their neutral territories and emerge into the world beyond, not as healer and patient, but woman and man—
“I’ll try anything,” Chaol said, and she knew he meant it. And from the way he looked to the open gates of the Torre, to the city just starting to glow beyond … She knew he wanted to try anything; was as eager for a distraction from that shadow looming over them as she herself was.
So Yrene signaled to the guards that they didn’t need his horse. Not for a while yet. “I know just the place.”
Some people stared; some were too busy going about their business or journeys home to remark on Chaol as he wheeled his chair alongside Yrene.
She had to step in only a few times, to help him over the bump of a curve, or down one of the steep streets. She led him to a place five blocks away, the establishment like nothing he’d seen in Rifthold. He’d visited a few private dining rooms with Dorian, yes, but those had been for the elite, for members and their guests.
This place … it was akin to those private clubs, in that it was only for eating, full of tables and carved wooden chairs, but this was open to anyone, like the public rooms at an inn or tavern. The front of the pale-stoned building had several sets of doors that were open to the night, leading out onto a patio full of more tables and chairs under the stars, the space jutting into the street itself so that diners could watch the passing city bustle, even glimpse down the sloping street to the dark sea sparkling under the moonlight.
And the enticing smells coming from within: garlic, something tangy, something smoky …
Yrene murmured to the woman who came to greet them, which must have amounted to a table for two and without one chair, because within a moment, he was being led to the street-patio, where a servant discreetly removed one of the chairs at a small table for him to pull up to the edge.
Yrene claimed a seat opposite him, more than a few heads turning their way. Not to gawk at him, but her.
The Torre healer.
She didn’t seem to notice. The servant returned to rattle off what had to be the menu, and Yrene ordered in her halting Halha.
She bit her lower lip, glancing to the table, the public dining room. “Is this all right?”
Chaol took in the open sky above them, the color bleeding to a sapphire blue, the stars beginning to blink awake. When had he last relaxed? Eaten a meal not to keep his body healthy and alive, but to enjoy it?
He grappled for the words. Grappled to settle into the ease. “I’ve never done anything like this,” he at last admitted.
His birthday this past winter, in that greenhouse—even then, with Aelin, he’d been half there, half focused on the palace he’d left behind, on remembering who was in charge and where Dorian was supposed to be. But now …
“What—eaten a meal?”
“Had a meal when I wasn’t … Had a meal when I was just … Chaol.”
He wasn’t sure if he’d explained it right, if he could articulate it—
Yrene angled her head, her mass of hair sliding over a shoulder. “Why?”
“Because I was either a lord’s son and heir, or Captain of the Guard, or now Hand to the King.” Her gaze was unflinching as he fumbled to explain. “No one recognizes me here. No one has ever even heard of Anielle. And it’s …”
“Liberating?”
“Refreshing,” he countered, giving Yrene a small smile at the echo to his earlier words.
She blushed prettily in the golden light from the lanterns within the dining room behind them. “Well … good.”
“And you? Do you go out with friends often—leave the healer behind?”
Yrene watched the people streaming by. “I don’t have many friends,” she admitted. “Not because I don’t want them,” she blurted, and he smiled. “I just—at the Torre, we’re all busy. Sometimes, a few of us will go for a meal or drink, but our schedules rarely align, and it’s easier to eat at the mess hall, so … we’re not really a lively bunch. Which was why Kashin and Hasar became my friends—when they’re in Antica. But I’ve never really had the chance to do much of this.”
He almost asked, Go out to dinner with men? But said, “You had your focus elsewhere.”
She nodded. “And maybe one day—maybe I’ll have the time to go out and enjoy