Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6)

by Sarah J. Maas

He clenched his jaw. “You can nap here. I’ll look after you.” Useless as it would be. “Then work on me later—” “I will work on you now. I am not going to let them scare me away.” Her voice did not tremble or waver. She added, more quietly but no less fiercely, “I once lived in fear of other people. I let other people walk all over me just because I was too afraid of the consequences for refusing. I did not know how to refuse.” Her hand pushed down on his spine in a silent order to rest his head again. “The day I reached these shores, I cast aside that girl. And I will be damned if I let her reemerge. Or let someone tell me what to do with my life, my choices again.”

“It doesn’t just dislike my magic,” she breathed. His arms buckled, so he lay down again on the cushions, holding her stare as Yrene declared, “It hates my magic.”

“It is,” she said, and some part of his chest caved in. “I sensed the broken bits—the tangled and severed nerves. But to heal those things, to get them communicating with your brain again … I need to get past that echo. Or beat it into submission enough to have space to work on you.” Her lips pressed into a grim line. “This shadow, this thing that haunts you—your body. It will fight me every step of the way, fight to convince you to tell me to stop. Through pain.” Her eyes were clear—stark. “Do you understand what I am telling you?”

Her eyes flicked to him at that. “You would be surprised by how closely the healing of physical wounds is tied to the healing of emotional ones.”

“You heard what befell it—the glass portions.” “Ah.” Another beat of quiet. “Shattered by the Queen of Terrasen. Your … ally.” “My friend.” He craned his body around hers to peer at her face. “Is she truly?” “She is a good woman,” Nesryn said, and meant it. “Difficult, yes, but … some might say the same of any royalty.” “Apparently, she found the former King of Adarlan so difficult that she killed him.” Careful words. “The man was a monster—and a threat to all. His Second, Perrington, remains that way. She did Erilea a favor.” Sartaq angled the reins as Kadara began a slow, steady descent toward a sparkling river valley. “She is truly that powerful?” Nesryn debated the merits of the truth or downplaying Aelin’s might. “She and Dorian both possess considerable magic. But I would say it is their intelligence that is the stronger weapon. Brute power is useless without it.” “It’s dangerous without it.”

the captain. I mean—Lord Westfall.”

“There is beauty in my father’s lands,” the prince went on while Kadara ripped into that monstrous carcass, “but there is much lurking beneath the surface, too.”

The dark wall was alive. Swimming with images, one after another. As if she were looking through someone’s eyes. She knew on instinct they did not belong to Lord Chaol.

Insufferable man. Yrene must have said as much, because a half smile kicked up on one side of his face. “You’re not the first to call me that,” he said, his voice smoother. Less hoarse.

She debated calling it off. Wondered what she’d been thinking, asking him of all people to come. But … five hours. Five hours of agony, and he had not broken.

Various temples were interspersed amongst the main thoroughfares: some crafted of marble pillars, some beneath peaked wooden roofs and painted columns, some mere courtyards filled with pools or rock gardens or sleeping animals. Thirty-six gods watched over this city—and there were thrice as many temples to them scattered throughout.

Antica’s owls. They were everywhere in this city, tribute to the goddess worshipped perhaps more than any other of the thirty-six. No chief god ruled the southern continent, yet Silba … Nesryn again studied the mighty tower, shining brighter than the palace on the opposite end of the city. Silba reigned unchallenged here. For anyone to break into that Torre, to kill one of the healers, they had to be desperate. Or utterly insane.

Chaol’s torso remained solid. Unwavering. His muscle control was extraordinary. A man who had trained that body to obey him no matter what, even now. And—he was in the saddle.

“Towers,” he mused, glancing toward Yrene. “Is it coincidence you bear that name, or did your ancestors once hail from the Torre?” Her knuckles were white as she gripped the pommel, as if turning to look at him would send her toppling off. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “My—it was knowledge that I never learned.”

Yrene clenched the saddle horn again. “The khagan holds all people accountable to the rule of the law, whether they’re servants or princes.”

