He shoved against the feeling that he was again thirteen years old and trying to talk to a pretty girl for the first time and ground out, “Fine.”

Yrene withdrew a step and handed him his shirt. He sat up, arms and abdominal muscles straining, and slid it on.

“Well?” Nesryn asked, stalking close.

Yrene toyed with a heavy, loose curl. “I need to think. Talk to my superior.”

“I thought you were the best,” Nesryn said carefully.

“I am one of many who are skilled,” Yrene admitted. “But the Healer on High assigned me to this. I should like to speak to her first.”

“Is it bad?” Nesryn demanded. He was grateful she did—he didn’t have the nerve to.

Yrene only looked to him, her gaze frank and unafraid. “You know it is bad.”

“But can you help him?” Nesryn pushed, sharper this time.

“I have healed such injuries before. But this … it remains to be seen,” Yrene said, meeting her gaze now.

“When—when will you know?”

“When I have had time to think.”

To decide, Chaol realized. She wanted to decide whether to help him.

He held Yrene’s stare again, letting her see that he, at least, understood. He was glad Nesryn had not entertained the idea. He had a feeling Yrene would be face-first against the wall if she did.

But for Nesryn … the healers were beyond reproach. Holy as one of the gods here. Their ethic unquestionable.

“When will you return?” Nesryn asked.

Never, he almost answered.

Yrene slid her hands into her pockets. “I’ll send word,” was all she said, and left.

Nesryn stared after her, then rubbed her face.

Chaol said nothing.

But Nesryn straightened, then dashed out—to the sitting room. Rustling paper, and then—

Nesryn halted in the doorway to his room, brows crossed, Yrene’s paper in her hands.

She handed it to him. “What does this even mean?”

There were four names written on the paper, her handwriting messy.

Olgnia.

Marte.

Rosana.

Josefin.

It was the final name that had been written down several times.

The final name that had been underlined, over and over.

Josefin. Josefin. Josefin.

“Perhaps they’re other healers in the Torre who could help,” he lied. “Perhaps she feared spies overhearing her suggest someone else.”

Nesryn’s mouth quirked to the side. “Let’s see what she says—when she returns. At least we know Hasar can track her down if need be.” Or Kashin, whose very name had set the healer on edge. Not that he’d force Yrene to work on him, but … it was useful information.

Chaol studied the paper again. The fervent underlining of that final name.

As if Yrene had needed to remind herself while here. In his presence. As if she needed whoever they were to know that she remembered them.

He had met another talented young healer from Fenharrow. His king had loved her enough to consider fleeing with her, to seek a better life for them. Chaol knew what had gone on in Fenharrow during their youth. Knew what Sorscha had endured there—and what she’d endured in Rifthold.

He’d ridden through Fenharrow’s scarred grasslands over the years. Had seen the burned or abandoned stone cottages, their thatched roofs long since gone. Owners either enslaved, dead, or fled elsewhere. Far, far away.

No, Chaol realized as he held that piece of paper, Yrene Towers would not be returning.

6

She’d known his age, but Yrene had still not expected the former captain to look so … young.

She hadn’t done the math until she’d walked into that room and seen his handsome face, a mix of caution and hope written across the hardened, broad features.

It was that hope that had made her see red. Had made her ache to give him a matching scar to the slender one slicing across his cheek.

She’d been unprofessional in the most horrific sense. Never—never had she been so rude and unkind toward any of her patients.

Mercifully, Hasar had arrived, cooling her head slightly. But touching the man, thinking of ways to help him …

She had not meant to write the list of the last four generations of Towers women. Had not meant to write her mother’s name over and over while pretending to record his information. It had not helped with the overwhelming roaring in her head.

Sweating and dusty, Yrene burst into Hafiza’s office nearly an hour later, the trek from the palace through the clogged, narrow streets, then the endless steps up here, taking an eternity.

She’d been late—that had been her first truly unprofessional moment. She’d never been late to an appointment. Yet right at ten, she’d found herself in an alcove of the hallway outside his bedroom, hands over her face, struggling to breathe.

He hadn’t been the brute she’d expected.

He’d spoken well, more lord than soldier. Though his body had most certainly belonged to the latter. She had patched up and healed enough of the khagan’s favored warriors to know the feel of muscle beneath her fingers. The scars covering Lord Westfall’s tan skin spoke volumes about how the muscles had been earned the hard way. And now aided him in maneuvering through the world with the chair.

And the injury to his spine …

As Yrene halted at the threshold of the Healer on High’s office, Hafiza looked up from where she sat beside a sniffling acolyte.

“I need a word,” Yrene said tightly, one hand gripping the doorjamb.

“You shall have one when we are done,” Hafiza simply replied, handing a handkerchief to the weepy girl.

Some male healers existed, but the majority of those who received Silba’s gift were female. And this girl, likely no more than fourteen … Yrene had been laboring on her cousin’s farm at that age. Dreaming of being here. Certainly not crying to anyone about her sorry lot in life.

But Yrene walked out, shutting the door behind her, and waited against the wall on the narrow landing.

There were two other doors up here: one locked that led into Hafiza’s personal workshop, and a door that led into the Healer on High’s bedroom; the former carved with an owl taking flight, the latter with an owl at rest. Silba’s symbol. It was everywhere in the tower—owls carved and embossed in the stone and wood, sometimes in unexpected places and with silly little expressions, as if some long-ago acolyte had etched them as a secret joke. But the owl on the Healer on High’s private workshop …

Even though it perched atop a gnarled branch of iron that flowed across the door itself, wings flared wide as it prepared to leap into the skies, it seemed … alert. Aware of all who passed that door, who perhaps gazed too long in the direction of the workshop. None but Hafiza possessed the key to it, handed down by her predecessor. Ancient, half-forgotten knowledge and devices lay within, the acolytes whispered—unnatural things that were better locked up than set loose in the world.

Yrene always laughed at their hushed words, but didn’t tell them she and a few select others had been granted the pleasure of joining Hafiza in that workshop, which, save for the sheer age of some of the tools and furniture, held nothing worth gossiping about. But the mystery of the Healer on High’s workshop persisted, as it had likely done for centuries—yet another well-loved myth of the Torre, passed on from acolyte to acolyte.

Yrene fanned her face, still out of breath from the climb and the heat. She leaned her head back against the cool stone, and again felt for the scrap of paper in her pocket. She wondered if the lord had noticed how often she’d grabbed that stranger’s note. If he’d thought she was reaching for a weapon. He’d seen everything, been aware of her every breath.

A man trained for it. He had to be, if he’d served the dead king. Just as Nesryn Faliq, a child of this continent, now served the king of a territory that had not treated outsiders very well at all.

Yrene could not make sense of it. There was some romantic bond, she knew from both the tension and comfort between them. But to what degree … It didn’t matter. Save for the emotional healing the lord would need as well. A man not used to voicing his feelings, his fears and hopes and hurts—that much was obvious.