Page 138 of Kingdom of Ash

The drums kept pounding. Had pounded all night.

He’d kissed Yrene good-bye, and she’d seemed like she wanted to say more but had opted to hold him for a long, precious minute before they parted ways.

It would not be the last time he saw her, he promised himself as heaimed for the battlements where his father, Sartaq, and Nesryn had agreed to meet at dawn.

The prince and Nesryn had not yet arrived, but his father stood in armor Chaol had not glimpsed since childhood. Since his father had ridden to serve Adarlan’s wishes. To conquer this continent.

It still fit him well, the muted metal scratched and dented. Not the finest piece of armor from the family arsenal beneath the keep, but the sturdiest. A sword hung at his hip, and a shield lay against the battlement wall. Around them, sentries tried not to watch, though their fear-wide eyes tracked every movement.

The drums pounded on.

Chaol came up beside his father, his own dark tunic reinforced with armor at his shoulders, forearms, and shins.

A cane of ironwood had been sheathed down Chaol’s back, for when Yrene’s magic began to fade, and his chair waited just inside the great hall, for when her power depleted entirely.

What his father had made of it when Chaol had explained yesterday, he hadn’t let on. Hadn’t said a single word.

Chaol cast a sidelong glance at the man staring toward the army whose fires began winking out one by one under the rising light.

“They used the bone drums during the last siege of Anielle,” his father said, not a tremor in his voice. “Legend says they beat the drums for three days and three nights before they attacked, and that the city was so rife with terror, so mad with sleeplessness, that they didn’t stand a chance. Erawan’s armies and beasts shredded them apart.”

“They did not have ruks fighting with them then,” Chaol said.

“We’ll see how long they last.”

Chaol gritted his teeth. “If you do not have hope, then your men will not last long, either.”

His father stared toward the plain, the army revealed with each minute.

“Your mother left,” the man said at last.

Chaol didn’t hide his shock.

His father gripped the stone parapet. “She took Terrin and left. I don’t know where they fled. As soon as we realized we’d been surrounded by enemies, she took her ladies-in-waiting, their families. Departed in the dead of night. Only your brother bothered to leave a note.”

His mother, after all she’d endured, all she’d survived in this hellish house, had finally walked out. To save her other son—their promise of a future. “What did Terrin say?”

His father smoothed his hand over the stone. “It doesn’t matter.”

It clearly did. But now wasn’t the time to push, to care.

There was no fear on his father’s face. Just cold resignation.

“If you do not lead these men today,” Chaol growled, “then I will.”

His father looked at him at last, his face grave. “Your wife is pregnant.”

The shock roiled through Chaol like a physical blow.

Yrene—Yrene—

“A skilled healer she might be, but a deft liar, she is not. Or have you not noticed her hand frequently resting on her stomach, or how green she turns at mealtime?”

Such mild, casual words. As if his father weren’t ripping the ground out from beneath him.

Chaol opened his mouth, body tensing. To yell at his father, to run to Yrene, he didn’t know.

But then the bone drums stopped.

---