He charged on, “And what about you, then? How about we make a deal: you tell me all your deep, dark secrets, Yrene Towers, and I’ll tell you mine.”

Same as he did with Celaena

He wasn’t certain if he’d even tried to swim. Not since that sword had gone into the river. Not since he’d left Dorian in that room with his father and told his friend—his brother—that he loved him, and knew it was good-bye. He’d … left. In every sense of the word.

“Then stay.” That smile broadened. Handsome—Kashin was truly a handsome man. If he had been anyone else, bore any other title—

His throat bobbed. “Everything I thought, everything I had planned and wanted … It’s gone. All I have left is my king, and this ridiculous, slim scrap of hope that we survive this war and I can find a way to make something of it.” “Of what?” “Of everything that crumbled in my hands. Everything.”

The void showed him fire. A woman with golden-brown hair and matching skin screaming in agony toward the heavens. It showed him a broken body on a bloody bed. A head rolling across a marble floor. You did this you did this you did this It showed a woman with eyes of blue flame and hair of pure gold poised above him, dagger raised and angling to plunge into his heart. He wished. He sometimes wished that she hadn’t been stopped. The scar on his face—from the nails she’d gouged into it when she first struck him … It was that hateful wish he thought of when he looked in the mirror. The body on the bed and that cold room and that scream. The collar on a tan throat and a smile that did not belong to a beloved face. The heart he’d offered and had been left to drop on the wooden planks of the river docks. An assassin who had sailed away and a queen who had returned. A row of fine men hanging from the castle gates. All held within that slim scar. What he could not forgive or forget. The void showed it to him, again and again. It lashed his body with red-hot, pronged whips. And showed him those things, over and over. It showed him his mother. And his brother. And his father. Everything he had left. What he’d failed. What he’d hated and what he’d become.

She knew what he meant. Yrene dabbed at the blood on her chest. “I went in there, to the site of the scar, and it was the same as before. A wall that no strike of my magic could crumble. I think it showed me …” Her fingers tightened on the shirt as she pressed it against the blood soaking her front. “What?” “Morath,” she breathed, and he could have sworn even the birds’ singing faltered in the garden. “It showed some memory, left behind in you. It showed me a great black fortress full of horrors. An army waiting in the mountains around it.”

“I don’t know,” Yrene admitted. “But then I heard your screaming. Not out here, but … in there.” She wiped at her nose again. “And I realized that attacking that solid wall was … I think it was a distraction. A diversion. So I followed the sounds of your screaming. To you.” To that place deep within him. “It was so focused upon ripping you apart that it did not see me coming.” She shivered. “I don’t know if it did anything, but … I couldn’t stand it. To watch and listen. I startled it when I leaped in, but I don’t know if it will be waiting the next time. If it will remember. There’s a … sentience to it. Not a living thing, but as if a memory were set free in the world.”

Chaol swallowed. After a heartbeat, he said, “I watched the King of Adarlan butcher the woman Dorian loved in front of me, and I could do nothing to stop it. To save her. And when the king went to kill me for planning to overthrow him … Dorian stepped in. He took on his father and bought me time to run. 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.”

“Chaol,” she breathed, and he thought it might have been the first time she’d called him such. 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.

Her aunt simply said, “The ruks will not fear wyverns.”

Chaol stared after her for a few minutes, shifting his toes in his boots. There had been no heat in it—the kiss. No real feeling.

Religious tolerance, she’d said, was something the very first khagan had championed—and all who had come after him, too. Oppressing various beliefs only led to discord within his empire, so he’d absorbed them all. Some literally, twining multiple gods into one. But always allowing those who wished to practice the freedom to do so without fear.

“Hasar lent me a dress, so I have to go. Or risk her wrath.”

And from those shadows of his memory, he heard Aedion Ashryver’s voice. What do you suppose the people on other continents, across all those seas, think of us? Do you think they hate us or pity us for what we do to each other? Perhaps it’s just as bad there. Perhaps it’s worse. But … I have to believe it’s better. Somewhere, it’s better than this. He wondered if he’d ever get to tell Aedion that he’d found such a place. Perhaps he would tell Dorian what he’d seen here. Help rebuild the ruins of Rifthold, of his kingdom, into something like this.

