Chaol’s head snapped up, as if something in the khagan’s tone had snared him. “Why.”
Nesryn barely hid her cringe. More of a demand than anyone ever dared make of the man, judging by the surprised anger in the khagan’s eyes, in the glances exchanged between his children.
But Nesryn caught the flicker of something else within the khagan’s eyes. A weariness.
Something oily slid into her gut as she noted the white banners streaming from the windows, all over the city. As she looked to the six heirs and counted again.
Not six.
Five. Only five were here.
Death-banners at the royal household. All over the city.
They were not a mourning people—not in the way they could be in Adarlan, dressing all in black and moping for months. Even amongst the khagan’s royal family, life picked up and went on, their dead not stuffed in stone catacombs or coffins, but shrouded in white and laid beneath the open skies of their sealed-off, sacred reserve on the distant steppes.
Nesryn glanced down the line of five heirs, counting. The eldest five were present. And just as she realized that Tumelun, the youngest—barely seventeen—was not there, the khagan said to Chaol, “Your spies are indeed useless if you have not heard.”
With that, he strode for his throne, leaving Sartaq to step forward, the second-eldest prince’s depthless eyes veiled with sorrow. Sartaq gave Nesryn a silent nod. Yes. Yes, her suspicions were right—
Sartaq’s solid, pleasant voice filled the chamber. “Our beloved sister, Tumelun, died unexpectedly three weeks ago.”
Oh, gods. So many words and rituals had been passed over; merely coming here to demand their aid in war was uncouth, untoward—
Chaol said into the fraught silence, meeting the stares of each taut-faced prince and princess, then finally the weary-eyed khagan himself, “You have my deepest condolences.”
Nesryn breathed, “May the northern wind carry her to fairer plains.”
Only Sartaq bothered to nod his thanks, while the others now turned cold and stiff.
Nesryn shot Chaol a silent, warning look not to ask about the death. He read the expression on her face and nodded.
The khagan scratched at a fleck on his ivory throne, the silence as heavy as one of the coats the horse-lords still wore against that bitter northern wind on the steppes and their unforgiving wooden saddles.
“We’ve been at sea for three weeks,” Chaol tried to offer, his voice softer now.
The khagan did not bother to appear understanding. “That would also explain why you are so unaware of the other bit of news, and why these cold jewels might be of more use for you.” The khagan’s lips curled in a mirthless smile. “Arghun’s contacts also brought word from a ship this morning. Your royal coffers in Rifthold are no longer accessible. Duke Perrington and his host of flying terrors have sacked Rifthold.”
Silence, pulsing and hollow, swept through Nesryn. She wasn’t sure if Chaol was breathing.
“We do not have word on King Dorian’s location, but he yielded Rifthold to them. Fled into the night, if rumor is to be believed. The city has fallen. Everything to the south of Rifthold belongs to Perrington and his witches now.”
Nesryn saw the faces of her nieces and nephews first.
Then the face of her sister. Then her father. Saw their kitchen, the bakery. The pear tarts cooling on the long, wooden table.
Dorian had left them. Left them all to … to do what? Find help? Survive? Run to Aelin?
Had the royal guard remained to fight? Had anyone fought to save the innocents in the city?
Her hands were shaking. She didn’t care. Didn’t care if these people clad in riches sneered.
Her sister’s children, the great joy in her life …
Chaol was staring up at her. Nothing on his face. No devastation, no shock.
That crimson-and-gold uniform became stifling. Strangling.
Witches and wyverns. In her city. With those iron teeth and nails. Shredding and bleeding and tormenting. Her family—her family—
“Father.”
Sartaq had stepped forward once more. Those onyx eyes slid between Nesryn and the khagan. “It has been a long journey for our guests. Politics aside,” he said, giving a disapproving glance at Arghun, who seemed amused—amused at this news he’d brought, that had set the green marble floors roiling beneath her boots—“we are still a nation of hospitality. Let them rest for a few hours. And then join us for dinner.”
Hasar came to Sartaq’s side, frowning at Arghun while she did. Perhaps not from reprimand like her brother, but simply for Arghun not telling her of this news first. “Let no guest pass through our home and find its comforts lacking.” Even though the words were welcoming, Hasar’s tone was anything but.
Their father gave them a bemused glance. “Indeed.” Urus waved a hand toward the servants by the far pillars. “Escort them to their rooms. And dispatch a message to the Torre to send their finest—Hafiza, if she’ll come down from that tower.”
Nesryn scarcely heard the rest. If the witches held the city, then the Valg who had infested it earlier this summer … There would be no one to fight them. No one to shield her family.
If they had survived.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
She should not have left. Should not have taken this position.
They could be dead, or suffering. Dead. Dead.
She did not notice the female servant who came to push Chaol’s chair. Barely noticed the hand Chaol reached out to twine through her own.
Nesryn didn’t so much as bow to the khagan as they left.
She could not stop seeing their faces.
The children. Her sister’s smiling, round-bellied children.
She should not have come.
3
Nesryn had gone into shock.
And Chaol could not go to her, could not scoop her into his arms and hold her close.
Not when she had walked, silent and drifting like a wraith, right into a bedroom of the lavish suite they’d been appointed on the first floor of the palace, and shut the door behind her. As if she had forgotten anyone else in the world existed.
He didn’t blame her.
Chaol let the servant, a fine-boned young woman with chestnut hair that fell in heavy curls to her narrow waist, wheel him into the second bedroom. The suite overlooked a garden of fruit trees and burbling fountains, cascades of pink and purple blossoms hanging from potted plants anchored into the balcony above. They provided living curtains before his towering bedroom windows—doors, he realized.
The servant mumbled something about drawing a bath, her use of his language unwieldy compared to the skill of the khagan and his children. Not that he was in any position to judge: he was barely fluent in any of the other languages within his own continent.
She slipped behind a carved wooden screen that no doubt led into his bathing chamber, and Chaol peered through his still-open bedroom door, across the pale marble foyer, to the shut doors of Nesryn’s bedroom.
They should not have left.
He couldn’t have done anything, but … He knew what the not-knowing would do to Nesryn. What it was already doing to him.
Dorian was not dead, he told himself. He had gotten out. Fled. If he were in Perrington’s grip—Erawan’s grip—they would have known. Prince Arghun would have known.