“Liberating?”
“Refreshing,” he countered, giving Yrene a small smile at the echo to his earlier words.
She blushed prettily in the golden light from the lanterns within the dining room behind them. “Well … good.”
“And you? Do you go out with friends often—leave the healer behind?”
Yrene watched the people streaming by. “I don’t have many friends,” she admitted. “Not because I don’t want them,” she blurted, and he smiled. “I just—at the Torre, we’re all busy. Sometimes, a few of us will go for a meal or drink, but our schedules rarely align, and it’s easier to eat at the mess hall, so … we’re not really a lively bunch. Which was why Kashin and Hasar became my friends—when they’re in Antica. But I’ve never really had the chance to do much of this.”
He almost asked, Go out to dinner with men? But said, “You had your focus elsewhere.”
She nodded. “And maybe one day—maybe I’ll have the time to go out and enjoy myself, but … there are people who need my help. It feels selfish to take time for myself, even now.”
“You shouldn’t feel that way.”
“And you’re any better?”
Chaol chuckled, leaning back as the servant came, bearing a pitcher of chilled mint tea. He waited until the man left before saying, “Maybe you and I will have to learn how to live—if we survive this war.”
It was a sharp, cold knife between them. But Yrene straightened her shoulders, her smile small and yet defiant as she lifted her pewter glass of tea. “To living, Lord Chaol.”
He clinked his glass against hers. “To being Chaol and Yrene—even just for a night.”
Chaol ate until he could barely move, the spices like small revelations with every bite.
They talked as they dined, Yrene explaining her initial months at the Torre, and how demanding her training had been. Then she’d asked about his training as captain, and he’d balked—balked at talking of Brullo and the others, and yet … He couldn’t refuse her joy, her curiosity.
And somehow, talking about Brullo, the man who had been a better father to him than his own … It did not hurt, not as much. A lower, quieter ache, but one he could withstand.
One he was glad to weather, if it meant honoring a good man’s legacy by telling his story.
So they talked, and ate, and when they finished, he escorted her to the glowing white walls of the Torre. Yrene herself seemed glowing as she smiled when they stopped within the gates while his horse was readied.
“Thank you,” she said, her cheeks flushed and gleaming. “For the meal—and company.”
“It was my pleasure,” Chaol said, and meant it.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning—at the palace?”
An unnecessary question, but he nodded.
Yrene shifted from one foot to another, still smiling, still shining. As if she were the last, vibrant ray of the sun, staining the sky long after it had vanished over the horizon.
“What?” she asked, and he realized he’d been staring.
“Thank you for tonight,” Chaol said, stifling what tried to leap off his tongue: I can’t take my eyes off you.
She bit her lip again, the crunch of hooves on gravel approaching. “Good night,” she murmured, and took a step away.
Chaol reached out. Just to brush his fingers over hers.
Yrene paused, her fingers curling, as if they were the petals of some shy flower.
“Good night,” he merely said.
And as Chaol rode back to the illuminated palace across the city, he could have sworn that some weight in his chest, on his shoulders, had vanished. As if he’d lived with it his entire life, unaware, and now, even with all that gathered around him, around Adarlan and those he cared for … How strange it felt.
That lightness.
CHAPTER
33
The Watchtower of Eidolon jutted up from the mist-shrouded pines like the shard of a broken sword. It had been situated atop a low-lying peak that overlooked a solid wall of gargantuan mountains, and as Nesryn and Sartaq swept near the tower, sailing along the tree-crusted hills, she had the sense of racing toward a tidal wave of hard stone.
For a heartbeat, a wave of lethal glass swept for her instead. She blinked, and it was gone.
“There,” Sartaq whispered, as if fearful that any might hear while he pointed toward the enormous mountains lurking beyond. “Over that lip, that is the start of kharankui territory, the Dagul Fells. Those in the watchtower would have been able to see anyone coming down from those mountains, especially with their Fae sight.”
