Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass #0.1–0.5, 1–7)

by Sarah J. Maas

He kissed her cheek, but said nothing as she opened the locket and carefully removed the browned scrap. The wind tried to rip it from her fingers, but Yrene held tight, unfolding the slender fragment. She scanned the text she’d read a thousand times. “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 ...