Yrene simply walked out.

She waited on the gold sofa in the sitting room, her knee bouncing as she watched the garden, the climbing flowers just beginning to open up along the pillars outside the glass doors.

Even with the burbling fountain, it didn’t quite block out the sounds of Nesryn murmuring as she awoke—then the pad of soft feet from his bedroom to her own, followed by the shutting of her door.

A moment later, wheels groaned, and there he was. In his shirt and pants. Hair still disheveled. As if he’d run his hands through it. Or Nesryn had. Repeatedly.

Yrene wrapped her arms around herself, the room somehow so very large. The space between them too open. She should have eaten breakfast. Should have done something to keep from this lightness. This hollow pit in her stomach.

“I didn’t realize you’d be here so early,” he said softly. She could have sworn guilt laced his tone.

“You said I could come at dawn,” she replied with equal quiet, but hated the note of accusation in her voice and quickly added, “I should have sent word.”

“No. I—”

“I can come back later,” she said, shooting to her feet. “Let you two eat breakfast.”

Together. Alone.

“No,” he said sharply, pausing his approach near their usual couch. “Now is fine.”

She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t meet his eyes. Or explain why.

“Yrene.”

She ignored the command in her name and went to the desk, seating herself behind it, grateful for the wall of carved wood between them. The stability of it beneath her palm as she opened up her satchel from where she’d left it along the edge and began unpacking her things with careful precision. Vials of oils she did not need. Journals.

Books—the ones she’d taken from the library, The Song of Beginning with them. Along with those ancient, precious scrolls. She had not been able to think of a safer place for them beyond here. Beyond him.

Yrene said very quietly, “I can make up a tonic. For her. If such a thing is needed. Isn’t wanted, I mean.”

A child, she couldn’t bring herself to say. Like the fat babe she’d spied him smiling so broadly at yesterday. As if it was a blessing, a joy he one day might desire—

“And I can make up a daily one for you,” she added, every word stumbling and tripping out of her mouth.

“She’s already taking one,” he said. “Since she was fourteen.”

Likely since she first started bleeding. For a woman in a city like Rifthold, it was wise. Especially if she planned to enjoy herself as well.

“Good,” was all Yrene could think to say, still stacking her books. “Smart.”

He approached the desk until his knees slid beneath the other end. “Yrene.”

She thumped book after book on top of each other.

“Please.”

The word had her lifting her gaze. Meeting his stare—the sun-warmed soil of his eyes.

And it was the formation of those two words that she beheld brewing in his gaze—I’m sorry—that had her shooting up from the desk again. Walking across the room. Flinging open the garden doors.

There was nothing to be sorry for. Nothing.

They were lovers, and she …

Yrene lingered at the garden doors until Nesryn’s bedroom door opened and closed. Until she heard Nesryn poke her head into the sitting room, murmur a farewell to Chaol, and leave.

Yrene tried to bring herself to look over a shoulder at Captain Faliq, to offer a polite smile, but she pretended not to hear the brief encounter. Pretended to be too busy examining the pale purple flowers unfurling in the morning sunlight.

She shoved back against the hollowness. She had not felt so small, so … insignificant for a long, long time.

You are the heir apparent to Hafiza, Healer on High. You are nothing to this man and he is nothing to you. Stay the course. Remember Fenharrow—your home. Remember those who are there—who need your help.

Remember all that you promised to do. To be.

Her hand slid into her pocket, curling around the note there.

The world needs more healers.

“It’s not what you think,” Chaol said behind her.

Yrene closed her eyes for a heartbeat.

Fight—fight for your miserable, useless, wasted life.

She turned, forcing a polite smile to her face. “It is a natural thing. A healthy thing. I’m glad you’re feeling … up to the task.”

From the ire that rippled in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw, Chaol perhaps was not.

The world needs more healers. The world needs more healers. The world needs more healers.

Finish with him, heal him, and she could leave Hafiza, leave the Torre, with her head held high. She could return home, to war and bloodshed, and make good on her promise. Make good on that stranger’s gift of freedom that night in Innish.

“Shall we begin?”

It would be in here today. Because the prospect of sitting on that rumpled bed that likely still smelled of them—

There was a tightness to her throat, her voice, that she could not shake, no matter how many breaths she took.

Chaol studied her. Weighing her tone. Her words. Her expression.

He saw it—heard it. That tightness, that brittleness.

I expected nothing, she wanted to say. I—I am nothing.

Please don’t ask. Please don’t push. Please.

Chaol seemed to read that, too. He said quietly, “I didn’t take her to bed.”

She refrained from mentioning that the evidence seemed stacked against him.

Chaol went on, “We spoke long into the night and fell asleep. Nothing happened.”

Yrene ignored the way her chest both hollowed out and filled at the words. Didn’t trust herself to speak as the information settled.

As if sensing her need for a breath, Chaol began to turn toward the couch, but his attention snagged on the books she’d stacked on the table. On the scrolls.

The color drained from his face.

“What is that,” he growled.

Yrene strode to the desk, picking up the parchment and unrolling it carefully to display the strange symbols. “Nousha, the Head Librarian, found it for me that night when I asked her for information on … the things that hurt you. In all the—upheaval, I forgot it. It was shelved near the Eyllwe books, so she threw it in, just in case. I think it’s old. Eight hundred years at least.” She was babbling, but couldn’t stop, grateful for any subject but the one he’d been so near to breaching. “I think they’re runes, but I’ve seen none like it. Neither had Nousha.”

“They are not runes,” Chaol said hoarsely. “They’re Wyrdmarks.”

And from what he had told her, Yrene knew there was much more. So much more he had not divulged. She stroked a hand over the dark cover of The Song of Beginning. “This book … It mentioned a gate. And keys. And three kings to wield them.”

She wasn’t certain he was breathing. Then Chaol said, voice low, “You read that. In that book.”

Yrene opened the pages, flipping to the illustration of the three figures before that otherworldly gate. Approaching, she held the book open for him to see. “I couldn’t read much of it—it’s in an ancient form of Eyllwe—but …” She flipped to the other illustration, of the young man being infested by that dark power on the altar. “Is that … is that what they truly do?”

His hands slackened at the sides of his chair as he stared and stared at the panel featuring the young man’s cold, dark eyes. “Yes.”

The word held more pain and fear than she’d expected.

She opened her mouth, but he sliced a warning glare at her, mastering himself. “Hide it, Yrene. Hide all of it. Now.”

Her heart thundered in her chest, her limbs, but she snatched up the books. The scrolls. He watched the doors, the windows, while she set about placing them under cushions and inside some of the larger vases. But the scroll … it was too precious. Too ancient to treat so callously. Even flattening it out might harm the integrity of the paper, the ink.

He noticed her looking around helplessly, the scroll in her hands. “My boots, if you will, Yrene,” he said casually. “I have a second pair that I’d rather wear today.”