Bored with their womanly talk, I scrape my eyes over the sky, looking for any sign of rain. The last thing I want is for this damnable ride to be delayed for the weather. Twenty-one days are twenty-one days more than I should be away from Duren.
I should be in the Blackened Forest north of the city, tracking that troublesome bear that’s been wreaking so much damage in the villages up near the border wall with the neighboring kingdom of Volkany—the cursed kingdom. My mind can’t let go of it. It dragged off a fifteen-year-old girl, and no one has seen her since. Her parents wailed my ears off. She was their pride and joy, godkissed with the ability to find misplaced objects. But it’s strange: When I tried to track the bear, the claw marks it left behind seemed too large—unless it’s the largest fucking bear anyone’s ever seen. I found a clump of its fur that shimmered like fine strands of precious metal.
Lord Charlin climbs the manor’s front steps precariously as he raises his voice to the small crowd of servants.
He slurs drunkenly, “We of House Darrow bid farewell to my daughter on this, um . . . on this joyous occasion of her ride to meet her husband . . . uh . . . ” He trails off stupidly, smacking his lips.
Like a ripple of smoke, Sabine’s scent changes. Her tang of fear is gone, the violets are gone, replaced by the smell of two iron blades striking.
The scent of anger.
Can I blame her? I prefer having no father, if my option is this one.
Suri Darrow saves her husband’s lackluster speech by piping up, “May the wind be at your back, the sun on your face, and the gods’ blessing on your journey, Sabine.”
It’s childish, these theatrics. They aren’t sending her off to her doom. Lord Rian will shower a girl like her with jewels. She’s about to know finery as she’s never fathomed. All she need do is acquiesce to my master’s occasional whim—and granted, his whims can be impulsive—and he’ll lay down the earth at her feet.
Lord Rian’s words slingshot back into my memory.
“I want her, Wolf,” Rian said. “Sabine Darrow will be my wife, come hell or hounds.”
I remember it like it happened yesterday, not a year ago. My master came to Bremcote for business to evaluate some young brute for the combat games. The fighter’s father wanted to charm Lord Rian, so he took him to a Preview where young maidens eligible to be wed in the next few years were put out on display.
Up to that point, he’d sworn never to marry—until he saw Sabine Darrow.
“Her father’s a drunken lout,” he told me after. “But he knows he has a prize in that girl. Honeyed hair down to the floor. A face that rivals the statues of Clarana. And she’s godkissed. She’s young—not ready for another year. And her father won’t give her up for less than a fortune, but I’m not going to pay a penny for her. Watch and see, Wolf.”
Lord Rian could easily afford to buy a bride at any price, but it’s never about money with the Valveres.
It’s the win.
It’s the game.
And in the end, he hadn’t paid a penny for her, just as he’d vowed.
“Open the gate!” Lord Charlin calls.
Servants roll back the wooden gate, and Sabine’s pulse jumps in her veins. She’s not the only one less than thrilled about this ride. I have more pressing work. I can’t stop chewing over that strange bear activity up near the border with Volkany and the missing godkissed girl. But Lord Rian said it had to be me.
I trust you to bring her to me, Wolf, he said. You and you alone.
“Listen, little violet,” I say to her now as I sling my rucksack over my shoulder. “You are the property of Lord Rian Valvere of Duren, who has entrusted me to bring you to him safely and without incident. You will obey my commands on the ride, do you understand?”
She looks down at me through her long lashes, and I have to pretend that I don’t notice the obvious bare curves of her body.
“Oh, I have plenty of experience with people who expect me to obey,” she says evenly.
There’s a challenge in her tone, yet I can’t quite suss out its exact nature. This pampered princess? She’s known no hardship, of that I feel certain.
I tighten my jaw. The little flower might yet have thorns.
“Good,” I snap, and the two of us—me on foot, her on horseback—begin the ride.
Chapter 3
Sabine
Bremcote is a provincial town with middling importance in East Astagnon, best known for its wool market. A network of dirt roads connect wooden houses, a few garden plots, the mill, and of course, my father’s manor house.
The furthest I’ve ever been from Bremcote is nineteen miles away, at the Convent of the Immortal Iyre. After my mother died, my father didn’t know what to do with me. I was ten years old, no longer an easily-ignored child, and not yet breedable collateral to be married off. So he made a deal with the Matron to take me in as a ward. Of the ten Immortals, only Iyre, Goddess of Virtue, has any reputation for chastity. The nine others are a debauched collection of licentious pleasure-seekers. Iyre served the other gods with sweetness and light, maintaining her purity even with Immortal Popelin always trying to look up her skirt. As far as gods go, I always found her boring and meek; the spirit of the convent reflected those traits. My one saving grace during my miserable years there was that I was allowed to bring Myst, though it pained me every day that they drove her hard pulling work carts. A horse like her should never be yoked.
Now, my curiosity flits around the rusty hand pump in the village green, a goat-head door knocker, bottles of milk left at someone’s doorway. After twelve isolated years in that place, everything is new, thrilling, strange. Even milk bottles!
I left the convent only once in those twelve years, and on that particular occasion, I sooner would have remained imprisoned. They called it the “Preview.” The memory alone steeps me in nausea.
A Preview is to a high-born maiden as an auction is to a broodmare: a chance to show off merchandise to potential bidders. Ten girls stand on ten chairs in the church nave, of all places. The men come to find a young, ripe wife they can eventually sire children on with their grunting old bodies, and they pay handsomely just for the chance to attend.
Bachelors from all corners of East Astagnon spoke about us girls like we couldn’t hear them, comparing our beauty, our ripeness for childbirth, our family names. There was one other godkissed girl there, a pretty brown girl from Covery who could change an apple’s color from red to green. A useless power, if you ask me, but a power all the same, and the status of having a godkissed bride—regardless of what they can actually do—is all some men care about.
Balancing on that damned chair, unsuccessfully begging a thrush in the rafters to come peck out the eyes of every man there, was the first and only time I saw the man I’m now to marry.