She lowered her gaze from the Torre to find his face grim. “I’m sorry to have brought all this upon you—all of you,” Chaol said quietly.
“Don’t be. Perhaps that’s what it wants. To use fear and guilt to end this—stop us.” She studied him, the proud lift of his chin, the strength he radiated in every breath. “Though … I do worry that time is not on our side.” Yrene amended, “Take all the time you need to heal. Yet …” She rubbed at her chest. “I have a feeling we have not seen the last of that hunter.”
Chaol nodded, his jaw tight. “We’ll deal with it.”
And that was that. Together—they’d deal with it together.
Yrene smiled slightly at him as the light steps of his horse approached on the pale gravel.
And the thought of climbing back to her room, the thought of hours spent fretting …
Maybe it made her pathetic, but Yrene blurted, “Would you like to stay for dinner? Cook will mope that you didn’t say hello.”
She knew it was not mere fear that spurred her. Knew that she just wanted to spend a few more minutes with him. Talk to him in a way that she so rarely did with anyone else.
For a long moment, Chaol only watched her. As if she were the only person in the world. She braced herself for the refusal, the distance. Knew she should have just let him ride off into the night.
“What if we ventured out for dinner instead?”
“You mean—in the city?” She pointed toward the open gates.
“Unless you think the chair in the streets—”
“The walkways are even.” Her heart hammered. “Do you have any preference for what to eat?”
A border—this was some strange border that they were crossing. To leave their neutral territories and emerge into the world beyond, not as healer and patient, but woman and man—
“I’ll try anything,” Chaol said, and she knew he meant it. And from the way he looked to the open gates of the Torre, to the city just starting to glow beyond … She knew he wanted to try anything; was as eager for a distraction from that shadow looming over them as she herself was.
So Yrene signaled to the guards that they didn’t need his horse. Not for a while yet. “I know just the place.”
Some people stared; some were too busy going about their business or journeys home to remark on Chaol as he wheeled his chair alongside Yrene.
She had to step in only a few times, to help him over the bump of a curve, or down one of the steep streets. She led him to a place five blocks away, the establishment like nothing he’d seen in Rifthold. He’d visited a few private dining rooms with Dorian, yes, but those had been for the elite, for members and their guests.
This place … it was akin to those private clubs, in that it was only for eating, full of tables and carved wooden chairs, but this was open to anyone, like the public rooms at an inn or tavern. The front of the pale-stoned building had several sets of doors that were open to the night, leading out onto a patio full of more tables and chairs under the stars, the space jutting into the street itself so that diners could watch the passing city bustle, even glimpse down the sloping street to the dark sea sparkling under the moonlight.
And the enticing smells coming from within: garlic, something tangy, something smoky …
Yrene murmured to the woman who came to greet them, which must have amounted to a table for two and without one chair, because within a moment, he was being led to the street-patio, where a servant discreetly removed one of the chairs at a small table for him to pull up to the edge.
Yrene claimed a seat opposite him, more than a few heads turning their way. Not to gawk at him, but her.
The Torre healer.
She didn’t seem to notice. The servant returned to rattle off what had to be the menu, and Yrene ordered in her halting Halha.
She bit her lower lip, glancing to the table, the public dining room. “Is this all right?”
Chaol took in the open sky above them, the color bleeding to a sapphire blue, the stars beginning to blink awake. When had he last relaxed? Eaten a meal not to keep his body healthy and alive, but to enjoy it?
He grappled for the words. Grappled to settle into the ease. “I’ve never done anything like this,” he at last admitted.
His birthday this past winter, in that greenhouse—even then, with Aelin, he’d been half there, half focused on the palace he’d left behind, on remembering who was in charge and where Dorian was supposed to be. But now …
“What—eaten a meal?”
“Had a meal when I wasn’t … Had a meal when I was just … Chaol.”
He wasn’t sure if he’d explained it right, if he could articulate it—
Yrene angled her head, her mass of hair sliding over a shoulder. “Why?”
“Because I was either a lord’s son and heir, or Captain of the Guard, or now Hand to the King.” Her gaze was unflinching as he fumbled to explain. “No one recognizes me here. No one has ever even heard of Anielle. And it’s …”
“Liberating?”
“Refreshing,” he countered, giving Yrene a small smile at the echo to his earlier words.
She blushed prettily in the golden light from the lanterns within the dining room behind them. “Well … good.”
“And you? Do you go out with friends often—leave the healer behind?”
Yrene watched the people streaming by. “I don’t have many friends,” she admitted. “Not because I don’t want them,” she blurted, and he smiled. “I just—at the Torre, we’re all busy. Sometimes, a few of us will go for a meal or drink, but our schedules rarely align, and it’s easier to eat at the mess hall, so … we’re not really a lively bunch. Which was why Kashin and Hasar became my friends—when they’re in Antica. But I’ve never really had the chance to do much of this.”
He almost asked, Go out to dinner with men? But said, “You had your focus elsewhere.”
She nodded. “And maybe one day—maybe I’ll have the time to go out and enjoy myself, but … there are people who need my help. It feels selfish to take time for myself, even now.”
“You shouldn’t feel that way.”
“And you’re any better?”
Chaol chuckled, leaning back as the servant came, bearing a pitcher of chilled mint tea. He waited until the man left before saying, “Maybe you and I will have to learn how to live—if we survive this war.”
It was a sharp, cold knife between them. But Yrene straightened her shoulders, her smile small and yet defiant as she lifted her pewter glass of tea. “To living, Lord Chaol.”
He clinked his glass against hers. “To being Chaol and Yrene—even just for a night.”
Chaol ate until he could barely move, the spices like small revelations with every bite.
They talked as they dined, Yrene explaining her initial months at the Torre, and how demanding her training had been. Then she’d asked about his training as captain, and he’d balked—balked at talking of Brullo and the others, and yet … He couldn’t refuse her joy, her curiosity.
And somehow, talking about Brullo, the man who had been a better father to him than his own … It did not hurt, not as much. A lower, quieter ache, but one he could withstand.
One he was glad to weather, if it meant honoring a good man’s legacy by telling his story.
So they talked, and ate, and when they finished, he escorted her to the glowing white walls of the Torre. Yrene herself seemed glowing as she smiled when they stopped within the gates while his horse was readied.
“Thank you,” she said, her cheeks flushed and gleaming. “For the meal—and company.”
“It was my pleasure,” Chaol said, and meant it.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning—at the palace?”
An unnecessary question, but he nodded.
Yrene shifted from one foot to another, still smiling, still shining. As if she were the last, vibrant ray of the sun, staining the sky long after it had vanished over the horizon.
“What?” she asked, and he realized he’d been staring.
“Thank you for tonight,” Chaol said, stifling what tried to leap off his tongue: I can’t take my eyes off you.