Chaol and Nesryn: Throne of Glass Bonus Chapter

After two weeks aboard the Wind Cutter, Chaol Westfall still wasn’t entirely certain how Dorian and Aelin had arranged for him to stay inside the captain’s lavish suite. He wouldn’t have put it past either of them to have bribed or bullied the ship’s captain into yielding the room, but from the polite, cool distance with which the captain treated him and Nesryn, Chaol suspected that the Queen of Terrasen had made a point of visiting the ship before departing for her own kingdom. A suspicion that was only solidified by the handprint burned into the desk across the room.

Honestly, he would have preferred if they had just given him a small stateroom. Mostly for two reasons, the first, and perhaps worst, was that it only drew attention to him. To his condition. He still didn’t know what, exactly, to call the absolute numbness and lack of movement below his waist. But he could only endure it thanks to the other reason for wanting a smaller room, Nesryn.

With the larger cabin, there was really no excuse for her to stay elsewhere. And though he knew damn well that she could take care of herself, the thought of Nesryn staying belowdecks in a ship filled with sea-hardened men made him grind his teeth. So, she stayed with him. Here. In this room. In this very bed in which he was now lying, watching the reflection of sunlight on water ripple over the white painted ceiling.

He hadn’t touched her, not during the nights they’d shared this bed. Not during the daytime hours, either. Though he certainly woke up most mornings with the merciful proof that something still worked below his waist.

Not that Nesryn showed any inclination to touch him, either.

He wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing. Whether he could stomach the sure humiliation of trying without use of his legs. Whether he could stomach reaching for her, only to have her recoil.

He knew Nesryn didn’t think less of him. She believed the injury was only temporary, and he knew that even if she had to bang on the front doors of the Torre Cesme, she’d get him help from its famed healers.

But he still noted the way she’d sometimes look at him, with that pain and pity.

He wanted to scream whenever she did. Whenever any of the sailors on this ship had the same look as they wheeled him in that infernal chair onto the deck for some fresh air. Another reason why he’d been granted the captain’s suite, it didn’t require stairs to access the deck.

He tried. Every day he tried to get just one of his toes to move. The empty silence that greeted him was more terrifying than those moments facing the king. Even the death he’d believed was coming had been less harrowing and unbearable than the utter silence of his body.

Chaol blew out a long breath, and slid his gaze to the woman sleeping beside him.

Nesryn’s dark hair spilled across the pillow, her tan face softened with sleep.

They’d been lovers over a year ago, but had never actually shared a bed until now. Hadn’t spent much longer together than the time it took to enjoy each other.

Everything with her had been out of order from the very start. They hadn’t even really become proper friends until this spring. And they certainly weren’t lovers now.

She never talked about it.

Her brow furrowed a bit in her sleep, and she nestled further into the pillow. Dawn had broken only minutes ago. They usually awoke with the sunrise to train in whatever way he could on the deck, but… she must have been exhausted if she had slept through the shifting light. He could let her sleep. Since he certainly couldn’t get into that awaiting chair without her.

Chaol rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He wished he could drift back to sleep. If Nesryn hadn’t joined him on this journey, he might very well have not bothered to get out of bed at all. Just to avoid the stares. And avoid the constant, endless reminder of all that he had taken for granted. The body he’d assumed would always serve him.

But the things he had come to depend on, the things he’d assumed would always be the same, always be right… they’d vanished too. They’d vanished the moment Nehemia Ytger had died, the moment that collar had gone around Dorian’s neck. The moment he’d seen his own men, seen Ress, hanging from the castle fence.

Chaol loosed a breath from deep in his chest.

He hadn’t told Nesryn or Dorian that he wished he’d been among them–his men.

That he wished Aelin hadn’t slipped the Eye of Elena into his pocket, that Rowan Whitethorn hadn’t spared him from the collapsing glass castle.

That even though Dorian appointed him the King’s Hand, he was still no better than an oath-breaker, a liar, a traitor.

***

The sun had become merciless the closer they’d sailed to the shores of the Southern Continent.

“It will only get worse,” Nesryn admitted as she panted beside him on the main deck, after Chaol had mentioned it for the second time that morning. They were both already deeply tanned from the hours spent out here, though she handled the sun better than he did. His face and bare chest and back were splattered with specks of peeling skin from various sunburns.

