Yrene smiled at the small silver bell, purchased with that stranger’s gold. There was her name, etched into the side—maybe by the same jeweler Chaol had found for the amulet hanging from her neck. Even in here, she had not wanted to part with it.
Gently, she brushed her finger over the bell, over her name and the date she’d entered the Torre.
A faint, sweet ringing leaped away in the wake of her touch. It echoed off the rock walls, off the other bells. Setting some of them ringing, as if in answer.
Around and around the sound of her bell danced, and Yrene turned in place, as if she could follow it. And when it faded …
Yrene flicked her bell again. A louder, clearer sound.
The ringing flitted through the room, and she watched it, tracked it.
It faded once more. But not before her power flickered in answer.
With hands that did not entirely belong to her, Yrene rang her bell a third time.
And as its singing filled the room, Yrene began to walk.
Everywhere its ringing went, Yrene followed.
Her bare feet slapping against the damp stone, she tracked the sound’s path through the Womb, as if it were a rabbit racing ahead of her.
Around the stalagmites rising from the floor. Ducking under the stalactites drooping from above. Crossing the room; slithering down the walls; setting the candles guttering. On and on, she tracked that sound.
Past the bells of generations of healers, all singing in its wake.
Yrene streamed her fingers along them, too.
A wave of sound answered.
You must enter where you fear to tread.
Yrene walked on, the bells ringing, ringing, ringing. Still she followed the sound of her own bell, that sweet, clear song beckoning onward. Pulling her.
That darkness still dwelled in him; in his wound. They had beaten it so far back, yet it remained. Yesterday, he’d told her things that broke her heart, but not the entire story.
But if the key to defeating that shred of Valg blackness did not lie in facing the memories alone, if blind blasts of her magic did nothing …
Yrene followed the silver bell’s ringing to where it halted:
An ancient corner of the room, the chains rusted with age, some of the bells green from oxidation.
Here, the sound of her bell went silent.
No, not silent. But waiting. Humming against the corner of stone.
There was a small bell, hanging just by the end of the chain. So oxidized that the writing was nearly impossible to read.
But Yrene read the name there.
Yafa Towers
She did not feel the hard bite of stone as she fell to her knees. As she read that name, the date—the date from two hundred years ago.
A Towers woman. A Towers healer. Here—with her. A Towers woman had been singing in this room during the years Yrene had dwelled here. Even now, even so far from home, she had never once been alone.
Yafa. Yrene mouthed the name, a hand on her heart.
Enter where you fear to tread …
Yrene peered up into the darkness of the Womb overhead.
Feeding. The Valg’s power had been feeding off him …
Yes, the darkness above seemed to say. Not a drip sounded; not a bell chimed.
Yrene gazed down at her hands, lying limp at her sides. Summoned forth the faint white glow of her power. Let it fill the room, echo off the rock in silent song. Echo off those bells, the voices of thousands of her sisters, the Towers voice before her.
Enter where you fear to tread …
Not the void lurking within him. But the void within herself.
The one that had started the day those soldiers had gathered around her cottage, had hauled her out by her hair into the bright grasses.
Had Yafa known, here in this chamber so far beneath the earth, what happened that day across the sea? Had she watched the past two months and sent up her ancient, rusted song in silent urging?
They weren’t bad men, Yrene.
No, they were not. The men he’d commanded, trained with, who had worn the same uniform, bowed to the same king as the soldiers who had come that day …
They were not bad men. People existed in Adarlan worth saving—worth fighting for. They were not her enemy, had never been. Perhaps she’d known that long before he’d revealed it in the oasis yesterday. Perhaps she had not wanted to.
But the thing that remained inside him, that shred of the demon who had ordered it all …
I know what you are, Yrene said silently.
For it was the same thing that had dwelled inside her these years, taking from her, even as it sustained her. A different creature, but still one and the same.
Yrene spooled her magic back inside herself, the glow fading. She smiled up at the sweet darkness above. I understand now.
Another drop of water kissed her brow in answer.
Smiling, Yrene reached out a hand to her ancestor’s bell. And rang it.
CHAPTER
54
Chaol awoke the next morning and could barely move.
They’d repaired his room, added extra guards, and by the time the royals at last returned from the dunes at sundown, all was in order.
He didn’t see Yrene for the rest of that day, and wondered if she and the Healer on High had indeed found something of worth in that scroll. But when dinner came and she still hadn’t appeared, he sent Kadja to ask Shen for a report.
Shen himself had returned—blushing a bit, no doubt thanks to the beauty of the servant girl who’d led him here—and revealed that he’d made sure word was received from the Torre that Yrene had returned safely and had not left the tower since.
Still, Chaol had debated calling for Yrene when his back began to ache to the point of being unbearable, when even the cane couldn’t help him hobble across the room. But the suite was not safe. And if she began to stay here, and Nesryn returned before he could explain—
He couldn’t get the thought out of his mind. What he’d done, the trust he’d broken.
