Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6)

by Sarah J. Maas

“As I said, there are no records here dating that far back. But,” she added when Chaol opened his mouth, “there are rumors that out in the desert, caves exist with such information—caves this information came from. Most have been lost, but there was one in the Aksara Oasis …” Nousha’s look turned knowing as Yrene winced. “Perhaps you should start there.”

Nesryn’s bow dangled from her shaking hands as Kadara dismembered the twitching spider. She whirled to Sartaq, but his eyes were turned away. To the wolf. She knew. Right as the wolf limped toward them, a deep gash in its side, and she beheld its dark sapphire eyes. Knew what it was, who it was, as the edges of his gray coat shimmered, his entire body filling with light that shrank and flowed. And when Falkan waved on his feet before them, a hand pressed to the bloody wound in his ribs, Nesryn breathed, “You’re a shape-shifter.”

“Who has the Wyrdkeys?” The question echoed between them. Nesryn swallowed. “What’s a Wyrdkey?” Sartaq pushed off the door. “Liar,” he breathed. “While we were gone, my ej recalled some of the other stories, dragged them up from whatever collective memory she possesses as Story Keeper. Tales of a Wyrdgate that the Valg and their kings passed through—could open at will with three keys when wielded together. Remembered that those keys went missing, after Maeve herself stole them and used them to send the Valg back. Hidden, she says. Throughout the world.” Nesryn only lifted a brow. “And what of it?” A cold snort. “It is how Erawan has raised an army so quickly, why even Aelin of the Wildfire cannot take him on without assistance. He must have at least one. Not all, or we’d be calling Erawan our master already. But at least one, maybe two. So where is the third?” She honestly had not a clue. Whether Aelin and the others possessed an inkling, they’d never told her. Only that their ultimate path, beyond war and death, was to retrieve the ones Erawan held. But even telling him that …

Chaol fell silent for a heartbeat. “And you, Prince? Do you wish to join this war?” Kashin didn’t answer immediately. He scanned the room, the ceiling, the bed, and finally Chaol himself. “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.” His throat bobbed. “My sulde blows northward—day and night, the horsehairs blow north. So perhaps I will find my destiny on the plains of Fenharrow. Or before the white walls of Orynth. But it is northward that I shall go—if my father will order me.”

But Arghun seized on the words. “If it is a love match, then they risk knowing their enemies will go after him to punish her.” Arghun smiled as if to say he was already thinking of doing so. Chaol snorted, and the prince straightened. “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.” A pause of silence.

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.” She let out a small, soft laugh—a sound of pure joy. He couldn’t let himself identify the other sound within it. “I bought it,” Chaol clarified instead, “so you could keep whatever it is you always carry in your pocket inside. So you don’t have to keep moving it from dress to dress. Whatever it is.” Surprise lighted her eyes. “You know?” “I don’t know what it is, but I see you holding something in there all the time.”

A sob clawed its way up Nesryn’s throat. “Please,” she begged, scanning the rock high above them, the lip into the upper reaches of the narrow pass, the curving horns of the peaks, tugging and tugging on Sartaq’s arm. “Please,” she begged them, begged anyone. But Sartaq’s face went calm. So calm. He stopped pushing, stopped trying to haul himself forward. Nesryn shook her head, pulling on his arm. He did not move. Not an inch. His dark eyes met hers. There was no fear in them. 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.” A hiss behind him, a rising bulk of shining black— Then the prince was gone. Ripped from her hands. As if he had never been.

“Then—then what is it you do here?” The spider took a step forward, and Nesryn braced herself. But the spider lifted a thin, clawed leg and pointed to one of the polished, carved walls. “We wait.” And as her eyes at last adjusted to the dimness, Nesryn saw what the spider pointed to. A carving of an archway—a gate. And a cloaked figure standing within it. She squinted, straining to make out who stood there. “W-who do you wait for?” Houlun had said the Valg had once passed through here— The spider brushed aside the dirt crusted over the figure. Revealing long, flowing hair etched there. And what she’d thought to be a cloak … It was a dress. “Our queen,” the spider said. “We wait for Her Dark Majesty to return at last.” “Not—not Erawan?” Servants to a dark crown, Houlun had said … The spider spat, the venom landing near Sartaq’s covered feet. “Not him. Never him.” “Then who—” “We wait for the Queen of the Valg,” the spider purred, rubbing against the carving. “Who in this world calls herself Maeve.”

Nesryn had heard the legends. Of Maeve’s dark, unnamed power—a darkness that could devour the stars. That Maeve had never revealed a Fae form, only that deadly darkness. And she had lived far beyond the lifespan of any known Fae. Lived so long that the only comparable lifespan … Erawan. A Valg life span. For a Valg queen.

“Disguised in a Fae body, they did not recognize her, the fools. But she used it against them. Knew how to defeat them, how their armies worked. And when she realized what they had done to arrive here, the keys they possessed … she wanted them. To banish them, kill them, and to use the keys as she saw fit within this world. And others. “So she took them. Snuck in and took them, surrounding herself with Fae warriors so others might not ask just how she knew so many things. Oh, the clever queen claimed it was from communing with the spirit world, but … she knew. She had run those war camps. Knew how the kings worked. So she stole the keys. Managed to send two of those kings back, Orcus one of them. And before she could go after the final king, the youngest one who loved his brothers so very deeply, the keys were taken from her.” A hiss. “By Brannon,” Nesryn breathed.

