Someone—Shen—gripped the handles of his chair and began to turn him.
Chaol twisted, teeth bared at the guard. “Don’t touch it.”
But Shen didn’t release the handles, even as apology shone in his eyes. He knew—Chaol realized the guard knew just how it felt to have the chair touched, moved, without being asked. Just as Chaol knew what defying the khagan’s order to escort him from the room might mean for Shen.
So Chaol again fixed his stare on the khagan. “Your city is the greatest I have ever laid eyes upon, your empire the standard by which all others should be measured. When Morath comes to lay waste to it, who will stand with you if we are all carrion?”
The khagan’s eyes burned like coals.
Shen kept pushing his chair toward that door.
Chaol’s arms shook with the effort to keep from shoving the guard away, his legs trembling as he tried and tried to rise. Chaol looked over his shoulder and growled, “I stood on the wrong side of the line for too damn long, and it cost me everything. Do not make the same mistakes that I—”
“Do not presume to tell a khagan what he must do,” Urus said, his eyes like chips of ice. He jerked his chin to the guards shifting on their feet at the door. “Escort Lord Westfall back to his rooms. Do not allow him into my meetings again.”
The threat lay beneath the calm, cold words. Urus had no need to raise his voice, to roar to make his promise of punishment clear enough to the guards.
Chaol pushed and pushed against his chair, arms straining as he fought to stand, to even rise slightly.
But then Shen had his chair through the doors, and down the gleaming bright hallways.
Still his body did not obey. Did not answer.
The doors to the khagan’s council chamber shut with a soft click that reverberated through Chaol’s every bone and muscle, the sound more damning than any word the khagan had uttered.
Yrene had left Chaol to his thoughts the night before.
Left them as she stormed back to the Torre and decided that Hasar … Oh, she did not mind manipulating the princess one bit. And realized precisely how she’d get the princess to invite her to that damned oasis.
But it seemed that even a morning in the training ring with the guards had not soothed the jagged edge in Chaol’s own temper. The temper still simmering as he waited in the sitting room while Yrene sent Kadja off on another fool’s errand—twine, goat’s milk, and vinegar—and at last readied to work on him.
Summer was boiling toward a steamy close, the wild winds of autumn beginning to lash at the waters of the turquoise bay. It was always warm in Antica, but the Narrow Sea turned rough and unwieldy from Yulemas to Beltane. If an armada did not sail from the southern continent before then … Well, Yrene supposed that after last night, one wouldn’t sail anyway.
Sitting near their usual gold couch, Chaol didn’t greet her with more than a cursory glance. Not at all like his usual grim smile. And the shadows under his eyes … Any thought of rushing in here to tell him of her plan flowed out of Yrene’s head as she asked, “Were you up all night?”
“For parts of it,” he said, his voice low.
Yrene approached the couch but did not sit. Instead, she simply watched him, folding her arms across her abdomen. “Perhaps the khagan will consider. He’s aware of how his children scheme. He’s too smart not to have seen Arghun and Hasar working in tandem—for once—and to not be suspicious.”
“And you know the khagan so well?” A cold, biting question.
“No, but I’ve certainly lived here a good deal longer than you have.”
His brown eyes flashed. “I don’t have two years to spare. To play their games.”
And she did, apparently.
Yrene stifled her irritation. “Well, brooding about it won’t fix anything.”
His nostrils flared. “Indeed.”
She hadn’t seen him like this in weeks.
Had it been so long already? Her birthday was in a fortnight. Sooner than she’d realized.
It wasn’t the time to mention it, or the plan she’d hatched. It was inconsequential, really, given everything swarming around them. The burdens he bore. The frustration and despair she now saw pushing on those shoulders.
“Tell me what happened.” Something had—something had shifted since they’d parted ways last night.
A cutting glance her way. She braced herself for his refusal as his jaw tightened.
But then he said, “I went to see the khagan this morning.”
“You got an audience?”
“Not quite.” His lips thinned.
“What happened?” Yrene braced a hand on the arm of the sofa.
