With the furniture in front of the exits—
His words sank in.
“You will do no such—”
The bedroom door shuddered beneath a blow. Then another.
The handle shook and shook.
Oh, gods.
They hadn’t bothered with the garden. They’d simply gotten in the front doors.
Another bang that had her flinching away. Another.
“Steady,” Chaol murmured.
Yrene’s dagger trembled as he angled himself to the bedroom door, his blades unwavering.
Another bang, furious and raging.
Then—a voice.
Soft and hissing, neither male nor female.
“Yrene,” it whispered through the crack in the door. She could hear the smile in its voice. “Yrene.”
Her blood went cold. It was not a human voice.
“What is it you want,” Chaol said, his own voice like steel.
“Yrene.”
Her knees buckled so wildly she could barely stand. Every moment of training she’d done slithered right out of her head.
“Get out,” Chaol snarled toward the door. “Before you regret it.”
“Yrene,” it hissed, laughing a bit. “Yrene.”
Valg. One had indeed been hunting her that night, and had come for her again tonight—
Clapping her free hand over her mouth, Yrene sank onto the edge of the bed.
“Don’t you waste one heartbeat being afraid of a coward who hunts women in the darkness,” Chaol snapped at her.
The thing on the other side of the door growled. The doorknob rattled. “Yrene,” it repeated.
Chaol only held her stare. “Your fear grants it power over you.”
“Yrene.”
He approached her, lowering his dagger and sword into his lap. Yrene flinched, about to warn him not to lower his weapons. But Chaol stopped before her. Took her face in his hands, his back wholly to the door now. Even though she knew he monitored every sound and movement behind it. “I am not afraid,” he said softly, but not weakly. “And neither should you be.”
“Yrene,” the thing snapped on the other side of the door, slamming into it.
She cringed away, but Chaol held her face tightly. Did not break her gaze.
“We will face this,” he said. “Together.”
Together. Live or die here—together.
Her breathing calmed, their faces so close his own breath brushed her mouth.
Together.
She hadn’t thought to use such a word, to feel what it meant … She hadn’t felt it since—
Together.
Yrene nodded. Once. Twice.
Chaol searched her eyes, his breath fanning her mouth.
He lifted her hand, still clutched around the dagger, and adjusted her grip. “Angle it up, not straight in. You know where it is.” He put a hand on his chest. Over his heart. “The other places.”
Brain. Through the eye socket. Throat, slashing to unleash the life’s blood. All the various arteries that could be struck to ensure a swift bleed-out.
Things she had learned to save. Not—end.
But this thing …
“Beheading works best, but try to get it down first. Long enough to sever the head.”
He’d done this before, she realized. He’d killed these things. Triumphed against them. Had taken them on with no magic but his own indomitable will and courage.
And she … she had crossed mountains and seas. She had done it on her own.
Her hand stopped shaking. Her breathing evened out.
Chaol’s fingers squeezed around her own, the hilt’s fine metal pushing into the palm of her hand. “Together,” he said one last time, and released her to pluck up his own weapons again.
To face the door.
There was only silence.
He waited, calculating. Sensing. A predator poised to strike.
Yrene’s dagger held steady as she rose to her feet behind him.
A crash sounded through the foyer—followed by shouting.
She started, but Chaol loosed a breath. One of shuddering relief.
He recognized the sounds before she did.
The shouts of guards.
They spoke in Halha—cries through the bedroom door about their status. Safe? Hurt?
Yrene replied in her own shoddy use of the language that they were unharmed. The guards said the servant girl had seen the broken suite door and come running to fetch them.
There was no one else in the suite.
CHAPTER
28
Prince Kashin arrived swiftly, summoned by the guards at Yrene’s request—before she or Chaol even dared to remove the furniture barring the door. Any of the other royals required too much explaining, but Kashin … He understood the threat.
Chaol knew the prince’s voice well enough by that point—Yrene knew it well herself—that as it filled the suite foyer, he gave her the nod to haul away the furniture blocking the door.
Chaol was grateful, just for a heartbeat, that he remained in this chair. Relief might have buckled his legs.
He hadn’t been able to discern a viable path out of it. Not for her. In the chair, against a Valg minion, he was as good as carrion, though he’d calculated that a well-timed throw of his dagger and sword might save them. That had been his best option: throwing.
He hadn’t cared—not really. Not about what it meant for him. But about how much time that throw might buy her.
Someone had hunted her. Meant to kill her. Terrorize and torment her. Perhaps worse, if it was indeed a Valg-infested agent of Morath. Which it had sure as hell sounded like.
He hadn’t been able to make out the voice. Male or female. Just one of them, though.
Yrene remained calm as she opened the door at last to reveal a wild-eyed Kashin, panting heavily. The prince scanned her from head to toe, gave Chaol a brief glance, then returned his focus to the healer. “What happened?”
Yrene lingered behind Chaol’s chair as she said with surprising calm, “I was walking back here to make sure Lord Westfall took a tonic.”
Liar. Smooth, pretty liar. She’d likely been coming back to give him the second earful Chaol had been waiting for all evening.
Yrene came around the chair to stand beside him, close enough that the heat of her warmed his shoulder. “And I was nearly here when I sensed someone behind me.” Yrene then explained the rest, observing the room every now and then, as if whoever it had been would leap out of the shadows. And when Kashin asked if she suspected why someone might do her harm, Yrene glanced at Chaol, a silent conversation passing between them: it had likely been to spook her from helping him, for whatever wicked purpose of Morath. But she’d only told the prince she didn’t know.
Kashin’s face tightened with fury as he studied the cracked door to Chaol’s bedroom. He said over his shoulder to the guards combing through the suite, “I want four of you outside this suite. Another four at the end of the hall. A dozen of you in the garden. Six more at the various hall crossroads that lead here.”
Yrene let out a breath of what might very well have been relief.
Kashin heard it, putting a hand on the hilt of his sword as he said, “The castle is already being searched. I plan to join them.”
Chaol knew it wasn’t for Yrene alone. Knew that the prince had good reason to join the hunt, that there was likely still a white banner hanging from his windows.
Gallant and dedicated. Perhaps how all princes should be. And perhaps a good friend for Dorian to have. If everything went in their favor.
Kashin seemed to take a bracing breath. Then he asked Yrene quietly, “Before I go … why don’t I escort you back to the Torre? With an armed guard, of course.”
There was enough concern and hope in the prince’s eyes that Chaol made a point to busy himself by monitoring the guards still examining every inch of the rooms.
Yet Yrene wrapped her arms around herself and said, “I feel safer here.”
Chaol tried not to blink at her. At the words.
With him. She felt safer here with him.
He avoided the urge to remind her that he was in this chair.
Kashin’s gaze now shifted to him, as if remembering he was there. And it was disappointment that now hardened his gaze—disappointment and warning as he met Chaol’s stare.
Chaol clamped down on his warning to Kashin to stop giving him that look and go search the palace.
He’d keep his hands to himself. He’d been unable to stop thinking about Nesryn’s letter all day. When he wasn’t mulling over all that Shen had shown him—what it had done to him to see what lay beneath that proud guard’s sleeve.
But the prince just bowed his head, a hand on his chest. “Send word if you need anything.”