Silba—Goddess of Healing.

He had known one other young woman who was gods-blessed. No wonder they both possessed such unbanked fire in their eyes.

Yrene took her vial of that lovely-smelling oil and began packing up her bag.

“Why did you decide to come back to help me?”

Yrene paused, her slim body going rigid. Then she turned to him.

A wind drifted in from the garden, blowing the strands of her hair, still half-up, over her chest and shoulder. “I thought you and Captain Faliq would use my refusal against me one day.”

“We don’t plan to live here forever.” No matter what else she’d implied.

Yrene shrugged. “Neither do I.”

She packed up the rest of her bag and headed for the door.

He stopped her with his next question. “You plan to return?” To Fenharrow? To hell?

Yrene looked to the door, to the servants listening, waiting, in the foyer beyond. “Yes.”

She wished not just to return to Fenharrow, but also to help in the war. For in this war healers would be needed. Desperately. No wonder she had paled at the horrors he had whispered into her ear. Not only for what they would face, but what might come to kill her, too.

And though her face remained wan, as she noted his raised brows, she added, “It is the right thing to do. With all I have been granted—all the kindness thrown my way.”

He debated warning her to stay, to remain here, safe and protected. But he noted the wariness in her eyes as she awaited his answer. Others, he realized, had likely already cautioned against her leaving. Perhaps made her doubt herself, just a bit.

So Chaol instead said, “Captain Faliq and I are not the sort of people who would hold a grudge against you—try to punish you for it.”

“You served a man who did such things.” And likely acted on his behalf.

“Would you believe me if I told you that he left his dirty work to others beyond my command, and I was often not told?”

Her expression told him enough. She reached for the doorknob.

“I knew,” he said quietly. “That he had done and was doing unspeakable things. I knew that forces had tried to fight against him when I was a boy, and he had smashed them to bits. I—to become captain, I had to yield certain … privileges. Assets. I did so willingly, because my focus was on protecting the future. On Dorian. Even as boys, I knew he was not his father’s son. I knew a better future lay with him, if I could make sure Dorian lived long enough. If he not only lived, but also survived—emotionally. If he had an ally, a true friend, in that court of vipers. Neither of us was old enough, strong enough to challenge his father. We saw what happened to those who whispered of rebellion. I knew that if I, if he set one foot out of line, his father would kill him, heir or no. So I craved the stability, the safety of the status quo.”

Yrene’s face had not altered, not softened or hardened. “What happened?”

He reached for his shirt at last. Fitting, he thought, that he’d laid some part of himself bare while sitting here mostly naked. “We met someone. Who set us all down a path I fought against until it cost me and others much. Too much. So you may look at me with resentment, Yrene Towers, and I will not blame you for it. But believe me when I say that there is no one in Erilea who loathes me more than I do myself.”

“For the path you found yourself forced down?”

He slung his shirt over his head and reached for his pants. “For fighting that path to begin with—for the mistakes I made in doing so.”

“And what path do you walk now? How shall the Hand of Adarlan shape its future?”

No one had asked him. Not even Dorian.

“I am still learning—still … deciding,” he admitted. “But it begins with wiping Perrington and the Valg from our homeland.”

She caught the word—our. She chewed on her lip, as if tasting it in her mouth. “What happened on Midsummer, exactly?” He’d been vague. Had not told her of the attack, the days and months leading to it, the aftermath.

That chamber flashed in his mind—a head rolling across the marble, Dorian screaming. Blending with another moment, of Dorian standing beside his father, face cold as death and crueler than any level of Hellas’s realm. “I told you what happened,” he simply said.

Yrene studied him, toying with the strap of her heavy leather satchel. “Facing the emotional consequences of your injury will be a part of this process.”

“I don’t need to face anything. I know what happened before, during, and after.”

Yrene stood perfectly still, those too-old eyes utterly unfazed. “We’ll see about that.”

The challenge hanging in the air between them, dread pooling in his stomach, the words curdled in Chaol’s mouth as she turned on her heel and left.

9

Two hours later, her head leaning against the lip of the tub carved into the stone floor of the enormous cavern beneath the Torre, Yrene stared into the darkness lurking high above.

The Womb was nearly empty in the midafternoon. Her only company was the trickle of the natural hot spring waters flowing through the dozen tubs built into the cave floor, and the drip of water from jagged stalactites landing upon the countless bells strung on chains between the pillars of pale stone that rose up from the ancient rock.

Candles had been tucked into natural alcoves, or had been clumped at either end of each sunken tub, gilding the sulfurous steam and setting the owls carved into every wall and slick pillar in flickering relief.

A plush cloth cushioning her head against the unforgiving stone lip of the tub, Yrene breathed in the Womb’s thick air, watching it rise and vanish into the clear, crisp darkness squatting far overhead. All around her echoed high-pitched, sweet ringing, occasionally interrupted by solitary clear notes.

No one in the Torre knew who had first brought the various bells of silver and glass and bronze down to the open chamber of Silba’s Womb. Some bells had been there so long they were crusted with mineral deposits, their ringing as water dropped from the stalactites now no more than a faint plunk. But it was tradition—one Yrene herself had participated in—for each new acolyte to bring a bell of her choosing. To have her name and date of entry into the Torre engraved on it, and to then find a place for it, before she first immersed herself in the bubbling waters of the Womb floor. The bell to hang for eternity, offering music and guidance to all healers who came afterward; the voices of their beloved sisters forever singing to them.