Tower of Dawn

He blew out a breath, shoulders loosening. “And I’m relieved to see that the reality lives up to the legend.”

Nesryn chuckled, grateful to be back on safer ground. “You had doubts?”

They reached the landing that would take them to the great hall. Sartaq let her fall into step beside him. “The reports left out some key information. It made me doubt their accuracy.”

It was the sly gleam in his eye that made Nesryn angle her head. “What, exactly, did they fail to mention?”

They reached the great hall, empty save for a cloaked figure just barely visible on the other side of the fire pit—and someone sitting beside her.

But Sartaq turned to her, examining her from head to toe and back again. There was little that he missed. “They didn’t mention that you’re beautiful.”

Sartaq whispered in Nesryn’s ear, “I was praying to the Eternal Sky and all thirty-six gods that you’d say yes.”

She smiled, even if he couldn’t see it.

“So was I,” Nesryn breathed, and they leaped into the skies.

She bit her lip. “How long until you go?”

“An hour.”

An hour to think …

She had not told Chaol. That she’d seen his toes move last night. She’d seen them curl and flex in his sleep.

She had cried, silent tears of joy sliding onto the pillow. She hadn’t told him. And when he’d awoken …

Let’s have an adventure, Nesryn Faliq, he’d promised her in Rifthold. She had cried then, too.

But perhaps … perhaps neither of them had seen. The path ahead. The forks in it.

She could see down one path clearly.

Honor and loyalty, still unbroken. Even if it stifled him. Stifled her. And she … she did not want to be a consolation prize. Be pitied or a distraction.

But this other path, the fork that had appeared, branching away across grasslands and jungles and rivers and mountains … This path toward answers that might help them, might mean nothing, might change the course of this war, all carried on a ruk’s golden wings …

She would have an adventure. For herself. This one time. She would see her homeland, and smell it and breathe it in. See it from high above, see it racing as fast as the wind.

She owed herself that much. And owed it to Chaol as well.

Perhaps she and this dark-eyed prince might find some scrap of salvation against Morath. And perhaps she might bring an army back with her.

Sartaq was still watching, his face carefully neutral as the last of the servants bowed and vanished. His sulde had been strapped just below the saddle, within easy reach should the prince need it, its reddish horsehairs trailing in the wind. Trailing southward.

Toward that distant, wild land of the Tavan Mountains. Beckoning, as all spirit-banners did, toward an unknown horizon. Beckoning to claim whatever waited there.

Nesryn said quietly, “Yes.”

The prince blinked.

“I will go with you,” she clarified.

A small smile tugged on his mouth. “Good.” Sartaq jerked his chin to the archway through which the servants had vanished down the minaret. “Pack lightly, though—Kadara is already near her limit.”

Nesryn shook her head, noting the bow and quiver stocked with arrows already atop Kadara. “I have nothing to bring with me.”

Sartaq watched her for a long moment. “Surely you would wish to say good-bye—”

“I have nothing,” she repeated. His eyes flickered at that, but she added, “I—I’ll leave a note.”

The prince solemnly nodded. “I can outfit you with clothes when we arrive. There is paper and ink in the cabinet by the far wall. Leave the letter in the box by the stairs, and one of the messengers will come to check at

“You leave now,” Nesryn clarified as she noted the spear leaning against the far wall near the supply racks. His sulde. The russet horsehair tied beneath the blade drifted in the wind weaving through the aerie, the dark wood shaft polished and smooth.

Sartaq’s onyx eyes seemed to darken further as he strode to his sulde, weighing the spirit-banner in his hands before resting it beside him, the wood thunking on the stone floor. “I …” It was the first she’d seen him stumble for words.

“You weren’t going to say good-bye?”

She had no right to make such demands, expect such things, tentative allies or no.

But Sartaq leaned his sulde against the wall again and began braiding back his black hair. “After last night’s party, I had thought you would be … preoccupied.”

With Chaol. Her brows rose. “All day?”

The prince gave her a roguish smile, finishing off his long braid and picking up his spear once more. “I certainly would take all day.”

When she’d walked into his bedroom and found him there with Nesryn, and he’d felt the world slipping out from under him at the expression on her face. And when she had
refused to meet his stare, when she’d wrapped her arms around herself …

He wished he’d been able to walk. So she could see him crawl toward her.

Yrene laughed, and the sound … Beautiful as the sound was, it was nothing like the smile on her face. The delight.

He’d never seen a face so lovely.

And as she saw her father standing there, as her sister shoved past, her children pouring out in a shrieking gaggle …

Nesryn fell to her knees and wept.

Duva. The khagan’s now-youngest daughter.

She smiled at them as they approached—and the expression was not human.

It was Valg.

“If she survived, if she is grown, she might have the shifter gift, too. But it doesn’t matter if she does or does not. What matters … She is my family. All I have left. And I have looked for her for a very long time.”

Nesryn fired the third arrow. A spider screamed as it found its mark. The others fell back.

“Find her,” Falkan said, taking a step toward the horrors churning below. “My fortune—all of it is for her. And I may have failed her in this life. But not in my death.”

“We wait for the Queen of the Valg,” the spider purred, rubbing against the carving. “Who in this world calls herself Maeve.”