His parents passed a small shadow lurking in the open doorway to the keep itself.
Terrin.
His younger brother braved a step toward him. To risk those dangerously icy stairs and help him.
A sharp, barked word from his father within the darkness of the hall halted Terrin.
Chaol wiped the blood from his mouth and silently shook his head at his brother.
And it was terror—undiluted terror—on Terrin’s face as Chaol eased to his feet. Whether he knew that the title had just passed to him …
He couldn’t bear it. That fear on Terrin’s round, young face.
So Chaol turned, clenching his jaw against the pain in his knee, already swollen and stiff. Blood and ice merged, leaking from his palms.
He managed to limp across the landing. Down the stairs.
One of the guards at the bottom gave him his gray wool cloak. A sword and knife.
Another gave him a horse and a bearing.
A third gave him a supply pack that included food and a tent, bandages and salves.
They did not say a word. Did not halt him more than necessary.
He did not know their names. And he learned, years and years later, that his father had watched from one of the keep’s three towers. Had seen them.
His father himself told Chaol all those years later what happened to those three men who had aided him.
They were let go. In the dead of winter. Banished into the Fangs with their families.
Three families sent into the wilds. Only two were still heard from in the summer.
Proof. It had been proof, he’d realized after he’d convinced himself not to murder his father. Proof that his kingdom was rife with corruption, with bad men punishing good people for common decency. Proof that he had been right to leave Anielle. To stick with Dorian—to keep Dorian safe.
To protect that promise of a better future.
He’d still sent out a messenger, his most discreet, to find those remaining families. He didn’t care how many years had passed. He sent the man with gold.
The messenger never found them, and had returned to Rifthold, gold intact, months later.
He had chosen, and it had cost him. He had picked and he had endured the consequences.
A body on a bed. A dagger poised above his heart. A head rolling on stone. A collar around a neck. A sword sinking to the bottom of the Avery.
The pain in his body was secondary.
Worthless. Useless. Anyone he had tried to help … it had made it worse.
The body on the bed … Nehemia.
She had lost her life. And perhaps she had orchestrated it, but … He had not told Celaena—Aelin—to be alert. Had not warned Nehemia’s guards of the king’s attention. He had as good as killed her. Aelin might have forgiven him, accepted that he was not to blame, but he knew. He could have done more. Been better. Seen better.
And when Nehemia had died, those slaves had risen up in defiance. A rallying cry as the Light of Eyllwe was extinguished.
The king had extinguished them as well.
Calaculla. Endovier. Women and men and children.
And when he had acted, when he had chosen his side …
Blood and black stone and screaming magic.
You knew you knew you knew
You will never be my friend my friend my friend
The darkness shoved itself down his throat, choking him, strangling him.
He let it.
Felt himself open his jaws wide to let it in farther.
Take it, he told the darkness.
Yes, it purred to him. Yes.
It showed him Morath in its unparalleled horrors; showed him that dungeon beneath the glass castle, where faces he knew pleaded for mercy that would never come; showed him the young golden hands that had bestowed those agonies, as if they had stood side by side to do it—
He knew. Had guessed who had been forced to torture his men, to kill them. They both knew.
He felt the darkness swell, readying to pounce. To make him truly scream.
But then it was gone.
Rippling golden fields stretched away under a cloudless blue sky. Little sparkling streams wended through it, curling around the occasional oak tree. Strays from the tangled, looming green of Oakwald Forest to his right.
Behind him, a thatched roof cottage, its gray stones crusted in green and orange lichen. An ancient well sat a few feet away, its bucket balanced precariously on the stone lip.
Beyond it, attached to the house itself, a small pen with wandering chickens, fat and focused on the dirt before them.
And past them …
A garden.
Not a formal, beautiful thing. But a garden behind a low stone wall, its wooden gate open.
Two figures were stooped amongst the carefully plotted rows of green. He drifted toward them.
He knew her by the golden-brown hair, so much lighter in the summer sun. Her skin had turned a lovely deep brown, and her eyes …
It was a child’s face, lit with joy, that looked upon the woman kneeling in the dirt, pointing toward a pale green plant with slender purple cones of blossoms swaying in the warm breeze. The woman asked, “And that one?”
“Salvia,” the child—no more than nine—answered.
“And what does it do?”
The girl beamed, chin rising as she recited, “Good for improving memory, alertness, mood. Also assists with fertility, digestion, and, in a salve, can help numb the skin.”
“Excellent.”
The girl’s broad smile revealed three missing teeth.
The woman—her mother—took the girl’s round face in her hands. Her skin was darker than her daughter’s, her hair a thicker, bouncier curl. But their builds … It was the woman’s build that the girl would grow into one day. The freckles that she’d inherit. The nose and mouth.
“You have been studying, my wise child.”
The woman kissed her daughter on her sweaty brow.
He felt the kiss—the love in it—even as a ghost at the gate.
For it was love that shaded the entirety of the world here, gilded it. Love and joy.
Happiness.
The sort he had not known with his own family. Or anyone else.
The girl had been loved. Deeply. Unconditionally.
This was a happy memory—one of a few.
“And what is that bush, there by the wall?” the woman asked the girl.
Her brow scrunched in concentration. “Gooseberries?”
“Yes. And what do we do with gooseberries?”
The girl braced her hands on her hips, her simple dress blowing in the dry, warm breeze. “We …” She tapped her foot with impatience—at her own mind, for not recalling. The same irritation he’d seen outside that old man’s house in Antica.
Her mother crept up behind her, sweeping the girl into her arms and kissing her cheek. “We make gooseberry pie.”
The girl’s squeal of delight echoed across the amber grasses and clear streams, even into the tangled, ancient heart of Oakwald.
Perhaps even to the White Fangs themselves, and the cold city nestled at their edge.
He opened his eyes.
And found his entire foot pressing into the couch cushions.
Felt the silk and embroidery scratching against the bare arch of his foot. His toes.
Felt.
He bolted upright, finding Yrene not at his side.
Nowhere near.
He gaped at his feet. Below the ankle … He shifted and rotated his foot. Felt the muscles.
Words stalled in his throat. His heart thundered. “Yrene,” he rasped, scanning for her.
She wasn’t in the suite, but—
Sunlight on brown-gold caught his eye. In the garden.
She was sitting out there. Alone. Quietly.
He didn’t care that he was half dressed. Chaol heaved himself into the chair, marveling at the sensation of the smooth wood supports beneath his feet. He could have sworn even his legs … a phantom tingling.
He wheeled himself into the small, square garden, breathless and wide-eyed. She’d repaired another fraction, another—
She’d settled herself in an ornate little chair before the circular reflection pool, her head propped up by her fist.
At first, he thought she was sleeping in the sun.
But he inched closer and caught the gleam of light on her face. On the wetness there.
Not blood—but tears.
Streaming silently, unendingly, as she stared at that reflection pool, the pink lilies and emerald pads covering most of it.