“And it’ll be even hotter in Antica, with summer now upon them,” she added, finishing her set of abdominal exercises. She slugged from a glass of water beside them before bracing his feet apart on the deck and pinning them down. The only way he could exercise his stomach muscles.

Chaol gritted his teeth and began his set, his body already aching from the grueling exercises they’d been working through. Peacefully, calmly. Not at all like the verbal sparring that had always accompanied sessions with Aelin.

He wondered if it made him a bastard for not knowing what she preferred.

He was on his seventh curl when Nesryn said, “You’re quiet today.”

He paused at the apex of the curl to his knees, meeting her dark stare. Wariness flickered in those night-black eyes, in that lovely, solemn face. He’d noticed the way the sailors looked at her. Especially now that she was in civilian clothing. Especially when her sweating made her white shirt cling with little to be imagined.

Chaol tried not to look at said white shirt as he renewed his repetitions.

“It’s the heat.”

“So you’ve said.”

Challenge, sleek and cool, lurked beneath those words. He ignored it.

What could he really say that wasn’t obvious? She was bracing his gods damned legs. And she had to help him to just use the privy.

Chaol coiled upward again, a trickle of sweat sliding down his back, tickling, tickling, then nothing. It passed whatever demarcation line and vanished.

He did another curl, then another.

His friends were likely readying for conflict with Morath, and he could barely exercise without assistance. And if those healers failed, if he could not walk again…

“That’s enough,” Nesryn said quietly. “You’ve done double.”

Chaol obeyed, lying flat on his back, a boiling heat in his face, his bare chest.

A flopping fish in the sun–

He would beat this, he would fight this.

Even if the thought of Nesryn and whatever waiting sailor helping him into that chair right now made him want to roll off the deck and into the sea.

His stomach burned, his arms ached, but he jerked his chin at her. “Next round.”

“It’s too hot. You’ll get heat sickness.”

“I’m not an invalid.”

“No, but you also aren’t immune to the dangers of the sun, so we’re done.”

He sat up, holding her stare as he growled, “Next. Round.”

They were close enough to share breath, and her own stirred against his mouth as Nesryn said calmly, “No.” And stood from where she’d been bracing his feet.

Without her weight, his legs slid out–and only the clenching of his stomach muscles and splaying of his hands on the deck saved him from falling flat on his back. His face heated, hotter than the midmorning sun, and he refused to see which sailors had observed it.

She strode the few steps to the wheeled chair, and every groan and rattle as she rolled it to him was like talons scraping down his temper. But he let her and the waiting sailor hoist him into it. And he did not speak, or look at anything but the door ahead, as Nesryn pushed him back to their room.

He didn’t speak for a while after that, either.

As a passenger–and as an incapacitated one at that– there was little to do during the day. Other than plan for their inevitable meetings in Antica, and when that grew tiresome, read the trunk of books Dorian had sent along with them.

Seated at the large captain’s desk in the suite, Chaol went over the list of names both Dorian and Nesryn had supplied. “The emperor,” he said to Nesryn as the afternoon sun sank toward the horizon, “has enough advisors and councilmen to make up a whole army.”

“He rules a continent,” Nesryn said mildly from the chaise lounge by the salt-stained windows, where she read one of Dorian’s books.

“He needs an army of people to manage it. And he goes by khagan, not emperor.” Chaol frowned at the sheets of information.

The god-city was the heart of that empire, the khagan’s mighty hold for three hundred years. The continent itself stretched from the arid northern continent, which Antica occupied, to the vast grassland steppes and deserts in the east, where the khagan’s bloodline had once reigned as nomadic warlords before turning conquerors, to the lush rice paddies and jungles in the west, to the towering mountains stretching to an icy sea in the south. The khaganate had taken it all, and built several cities throughout, key centers for trade and learning and invention. Magic wasn’t as rife as it was in their own land, though their healers had been extraordinarily gifted.

Chaol supposed that for a conquering people, having an abundance of healers had likely assisted in their rise. And would hopefully assist in his own healing.

But the other thing, the greater thing, he needed…“He has six children,” Chaol said to Nesryn. “Who commands the northern armies?” The one that would be closest to the Narrow Sea, to come to Adarlan’s aid.

“The second-eldest son. Sartaq. The one likely to take the crown.”