“So you have waited these thousands of years—for her to return to these mountains?” “She ordered us to hold the pass, to guard the rip in the world. So we have. And so we will, until she summons us to her side once more.”

“I will hold them,” Falkan said. Sparks showered, flame kindled on that third flaming arrow. “A favor, Captain,” the shifter said to her. Time. They did not have time— “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.” Nesryn’s hands shook as she aimed the arrow toward the spider trying to edge past her burning sister. Sartaq warned, “Hurry.” Falkan said, “If she survived, if she is grown, she might have the shifter gift, too. But it doesn’t matter if she does or does not. What matters … She is my family. All I have left. And I have looked for her for a very long time.” Nesryn fired the third arrow. A spider screamed as it found its mark. The others fell back. “Find her,” Falkan said, taking a step toward the horrors churning below. “My fortune—all of it is for her. And I may have failed her in this life. But not in my death.”

He had made one promise. He had not broken it yet. To save them. His friend, his kingdom. He still had that. Even here at the bottom of this dark hell, he still had that. And the road that he had traveled so far … No, he would not look back. What if we go on, only to more pain and despair? Aelin had smiled at his question, posed on that rooftop in Rifthold. As if she had understood, long before he did, that he would find this pit. And learn the answer for himself. Then it is not the end. This … This was not the end. This crack in him, this bottom, was not the end. He had one promise left. To that he would still hold. It is not the end

“With the life-bond between you, Yrene’s power flowing into you … It will act as a brace. Stabilizing the area, granting you ability to use your legs whenever Yrene’s magic is at its fullest.” He steeled himself for the but. Hafiza smiled grimly. “But when Yrene’s power flags, when she is drained or tired, your injury will regain control, and your ability to walk will again be impaired. It will require you to use a cane at the very least—on hard days, perhaps many days, the chair. But the injury to your spine will remain.” The words settled in him. Floated through and settled. Yrene was wholly silent. So still that he faced her. “Can’t I just heal him again?” She leaned toward him, as if she’d do just that. Hafiza shook her head. “It is part of the balance—the cost. Do not tempt the compassion of the force that granted this to you.” But Chaol touched Yrene’s hand. “It is no burden, Yrene,” he said softly. “To be given this. It is no burden at all.” Yet agony filled her face. “But I—” “Using the chair is not a punishment. It is not a prison,” he said. “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.” He brushed away the tear that slipped down her cheek. “I wanted to heal you,” she breathed. “You did,” he said, smiling. “Yrene, in every way that truly matters … You did.”

“There is another piece to the life-bond, to this bargain,” Hafiza added gently. They turned to her. “When it is time, whether the death is kind or cruel … It will claim you both.” Yrene’s golden eyes were still lined with silver. But there was no fear in her face, no lingering sorrow—none. “Together,” Chaol said quietly, and interlaced their hands. Her strength would be his strength. And when Yrene went, he would go. But if he went before her— Dread curled in his gut. “The true price of all this,” Hafiza said, reading the panic. “Not fear for your own life, but what losing your life will do to the other.”

“I wonder if she’ll return for this war. Whoever she was. She spoke of the empire like …” Yrene shook her head, more to herself, and folded it shut again. “Perhaps she will come home to fight, from wherever she sailed off to.” She offered him the piece of paper and turned away to the sea ahead. Chaol took the scrap from Yrene, the paper velvet-soft from its countless readings and foldings and how she’d held it in her pocket, clutched it, all these years. He unfolded the note and read the words he already knew were within: For wherever you need to go—and then some. The world needs more healers. The waves quieted. The ship itself seemed to pause. Chaol glanced to Yrene, smiling serenely at the sea, then to the note. To the handwriting he knew as well as his own. Yrene went still at the tears he could not stop from sliding down his face. “What’s wrong?” She would have been sixteen, nearly seventeen then. And if she had been in Innish … It would have been on her way to the Red Desert, to train with the Silent Assassins. The bruises Yrene had described … The beating Arobynn Hamel had given her as punishment for freeing Rolfe’s slaves and wrecking Skull’s Bay. “Chaol?” For wherever you need to go—and then some. The world needs more healers. There, in her handwriting … Chaol looked up at last, blinking away tears as he scanned his wife’s face. Every beautiful line, those golden eyes. A gift. A gift from a queen who had seen another woman in hell and thought to reach back a hand. ...

Chaol folded the note along its well-worn lines and carefully set it back within Yrene’s locket. “Keep it a while longer,” he said softly. “I think there’s someone who will want to see that.” Yrene’s eyes filled with surprise and curiosity, but she asked nothing as Chaol again slid his arms around her and held her tightly. Every step, all of it, had led here. From that keep in the snow-blasted mountains where a man with a face as hard as the rock around them had thrown him into the cold; to that salt mine in Endovier, where an assassin with eyes like wildfire had smirked at him, unbroken despite a year in hell. 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. 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. Where he wanted to be. A moment of kindness. From a young woman who ended lives to a young woman who saved them.