Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,98

this,” he muttered back, and was surprised to find the corners of his mouth tugging upward at the thought.

Yrene threw him a bemused look, some light back in her eyes. People had twisted in their seats to better watch the dancers, their sculpted bodies and nimble, bare feet.

Perfect, precise movements, their bodies merely instruments of the music. Beautiful—ethereal and yet … tangible. Aelin, he realized, would have enjoyed this, too. Greatly.

As the dancers performed, servants hauled over chairs and couches, arranging pillows and tables. Bowls of smoking herbs were laid atop them, the smell sweet and cloying.

“Don’t get too close if you want your senses intact,” Yrene warned as a male servant bore one of the smoking metal dishes toward a carved wood table. “It’s a mild opiate.”

“They really let their hair down when their parents are away.”

Some of the viziers were leaving, but many left the table to take up cushioned seats, the entirety of the great hall remade in a matter of moments to accommodate lounging, and—

Servants emerged from the curtains, well groomed and dressed in gauzy, rich silk as well. Men and women, all beautiful, found their way to laps and armrests, some curling at the feet of viziers or nobility.

He’d seen fairly unleashed parties at the glass castle, but there had still been a stiffness. A formality and sense that such things were hidden behind closed doors. Dorian had certainly saved it for his own room. Or someone else’s. Or he just dragged Chaol into Rifthold, or down to Bellhaven, where the nobility held parties far more uninhibited than those of Queen Georgina.

Sartaq remained at the table beside Nesryn, who watched the skilled dancers with wide-eyed admiration, but the other royal children … Duva, a hand on her belly, bid her farewells, her husband at her side, silent as always. The smoke was not good for the babe in her womb, Duva claimed, and Yrene nodded in approval, though no one looked her way.

Arghun claimed a couch for himself around the dancing, reclining and breathing in the smoke rippling off the embers in those small metal bowls beside them. Courtiers and viziers vied for the seats nearest the eldest prince.

Hasar and her lover took a small couch for themselves, the princess’s hands soon tangling in her lover’s thick black hair. Her mouth found a spot on the woman’s neck a moment later. Renia’s answering smile was slow and broad—her eyes fluttering closed as Hasar whispered something against her skin.

Kashin seemed to wait for minutes as Yrene and Chaol watched the unfolding decadence from the emptying banquet table.

Waiting for Yrene, no doubt, to rise.

Color had stained her cheeks as she kept her eyes firmly on her kahve, steam curling from the small cup.

“You’ve seen this before?” Chaol asked her.

“Give it an hour or two, and they’ll all slip away to their rooms—not alone, of course.”

Prince Kashin seemed to have dragged out his conversation with the vizier beside him for as long as he could stomach. He opened his mouth, looking right toward Yrene, and Chaol read the invitation in his eyes before the man could speak.

Chaol had perhaps a heartbeat to decide. To see that Sartaq had invited Nesryn to sit with him—not at the table, not on one of the couches, but at a pair of chairs to the far back of the room, where there was no smoke and the windows were open, and yet they could still watch. She gave Chaol a reassuring nod, her pace unhurried as she walked with the prince.

So as Kashin leaned forward to invite Yrene to join him at a couch, Chaol turned to the healer and said, “I would like to sit with you.”

Her eyes were slightly wide. “Where.”

Kashin shut his mouth, and Chaol had the sense that there was a target being drawn on his chest.

But he held Yrene’s gaze and said, “Where it is quieter.”

There were only a few couches left free—all close to the thickest smoke and dancing. But there was one half hidden in shadow near an alcove across the room, a small brazier of those herbs smoldering on the low-lying table before it. “If we are meant to be seen together tonight,” he said so quietly only Yrene could hear, “then remaining here for a while would be better than leaving together.” What a message that would send, given the shift in the party’s atmosphere. “And I would not have you walk alone.”

Yrene rose silently, smiling grimly. “Then let us relax, Lord Westfall.”