Succession in the khaganate was not determined by birth or gender. No, it was determined by whom the emperor deemed strongest. Perhaps another reason why the dynasty had lasted. Lesser heirs were discarded, better ones raised up. The last khagan had been female, a mighty empress who had made slavery illegal, paid good money to bring in artists of all kinds to enrich her cities, and opened trade routes with previous enemies, filling her empire’s coffers to the point of overflowing. She had picked her fifth-born child, the current khagan, to take her throne, only days before she had died at the ripe old age of ninety-six. Already wed with children of his own, the khagan had ensured his reign by killing the siblings who had coveted that throne. Immediately. Along with any of their offspring.

Only three others survived his assassins, one of them fleeing into exile, and the other two swearing fealty. They started by having the healers of the Torre Cesme render them infertile.

No threats to the bloodline.

The khagans knew that most empires were not destroyed from outside forces alone, but from weaknesses within. A vast royal bloodline offered too many contenders for the throne, too many chances for divisive factions. Chaol wondered what it had been like to grow up in that household, to be a potential khagan heir and know your siblings might one day kill you.

Though Chaol supposed it wouldn’t be too different from his own upbringing.

His attention drifted to the large map painted on the wall. To Anielle.

Had his father heard of his injuries? Had his mother?

Anielle was so close to Morath. Too close. He prayed his father would get his mother out, get his brother, Terrin, out, too–before it was too late. The thought of either in Morath’s claws…

“We have nothing to offer the khagan,” Chaol said quietly.

Nesryn set the book on her lap.

Chaol continued when she remained silent, “We already trade with them, already have agreed not to bother them if they don’t bother us…there’s no incentive to join this war, to send an army capable of hammering Morath.”

“I’d think the threat of Morath turning its eye on them would be enough incentive,” Nesryn said, also studying the large map.

“Their empire is larger. Morath might seem inconsequential.”

“Not with those rings and collars, not if they have an aerial legion of witches that can sack cities.”

Chaol’s stomach twisted. “The khagan might find it more profitable to ally with Morath.”

“He would never,” Nesryn said tightly. “We do not bow to foreign rulers, and surely that’s what the asking price of allying with Morath would be. But the khagan will still need to be convinced of the threat, his children will need to be convinced of the threat.”

Chaol tapped a finger on the desk. “And what of the threat our friends pose?”

A dark eyebrow lifted.

“Dorian has magic, but Aelin…how do I explain Aelin Galathynius?”

“She gave you leave to bargain on her behalf. I assume that means you are free to explain her however it will benefit us.”

“An assassin turned queen who can shatter castles and kill kings as she wishes?”

Nesryn studied the cover of her book. “The khagan employs many spies. They might already know the assassin part, and her involvement with you.”

“Do you think that would hurt our cause?”

“We are free to love who we will in the Southern Continent,” she said. “Many do not bother with vows of marriage. But Aelin Galathynius shared a bed with Dorian Havilliard, and with you, and now with Prince Rowan. They might have…questions.”

“She didn’t share a bed with Dorian. Not–like that.”

“It was a romantic entanglement regardless.”

He clenched his jaw.

She opened up her book again with a feigned casualness. “Do you…do you still hold hope for her?”

“No,” he said, his voice flat and hollow. “She changed her mind, she changed–as a person. And even if she had wanted to be with me, I would not have left Dorian, and she would have gone to Terrasen, and it would never have worked. And perhaps we would have been a bit shattered by it, but whether in a year, or ten…Rowan would have been there. Waiting for her, all that time.”

“That’s a rather romantic view of it.” But her gaze rose to his face, to the scar along his cheek, courtesy of Aelin.

“She’s allowed to fall in and out of love as she chooses.”

“And have you fallen out of love with her?”

“This spring and summer was a maelstrom,” he said tightly, glancing at the burned handprint peeking from beneath a stack of papers across the desk. “Between Dorian, and all that happened…Everything fell apart. If the price of getting Dorian back was losing her, then so be it.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m here with you, aren’t I?

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you want to be.”

Instinct had him pushing off the desk, to stand. And his rage as his body refused to move, as his legs didn’t respond—

”Am I supposed to lie in bed and weep over it? That I was not the man she wanted? Am I supposed to mourn the fact that the dreams I had, the plans I made, were all for a woman who did not exist? Loving an assassin with no responsibilities is completely different from loving a queen with a kingdom and a world to look after. Would I have loved her if I had known from the start what she is?” He shook his head. “If I had met her now…my first instinct would have been to protect Dorian from her. I expect the khagan to feel the same.”