So he’d managed to take a bath, hoping to ease his sore muscles, and had nearly crawled into bed.
Chaol awoke at dawn, tried to reach for his cane beside the bed, and bit down his bark of pain.
Panic crashed into him, wild and sharp. He gritted his teeth, trying to fight through it.
Toes. He could move his toes. And his ankles. And his knees—
His neck arched at the rippling agony as he shifted his knees, his thighs, his hips.
Oh, gods. He’d pushed it too far, he’d—
The door flung open, and there she was, in that purple gown.
Yrene’s eyes widened, then settled—as if she’d been about to tell him something.
Instead, that mask of steady calm slid over her face while she tied her hair back in her usual half-up fashion and approached on unfaltering feet. “Can you move?”
“Yes, but the pain—” He could barely speak.
Dropping her satchel to the carpet, Yrene rolled up her sleeves. “Can you turn over?”
No. He’d tried, and—
She didn’t wait for his answer. “Describe exactly what you did yesterday, from the moment I left until now.”
Chaol did. All of it, right until the bath—
Yrene swore viciously. “Ice. Ice to help strained muscles, not heat.” She blew out a breath. “I need you to roll over. It will hurt like hell, but it’s best if you do it in one go—”
He didn’t wait. He gritted his teeth and did it.
A scream shattered from his throat, but Yrene was instantly there, hands on his cheek, his hair, mouth against his temple. “Good,” she breathed onto his skin. “Brave man.”
He hadn’t bothered with more than undershorts while sleeping, so she had little to do to prepare him as she hovered her hands over his back, tracing the air above his skin.
“It … it crept back,” she breathed.
“I’m not surprised,” he said through his teeth. Not
at all.
She lowered her hands to her sides. “Why?”
He traced a finger over the embroidered coverlet. “Just—do what you have to.”
Yrene paused at his deflection—then riffled through her bag for something. The bit. She held it in her hands, however, instead of sliding it into his mouth. “I’m going in,” she said quietly.
“All right.”
“No—I’m going in, and I’m ending this. Today. Right now.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. All that it’d entail. He dared ask, “And what if I can’t?” Face it, endure it?
There was no fear in Yrene’s eyes, no hesitation. “That’s not my question to answer.”
No, it never had been. Chaol watched the sunlight dance on her locket, over those mountains and seas. What she might now witness within him, how badly he’d failed, over and over—
But they had walked this far down the road. Together. She had not turned away. From any of it.
And neither would he.
His throat thick, Chaol managed to say, “You could hurt yourself if you stay too long.”
Again, no ripple of doubt or terror. “I have a theory. I want to test it.” Yrene slid the bit between his lips, and he clamped down lightly. “And you—you’re the only person I can try it on.”
It occurred to Chaol, right as she laid her hands on his bare spine, why he was the only one she could try it on. But there was nothing he could do as pain and blackness slammed into him.
No way to stop Yrene as she plunged into his body, her magic a white swarming light around them, inside them.
The Valg. His body had been tainted by their power, and Yrene—
Yrene did not hesitate.
She soared through him, down the ladder of his spine, down the corridors of his bones and blood.
She was a spear of light, fired straight into the dark, aiming for that hovering shadow that had stretched out once more. That had tried to reclaim him.
Yrene slammed into the darkness and screamed.
It roared back, and they tangled, grappling.
It was foreign and cold and hollow; it was rife with rot and wind and hate.
Yrene threw herself into it. Every last drop.
And above, as if the surface of a night-dark sea separated them, Chaol bellowed with agony.
Today. It ended today.
I know what you are.
So Yrene fought, and so the darkness raged back.
CHAPTER
55
The agony tore through him, unending and depthless.
He blacked out within a minute. Leaving him to free-fall into this place. This pit.
The bottom of the descent.
The hollow hell beneath the roots of a mountain.
Here, where all was locked and buried. Here, where all had come to take root.
The empty foundation, mined and hacked apart, crumbled away into nothing but this pit.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Worthless and nothing.
He saw his father first. His mother and brother and that cold mountain keep. Saw the stairs crusted with the ice and snow, stained with blood. Saw the man he’d gladly sold himself out to, thinking it would get Aelin to safety. Celaena to safety.
He’d sent the woman he’d loved to the safety of another assassination. Had sent her to Wendlyn, thinking it better than Adarlan. To kill its royal family.
His father emerged from the dark, the mirror of the man he might have become, might one day be. Distaste and disappointment etched his father’s features as he beheld him, the son that might have been.
His father’s asking price … he’d thought it a prison sentence.
But perhaps it had been a shot at freedom—at saving his useless, wayward son from the evil he likely suspected was about to be unleashed.
He had broken that promise to his father.
He hated him, and yet his father—that horrible, miserable bastard—had upheld his end of the bargain.
He … he had not.
Oath-breaker. Traitor.
