Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,158

a whisper of reassurance, as if he could sense that the walls were indeed closing in around her—

Hasar shot Yrene a displeased look. Why did you not inform me of this?

Yrene gave her an innocent wince back. I did not know. It was the truth.

“I suppose you shall tell us?” Hasar replied coolly to the lord.

Chaol shrugged. “I received word today—from Captain Faliq. She and your brother have decided to extend their trip by another three weeks. It turns out, her skill with a bow and arrow was in high demand amongst his rukhin. They have begged to keep her for a while longer. She obliged them.”

Yrene schooled her face into neutrality. Even as relief and shame washed through her.

A good woman—a brave woman. That was who she was so relieved to hear was not returning. Not … interrupting.

“Our brother is wise,” Arghun said from down the table, “to keep such a skilled warrior for as long as possible.”

The barb was there, buried deep.

Chaol again shrugged. “He is wise indeed, to know how special she is.” The words were spoken with truth, yet …

She was inventing things. Reading into it, assuming his tone had no affection beyond pride.

Arghun leaned forward to say to Hasar, “Well, then there’s the matter of the other news, sister. Which I assume Lord Westfall has also heard.”

A few places down, the khagan’s conversation with his closest viziers faltered.

“Oh, yes,” Hasar said, swirling her wine as she sprawled in her chair. “I’d forgotten.”

Yrene tried to catch Renia’s eye, to get the princess’s lover to reveal something about what she now felt building, the wave about to crash. The reason the room was so charged. But Renia only watched Hasar, a hand on her arm as if to say, Caution.

Not for what she was to reveal, but how Hasar was to reveal it.

Chaol glanced between Arghun and Hasar. From the prince and princess’s smirking, it was clear enough they were aware he hadn’t heard. But Chaol still seemed to be debating the merits of appearing knowledgeable, or admitting the truth—

Yrene spared him from the choice. “I have not heard it,” she said. “What has happened?”

Under the table, Chaol’s knee brushed hers in thanks. She told herself it was merely pleasure at the fact he could move that knee that coursed through her. Even as dread coiled in her gut.

“Well,” Hasar began, the opening chords to a dance she and Arghun had coordinated before this meal, “there have been some … developments on the neighboring continent, it seems.”

Yrene now pressed her knee into Chaol’s, a silent solidarity. Together, she tried to say through touch alone.

Arghun said to Yrene, to Chaol, and then down to his father, “So many developments up north. Royals gone missing, now revealing themselves once more. Both Dorian Havilliard and the Terrasen Queen. The latter did it in such dramatic fashion, too.”

“Where,” Yrene whispered, because Chaol could not. Indeed, the breath had gone out of him at the mention of his own king.

Hasar smiled at Yrene—that pleased smile she’d given her upon arrival.

“Skull’s Bay.”

The lie, the guess that Chaol had given her to feed to the princess … It had proved true.

She felt Chaol tense, though his face revealed nothing but bland interest. “A pirate port in the south, Great Khagan,” Chaol explained to Urus, seated down the table, as if he were indeed aware of this news—and a part of this conversation. “In the middle of a large archipelago.”

The khagan glanced to his visibly displeased viziers, and frowned with them. “And why would they appear in Skull’s Bay?”

Chaol had no answer, but Arghun was more than happy to supply it. “Because Aelin Galathynius thought to go head-to-head against the army Perrington had camped at the edge of the archipelago.”

Yrene slid her hand off the table—to grip Chaol’s knee. Tension radiated through every hard line of his body.

Duva asked, a hand on her growing belly, “Was the win in her favor, or Perrington’s?” As if it were a sporting match. Her husband was indeed peering down the table to see the heads swivel.

“Oh, in hers,” Hasar said. “We had eyes in the town already, so they were able to dispatch a full report.” That smug, secret smile again in Yrene’s direction. Spies she had sent using Yrene’s information. “Her power is considerable,” she added to her father. “Our sources say it burned the sky itself. And then wiped out most of the fleet assembled against her. In a single blow.”

Holy gods.

The viziers shifted, and the