Yrene looked then to find him in the threshold of his bedroom, sword in his hand. Eyes on the door.

“Who the hell is that.”

“Get inside,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please.”

He read the terror in her face. Read and understood.

He shoved back into the room, holding the door for her and then sealing it behind her.

The front door cracked. Chaol locked his bedroom door with a click. Only one lock.

“The chest,” he said, his voice unfaltering. “Can you move it?”

Yrene whirled to the chest of drawers beside the door. She didn’t reply as she threw herself against it, shoes again slipping on the polished marble—

She kicked off her shoes, bare skin finding better grip on the stone as she heaved and grunted and shoved—

The chest slid in front of the bedroom door.

“The garden doors,” Chaol ordered, finishing locking them.

They were solid glass.

Dread and panic curled in her gut, ripping the breath from her throat.

“Yrene,” Chaol said evenly. Calmly. He held her gaze. Steadying her. “How far is the nearest entrance to the garden from the outer hall?”

“A two-minute walk,” she replied automatically. It was only accessible from the interior rooms, and as most of these were occupied … They’d have to take the hall to the very end. Or risk running through the bedrooms next door, which … “Or one.”

“Make it count.”

She scanned the bedroom for anything. There was an armoire beside the glass doors, towering high above. Too high, too enormously heavy—

But the movable screen to the bathroom …

Yrene hurtled across the room, Chaol lunging for a set of daggers on his nightstand.

She grabbed the heavy wooden screen and hauled and shoved it, cursing as it snagged on the rug. But it moved—it got there. She flung open the armoire doors and wedged the screen between it and the wall, shaking it a few times for good measure. It held.

She rushed to the desk, throwing books and vases off it. They shattered across the floor.

Stay calm; stay focused.

Yrene hauled the desk to the wood screen and flipped it onto its side with a clattering crash. She shoved it against the barricade she’d made.

But the window—

There was one across the room. High and small, but—

“Leave it,” Chaol ordered, sliding into place in front of the glass doors. Sword angled and dagger in his other hand. “If they try that route, the small size will force them to be slow.”

Long enough for him to kill it—whoever it was.

“Get over here,” he said quietly.

She did so, eyes darting between the bedroom door and the garden doors.

“Deep breaths,” he told her. “Center yourself. Fear will get you killed as easily as a weapon.”

Yrene obeyed.

“Take the dagger on the bed.”

Yrene balked at the weapon.

“Do it.”

She grabbed the dagger, the metal cool and heavy in her hand. Unwieldy.

His breathing was steady. His focus unrelenting as he monitored both doors. The window.

“The bathroom,” she whispered.

“The windows are too high and narrow.”

“What if it’s not in a human body?”

The words ripped from her in a hoarse whisper. The illustrations she’d seen in that book—

“Then I’ll keep it occupied while you run.”

With the furniture in front of the exits—

His words sank in.

“You will do no such—”

The bedroom door shuddered beneath a blow. Then another.

The handle shook and shook.

Oh, gods.

They hadn’t bothered with the garden. They’d simply gotten in the front doors.

Another bang that had her flinching away. Another.

“Steady,” Chaol murmured.

Yrene’s dagger trembled as he angled himself to the bedroom door, his blades unwavering.

Another bang, furious and raging.

Then—a voice.

Soft and hissing, neither male nor female.

“Yrene,” it whispered through the crack in the door. She could hear the smile in its voice. “Yrene.”

Her blood went cold. It was not a human voice.

“What is it you want,” Chaol said, his own voice like steel.

“Yrene.”

Her knees buckled so wildly she could barely stand. Every moment of training she’d done slithered right out of her head.

“Get out,” Chaol snarled toward the door. “Before you regret it.”

“Yrene,” it hissed, laughing a bit. “Yrene.”

Valg. One had indeed been hunting her that night, and had come for her again tonight—

Clapping her free hand over her mouth, Yrene sank onto the edge of the bed.

“Don’t you waste one heartbeat being afraid of a coward who hunts women in the darkness,” Chaol snapped at her.

The thing on the other side of the door growled. The doorknob rattled. “Yrene,” it repeated.

Chaol only held her stare. “Your fear grants it power over you.”

“Yrene.”

He approached her, lowering his dagger and sword into his lap. Yrene flinched, about to warn him not to lower his weapons. But Chaol stopped before her. Took her face in his hands, his back wholly to the door now. Even though she knew he monitored every sound and movement behind it. “I am not afraid,” he said softly, but not weakly. “And neither should you be.”

“Yrene,” the thing snapped on the other side of the door, slamming into it.

She cringed away, but Chaol held her face tightly. Did not break her gaze.

“We will face this,” he said. “Together.”

Together. Live or die here—together.

Her breathing calmed, their faces so close his own breath brushed her mouth.

Together.

She hadn’t thought to use such a word, to feel what it meant … She hadn’t felt it since—

Together.

Yrene nodded. Once. Twice.

Chaol searched her eyes, his breath fanning her mouth.

He lifted her hand, still clutched around the dagger, and adjusted her grip. “Angle it up, not straight in. You know where it is.” He put a hand on his chest. Over his heart. “The other places.”

Brain. Through the eye socket. Throat, slashing to unleash the life’s blood. All the various arteries that could be struck to ensure a swift bleed-out.

Things she had learned to save. Not—end.

But this thing …

“Beheading works best, but try to get it down first. Long enough to sever the head.”

He’d done this before, she realized. He’d killed these things. Triumphed against them. Had taken them on with no magic but his own indomitable will and courage.

And she … she had crossed mountains and seas. She had done it on her own.

Her hand stopped shaking. Her breathing evened out.

Chaol’s fingers squeezed around her own, the hilt’s fine metal pushing into the palm of her hand. “Together,” he said one last time, and released her to pluck up his own weapons again.

To face the door.

There was only silence.

He waited, calculating. Sensing. A predator poised to strike.

Yrene’s dagger held steady as she rose to her feet behind him.

A crash sounded through the foyer—followed by shouting.

She started, but Chaol loosed a breath. One of shuddering relief.

He recognized the sounds before she did.

The shouts of guards.

They spoke in Halha—cries through the bedroom door about their status. Safe? Hurt?

Yrene replied in her own shoddy use of the language that they were unharmed. The guards said the servant girl had seen the broken suite door and come running to fetch them.

There was no one else in the suite.

28

Prince Kashin arrived swiftly, summoned by the guards at Yrene’s request—before she or Chaol even dared to remove the furniture barring the door. Any of the other royals required too much explaining, but Kashin … He understood the threat.

Chaol knew the prince’s voice well enough by that point—Yrene knew it well herself—that as it filled the suite foyer, he gave her the nod to haul away the furniture blocking the door.