His words sank in, one by one. He added more calmly, running a hand over his face, “That’s the difference. Celaena was a fraction of Aelin, both good and bad. But Aelin…she is Celaena, and she is queen, and she is the Fire-Bringer. I fell in love with a facet, and I panicked when I realized it was a fraction of the whole, when I saw that power, that heritage, and…it was not a part of my plans.”

He looked to the sea gleaming behind her, the wind whipping the waves. “Rowan Whitethorn saw everything. From the moment he met her, he saw all of Aelin. And he was not afraid. I don’t blame either of them for falling in love. I don’t blame her.” He loosed a shuddering breath. “I was what Celaena needed after Endovier. But Rowan is who Aelin needs–forever.”

“And what about what you need?” Nesryn angled her head, that dark hair sliding along her neck and jaw.

“I have never been in a position to demand the things I need. This trip…is the first.”

She stalked to him with feline quiet, taking up a perch on the edge of the desk before him. She stared at him for a long moment, the lap of the waves and groaning of the wood the only sound.

He didn’t move as Nesryn reached out a slender hand and brushed the hair back from his brow. “You give and give and give,” she murmured. “When will it be enough?”

“It is my honor to serve.”

“I don’t mean in that way. When have you ever been selfish?”

“Stop trying to make me out to be something I’m not.”

She lowered her hand from his hair, the corner of her mouth tugging upward. “And what is that? A good man?”

“People died because of me.”

“They have also died at my hand, and Aelin’s, and a great many others! And this is war. A great many will die from your choices, or your hand, as well.”

“Not if I can’t walk.”

“You will walk again.”

He met those dark eyes. Unfaltering will glimmered in them.

“You will walk again,” Nesryn repeated. “And you will remember that you are a good man regardless, a brave and selfless man. You will remember that you may not have magic, but there is mighty power in the strength of ordinary people. You will remember that…” Her chest heaved and she steadied herself with a long breath. “You will remember, Chaol,” she said, “that the world needs men like you. In war, and after it. Especially after it.”

“And what of you?”

“What about me?”

His heart thundered as he traced a finger over the back of her hand, her knuckles white as she gripped the edge of the desk. “Where will you fit in with this?”

“I will go where I am needed most.”

“And if that is at my side?”

“Then that is where I shall be.” Her dark eyes flickered. “But I hold you to no promises, Chaol. I expect nothing.”

“Why?”

“Because I know who I am, what I am. You turned to me last summer, after Lithaen left you for Lord Roland. You turned to me again this spring, after Aelin. I am not the first choice. But for now, it suits my own interests to be here. I enjoy your company, enjoy you.”

He wasn’t sure how the conversation had shifted toward this. “You–you aren’t some sort of consolation prize.”

She let out a low laugh and leaned in to kiss the top of his head. “Would you have picked me if Aelin had come running back to you? Would you have noticed my existence?”

She pulled back when he didn’t answer, a self-effacing smile on her mouth.

She made to walk away, but he gripped her arm.

Yanked, actually, as he pulled her toward him and claimed her mouth.

Nesryn stilled, but didn’t retreat. So he gentled his kiss, loosening his grip on her arm, sliding his other hand around her neck to rest against her nape. Holding her to him as he kissed the corner of her mouth, the bow of her lips. Coaxing kisses, exploring the shape of her, until he nipped at her bottom lip.

Nesryn made a small sound and at last opened for him. The heat of her mouth, the slide of her tongue as it met his own…

Warmth and steel and silk–that’s what being with her was always like. Like pulling back a silken curtain to find a roaring storm beneath.

Finding he had no power to resist losing himself in it.

He tilted her head slightly to more thoroughly claim her, the hand gripping her arm sliding to rest on her hip.

She needed no encouragement. Her hands ran over his shoulders, digging in to muscle, as she straddled him. Slender, her body was so slender when he touched her like this. He forgot so easily how much smaller she was than him, how delicately built.

His hands roved over her ribs, her back, and he growled into her mouth as she ground against him. Yes, that part of him certainly worked.

