And the enticing smells coming from within: garlic, something tangy, something smoky …

Yrene murmured to the woman who came to greet them, which must have amounted to a table for two and without one chair, because within a moment, he was being led to the street-patio, where a servant discreetly removed one of the chairs at a small table for him to pull up to the edge.

Yrene claimed a seat opposite him, more than a few heads turning their way. Not to gawk at him, but her.

The Torre healer.

She didn’t seem to notice. The servant returned to rattle off what had to be the menu, and Yrene ordered in her halting Halha.

She bit her lower lip, glancing to the table, the public dining room. “Is this all right?”

Chaol took in the open sky above them, the color bleeding to a sapphire blue, the stars beginning to blink awake. When had he last relaxed? Eaten a meal not to keep his body healthy and alive, but to enjoy it?

He grappled for the words. Grappled to settle into the ease. “I’ve never done anything like this,” he at last admitted.

His birthday this past winter, in that greenhouse—even then, with Aelin, he’d been half there, half focused on the palace he’d left behind, on remembering who was in charge and where Dorian was supposed to be. But now …

“What—eaten a meal?”

“Had a meal when I wasn’t … Had a meal when I was just … Chaol.”

He wasn’t sure if he’d explained it right, if he could articulate it—

Yrene angled her head, her mass of hair sliding over a shoulder. “Why?”

“Because I was either a lord’s son and heir, or Captain of the Guard, or now Hand to the King.” Her gaze was unflinching as he fumbled to explain. “No one recognizes me here. No one has ever even heard of Anielle. And it’s …”

“Liberating?”

“Refreshing,” he countered, giving Yrene a small smile at the echo to his earlier words.

She blushed prettily in the golden light from the lanterns within the dining room behind them. “Well … good.”

“And you? Do you go out with friends often—leave the healer behind?”

Yrene watched the people streaming by. “I don’t have many friends,” she admitted. “Not because I don’t want them,” she blurted, and he smiled. “I just—at the Torre, we’re all busy. Sometimes, a few of us will go for a meal or drink, but our schedules rarely align, and it’s easier to eat at the mess hall, so … we’re not really a lively bunch. Which was why Kashin and Hasar became my friends—when they’re in Antica. But I’ve never really had the chance to do much of this.”

He almost asked, Go out to dinner with men? But said, “You had your focus elsewhere.”

She nodded. “And maybe one day—maybe I’ll have the time to go out and enjoy myself, but … there are people who need my help. It feels selfish to take time for myself, even now.”

“You shouldn’t feel that way.”

“And you’re any better?”

Chaol chuckled, leaning back as the servant came, bearing a pitcher of chilled mint tea. He waited until the man left before saying, “Maybe you and I will have to learn how to live—if we survive this war.”

It was a sharp, cold knife between them. But Yrene straightened her shoulders, her smile small and yet defiant as she lifted her pewter glass of tea. “To living, Lord Chaol.”

He clinked his glass against hers. “To being Chaol and Yrene—even just for a night.”

Chaol ate until he could barely move, the spices like small revelations with every bite.

They talked as they dined, Yrene explaining her initial months at the Torre, and how demanding her training had been. Then she’d asked about his training as captain, and he’d balked—balked at talking of Brullo and the others, and yet … He couldn’t refuse her joy, her curiosity.

And somehow, talking about Brullo, the man who had been a better father to him than his own … It did not hurt, not as much. A lower, quieter ache, but one he could withstand.

One he was glad to weather, if it meant honoring a good man’s legacy by telling his story.

So they talked, and ate, and when they finished, he escorted her to the glowing white walls of the Torre. Yrene herself seemed glowing as she smiled when they stopped within the gates while his horse was readied.

“Thank you,” she said, her cheeks flushed and gleaming. “For the meal—and company.”

“It was my pleasure,” Chaol said, and meant it.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning—at the palace?”

An unnecessary question, but he nodded.

Yrene shifted from one foot to another, still smiling, still shining. As if she were the last, vibrant ray of the sun, staining the sky long after it had vanished over the horizon.

“What?” she asked, and he realized he’d been staring.

“Thank you for tonight,” Chaol said, stifling what tried to leap off his tongue: I can’t take my eyes off you.

She bit her lip again, the crunch of hooves on gravel approaching. “Good night,” she murmured, and took a step away.

Chaol reached out. Just to brush his fingers over hers.

Yrene paused, her fingers curling, as if they were the petals of some shy flower.

“Good night,” he merely said.

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.

33

The Watchtower of Eidolon jutted up from the mist-shrouded pines like the shard of a broken sword. It had been situated atop a low-lying peak that overlooked a solid wall of gargantuan mountains, and as Nesryn and Sartaq swept near the tower, sailing along the tree-crusted hills, she had the sense of racing toward a tidal wave of hard stone.

For a heartbeat, a wave of lethal glass swept for her instead. She blinked, and it was gone.

“There,” Sartaq whispered, as if fearful that any might hear while he pointed toward the enormous mountains lurking beyond. “Over that lip, that is the start of kharankui territory, the Dagul Fells. Those in the watchtower would have been able to see anyone coming down from those mountains, especially with their Fae sight.”