Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,103

I know.

Chaol let Nesryn talk, listened until her voice lulled him to sleep, because he knew, too.

22

Yrene debated not showing up the next day.

What had happened on the couch last night …

She’d returned to her room overheated and frantic, unable to settle. Peeling off Hasar’s gown and jewels, she’d folded them neatly on her chair with shaking hands. Then she’d pushed her trunk in front of the door, just in case that murdering demon had spied her inhaling ungodly amounts of that smoke and thought to catch her out of her wits.

Because she had been. Utterly out of her mind. All she had known was the heat and smell and comforting size of him—the scrape of his calluses against her skin and how she wanted to feel them elsewhere. How she had kept looking at his mouth and it was all she could do to keep from tracing it with her fingers. Her lips.

She hated those parties. The smoke that made one abandon any sort of common sense. Inhibitions. Precisely why the nobility and wealthy loved to bring it out, but …

Yrene had paced her tower room, running her hands over her face until she smudged the cosmetics Hasar had personally applied.

She’d washed her face thrice. Slipped into her lightest nightgown and then tossed and turned in bed, the fabric clinging and chafing against her sweaty, burning skin.

Counting down the hours, the minutes, until that smoke’s grip loosened. Cleared away.

It didn’t let go easily. And it was only during the quietest, blackest hours of the night that Yrene took matters into her own hands.

A stronger dose than usual had been put out tonight. It crawled all over her, running talons along her skin. And the face it summoned, the hands she imagined brushing over her skin—

Release left her hollow—unsatisfied.

Dawn broke, and Yrene scowled at her haggard reflection in the sliver of mirror above the washbasin.

The opiate’s grip had vanished with the few hours of sleep she’d managed to steal, but … Something twisted low in her gut.

She washed and dressed and packed Hasar’s finery and jewels in a spare satchel. It was best to get it over with. She’d return the princess’s clothes and jewels after. Hasar had been smug as a Baast Cat at the information Yrene had given her, the lie Chaol had fed her to hand to the princess.

She had debated not telling him, but even before the smoke, before that madness … When he’d offered to sit with her to avoid refusing Kashin, after a day spent wandering the city in unhurried ease, she’d decided. To trust him. And then lost her mind entirely.

Yrene could barely look the guards, the servants, the viziers and nobility in the face as she entered the palace and made her way to Lord Westfall’s rooms. There was no doubt some had spied her on the couch with him. Some hadn’t—though they might have heard.

She’d never shown such behavior at the palace. She should tell Hafiza. Let the Healer on High hear of her brazenness before it reached the Torre from other lips.

Not that Hafiza would scold her, but … Yrene could not escape the feeling that she needed to confess. To make it right.

She’d keep today’s session brief. Or as brief as they could, when she lost all sense of time and place in that dark, raging hell of his wound.

Professional.

Yrene entered the suite, telling Kadja, “Ginger, turmeric, and lemon,” before walking to Chaol’s bedroom. Kadja seemed inclined to object, but Yrene ignored her and pushed open the bedroom door.

Yrene halted so fast she nearly stumbled.

It was the rumpled sheets and pillows she noticed first. Then his naked chest, his hips barely covered by a swath of white silk.

Then a dark head, facedown on the pillow beside his. Still sleeping. Exhausted.

Chaol’s eyes instantly flew open, and all Yrene managed was a silent, “Oh.”

Shock and—something else flared in his gaze, his mouth opening.

Nesryn stirred beside him, brows knotting, her shirt wrinkled.

Chaol grabbed fistfuls of the sheet, the muscles of his chest and abdomen shifting as he rose up on his elbows—

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.

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