Throne of Glass, #6
Tower of Dawn
by Sarah J. Maas
Contents
Chapter Twenty-Three
Overview
Yrene and Chaol confront the possibility that more Valg kings may still matter, then enter another healing session that exposes the deepest roots of Chaol’s shame and Yrene’s grief. Chaol relives his father’s cruelty and his failures, while Yrene counters the wound’s darkness with a cherished memory of her mother. The session restores feeling to Chaol’s feet and reveals to Yrene that the possessed old king caused Chaol’s injury, turning her personal loss into renewed resolve.
Summary
Yrene’s discovery that records mention two other Valg kings shakes Chaol, who had assumed they were destroyed. Because Chaol is too angry and afraid to begin healing safely, Yrene refuses to give him the bit until he talks. Her questions about his scars lead Chaol to admit that his father gave him one when Chaol was a boy, which steadies him enough for Yrene to begin.
Inside the wound, Chaol relives the day he left Anielle to abdicate his title and join the castle guard in Rifthold. His father threw him down the icy keep stairs, his mother was dragged away pleading, and his younger brother Terrin watched in terror as Chaol left. Guards quietly helped Chaol with a cloak, weapons, a horse, and supplies, but Chaol later learned his father punished those guards and their families by banishing them into the winter wilds.
The memory shifts into Chaol’s deeper guilt: the cost of his choices, Nehemia’s death, the slaughtered slaves, the violence in Rifthold, and the horrors tied to Morath and the possessed king. The darkness presses into Chaol, feeding on his shame and showing him torment until Yrene reaches him by offering a memory of light: herself as a loved child in Fenharrow, learning herbs from her mother in a sunlit garden.
Chaol wakes and discovers that he can feel and move his feet. Searching for Yrene, he finds her in the garden crying because the healing forced her to remember her mother’s face, voice, scent, love, and death. Yrene tells Chaol that her mother broke the healers’ oath not to kill by stabbing a soldier to save Yrene, then was burned while Yrene escaped into the forest.
Yrene recounts fleeing to relatives in northern Fenharrow, working there for six years, then crossing Fenharrow, Oakwald, and the mountains to reach Innish, where poverty trapped her in exploitative work at an inn. She then reveals that the healing showed her who caused Chaol’s wound: the old king, possessed for decades. The revelation gives Yrene a stronger reason to destroy the lingering stain, and Chaol recognizes that her memory of goodness pushed the darkness back.
Yrene also saw Chaol’s memory of his father and tells Chaol that none of it was his fault and that he deserved better. After a quiet moment, both recognize the healing’s progress: Yrene has pushed the damage lower and restored feeling to Chaol’s feet. Chaol asks Yrene to eat with him, and she agrees.
Who Appears
- Chaol WestfallRelives his father’s abuse and old guilt while Yrene’s healing restores feeling to his feet.
- Yrene TowersUses a joyful memory of her mother to fight the wound’s darkness and reveals her past.
- Yrene’s motherAppears in Yrene’s memory as a loving healer who died saving her daughter from soldiers.
- Chaol’s fatherAppears in memory as cruel lord of Anielle who abused Chaol and punished those who helped him.
- Terrin WestfallChaol’s younger brother, seen terrified in the memory of Chaol leaving Anielle.
- The old kingRevealed as possessed for decades and the source of the dark wound on Chaol’s spine.
- NehemiaRemembered by Chaol as a death he still blames himself for failing to prevent.