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Through the open windows behind the Healer on High, a night breeze laced with lavender and cloves flitted in, cooling her face and ruffling Hafiza’s cloud of white hair.
Yrene had never learned her name, that young woman who had worn her scars like some ladies wore their finest jewelry.
Men could unleash storms, too.
Too thin, she’d told Yrene by way of greeting. She needed a fatter ass for her lover to grip at night.
But even as he steered his horse through the crowds, he found himself glancing to that pale tower—a behemoth on the horizon. To the healer sleeping within.
“If this is your kindness, then I’d hate to see your bad side.” She knew he meant the words in jest, yet … Her back stiffened.
Her hands shook slightly as she obeyed. Not with fear, but … freedom.
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.
“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.”
Amren?
Nesryn supposed that was why she liked the queen: 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.
Chaol nodded, his jaw tight. “We’ll deal with it.” And that was that. Together—they’d deal with it together.
And as Chaol rode back to the illuminated palace across the city, he could have sworn that some weight in his chest, on his shoulders, had vanished. As if he’d lived with it his entire life, unaware, and now, even with all that gathered around him, around Adarlan and those he cared for … How strange it felt. That lightness.
“Anyone who thinks the Fae are prancing creatures given to poetry and singing needs a history lesson,” Sartaq murmured as they lingered on the bottom step, not daring to touch the floor. “That stone table was not used for writing reports or dining.”
What you have done, Yrene, what you are willing to still do … You did this—all this not for glory or ambition, but because you believe it is the right thing to do. Your bravery, your cleverness, your unfaltering will … I do not have words for it, Yrene.”
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.
But Chaol’s smile grew, his eyes lighting as he added, “We can only go on.” Yrene went to him, unable to stop herself, as if that smile were a beacon in the dark.
“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.”
It broke her, and unmade her, and rebirthed her.
“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.”
He had called her a monster. For her power, her actions, and yet … He did not blame her. He understood. That perhaps she had promised things, but … she had changed. The path had changed. He understood.
Every step, all of it, had led here.
Every step. Every curve into darkness. Every moment of despair and rage and pain. It had led him to precisely where he needed to be.
