“I know that well.”

“Do you? Do you understand what Morath is doing to you already? They build and plan and strike, and you can barely keep up. You are playing by the rules Perrington sets—and you will lose because of it.”

His breakfast turned over in his stomach. “We might still triumph.”

The khagan shook his head once. “To do that, your triumph must be complete. Every last bit of resistance squashed.”

His legs itched—and he shifted his feet just barely. Stand, he willed them. Stand.

He pushed his feet down, muscles barking in protest.

“Which is why,” Chaol snarled as his legs refused to obey, “we need your armies to aid us.”

The khagan glanced toward Chaol’s straining feet, as if he could see the struggle waging in his body. “I do not appreciate being hunted like some prize stag in a wood. I told you to wait; I told you to grant me the respect of grieving for my daughter—”

“And what if I told you that your daughter might have been murdered?”

Silence, horrible and hollow, filled the space between them.

Chaol snapped, “What if I told you that agents of Perrington might be here, and might already be hunting you, manipulating you into or out of this?”

The khagan’s face tightened. Chaol braced himself for the roaring, for Urus to perhaps draw the long, jeweled knife at his side and slam it into his chest. But the khagan only said quietly, “You are dismissed.”

As if the guards had listened to every word, the doors cracked open, a grim-faced Hashim beckoning Chaol toward the wall.

Chaol didn’t move. Footsteps approached from behind. To physically remove him.

He slammed his feet into the pedals of his chair, pushing and straining, gritting his teeth. Like hell they’d haul him out of here; like hell he’d let them drag him away—

“I came to not only save my people, but all peoples of this world,” Chaol growled at the khagan.

Someone—Shen—gripped the handles of his chair and began to turn him.

Chaol twisted, teeth bared at the guard. “Don’t touch it.”

But Shen didn’t release the handles, even as apology shone in his eyes. He knew—Chaol realized the guard knew just how it felt to have the chair touched, moved, without being asked. Just as Chaol knew what defying the khagan’s order to escort him from the room might mean for Shen.

So Chaol again fixed his stare on the khagan. “Your city is the greatest I have ever laid eyes upon, your empire the standard by which all others should be measured. When Morath comes to lay waste to it, who will stand with you if we are all carrion?”

The khagan’s eyes burned like coals.

Shen kept pushing his chair toward that door.

Chaol’s arms shook with the effort to keep from shoving the guard away, his legs trembling as he tried and tried to rise. Chaol looked over his shoulder and growled, “I stood on the wrong side of the line for too damn long, and it cost me everything. Do not make the same mistakes that I—”

“Do not presume to tell a khagan what he must do,” Urus said, his eyes like chips of ice. He jerked his chin to the guards shifting on their feet at the door. “Escort Lord Westfall back to his rooms. Do not allow him into my meetings again.”

The threat lay beneath the calm, cold words. Urus had no need to raise his voice, to roar to make his promise of punishment clear enough to the guards.

Chaol pushed and pushed against his chair, arms straining as he fought to stand, to even rise slightly.

But then Shen had his chair through the doors, and down the gleaming bright hallways.

Still his body did not obey. Did not answer.

The doors to the khagan’s council chamber shut with a soft click that reverberated through Chaol’s every bone and muscle, the sound more damning than any word the khagan had uttered.

Yrene had left Chaol to his thoughts the night before.

Left them as she stormed back to the Torre and decided that Hasar … Oh, she did not mind manipulating the princess one bit. And realized precisely how she’d get the princess to invite her to that damned oasis.

But it seemed that even a morning in the training ring with the guards had not soothed the jagged edge in Chaol’s own temper. The temper still simmering as he waited in the sitting room while Yrene sent Kadja off on another fool’s errand—twine, goat’s milk, and vinegar—and at last readied to work on him.

Summer was boiling toward a steamy close, the wild winds of autumn beginning to lash at the waters of the turquoise bay. It was always warm in Antica, but the Narrow Sea turned rough and unwieldy from Yulemas to Beltane. If an armada did not sail from the southern continent before then … Well, Yrene supposed that after last night, one wouldn’t sail anyway.

Sitting near their usual gold couch, Chaol didn’t greet her with more than a cursory glance. Not at all like his usual grim smile. And the shadows under his eyes … Any thought of rushing in here to tell him of her plan flowed out of Yrene’s head as she asked, “Were you up all night?”

“For parts of it,” he said, his voice low.

Yrene approached the couch but did not sit. Instead, she simply watched him, folding her arms across her abdomen. “Perhaps the khagan will consider. He’s aware of how his children scheme. He’s too smart not to have seen Arghun and Hasar working in tandem—for once—and to not be suspicious.”

“And you know the khagan so well?” A cold, biting question.

“No, but I’ve certainly lived here a good deal longer than you have.”

His brown eyes flashed. “I don’t have two years to spare. To play their games.”

And she did, apparently.

Yrene stifled her irritation. “Well, brooding about it won’t fix anything.”

His nostrils flared. “Indeed.”

She hadn’t seen him like this in weeks.

Had it been so long already? Her birthday was in a fortnight. Sooner than she’d realized.

It wasn’t the time to mention it, or the plan she’d hatched. It was inconsequential, really, given everything swarming around them. The burdens he bore. The frustration and despair she now saw pushing on those shoulders.

“Tell me what happened.” Something had—something had shifted since they’d parted ways last night.

A cutting glance her way. She braced herself for his refusal as his jaw tightened.