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Atop his snowy head sat no crown. For gods among mortals did not need markers of their divine rule.
“We met someone. Who set us all down a path I fought against until it cost me and others much. Too much. So you may look at me with resentment, Yrene Towers, and I will not blame you for it. But believe me when I say that there is no one in Erilea who loathes me more than I do myself.”
None of the Towers women had ever married, preferring either lovers who left them with a present that arrived nine months later or who perhaps stayed a year or two before moving on.
He’d trained young men ready to shed blood—not heal people. But defense was the first lesson he’d been taught, and had taught those young guards. Before they’d wound up hanging from the castle gates.
There had been a moment, when he had hurled his sword into the Avery. When he had been unable to bear its weight at his side, in his hand, and had chucked it and everything the Captain of the Guard had been, had meant, into the dark, eddying waters. He’d been sinking and drowning since. Long before his spine.
Yrene said quietly, “Soldiers from Adarlan burned my mother alive when I was eleven.” And before Chaol could answer, she laid her hand on the mark atop his spine.
But she looked down, dragging his stare with her. Down his bare torso, his bare legs. To his toes. To his toes, slowly curling and uncurling. As if trying to remember the movement.
“Skull’s Bay,” he threw out. “Tell her fire can be found at Skull’s Bay.” It was perhaps the one place Aelin would never go—down to the domain of the Pirate Lord.
“I am glad it was a memory of her that beat the darkness back a little further.”
He wished he’d been able to walk. So she could see him crawl toward her.
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 …
“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.”
there were plans so long in the making that for someone who let the world deem her unchecked and brash, Aelin showed a great deal of restraint in keeping it all hidden.
“This will be the great war of our time,” Kashin said quietly. “When we are dead, when even our grandchildren’s grandchildren are dead, they will still be talking about this war. They will whisper of it around fires, sing of it in the great halls. Who lived and died, who fought and who cowered.”
He had fought a king before and lived to tell.
“I might not have battled kings and shattered castles,” she said coldly, voice shaking with anger as she continued her retreat, “but I am the heir apparent to the Healer on High. Through my own work and suffering and sacrifice. And you’re standing right now because of that. People are alive because of that. So I may not be a warrior waving a sword about, may not be worthy of your glorious tales, but at least I save lives—not end them.”
She reached the handle. Fumbled blindly for it. And if she left, if he let her walk out … Yrene pushed down on the handle. And Chaol took a step toward her.
It was like waking up or being born or falling out of the sky. It was an answer and a song, and she could not think or feel fast enough.
“Good luck to anyone who tries to go after Rowan Whitethorn.” “Because Aelin will burn them to ash?” Hasar asked with poisoned sweetness. But it was Kashin who answered softly, “Because Rowan Whitethorn will always be the person who walks away from that encounter. Not the assailant.”
She trusted Chaol. She did not trust these royals.
Like Hasar, she isn’t an easy person to be with, to understand. Aelin frightens everyone.” He snorted. “But not him. I think that’s why she fell in love with him, against her best intentions. Rowan beheld all Aelin was and is, and he was not afraid.”
“Mountains. And seas,” she whispered. “So you never forget that you climbed them and crossed them. That you—only you—got yourself here.”
“I am glad,” she whispered, “that you do not love that queen. Or Nesryn.”
“I will cherish it always,” Chaol whispered as he slid into her, slow and deep. Pleasure rippled down his spine. “No matter what may befall the world.” Yrene kissed his neck, his shoulder, his jaw. “No matter the oceans, or mountains, or forests in the way.” Chaol held Yrene’s stare as he stilled, letting her adjust. Letting himself adjust to the sensation that the entire axis of the world had shifted. Looking into those eyes of hers, swimming with brightness, he wondered if she felt it, too. But Yrene kissed him again, in answer and silent demand. And as Chaol began to move in her, he
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Sartaq said to her, clear and steady, “I heard the spies’ stories of you. The fearless Balruhni woman in Adarlan’s empire. Neith’s Arrow. And I knew …” Nesryn sobbed, tugging and tugging. Sartaq smiled at her—gently. Sweetly. In a way she had not yet seen. “I loved you before I ever set eyes on you,” he said. “Please,” Nesryn wept. Sartaq’s hand tightened on hers. “I wish we’d had time.”
“We wait for the Queen of the Valg,” the spider purred, rubbing against the carving. “Who in this world calls herself Maeve.”
“When I was seven, my older brother sired a bastard daughter off a poor woman in Rifthold. Abandoned them both. It has been twenty years since then, and from when I was old enough to go to the city, to begin my trade, I looked for her. Found the mother after some years—on her deathbed. She could barely talk long enough to say she’d kicked the girl out. She did not know where my niece was. Didn’t care. She died before she could give me a name.”
Fire and ice. An end and a beginning.
Chaol took a shuddering breath. “What did Aelin promise you?” Hasar smiled to herself. “A better world.”
Duva. The khagan’s now-youngest daughter. She smiled at them as they approached—and the expression was not human. It was Valg.
She could have sworn a gentle, warm hand brushed her face. And Yrene knew it did not belong to Hafiza or the Other. Did not belong to any healer alive. But to one who had never left her, even when she had been turned into ash on the wind.
“I wanted to heal you,” she breathed. “You did,” he said, smiling. “Yrene, in every way that truly matters … You did.”
“We did not return alone when we raced back here.” Chaol glanced between them. “How many?” Sartaq’s face tightened. “The rukhin are vital enough internally that I can only risk bringing half.” Chaol waited. “So I brought a thousand.”
“So you will have to suffer my company for a while yet, Lord Westfall,” Hasar said, but that edged smile was not as sharp. “Because for my sisters, both living and dead, I will march with my sulde to the gates of Morath and make that demon bastard pay.” She met Yrene’s stare. “And for you, Yrene Towers. For what you did for Duva, I will help you save your land.”
“I told him if that was what it took to be chosen as Heir, I didn’t want it. And I walked out.” Nesryn sucked in a breath. “Are you insane?” Sartaq smiled faintly. “I certainly hope not, for the sake of this empire.” He tugged her closer, until their bodies were nearly touching. “Because my father appointed me Heir before I could walk out of the room.”
“We will go to war, Nesryn Faliq. And when we shatter Erawan and his armies, when the darkness is at last banished from this world … Then you and I will fly back here. Together.” He kissed her again—a bare caress of his mouth. “And so we shall remain for the rest of our days.”
Yrene leaned back into him, her body loosening with a sigh as she laid her hands atop where his rested over her stomach.
He’d almost told the princess that she could keep Hellas’s Horse, but there was something to be said about the prospect of charging down Morath foot soldiers atop a horse named Butterfly.
“Keep it a while longer,” he said softly. “I think there’s someone who will want to see that.”
An assassin who had found his wife, or they had found each other, two gods-blessed women wandering the shadowed ruins of the world. And who now held the fate of it between them.
A moment of kindness. From a young woman who ended lives to a young woman who saved them.
