My hand pauses as our eyes meet. The firelight dances in his dark irises. For a second, I forget who we are. That he’s my jailor and I’m his master’s bride. Here in the hidden contours of the forest, we might as well have stepped back in time one thousand years to the fae realm. An age of magic when the trees sang, and puffy white cloudfoxes skimmed the air.
I don’t know if all the stories in the Book of the Immortals are true—the mythical animals and cursed lovers and vicious battles between the gods—but being with Wolf makes me want to believe in fantasies.
Slow, he presses his palm to where his shirt hangs over my ribcage, gently feeling the bone. For a crazy second, I wish the fabric barrier wasn’t between us, and he was holding me again like when we rode Myst together.
Stop that, you idiot, I chide myself, but it feels hopeless.
“You reinjured your rib in the fight, didn’t you?”
I give a soft shake of my head, still unable to tear my gaze away from the firelight reflecting in his eyes. I did hurt my rib, but if I said that aloud, he’d stalk straight to the Order of Immortal Woudix’s church and burn it to the ground. “No. I’m okay.”
His hand remains cemented against my side in a way that makes me think he found as much solace in our horseback ride together as I did. That having me close meant something to him.
Over the next days, I keep thinking of his gentle touch on my ribs. The first time I saw him, I thought he was a gorgeous monster. Now, I’m starting to realize that for all his brutish ways, he isn’t at all like the men who catcall in the villages we pass.
There’s a part of me that wants to trust him with more than just my safety. That wants to lower my walls and ask for something I’ve never had: help.
The next time he lowers me down from Myst, I place my hand over his and, gathering my courage, look him square in the eye as I say, “Wolf, I want you to teach me to fight.”
Chapter 12
Wolf
I stare at Sabine like she’s speaking the incomprehensible Immortal Tongue. Teach her to fight? For a moment, with her soft hand pressed against mine, the moonlight painting her skin with a beautiful glow, and her leaning toward me with those rosebud lips, I had thought, maybe . . .
But that can never happen.
Sabine Darrow isn’t mine to kiss.
“I never want to be in the position again that I was in at Charmont,” she says in a voice that nearly breaks as her hand moves to her opposite wrist, where the Patron grabbed her. “My whole life, I’ve done nothing while others abused me. In the convent, there was nothing I could do. I was ten years old when I moved there, a child outnumbered by adults. When I got older and stronger, they threatened to hurt Myst as a means to keep me under their control.” She swallows, her throat catching on a lump of fear, but then her eyes turn determined.
She continues in a steely voice, “I know what they say about Sorsha Hall. The depraved court that the Valveres keep is as lawless as any fae gods’ realm. If I’m to thrive there, I need to be able to defend myself.”
Her request is sensible but naive. She may think she knows what she faces at Sorsha Hall, but she has no idea what she’s about to walk into. Rian has his flaws, but buried somewhere beneath his ruthlessness, a moral compass still tries to guide him, as it did when we were boys. It’s the rest of his family she should fear. His older brothers, Kendan and Lore, though they’ve both been absent for years: Lore heading the Valveres’ shipping fleet far across the Panopis Sea, and Kendan as a captain for King Joruun’s army in Old Coros—or at least, that’s the formal word. Their father, Lord Berolt, was born with a broken moral compass. He built his empire of legal—and illegal—vices through blood and blackmail. There’s a persistent rumor that he killed his late wife, Madelyna—Rian’s mother—in a fit of rage when she birthed a normal third son, after a fortuneteller foretold that Rian would be godkissed.
All that’s not even to mention the Valvere cousins and aunts and uncles and one especially vile grandmother, as well as the questionable company the family keeps: revelers and pirates, mercenaries and whores. All dressed up in fae finery that does little to hide their barbarous desires.
“Lord Rian will do everything in his power to ensure your safety, my lady.” I speak my words carefully, even formally, to try to atone for the unchaste thoughts I was having earlier.
That you’re still having, Wolf.
I tell that voice to shut up.
Sabine levels a hard look at me. “Will Lord Rian always be around?”
I wish like hell I could assure her that without a shadow of a doubt, she’ll be safe at Sorsha Hall. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be watching out for her, and you can bet I won’t take my sight off her for a holy second.
But then again, not even I can be around all the time. I have to sleep. I have to piss. And if I don’t investigate the strange happenings at the Volkish border wall, who will?
My little violet is right: she needs to know how to defend herself.
“After dinner, then,” I say.
Once we’ve rested and filled our bellies, I explain methodically, “You’re at a disadvantage because of your size. The only opponent you could realistically defeat is another woman. I don’t mean to belittle the strength of your will—I’m only speaking practically. If you tried to take on someone my size, well . . . ”
I don’t have to finish my thought. I dwarf her as we sit beside the fire. Even my shadow vastly overstretches hers on the forest floor behind us. I could break her with just my little finger.
Not missing a beat, she says, “So, then tell me how to fight women.”
My eyebrows rise until I remember that for twelve years, it’s been women who have hurt her.
Sabine is nothing like what I expected. She’s a study in contradictions: soft and hard at the same time. It feels impossible that she’s real. This is a girl who will share her meager food with a mouse, who finds sympathy even for the slithering, venomous creatures of the night. She’s just as tender a morsel on the outside, with her creamy soft skin and round curves that beg to be squeezed.
And yet there’s another side to her entirely. An angry, determined girl who refuses to be a victim. Who wants to know how to fight against anyone who crosses her, even old women. I want to know how one person can hold so much complexity. How her soul can bear so much rage and yet not break from it. Maybe if I can figure out how she still sees the beauty in life after everything that’s happened to her, I can, too.
“Right.” I push to my feet. “Stand up, then. First lesson: basic stance.”
She eagerly springs to her feet as my borrowed shirt hangs down to mid-thigh. She raises her fists like a child would, too high, too forward, and utterly wrong. But stance is easy to fix. You can’t teach someone determination, and my little violet has that in spades.
“Before you think about your fists, get your feet right.” I move behind her, easing her arms down by her sides, and kick her feet shoulder-width apart. She totters off balance momentarily, and I snare her around the waist to center her.