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

A brother he had traded for another. A brother he had left behind.

The darkness squeezed, crushing his bones to dust.

It would kill him.

It would kill him, this pain, this … this endless, churning pit of nothing.

Perhaps it would be a mercy. He wasn’t entirely certain his presence—his presence beyond made any sort of difference. Not enough to warrant trying. Coming back at all.

The darkness liked that. Seemed to thrive on that.

Even as it tightened the vise around his bones. Even as it boiled the blood in his veins and he bellowed and bellowed—

White light slammed into him. Blinding him.

Filling that void.

The darkness shrieked, surging back, then rising like a tidal wave around him—

Only to bounce off a shell of that white light, wrapped around him, a rock against which the blackness broke.

A light in the abyss.

It was warm, and quiet, and kind. It did not balk at the dark.

As if it had dwelled in such darkness for a long, long time—and understood how it worked.

Chaol opened his eyes.

Yrene’s hand had slipped from his spine.

She was already twisting away from him, lunging for his discarded shirt on the bedroom carpet.

He saw the blood before she could hide it.

Spitting out the bit, he gripped her wrist, his panting loud to his ears. “You’re hurt.”

Yrene wiped at her nose, her mouth, and her chin before she faced him.

It didn’t hide the stains down her chest, soaking into the neckline of her dress.

Chaol surged upright. “Holy gods, Yrene—”

“I’m fine.”

The words were stuffy, warped with the blood still sliding from her nose.

“Is—is that common?” He filled his lungs with air to call for someone to fetch another healer—

“Yes.”

“Liar.” He heard the falsehood in her pause. Saw it in her refusal to meet his stare. Chaol opened his mouth, but she laid her hand on his arm, lowering the bloodied shirt.

“I’m fine. I just need—rest.”

She appeared anything but, with blood staining and crusting her chin and mouth.

Yrene pressed his shirt again to her nose as a new trickle slid out. “At least,” she said around the fabric and blood, “the stain from earlier now matches my dress.”

A sorry attempt at humor, but he offered her a grim smile. “I thought it was part of the design.”

She gave him an exhausted but bemused glance. “Give me five minutes and I can go back in and—”

“Lie down. Right now.” He slid away a few feet on the mattress for emphasis.

Yrene surveyed the pillows, the bed large enough for four to sleep undisturbed beside one another. With a groan, she pressed the shirt to her face and slumped on the pillows, kicking off her slippers and curling her legs up. She tipped her head upward to stop the bleeding.

“What can I get you,” he said, watching her stare blankly at the ceiling. She’d done this—done this while helping him, likely because of whatever shitty mood he’d been in before—

Yrene only shook her head.

In silence, he watched her press the shirt to her nose. Watched blood bloom across it again and again. Until it slowed at last. Until it stopped.

Her nose, mouth, and chin were ruddy with the remnants, her eyes fogged with either pain or exhaustion. Perhaps both.

So he found himself asking, “How?”

She knew what he meant. Yrene dabbed at the blood on her chest. “I went in there, to the site of the scar, and it was the same as before. A wall that no strike of my magic could crumble. I think it showed me …” Her fingers tightened on the shirt as she pressed it against the blood soaking her front.

“What?”

“Morath,” she breathed, and he could have sworn even the birds’ singing faltered in the garden. “It showed some memory, left behind in you. It showed me a great black fortress full of horrors. An army waiting in the mountains around it.”

His blood iced over as he realized whose memory it might belong to. “Real or—was it some manipulation against you?” The way his own memories had been wielded.

“I don’t know,” Yrene admitted. “But then I heard your screaming. Not out here, but … in there.” She wiped at her nose again. “And I realized that attacking that solid wall was … I think it was a distraction. A diversion. So I followed the sounds of your screaming. To you.” To that place deep within him. “It was so focused upon ripping you apart that it did not see me coming.” She shivered. “I don’t know if it did anything, but … I couldn’t stand it. To watch and listen. I startled it when I leaped in, but I don’t know if it will be waiting the next time. If it will remember. There’s a … sentience to it. Not a living thing, but as if a memory were set free in the world.”

Chaol nodded, and silence fell between them. She wiped at her nose again, his shirt now coated in blood, then set the fabric on the table beside the bed.

For uncounted minutes, sunshine drifted across the floor, wind rustling the palms.

Then Chaol said, “I’m sorry—about your mother.”

Thinking through the timeline … It had likely occurred within a few months of Aelin’s own terror and loss.

So many of them—the children whom Adarlan had left such deep scars upon. If Adarlan had left them alive at all.