Everything he had done, Aelin had come to rip it apart. Starting with his honor.
She, with her fluidity, that murky area in which she dwelled … He’d broken his vows for her. Broken everything he was for her.
He could see her, in the dark.
The gold hair, those turquoise eyes that had been the last clue, the final piece of the puzzle.
Liar. Murderer. Thief.
She basked in the sun atop a chaise longue on the balcony of that suite she’d occupied in the palace, a book in her lap. Tilting her head to the side, she looked him over with that lazy half smile. A cat being stirred from its repose.
He hated her.
He hated that face, the amusement and sharpness. The temper and viciousness that could reduce someone to shreds without so much as a word—only a look. Only a beat of silence.
She enjoyed such things. Savored them.
And he had been so bewitched by it, this woman who had been a living flame. He’d been willing to leave it all behind. The honor. The vows he’d made.
For this haughty, swaggering, self-righteous woman, he had shattered parts of himself.
And afterward, she had walked away, as if he were a broken toy.
Right into the arms of that Fae Prince, who emerged from the dark. Who approached that lounge chair on the balcony and sat on its end.
Her half smile turned different. Her eyes sparked.
The lethal, predatory interest honed in on the prince. She seemed to glow brighter. Become more aware. More centered. More … alive.
Fire and ice. An end and a beginning.
They did not touch each other.
They only sat on that chaise, some unspoken conversation passing between them. As if they had finally found some reflection of themselves in the world.
He hated them.
He hated them for that ease, that intensity, that sense of completion.
She had wrecked him, wrecked his life, and had then strolled right to this prince, as if she were going from one room to another.
And when it had all gone to hell, when he’d turned his back on everything he knew, when he had lied to the one who mattered most to keep her secrets, she had not been there to fight. To help.
She had only returned, months later, and thrown it in his face.
His uselessness. His nothingness.
You remind me of how the world ought to be. What the world can be.
Lies. The words of a girl who had been grateful to him for offering her freedom, for pushing and pushing her until she was roaring at the world again.
A girl who had stopped existing the night they’d found that body on the bed.
When she had ripped his face open.
When she had tried to plunge that dagger into his heart.
The predator he’d seen in those eyes … it had been unleashed.
There were no leashes that could ever keep her restrained. And words like honor and duty and trust, they were gone.
She had gutted that courtesan in the tunnels. She’d let the man’s body drop, closed her eyes, and had looked precisely as she had during those throes of passion. And when she had opened her eyes again …
Killer. Liar. Thief.
She was still sitting on the chaise, the Fae Prince beside her, both of them watching that scene in the tunnel, as if they were spectators in a sport.
Watching Archer Finn slump to the stones, his blood leaking from him, face taut with shock and pain. Watching Chaol stand there, unable to move or speak, as she breathed in the death before her, the vengeance.
As Celaena Sardothien ended, shattering completely.
He had still tried to protect her. To get her out. To atone.
You will always be my enemy.
She had roared those words with ten years’ worth of rage.
And she had meant it. Meant it as any child who had lost and suffered at Adarl
an’s hand would mean it.
As Yrene meant it.
The garden appeared in another pocket of the darkness. The garden and the cottage and the mother and laughing child.
Yrene.
The thing he had not seen coming. The person he had not expected to find.
Here in the darkness … here she was.
And yet he had still failed. Hadn’t done right by her, or by Nesryn.
He should have waited, should have respected them both enough to end one and begin with another, but he supposed he had failed in that, too.
Aelin and Rowan remained on that chaise in the sunshine.
He saw the Fae Prince gently, reverently, take Aelin’s hand, turning it over. Exposing her wrist to the sun. Exposing the faint marks of shackles.
He saw Rowan rub a thumb over those scars. Saw the fire in Aelin’s eyes bank.
Over and over, Rowan brushed those scars with his thumb. And Aelin’s mask slid off.
There was fire in that face. And rage. And cunning.
But also sorrow. Fear. Despair. Guilt.
Shame.
Pride and hope and love. The weight of a burden she had run from, but now …
I love you.
I’m sorry.
She had tried to explain. Had said it as clearly as she could. Had given him the truth so he might piece it together when she had left and understand. She meant those words. I’m sorry.
Sorry for the lies. For what she had done to him, his life. For swearing that she would pick him, choose him, no matter what. Always.
He wanted to hate her for that lie. That false promise, which she had discarded in the misty forests of Wendlyn.
And yet.
There, with that prince, without the mask … That was the bottom of her pit.
She had come to Rowan, soul limping. She had come to him as she was, as she had never been with anyone. And she had returned whole.
Still she had waited—waited to be with him.
Chaol had been lusting for Yrene, had taken her into his bed without so much as thinking of Nesryn, and yet Aelin …
She and Rowan looked to him now. Still as an animal in the woods, both of them. But their eyes full of understanding. Knowing.
She had fallen in love with someone else, had wanted someone else—as badly as he wanted Yrene.