Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6)

by Sarah J. Maas

Atop his snowy head sat no crown. For gods among mortals did not need markers of their divine rule.

Olgnia. Marte. Rosana. Josefin.

And somehow Chaol knew—that fast—that Kashin was not being considered for the throne.

“My family was glad to see me, in case you were wondering. And they received a brief letter from my father yesterday. They got out.” She began unbuttoning her jacket. “They could be anywhere.”

They were starting to atrophy. They already lacked the healthy vitality of the rest of him, the rippling muscle beneath that tan skin seeming looser—thinner.

But believe me when I say that there is no one in Erilea who loathes me more than I do myself.”

You must enter where you fear to tread.

The Womb’s protocol was well established. It was a place for solitude, for silence. Healers entered the waters to reconnect with Silba, to center themselves. Some sought guidance; some sought absolution; some sought to release a hard day’s worth of emotions they could not show before patients, perhaps could not show before anyone.

“Why do you think I come home so often, sister, if not for the good food?” “To plot and scheme?” Hasar asked sweetly. Sartaq’s smile turned subdued. “If only I had time for such things.”

Baast Cats—thirty-six females, no more, no less—could

The Baast Cats had dwelled in the Torre library for as long as it had existed, yet none knew where they had come from, or how they were replaced when age claimed them.

Orcus. Mantyx. Erawan. Three Valg Kings. Wielders of the Keys.

Not rape, not theft—not something that cowards would rather hide from. Yell fire, the stranger had instructed her. A threat to all. If you are attacked, yell about a fire.

Light brown cheeks turned to hollowed husks, eyes stained purple beneath, lips pale and cracked. A simple healer’s gown that had likely fit her that morning now hung loose, her slim form now emaciated, as if something had sucked the life from her—

First ring: Listen. Second: Listen now. The Heir Librarian rang it a third time, loud and clear, the pealing echoing down into the library, into every dark corner and hallway. Third ring: Get out.

And part of Yrene wondered, as she trudged through the palace, if Lord Chaol had not asked her to stop not just because he’d learned how to manage pain, but also because he somehow felt he deserved it.

“You’re as stubborn as an ass.” “I’ve been called worse,” he countered, the beginnings of a smile tugging on his mouth. “I’m not surprised.”

Some of the girls laughed quietly at the accompanying pop the girl made with her mouth. Aelin would have been beside herself with glee.

“Yes, your prized, shattered horse. Look how well broken I am to you. How docile.”

“Soldiers from Adarlan burned my mother alive when I was eleven.”

And I ran—I ran because … there was no one else to carry on the rebellion. To get word to the people who needed it. I let him take on his father and face the consequences, and I fled.”

To his toes, slowly curling and uncurling. As if trying to remember the movement.

He kissed her when she’d walked by to dress for dinner. He’d grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her down, and kissed her once. Brief—but thorough.

But it was the guard from yesterday—the one who’d aided him most—who came forward when the mare was brought over. Shen,

“I would like to sit with you.” Her eyes were slightly wide. “Where.”

“I would think you’d already done that, Yrene Towers.”

“Tell her fire can be found at Skull’s Bay.”

All she had known was the heat and smell and comforting size of him—the scrape of his calluses against her skin and how she wanted to feel them elsewhere. How she had kept looking at his mouth and it was all she could do to keep from tracing it with her fingers. Her lips.

It was the rumpled sheets and pillows she noticed first. Then his naked chest, his hips barely covered by a swath of white silk. Then a dark head, facedown on the pillow beside his. Still sleeping. Exhausted.

“I didn’t take her to bed.” She refrained from mentioning that the evidence seemed stacked against him. Chaol went on, “We spoke long into the night and fell asleep. Nothing happened.”

He shifted and rotated his foot. Felt the muscles.

“We make oaths—to never take a life. She broke that oath the day the soldiers came. She had hidden a dagger in her dress. She saw the soldier grab me, and she … she leaped on him.” She closed her eyes. “She killed him. To buy me time to run. And I did. I left her. I ran, and I left her, and I watched … I watched from the forest as they built that fire. And I could hear her screaming and screaming—”

He wished he’d been able to walk. So she could see him crawl toward her.

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.

Instead of three arrows distributed amongst the three dummies, she’d fired nine. Three rows of perfectly aligned shots on each: heart, neck, and head. Not an inch of difference. Even with the singing winds.

“The reports left out some key information. It made me doubt their accuracy.” It was the sly gleam in his eye that made Nesryn angle her head. “What, exactly, did they fail to mention?” They reached the great hall, empty save for a cloaked figure just barely visible on the other side of the fire pit—and someone sitting beside her. But Sartaq turned to her, examining her from head to toe and back again. There was little that he missed. “They didn’t mention that you’re beautiful.”

“I am Houlun, daughter of Dochin, but you may call me Ej, as the others do.”

stygian spiders.”

I was told that slaying the spider who ate my twenty years was the only way to return those lost years to me.”

A rip in the world—an open Wyrdgate. Here.

A border—this was some strange border that they were crossing. To leave their neutral territories and emerge into the world beyond, not as healer and patient, but woman and man—

“To living, Lord Chaol.” He clinked his glass against hers. “To being Chaol and Yrene—even just for a night.”

One heartbeat, she was crouched on a step. The next, it had slid away beneath her feet, a black pit yawning open beneath—

“There is no need to translate it,” said a light female voice in Halha. “It says, Look up. Pity you didn’t heed it.”

Kadara’s war cry sent the pines trembling, her claws ripping right into the abdomen of the kharankui and sending her toppling off the stairs.

“You’re a shape-shifter.”

falkan!

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.

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.”

“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.”