He twitched, eyes widening at me, and I knew he understood I meant my marriage. The muscle in his jaw flexed, and his neck corded.
“I didn’t want it, Bastian. I never wanted it.” Maybe it was my own guilt talking.
His lips paled as he pressed them together. Under this grey sky, it was like he too was becoming grey, like a ghost. His hair could’ve been the dark charcoal left after a fire. The scar cutting through his lips, silvery. His eyes, moonlight.
I’d have chosen him. If anyone had given me the choice. Hells, no one had and yet I’d still tried to. At that party, I’d tried to choose him.
Yet he looked furious at me for it.
“You fucking hypocrite.” It burst out of me. I didn’t mean to, and yet the words kept spilling—if I kept silent, it would be tears spilling in their place. “You talk so much about choice, and yet you only gave me an abridged one. Was it really a choice, when I didn’t know what you were doing? Was it a choice when I didn’t know you were using me?”
“You were using me too,” he rasped.
“Yes, but I never gave you grand speeches about how you deserved more and always had a choice. And”—my words cracked—“and I stopped using you. I tried to get out of the situation.” My chin trembled, because some foolish part of me had started believing his speeches.
Maybe I did deserve better. But if that was true, then I also deserved better than what he’d given me.
“You kept going to the bitter end.”
He worked his jaw side to side before he spoke. “This hasn’t ended yet.”
“Hasn’t it?” I rubbed my chest where my heart felt as raw as the edge to his voice. “I’m bound to you by some horrible accident of magic. But understand, that doesn’t mean I choose to be in Elfhame… to be with you. I don’t have the luxury—the power of that choice. Yet again.” I gave a bitter laugh, but there was no strength behind it.
After several minutes, he bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”
I made a low sound of acknowledgement, but I didn’t trust my voice to hold together. I’d already surreptitiously swiped away a tear that chilled my cheek.
We rode on in quiet for a long while, the sun setting ahead. Even that was muted by the blanketing cloud—a dull grey sunset.
Still, I felt better for speaking, like a wound had been purged of rot, leaving it clear to heal. At my side, Bastian was no longer wound up so tight, either, and the furrow of his brow was thoughtful rather than angry.
As if the sky had also relaxed its grip, it unleashed a torrent so sudden and absolute, I could barely see beyond my stag’s antlers.
I gasped as the chill rain snaked under my collar and down my back. Bastian bared his teeth, nose wrinkling like he could scare off the rain with a snarl.
“Come,” he shouted over the gushing deluge, and urged his stag into a canter. “There are caves in the foothills. We’ll make up the time tomorrow.”
I followed him off the path, barely daring to blink away the stinging rain in case I lost sight of him. A branch from a tree I didn’t even spot scraped my cheek, but I kept on his stag’s tail.
By the time we reached the great crack in the side of a granite rock face, I was drenched to my underwear—possibly to my soul. We rushed inside, dragging the deer, who didn’t seem so sure about the narrow passage. But it soon opened up to a space plenty big enough for the four of us.
Our panting breaths filled the cave as the frigid air bit through our wet clothes.
Water dripped from Bastian’s hair into his screwed up face, and a puddle formed at his feet. A particularly large droplet formed at the tip of his nose.
Maybe it was that, maybe it was the expression that I knew matched my own, but when I caught his eye, I laughed.
It started as a chuckle, but like the rain, it soon became a torrent.
And he laughed too.
I gave my body to it—a release after almost a month of uncertainty. He doubled over, as though the rain had washed away Business Bastian and the tense man I’d ridden out of the gate with.
Also…
“You look like a drowned rat,” I wheezed around my laughter, pointing at him, at the clothes stuck to his body and the hair plastered to his face.
He swept that hair back and cast an eye over me. “So do you. Albeit a very pretty rat.”
That only made me laugh harder. A few tears mingled with the rain on my face, but they were good tears. Gods, I hadn’t laughed this hard in…
I shook my head and wiped my cheeks as Bastian drew deep breaths, rubbing his belly. “I’m not used to working these muscles.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Maybe you should introduce laughter into your exercise regime.”
“Maybe you should not argue with trees next time you ride.” He bent close and swiped a stick from my hair.
“I was saving that for later.” I snatched it off him, like he was trying to steal my most prized possession. “Firewood, you know.”
“Ah, yes, that damp twig will warm us right up.”
We chuckled. Not the slightly unhinged laugh of moments earlier, but something calmer that lit up Bastian’s eyes as they held mine.
“Look, Kat. About earlier…” He shook his head and removed a wet lock of hair from my cheek.
The sun must not have yet reached the horizon, because no magic raced between us, but the way his expression softened and his skin upon mine still stole my breath.
“I truly am sorry.”
I didn’t want an apology of obligation. “You don’t have to say—”
“But I am sorry. I used you. It stopped being just that for me, though. I need you to believe me when I say that.” He leant in, gaze so intense it was like a grip on my soul. “It was only when your husband appeared that I remembered what I was meant to be doing to you. And I felt sick to my stomach at that and everything I’d done as much as the fact you’d deceived me and were married.”
My eyelids fluttered as everything came into new, sharp focus through that lens. He’d hurt himself as much as me. What a mess we were, inside as well as outside.
“And I’m sorry for what you said about taking away your choice.” He caught my chin, stopping me from looking away. “I never thought of it like that before. And this isn’t enough for that and for hurting you, but it’s a start.”
I swallowed, throat thick. “A fresh start.”
“Exac—”
Mid-word, he flinched, eyes widening. “Shit.”
A cold even deeper than the rain gnawed my bones. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“They aren’t meant to be this far east.” His gaze skipped side to side, distant, and I understood—his double had to be scouting ahead as it had in Riverton Palace.
I whispered past the lump in my throat, “Who?”
“Horrors.”
21
Bastian
Horrors had been confined to their territory for a thousand years.
Or so we thought.
In scouting ahead, my other half had discovered their markings near the road, beyond their borders.