“He had me hauled out of the room.” Cold, flat words. “I couldn’t even try to get around the guards. Try to make him listen.”
“If you’d been standing, they’d have hauled you away all the same.” Likely hurt him in the process.
He glared. “I didn’t want to fight them. I wanted to beg him. And I couldn’t even get onto my knees to do it.”
Her heart strained as he looked toward the garden window. Rage and sorrow and fear all crossed over his face. “You’ve made remarkable progress already.”
“I want to be able to fight alongside my men again,” Chaol said quietly. “To die beside them.”
The words were an icy slice of fear through her, but Yrene said stiffly, “You can do that from a horse.”
“I want to do it shoulder-to-shoulder,” he snarled. “I want to fight in the mud, on a killing field.”
“So you’d heal here only so you can go die somewhere else?” The words snapped from her.
“Yes.”
A cold, hard answer. His face equally so.
This storm brewing in him … She wouldn’t see their progress ruined by it.
And war was truly breaking across their home. Regardless of what he wished to do with himself, he did not—they did not have time. Her people in Fenharrow did not have time.
So Yrene stepped up to him, gripped him under a shoulder, and said, “Then get up.”
Chaol was in a shit mood, and he knew it.
The more he’d thought about it, the more he realized how easily the prince and princess had played him, toyed with him last night … It didn’t matter what move Aelin had made. Anything she had done, they would have turned against her. Against him. Had Aelin played the damsel, they would have called her a weak and uncertain ally. There was no way to win.
The meeting with the khagan had been folly. Perhaps Kashin had played him, too. For if the khagan had been willing to hear him out before, he certainly was not going to now. And even if Nesryn returned with Sartaq’s rukhin in tow … Her note yesterday had been carefully worded.
The rukhin are deft archers. They find my own skills intriguing, too. I should like to keep instructing. And learning. They fly free here. I’ll see you in three weeks.
He didn’t know what to make of it. The penultimate line. Was it an insult to him, or a coded message that the rukhin and Sartaq might disobey the commands of their khagan if he refused to let them leave? Would Sartaq truly risk treason to aid them? Chaol didn’t dare leave the message unburned.
Fly free. He had never known such a feeling. It would never be his to discover. These weeks with Yrene, dining in the city under the stars, talking to her about everything and nothing … It had come close, perhaps. But it did not change what lay ahead.
No—they were still very much alone in this war. And the longer he lingered, with his friends now in combat, now on the move …
He was still here. In this chair. With no army, no allies.
“Get up.”
He slowly faced Yrene as she repeated her command, a hand tightly gripped under his shoulder, her face full of fiery challenge.
Chaol blinked at her. “What.” Not quite a question.
“Get. Up.” Her mouth tightened. “You want to die in this war so badly, then get up.”
She was in a mood, too. Good. He?
??d been aching for a fight—the clashes with the guards still unsatisfactory in this gods-damned chair. But Yrene …
He hadn’t allowed himself to touch her these weeks. Had made himself keep a distance, despite her unintentional moments of contact, the times when her head dipped close to his and all he could do was watch her mouth.
Yet he’d seen the tension in her at dinner last night, when Hasar had taunted about Nesryn’s return. The disappointment she’d tried so hard to keep hidden, then the relief when he’d revealed Nesryn’s extended trip.
He was a champion bastard. Even if he’d managed to convince the khagan to save their asses in this war … He would leave here. Empty handed or with an army, he’d leave. And despite Yrene’s plans to return to their continent, he wasn’t certain when he’d see her again. If ever.
None of them might make it anyway.
And this one task, this one task that his friends had given him, that Dorian had given him …
He’d failed.
Even with all he’d endured, all he’d learned … It was not enough.
Chaol gave a pointed look to his legs. “How?” They’d made more progress than he could have dreamed, yet this—
Her grip tightened to the point of pain. “You said it yourself: you don’t have two years. I’ve repaired enough now that you should be able to stand. So get up.” She even went so far as to tug on him.
He stared at her beneath lowered brows, letting his temper slip its leash by a few notches. “Let go.”
“Or what?” Oh, she was pissed.