Perfect, precise movements, their bodies merely instruments of the music. Beautiful—ethereal and yet … tangible. Aelin, he realized, would have enjoyed this, too. Greatly.

From this vantage, they had an unobstructed view of the dancers, the seating areas, the servants and nobility now starting to run hands and mouths over skin and fabric, even as they watched the unparalleled entertainment. Something twisted—not unpleasantly—in his gut at the display. “They do not force servants here,” Yrene said quietly. “It was the first thing I asked during my initial time at these gatherings. The servants are eager to raise their positions, and the ones who are here know what privilege it might bring them if they leave here with someone tonight.” “But if they are paid,” he countered, “if they worry for their positions should they decline, then how can this ever be true consent?” “It isn’t. Not when you put it that way. But the khaganate has made sure that other lines are maintained. Age restrictions. Vocal consent. Punishments for those—even royalty—who break those rules.” She’d said as much days ago.

“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. He’d heard her story, once, of her “misadventure” with Rolfe. As if destroying his city and wrecking his prized ships were just another bit of fun. Heading there would indeed be the last thing Aelin would do, with the Pirate Lord’s promise to slaughter her on sight.

Fucking idiot Chaol again

She had debated not telling him, but even before the smoke, before that madness … When he’d offered to sit with her to avoid refusing Kashin, after a day spent wandering the city in unhurried ease, she’d decided. To trust him. And then lost her mind entirely.

“What is that,” he growled. Yrene strode to the desk, picking up the parchment and unrolling it carefully to display the strange symbols. “Nousha, the Head Librarian, found it for me that night when I asked her for information on … the things that hurt you. In all the—upheaval, I forgot it. It was shelved near the Eyllwe books, so she threw it in, just in case. I think it’s old. Eight hundred years at least.” She was babbling, but couldn’t stop, grateful for any subject but the one he’d been so near to breaching. “I think they’re runes, but I’ve seen none like it. Neither had Nousha.” “They are not runes,” Chaol said hoarsely. “They’re Wyrdmarks.”

She said after a moment, her voice barely audible, “You only talk of Erawan.” His eyes flashed in warning at the name. “But what of Orcus and Mantyx?” “Who?” Yrene began another set of the exercises on his legs and hips and lower back. “The other two kings. They are named in that book.” Chaol stopped wriggling his toes; she flicked them in reminder. The air whooshed from him as he resumed. “They were defeated in the first war. Sent back to their realm or slain, I can’t recall.” Yrene considered as she lowered his leg to the couch, nudging him to flip onto his stomach. “I’m sure you and your companions are adept at this whole saving-the-world thing,” she mused, earning a snort from him, “but I would make sure you know for certain. Which one it is.” She took up a perch on the thin lip of golden sofa cushion that his body did not cover. Chaol twisted his head toward her, the muscles in his back bunching. “Why?” “Because if they were merely banished to their realm, who is to say they aren’t still waiting to be let back into our world?”

He had chosen, and it had cost him. He had picked and he had endured the consequences. A body on a bed. A dagger poised above his heart. A head rolling on stone. A collar around a neck. A sword sinking to the bottom of the Avery. The pain in his body was secondary. Worthless. Useless. Anyone he had tried to help … it had made it worse.

The body on the bed … Nehemia. She had lost her life. And perhaps she had orchestrated it, but … He had not told Celaena—Aelin—to be alert. Had not warned Nehemia’s guards of the king’s attention. He had as good as killed her. Aelin might have forgiven him, accepted that he was not to blame, but he knew. He could have done more. Been better. Seen better.

knew then. What it was—who gave you the wound. And I saw what it was doing to you, and all I could think to stop it, to blast it away …” She pursed her lips, as if they might start trembling again. “A bit of goodness,” he finished for her. “A memory of light and goodness.” He didn’t have the words to convey his gratitude for it, for what it must have been like to offer up that memory of her mother against the demon that had destroyed her. Yrene seemed to read his thoughts, and said, “I am glad it was a memory of her that beat the darkness back a little further.”

