open books and a set of bronze hourglasses of various time measurement
s. “How was your party?”
Revelatory. “Lovely.”