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“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.”
A Towers woman. A Towers healer. Here—with her. A Towers woman had been singing in this room during the years Yrene had dwelled here. Even now, even so far from home, she had never once been alone.
The corners of his mouth tugged upward. “Then it is a good thing, Yrene Towers, that I love you as well.”
But what if a healer with my sort of gifts was to treat someone possessed—infected by the Valg?
“Turns out,” Hasar mused, as if it were a passing thought, “there are quite a few people who think highly of her. And who believe in what she’s selling.” “Which is what?” Yrene whispered. Hasar shrugged. “I assume it’s what she tried to sell to me, when she wrote me a message weeks ago, asking for my aid. From one princess to another.”
“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.
And where that scar had once sliced down his cheek … only unmarred skin remained.
But Chaol touched Yrene’s hand. “It is no burden, Yrene,” he said softly. “To be given this. It is no burden at all.”
“Using the chair is not a punishment. It is not a prison,”
“It never was. And I am as much of a man in that chair, or with that cane, as I am standing on my feet.”
What if we fight? Yrene had asked him on the trek over here. What then? Chaol had only kissed her temple. We fight all the time already. It’ll be nothing new. He’d added, Do you think I’d want to be with anyone who didn’t hand my ass to me on a regular basis?
“Utterly pathetic,” Yrene repeated, her magic rallying behind her in a mighty, cresting white wave. “For a prince to prey on a helpless woman.”
And as her power slammed into that last remnant of the demon, it laughed. No prince am I, girl. But a princess. And my sisters shall soon find you.
The front gates to her uncle’s house banged open. And as she saw her father standing there, as her sister shoved past, her children pouring out in a shrieking gaggle … Nesryn fell to her knees and wept.
Sartaq took a breath. “He asked me why.” “I hope you told him that the fate of the world might depend upon it.”
“I did. But I also told him that the woman I love now plans to head into war. And I intend to follow her.”
“He told me that you are common-born. That a would-be Heir of the khagan needs to wed a princess, or a lady, or someone with lands and alliances to offer.”
told him if that was what it took to be chosen as Heir, I didn’t want it. And I walked out.”
“Because my father appointed me Heir before I could walk out of the room.”
Yrene did not know, but … there was peace in Kashin’s eyes. And in the eyes of the others, when Yrene had seen them. And part of her indeed wondered if Sartaq had struck some unspoken agreement that went beyond Never Duva. To perhaps even Never Us.
To the twin rings now gracing both of their hands. “Watching the horizon won’t get us there any faster,” he murmured onto her neck. “Neither will teasing your wife about it.”
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.
A moment of kindness. From a young woman who ended lives to a young woman who saved them.
