Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,105

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.”

Right. Right.

Yrene hurried from the sitting room into his bedroom, wincing at the askew bed linens, at what she’d so stupidly assumed and seemed like such an enormous fool about—

She strode into the small dressing room, spotted his boots, and slid the parchment down the neck of one. Then took the pair and shoved it in a drawer, covering it with a stack of linen towels.

She reentered the sitting room a moment later. “I couldn’t find them. Perhaps Kadja sent them out for cleaning.”

“Too bad,” he said casually, his own boots now removed. Along with his shirt.

Her heart still raged as he eased onto the gold sofa but did not lie down.

“Do you know how to read?” she asked, kneeling before him and taking his bare foot in her hands. The Wyrdmarks?

“No.” His toes shifted as she began careful rotations of his ankle. “But I know someone who does it for me when it’s important.” Careful, veiled words for anyone listening.

Yrene went about exercising his legs, stretching and bending, the motions repeated over and over while he moved his toes as much as he could. “I should show you the library sometime,” she offered. “You might find something that strikes your fancy—for your reader to narrate to you.”

“Do you have many similarly interesting texts?”

She lowered his left leg and started on the other. “I could ask—Nousha knows everything.”

“When we’re done. After you rest. It’s