Calculating, cool Nesryn, she was like molten steel in his arms as he devoured her mouth, then ripped his lips away to taste her neck, taste her skin. Salt and sun and smoke–

He slid a hand up her side, then palmed her full breast. Her hand landed atop his, guiding him to squeeze harder, to roll her breast in his palm as he licked up the column of her throat.

The noise that came out of her, deep and breathless, made him see red. Had his damned legs worked, he would have surged out of the chair and splayed her out on that desk.

But they didn’t work.

And even being here in this chair…even if they got to the bed…

How could he taste her everywhere he wished without needing her help?

She felt him pause. Felt the insidious thoughts grip him.

Nesryn gripped his face, her breathing ragged. “It is temporary, and we will fight it together.” She leaned in, nipping at his neck, his ear. “I can do everything.”

His back stiffened. “I don’t want you to do everything.”

But her fingers drifted toward the buttons of his pants. “I want to.”

For a heartbeat, he flashed between this chair and a broom closet in the glass castle. Where it had been so easy, so stupidly easy, to hoist Aelin against the wall and take her. Where he’d laughed as he did it. His stomach turned, nausea rippling through him as he glanced at that burned handprint across the desk.

Nesryn slipped her hand beneath the waist of his pants. He caught her wrist and squeezed lightly. “Stop.”

She obeyed. But by the time her hand was free, her face had gone still and solemn. She remained straddling him, but–

“Not like this,” he told her. “I don’t want it to be like this.”

He couldn’t read her face as she asked softly, “You can–feel it, can’t you?”

“Gods, yes.” He was aching so fiercely he thought he’d combust. “That part still works.”

“We can move to the bed.”

“No.”

Again, no ripple of emotion on that beautiful face. As if she’d blown out the candle that contained all of them.

Slowly, she stood, setting her shirt to rights. “It’s nearly dinner. I’ll go fetch the food.”

“Nesryn.”

But she was already walking toward the double door, her back a bit stiffer than usual.

He opened his mouth to say something, but the words failed him. How could he even explain? That it was humiliating? That he didn’t want to lie there like some invalid while she rode him? That being passive, being required to ask for things…

He hated words, had always preferred action. And this…

He still had nothing to say as she shut the door behind herself.

They barely spoke during dinner, and afterward.

And when she helped him into bed, then crawled in herself… she stayed as far away as possible. Her arms wrapped around herself. He knew she wasn’t asleep, knew her breathing was too shallow, too quiet.

“It has nothing to do with you,” he said hoarsely. “If I could, I’d have…I’d have taken you every which way by now. But I can’t, and I don’t want to settle for some reduced version–“

“You don’t know it’d be like that.”

Her first words to him in hours.

“You didn’t even try to find out,” she went on, her back still to him.

He sighed sharply through his nose.

And the sound must have kindled her temper, because she finally turned over. “You can’t stop fighting. You can’t stop living. Or you will never survive what’s ahead.”

“Says the woman who barely smiles and laughs.”

“Do not mistake my reserve for lack of feeling. Do not think that because I don’t flash my emotions around it means that I do not have them. That I do not have hopes and fears and desires. I have had to learn to be calm, to be quiet and aloof–because growing up in a city where most people were predisposed to dislike me for my heritage, I had to be those things. And now that we are headed into war, I find that those things are gifts. But I do not shut out the world. I do not shut out life. And I think you were doing that for a long, long time before your spine was broken. Before even Aelin came along.”

He opened his mouth. But Nesryn had already turned back over.

He mulled over her words, his face uncomfortably hot. She was right. Of course, she was right.

He tried to move his toes. Tried to do anything below the waist.

Only silence.

Three days. Three days until they reached the harbor of Antica.

He didn’t rouse her to voice his conclusions an hour later. Instead, he again watched her sleeping, that lovely face gentle in slumber.

It was stupid to say, anyway. It would not be what she wanted to hear.

That even though she had a point about living…this war might very well end with them all dead, anyway. And he would fight like hell to keep Dorian from that fate, to save Adarlan, but…he didn’t really see the point in bothering to fall in love with the world. Not when it could be taken from him. Not with so many dangers waiting to rip them apart.

Sleep eventually claimed him.

Even with the words between them, when he awoke at dawn, Nesryn was nestled against him, her hand curled against his bare chest. Right over his heart, as if she held it gently in her palm.

Chaol laid his hand over hers, listening to her steady, unfaltering breathing.

He would fight, but…he wasn’t quite sure how to even begin this business of living.