Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,92

tapped his foot in silent order to keep wriggling his toes. Chaol obeyed with a huff of laughter.

“Kashin and Hafiza came with me. We were there over a month.” Yrene flexed his foot, up and down, working through the repetitive motions with slow, deliberate care. Magic aided in the healing, yes, but the physical element of it played equally as important a role. “Are you moving your toes as much as you can?”

A snort. “Yes, mistress.”

She hid her smile, stretching his leg as far as his hip would allow and rotating it in small circles.

“I assume that trip to the steppes was when Prince Kashin poured his heart out.”

Yrene nearly dropped his leg, but instead glared up at him, finding those rich brown eyes full of dry humor. “It is none of your business.”

“You do love to say that, for someone who seems so intent on demanding I tell her everything.”

She rolled her eyes and went back to bending his leg at the knee, stretching and easing. “Kashin was one of the first friends I made here,” she said after a long moment. “One of my first friends anywhere.”

“Ah.” A pause. “And when he wanted more than friendship …”

Yrene lowered Chaol’s leg at last, buckling it back into the brace and wiping the dust from his boots off her hands. She set her hands on her hips as she peered at him, squinting against the rising light. “I didn’t want more than that. I told him as much. And that is that.”

Chaol’s lips twitched toward a smile, and Yrene at last approached her waiting mare, hauling herself into the saddle. When she straightened, arranging the skirts of her dress over her legs, she said to him, “My aim is to return to Fenharrow, to help where I am needed most. I felt nothing strong enough for Kashin to warrant yielding that dream.”

Understanding filled his eyes, and he opened his mouth—as if he might say something about it. But he just nodded, smiling again, and said, “I’m glad you didn’t.” She lifted a brow in question, and his smile grew. “Where would I be without you here to bark orders at me?”

Yrene scowled, scooping up the reins and steering the horse toward the gates as she said sharply, “Let me know if you start to feel any discomfort or tingling in that saddle—and try to keep your toes moving as often as you can.”

To his credit, he didn’t object. He only said with that half smile, “Lead the way, Yrene Towers.”

And though she told herself not to … a little smile tugged on Yrene’s mouth as they rode into the awakening city.

20

With most of the city down by the docks for the sunrise ceremony to honor Tehome, the streets were quiet. Chaol supposed only the sickest would be bedbound today, which was why, when they approached a slender house on a sunny, dusty street, he wasn’t at all surprised to be greeted by violent coughing before they’d even reached the door.

Well, before Yrene had even reached the door. Without the chair, he’d remain atop the horse, but Yrene didn’t so much as comment on it as she dismounted, tied her mare to the hitching post down the street, and strode for the house. He kept shifting his toes every so often—as much as he could manage within the boots. The movement alone, he knew, was a gift, but it required more concentration than he’d expected; more energy, too.

Chaol was still flexing them when an elderly woman opened the house door, sighing to see Yrene and speaking in very slow Halha. For Yrene to understand, apparently, because the healer replied in the language as she entered the house and left the door ajar, her use of the words tentative and unwieldy. Better than his own.

From the street, he could see through the house’s open windows and door to the little bed tucked just under the painted sill—as if to keep the patient in the fresh air.

It was occupied by an old man—the source of that coughing.

Yrene spoke to the crone before striding to the old man, pulling up a squat, three-legged stool.

Chaol stroked his horse’s neck, wriggling his toes again, while Yrene took the man’s withered hand and pressed another to his brow.

Each movement was gentle, calm. And her face …

There was a soft smile on it. One he’d never seen before.

Yrene said something he couldn’t hear to the old woman wringing her hands behind them, then rolled down the thin blanket