Sartaq shrugged. “Kadara is my family. The rukhin, they are my family. My bloodline, though … It’s hard to love one another, when we will one day contend with each other. Love cannot exist without trust.” He smiled at his ruk. “I trust Kadara with my life. I would die for her, and she for me. Can I say the same of my siblings? My own parents?”

She wrote two notes. The first one, to her aunt and uncle, was full of love and warning and well-wishes. Her second note … it was quick, and to the point: I have gone with Sartaq to see the rukhin. I shall be gone three weeks. I hold you to no promises. And I will hold to none of my own.

Sartaq whispered in Nesryn’s ear, “I was praying to the Eternal Sky and all thirty-six gods that you’d say yes.” She smiled, even if he couldn’t see it. “So was I,” Nesryn breathed, and they leaped into the skies.

Chaol let out a low whistle through his teeth. “How old is the Torre, exactly?” “Fifteen hundred years.” He went still. “This library has been here that long?” She nodded. “It was all built in one go. A gift from an ancient queen to the healer who saved her child’s life. A place for the healer to study and live—close to the palace—and to invite others to study as well.” “So it predates the khaganate by a great deal.” “The khagans are the latest in a long line of conquerors since then. The most benevolent since that first queen, to be sure. Even her palace itself did not survive so well as the Torre. What you stay in now … they built it atop the rubble of the queen’s castle. After the conquerors who came a generation before the khaganate razed it to the ground.”

“Healers,” Yrene said, scanning the shelves, “are in high demand, whether you are the current ruler or the invading one. All other posts … perhaps unnecessary. But a tower full of women who can keep you from death, even if you are hanging by a thread …” “More valuable than gold.” “It begs the question of why Adarlan’s last king …” She almost said your king, but the word clanged strangely in her head now. “Why he felt the need to destroy those of us with the gift in his own continent.” Why the thing in him felt the need, she didn’t say.

Her heart thundered through her body. “But healers—we have no power to use in battle. Nothing beyond what you see from me.” Chaol was utterly still as he stared at her. “I think you might have something they want very badly.” The hair along her arms rose. “Or want to keep you from knowing too much about.” She swallowed, feeling the blood leave her face. “Like—your wound.” A nod.

“Aelin certainly enjoys it.” She’d never met another person with so many names and titles—and who enjoyed bandying them about so much. “The others … I don’t suppose I know them well enough to guess. Though Aedion Ashryver … he takes after Aelin.” She popped another grape into her mouth, her hair swaying as she leaned forward to pluck a few more into her palm. “They’re cousins, but act more like siblings.”

Wind-seeker, her mother had once called her. Unable to keep still, always wandering where the wind calls you. Where shall it beckon you to journey one day, my rose?

“Neith’s Arrow,” Sartaq said after uncounted minutes, leaning back against the rock. Nesryn dragged her gaze from the stars to find his face limned in moonlight, silver dancing along the pure onyx of his braid. He rested his forearms on his knees. “That’s what my spies called you, what I called you until you arrived. Neith’s Arrow.” The Goddess of Archery—and the Hunt, originally hailing from an ancient sand-swept kingdom to the west, now enfolded into the khaganate’s vast pantheon. A corner of his mouth tugged upward. “So don’t be surprised if there’s now a story or two about you already finding its way across the world.”

But she had a gift. And a relentless, driving thrum now roared in her blood thanks to him.

Hurry, a small, gentle voice murmured in her ear. In her head. She had never heard that voice before, but she sometimes felt its warmth. Coursing through her as her magic flowed out. It was as familiar to her as her own voice, her own heartbeat.

She cringed away, but Chaol held her face tightly. Did not break her gaze. “We will face this,” he said. “Together.” Together. Live or die here—together.