I groan as I tip my head back. I’m barely able to breathe. Too affected by the perfection of this beautiful girl who keeps me guessing with her every move. It’s a rush: To know that she’s safe. To know that my brutality hasn’t scared her away. To know that she’s a force to be reckoned with in her own right. I want to hear her heartbeat every night when I fall asleep. I want to feel the vibration of her blood as she lies next to me. I want to drown in the scent of blood and violets until there’s nothing in the world but her.
“Don’t,” I rasp out, and then lick my lips, and correct myself. “Don’t stop.”
She continues to move her soft lips over my neck in little kisses that makes my skin tingle and my body go still, afraid the slightest movement will make her stop. When she eventually breaks contact, she nestles her forehead on my shoulder. I’d bleed for her. I’d break bones for her. I’d cut my own heart out of my chest if she only asked it of me, and I’d willingly die at her feet with the still-pumping organ in my hands, an offering for this girl whose worth rivals the gods.
Chapter 21
Sabine
Basten’s shirt smells of smoke from the inn, but it reminds me of our campfire nights in the woods. Those long, star-filled nights when the two of us burned so bright in our hurt, rage, and loneliness that we weren’t able to see that the one thing we needed was just across the flames.
My hands twist in his shirt’s fabric, the same shirt I wore for all those black nights. The shirt that hugged me, that sheltered me. Why didn’t I see how Basten has always been watching out for me, even since that first night when he lent me his shirt?
And now he’s killed four men for me. It leaves my mind reeling and my breath hot. I never knew how intoxicating it could be to see someone go to battle for me. He butchered these men. Dropped bodies to my feet. All this blood. This carnage. The air is charged like the aftermath of a lightning strike—so much energy with nowhere to go.
Clutching his collar, I tip my face up. We’re whisper-close. A drop of blood rolls from his hairline. This time, I don’t wipe it away. I watch it blaze a course down his perfect temple.
What would my life have been like if I’d had Basten in the convent? My whole life, all I’ve known from the people who were supposed to care for me is perverse abuse at their own hands. For so long, I’ve longed for safety. Someone to fight for me, or better yet, to show me I have the strength to defend myself.
Basten has done both.
And what about him? An orphaned boy, forced to fight anyone who might be a friend. He trembles under my gentle touch like he’s never experienced a single tender thing before.
I didn’t see before now how alike the two of us are. We both grew up painfully alone, relying only on our wits and godkisses. So it’s no wonder that we tried to throw up walls when we found a like soul, instead of recognizing each other.
And now I’m about to lose him. When we reach Duren, he won’t be there for me when I need him. I’ll never again feel how entirely his arms surround me, like a coat tailored perfectly to my frame. I’ll never know if his broken parts ever mend.
As I clutch his collar harder, I feel like I’m falling from a hundred feet, falling, falling, falling, and the only thing to hold onto is him.
“You came,” I whisper.
“Little violet, of course I came. I’d cross the gods’ ten realms on hands and knees for you.”
He’s filthy, covered in blood, just like me. We should clean ourselves up, but I can’t bear to have this moment end. With the pad of my thumb, I smooth a drop of blood off his bottom lip. “What happened in Blackwater?”
“I shouldn’t have left you, even for a second. It’s my fault that they—”
I lay my finger flat across his lips, silencing him. “It isn’t your fault.”
He shakes his head. “Sabine, when I saw you were taken . . . When I smelled that bastard’s taint on top of your own scent . . . ” Rage contorts his face to the point where it feels like he’ll explode. He drags a hand down his face, trying to bring his emotions into check.
Myst whinnies at the door.
All dead?
I start to answer her, but before I can, Basten says in a voice heavy with exhaustion, “Yeah, crazy mare. We got her. We did it.”
I wrinkle my nose, confused. “Wait. Did you—did you hear her?”
“No. But that horse and I? We understand each other well enough without words.”
He weighs as much as two of you, Myst snorts at me. Tell him he walks on his own feet from now on.
I can’t help but smile, wondering how in the world the two of them got along well enough to team up to rescue me. Then, I look at Adan’s body, and grow serious.
“Basten, there’s something I have to tell you. King Joruun was the one who hired Adan and his men to bring me to Old Coros.”
Basten pulls back to search my eyes for an answer to a question he doesn’t understand. His eyebrows furrow. “King Joruun? Are you certain?” He hesitates. “What exactly did they say?”
“That the king wouldn’t want me, well, touched.” My voice bottoms out on the final word, as I feel the ghost of Maks’s hands between my legs. My throat goes bone-dry. My muscles seize up from the echo of past danger, and Basten must pick up on it with his heightened senses, because he lightly grips my chin with thumb and forefinger.
“Did they touch you?”
A whimper slips out before I can swallow it. My body shakes. Basten’s eyes darken like storm clouds, and he shakes his head as I hunt for words to explain.
“No—you don’t have to say it, Sabine. I can find out myself.” As carefully as picking up a bird with a broken wing, he leans close to smell my neck, then over my shoulder, to the palm of my hand. Then he turns to the dead bodies.
“That one,” he says, pointing to Maks. “He tried—but didn’t get far.”
I give the ghost of a nod.
His grip on my hand tightens possessively. “I’d ask Immortal Woudix to bring that bastard back from the dead, just so I could kill him all over again.” He takes a shuddering breath. A moment passes, then he says quietly, “They weren’t talking about King Joruun.”
It takes me a second to realize we aren’t talking about Maks anymore. “But who—”
“They meant King Rachillon.”
I stare at him. I’ve never heard the name.
He explains, “They were Volkish raiders, Sabine. A king might have hired them, but not ours. It was King Rachillon of Volkany.”
Bewildered, I stare blankly like he’s telling me a fae story that happened long ago to people far more important than me.
“King Rachillon?” I pronounce it as he did, Rah-shee-yan.
I’ve been so sequestered for the last twelve years that any news that might have dribbled across the Volkish border didn’t make it into the Convent of Immortal Iyre. The last I heard, Volkany didn’t even have a king. “I—I don’t understand. Why would the King of Volkany want me?”
It feels unreal to even say, like we’re operating within a dream.
Basten mutters to himself, “That’s a damn good question.”
He brought up Volkany in the Manywaters Inn. I wonder if he knows more than he’s saying—or at least suspects more—but his clenched jaw tells me his thoughts are locked inside his own head for the time being.