Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) by Sarah J. Maas

“Is it not our homeland?”

Silently, Yrene rose to grab her satchel. “I have no interest in sharing anything with Adarlan.”

He understood. He really did. Perhaps it was why he still had not told her who, exactly, that lingering darkness belonged to.

“And you,” Yrene went on, “are avoiding the topic at hand.” She rooted through her satchel. “You’ll have to talk about what happened sooner or later.”

“With all due respect, it’s none of your business.”

Her eyes flicked to him at that. “You would be surprised by how closely the healing of physical wounds is tied to the healing of emotional ones.”

“I’ve faced what happened.”

“Then what is that thing in your spine feeding on?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t care.

She fished something out of the satchel at last, and when she strode back toward him, his stomach tightened at what she held.

A bit. Crafted from dark, fresh leather. Unused.

She offered it to him without hesitation. How many times had she handed one over to patients, to heal injuries far worse than his?

“Now would be the time to tell me to stop,” Yrene said, face grim. “In case you’d rather discuss what happened these past few months.”

Chaol only lay on his stomach and slid the bit into his mouth.



Nesryn had watched the sunrise from the skies.

She’d found Prince Sartaq waiting in his aerie in the hour before dawn. The minaret was open to the elements at its uppermost level, and behind the leather-clad prince … Nesryn had braced a hand on the archway to the stairwell, still breathless from the climb.

Kadara was beautiful.

Each of the ruk’s golden feathers shone like burnished metal, the white of her breast bright as fresh snow. And her gold eyes had sized Nesryn up immediately. Before Sartaq even turned from where he’d been buckling on the saddle across her broad back.

“Captain Faliq,” the prince had said by way of greeting. “You’re up early.”

Casual words for any listening ears.

“The storm last night kept me from sleep. I hope I am not disturbing you.”

“On the contrary.” In the dim light, his mouth quirked in a smile. “I was about to go for a ride—to let this fat hog hunt for her breakfast for once.”

Kadara puffed her feathers in indignation, clicking her enormous beak—fully capable of taking a man’s head off in one snip. No wonder Princess Hasar remained wary of the bird.

Sartaq chuckled, patting her feathers. “Care to join?”

With the words, Nesryn suddenly had a sense of how very, very high the minaret was. And how Kadara would likely fly above it. With nothing to keep her from death but the rider and saddle now set in place.

But to ride a ruk …

Even better, to ride a ruk with a prince who might have information for them …

“I am not particularly skilled with heights, but it would be my honor, Prince.”

It had been a matter of a few minutes. Sartaq had ordered her to switch from her midnight-blue jacket to the spare leather one folded in a chest of drawers shoved against the far wall. He’d politely turned his back when she changed pants as well. Since her hair fell only to her shoulders, she had difficulty braiding it back, but the prince had fished into his own pockets and supplied her with a leather thong to pull it back into a knot.

Always carry a spare, he told her. Or else she’d be combing her hair for weeks.

He’d mounted the keen-eyed ruk first, Kadara lowering herself like some oversized hen to the floor. He climbed her side in two fluid movements, then reached down a hand for Nesryn. She gingerly laid her palm against Kadara’s ribs, marveling at the cool feathers smooth as finest silk.

Nesryn waited for the ruk to shift about and glare while Sartaq hauled her into the saddle in front of him, but the prince’s mount remained docile. Patient.

Sartaq had buckled and harnessed them both into the saddle, triple-checking the leather straps. Then he clicked his tongue once, and—

Nesryn knew it wasn’t polite to squeeze a prince’s arms so hard the bone was likely to break. But she did so anyway as Kadara spread her shining golden wings and leaped out.

Leaped down.

Her stomach shot straight up her throat. Her eyes watered and blurred.

Wind tore at her, trying to rip her from that saddle, and she clenched with her thighs so tightly they ached, while she gripped Sartaq’s arms, holding the reins, so hard he chuckled in her ear.

But the pale buildings of Antica loomed up, near-blue in the early dawn, rushing to meet them as Kadara dove and dove, a star falling from the heavens—

Then flared those wings wide and shot upward.

Nesryn was glad she had forgone breakfast. For surely it would have come spewing out of her mouth at what the motion did to her stomach.

Within the span of a few beats, Kadara banked right—toward the horizon just turning pink.

The sprawl of Antica spread before them, smaller and smaller as they rose into the skies. Until it was no more than a cobblestoned road beneath them, spreading into every direction. Until she could spy the olive groves and wheat fields just outside the city. The country estates and small towns speckled about. The rippling dunes of the northern desert to her left. The sparkling, snaking band of rivers turning golden in the rising sun that crested over the mountains to her right.