Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,45

at the sound, the world tumbling into focus. Her limbs and breath returning, as if she’d drifted above them.

She peered at the darkness—finding only smooth, veiling black. Hollow and empty, as if it had been vacated. There, and gone. As if she had repelled it, disappointed it.

Yrene’s head spun slightly as she sat up, stretching limbs that had gone a bit stiff, even in the mineral-rich water. How long had she soaked?

She rubbed at her slick arms, heart thundering as she scanned the darkness, as if it might still have another answer for what she must do, what lay before her. An alternative.

None came.

A sound shuffled through the cavern, distinctly not ringing or trickling or lapping. A quiet, shuddering intake of breath.

Yrene turned, water dripping off the errant strands of hair that had escaped the knot atop her head, and found another healer had entered the Womb at some point, claiming a tub on the opposite end of the parallel rows flanking either side of the chamber. With the drifting veils of steam, it was nearly impossible to identify her, though Yrene certainly didn’t know the name of every healer in the Torre.

The sound rasped through the Womb again, and Yrene sat up farther, hands bracing on the cool, dark floor as she stood from the water. Steam curled off her skin as she reached for the thin robe and tied it around her, the fabric clinging to her soaked body.

The Womb’s protocol was well established. It was a place for solitude, for silence. Healers entered the waters to reconnect with Silba, to center themselves. Some sought guidance; some sought absolution; some sought to release a hard day’s worth of emotions they could not show before patients, perhaps could not show before anyone.

And though Yrene knew the healer across the Womb was entitled to her space, though she was prepared to leave and grant the healer privacy to weep …

The woman’s shoulders shook. Another muffled sob.

On near-silent feet, Yrene approached the healer in the tub. Saw the rivulets down her young face—her light brown skin and gold-kissed umber hair nearly identical to Yrene’s own. Saw the bleakness in the woman’s tawny eyes as she gazed at the darkness high above, tears dripping off her slender jaw and into the rippling water.

There were some wounds that could not be healed. Some illnesses that even the healers’ power could not stop, if rooted too deeply. If they had come too late. If they did not mark the right signs.

The healer did not look at her as Yrene silently sat beside her tub, curling her knees to her chest before she picked up the healer’s hand and interlaced their fingers.

So Yrene sat there, holding the healer’s hand while she silently wept, the drifting steam full of the clear, sweet ringing of those bells.

After untold minutes, the woman in the tub murmured, “She was three years old.”

Yrene squeezed the healer’s damp hand. There were no words to comfort, to soothe.

“I wish …” The woman’s voice broke, her entire body shaking, candlelight jumping along her beige skin. “Sometimes I wish this gift had never been given to me.”

Yrene stilled at the words.

The woman at last turned her head, scanning Yrene’s face, a flicker of recognition in her eyes. “Do you ever feel that way?” A raw, unguarded question.

No. She hadn’t. Not once. Not even when the smoke of her mother’s immolation had stung her eyes and she knew she could do nothing to save her. She had never once hated the gift she’d been given, because in all those years, she had never been alone thanks to it. Even with magic gone in her homeland, Yrene had still felt it, like a warm hand clasping her shoulder. A reminder of who she was, where she had come from, a living tether to countless generations of Towers women who had walked this path before her.

The healer searched Yrene’s eyes for the answer she wanted. The answer Yrene could not give. So Yrene just squeezed the woman’s hand again and stared into the darkness.

You must enter where you fear to tread.

Yrene knew what she had to do. And wished she didn’t.

“Well? Has Yrene healed you yet?”

Seated at the high table in the khagan’s great hall, Chaol turned to where Princess Hasar sat several seats down. A cooling breeze that smelled of oncoming rain flowed through the open windows to rustle the white death-banners hanging from their upper frames.

Kashin and Sartaq glanced their way—the latter giving his sister