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and a young stranger had given her another gift, that final night in Innish two years ago.
Words from a mysterious stranger, perhaps a god who had worn the skin of a battered young woman, whose gift of gold had gotten her here. Saved her.
A note, written by a stranger who had saved her life and granted her freedom in a matter of hours. Yrene had never learned her name, that young woman who had worn her scars like some ladies wore their finest jewelry. The young woman who was a trained killer, but had purchased a healer’s education.
For wherever you need to go—and then some. The world needs more healers.
He had known one other young woman who was gods-blessed. No wonder they both possessed such unbanked fire in their eyes.
“Someone once taught me self-defense. What to do against attackers. Usually the male kind.”
“You realize I’m in this chair.” “And? Your mouth still works.” Tart, crisp words.
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.
Aelin would likely have laughed to see him now. The man who had stumbled out of her room after she’d declared that her cycle had arrived. Now sitting in this fine room, mostly naked and not giving a shit about it.
“I do not take lightly to my friends being hunted like beasts.” Not the voice of a princess—but a warrior-queen. “And I do not take lightly to Torre healers being killed and terrorized.”
“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?”
The true question was whether Aelin and her court’s vanishing were due to some awful play by Morath, or some scheme of the queen herself. Having seen what Aelin was capable of in Rifthold, the plans she’d laid out and enacted without any of them knowing … Nesryn’s money was on Aelin.
“The stygian spiders are little more than myths,” Nesryn managed to say to Houlun. “Spidersilk is so rare some even doubt it exists. You might be chasing ghosts.”
“Maybe you and I will have to learn how to live—if we survive this war.”
“To being Chaol and Yrene—even just for a night.”
“Don’t you wish to go north, brother? To meet all these people Nesryn talks of? Shifters and fire-breathing queens and Fae Princes …” “I’m beginning to think your obsession with anything related to the Fae might be unhealthy,” Sartaq grumbled.
He was standing. He was walking. And he was kissing her.
“Now I’ll have ways to reward you,” she said, trying for humor.
“A kiss. When and where of my choosing.” “What do you mean where.”
That the woman now closing in, now riding beside him, now beaming at him as if he were the only thing in this barren, burning sea … She had done this. Given him this. Yrene was smiling, and then she was laughing, as if she could not contain it inside her. Chaol thought it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. And that this moment, flying together over the sands, devouring the desert wind, her hair a golden-brown banner behind her … Chaol felt, perhaps for the first time, as if he was awake. And he was grateful, right down to his very bones, for it.
“I have known a fair number of people with tempers, and yours, Yrene Towers, ranks among the finest of them.” “Like Aelin Galathynius.” A shadow passed over him. “She would have greatly enjoyed the sight of Hasar flipping into the pool.”
There is no one else that I would trust to handle this war. No one else I would trust to take on all of Morath but Aelin. Even Dorian. If there’s some way to win, she’ll find it. The costs might be high, but she’ll do it.”
“Mountains. And seas,” she whispered. “So you never forget that you climbed them and crossed them. That you—only you—got yourself here.”
“I will cherish it always,” Yrene said, and he knew she wasn’t talking about the locket. Not as she lowered a hand from his face to his chest. Atop his raging heart. “No matter what may befall the world.” Another featherlight kiss. “No matter the oceans, or mountains, or forests in the way.”
It broke her, and unmade her, and rebirthed her.
“But she told me … told me it was better to be suffering in the streets of Antica than in Innish. And that if I wanted to come here, I should go. That if I wanted something, I should take it. She told me to fight for my miserable life.”
“I crossed because of her. I teach the women at the Torre because she told me to share the knowledge with any women who would listen. I teach it because it makes me feel like I’m paying her back, in some small way.”
“We wait for the Queen of the Valg,” the spider purred, rubbing against the carving. “Who in this world calls herself Maeve.”
Chaol’s back ached thanks to yesterday’s ride and last night’s … other ride.
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.
“When I realized what I was doing, I understood that’s what the Valg truly is, deep down. What your own shadows are. Parasites. And enduring it these weeks was not the same as facing it. So I attacked it as I would any other parasite; swarmed around it. Made it come to you—attack you as hard as it could to get away from me. So that you might face it, defeat it. So you might go where you feared most to tread, and decide whether, at last, you were ready to fight back.”
“Oh, just that Queen Maeve’s armada managed to find the host Aelin Galathynius has been so sneakily patching together. There was quite the battle.”
The numbers. A third of Maeve’s armada, bearing Whitethorn flags, had turned on their own and joined Terrasen’s fleet. Dorian had fought—held the front lines with Rowan. Then a pack of wyverns had soared in from nowhere—to fight for Aelin.
“What other armada,” Chaol forced himself to ask. Hasar shrugged, walking from the room. “Turns out, Aelin called in a debt. To the Silent Assassins of the Red Desert.” Chaol’s eyes burned. “And to Wendlyn.” His hands began shaking. “How many ships,” he breathed. “All of them,” Hasar said, hand on the door. “All of Wendlyn’s armada came, commanded by Crown Prince Galan himself.”
“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.” Chaol took a shuddering breath. “What did Aelin promise you?” Hasar smiled to herself. “A better world.”
“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.”
But Chaol was right. Whether he stood or limped or sat … it did not change him. Who he was. She had fallen in love with him well before he’d ever stood. She would love him no matter how he moved through the world.
“Because for my sisters, both living and dead, I will march with my sulde to the gates of Morath and make that demon bastard pay.” She met Yrene’s stare. “And for you, Yrene Towers. For what you did for Duva, I will help you save your land.”
Crying
But I also told him that the woman I love now plans to head into war. And I intend to follow her.”
“How else am I to amuse myself during the long hours than by teasing you, Lady Westfall?”
but there was something to be said about the prospect of charging down Morath foot soldiers atop a horse named Butterfly.
“I suppose I don’t need my little note any longer.” “Why?” “Because I am not alone,” she said, running her fingers over the metal. “And because I found my courage.”
For wherever you need to go—and then some. The world needs more healers.
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.
Crying again
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. With no thought of it ever being returned. A moment of kindness, a tug on a thread … And even Aelin could not have known that in saving a barmaid from those mercenaries, in teaching her to defend herself, in giving her that gold and this note … Even Aelin could not have known or
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“Keep it a while longer,” he said softly. “I think there’s someone who will want to see that.”
A moment of kindness. From a young woman who ended lives to a young woman who saved them.