Fae sight or not, Nesryn scanned the barren slopes of the Fells—a wall of boulders and shards of rock. No trees, no streams. As if life had fled. “Houlun flew over that?”
“Believe me,” Sartaq grumbled, “I am not pleased. Borte got an earful about it this morning.”
“I’m surprised your kneecaps still function.”
“Didn’t you notice my limp earlier?”
Despite the nearing watchtower, despite the wall of mountain that rose up beyond it, Nesryn chuckled. She could have sworn Sartaq leaned closer, his broad chest pushing into the quiver and bow she had strapped across her back, along with the twin long knives courtesy of Borte.
They hadn’t told anyone where they were going or what they sought, which had earned no shortage of glares from Borte over breakfast, and curious glances from Falkan across the round table. But they had agreed last night, when Sartaq left Nesryn at her bedroom door, that secrecy was vital—for now.
So they’d departed an hour after dawn, armed and bearing a few packs of supplies. Even though they planned to be headed home well before sunset, Nesryn had insisted on bringing their gear. Should the worst happen, should anything happen, it was better to be prepared.
Borte, despite her ire at being left in the dark, had braided Nesryn’s hair after breakfast—a tight, elegant plait starting at the crown of her head and landing just where her cape fell to cover her flying leathers. The braid was tight enough that Nesryn had avoided the urge to loosen it these hours that they’d flown, but now that the tower was in sight and her hair had barely shifted, Nesryn supposed the braid could stay.
Kadara circled the watchtower twice, dropping lower with each pass.
“No signs of webs,” Nesryn observed. The upper levels of the watchtower had been destroyed by weather or some long-ago passing army, leaving only two floors above the ground. Both were exposed to the elements, the winding stairwell in the center coated in pine needles and dirt. Broken beams and blocks of stone also littered it, but no indications of life. Or any sort of miraculously preserved library.
With Kadara’s size, the ruk had to find a clearing nearby to land, since Sartaq didn’t trust the watchtower walls to hold her. The bird leaped into the air as soon as they’d begun the climb up the small incline to the watchtower proper. She’d circle overhead until Sartaq whistled for her, apparently.
Another trick of the rukhin and the Darghan on the steppes: the whistling, along with their whistling arrows. They had long allowed both peoples to communicate in a way that few noticed or bothered to comprehend, passing messages through enemy territory or down army lines. The riders had trained the ruks to understand the whistles, too—to know a call for help from a warning to flee.
Nesryn prayed with each grueling step through the thick pine trees and granite boulders that they would only need the whistle to summon the bird. She was no great tracker, but Sartaq, it seemed, was deftly reading the signs around them.
A shake of the prince’s head told Nesryn enough: no hint of a presence, arachnid or otherwise. She tried not to look too relieved. Despite the tall trees, the Fells were a solid, looming presence to her right, drawing the eye even as it repelled every instinct.
Blocks of stone greeted them first. Great, rectangular chunks, half buried in the pine needles and soil. The full weight of summer lay upon the land, yet the air was cool, the shade beneath the trees outright chill
y.
“I don’t blame them for abandoning it if it’s this cold in the summer,” Nesryn muttered. “Imagine it in winter.”
Sartaq smiled but pressed a finger to his lips as they cleared the last of the trees. Blushing that he’d needed to remind her, Nesryn unslung her bow and nocked an arrow, letting it hang limply while they tipped back their heads to take in the tower.
It must have been enormous, thousands of years ago, if the ruins were enough to make her feel small. Any barracks or living quarters had long since tumbled away or rotted, but the stone archway into the tower itself remained intact, flanked by twin statues of some sort of weather-worn bird.
Sartaq approached, his long knife gleaming like quicksilver in the watery light as he studied the statues. “Ruks?” The question was a mere breath.
Nesryn squinted. “No—look at the face. The beak. They’re … owls.” Tall, slender owls, their wings tucked in tight. The symbol of Silba, of the Torre.
Sartaq’s throat bobbed. “Let’s be swift. I don’t think it’s wise to linger.”