White Horse Black Nights (The Godkissed Bride, #1)(37)
Myst crests the hill and charges downward at an even greater speed into the valley.
I open my throat and let out a cry.
It’s magical, riding like this. No stone walls or gates cage us. Just me and Myst and the wind and the road. It’s a freedom I’ve never experienced, and it’s so awe-inspiring that it’s too much for me to take in, like a harvest bounty overflowing its basket. My heart doesn’t know what to do with this surge of power. I’ve been confined by walls almost my entire life. Even if the walls didn’t lock me in, societal expectations would have done the same job. A lord’s daughter in this world is only good for her ability to fetch a powerful husband. Until I met Adan, there was never any hope for a different fate. But now here I am, free as a hawk. I could steer Myst into the forest if I wanted. I could climb that big elm tree to see the view. I could plunge into a stream, and no Sisters would be there to scold me.
I’ve come so far from that frightened, damaged girl I was when I stood in a muddy courtyard in a silk robe. I’ve experienced more in the last seventeen days than in the last seventeen years—most of all, what I’ve learned is just how much left there is to experience.
I draw Myst to a stop at the next rise. We both pant to catch our breaths as we take in the sweeping view of the Darmarnach Mountains in the distance. My hair falls around me in windswept waves.
As I gaze at those distant peaks, I think to myself that I can never go back to how I was before. Now that I’ve had a taste of freedom, I will never settle for anything less. Basten might drag me kicking and screaming to Duren, and Lord Rian might lock me inside Sorsha Hall, but I will never marry him.
I’m done letting men decide my fate.
Come on, Myst.
It’s painful to turn back and trot down the road until we reach Basten again, who all the while has had me on an invisible tether, but the hot seed of determination has lodged in my heart, and it’s already sprouted.
Somehow, I will sever that tie and win true freedom.
Chapter 14
Wolf
Blackwater.
It’s a cesspool of a town; like most port cities where transient people intermingle to trade goods or change travel routes, it draws the dregs of society. Spies. Prostitutes. Thieves. And it’s in Duren’s jurisdiction, so the Valveres control nearly every gambling hall and brothel within the town. When I first started working for the Valveres, they had me doing more unsavory tasks than hunting boar—the kind of jobs that weren’t exactly sanctioned under their license to operate the legal vices. The nature of that work brought me to Blackwater more times than I care to remember.
As we cross the bridge into town, my stomach clenches. I threw a man off this bridge once. He hadn’t paid his debts.
Not the kind of place you want to take a beautiful, nubile, naked lord’s daughter, for fuck’s sake. And yet as we step off the bridge into the town proper, I’m cautiously optimistic. The number of glances we get on the street is shockingly sparse. Sure, there are leers, but nothing like we experienced in Charmont or Polybridge. And then it hits me: In a town like Blackwater, a naked woman simply isn’t that unusual. Whores probably cavort bare-chested in the alleys every night. The people here are used to such sensationalism, unlike the prudish villagers of Charmont.
Sabine doesn’t seem troubled by the riffraff, either: vagrants slumped in doorways, mangy dogs, fortune tellers who’ll steal your coin and spit in your eye. Her attention is riveted to everything we pass, like we’re wandering through a mystical cave filled with fascinating treasures, instead of the Sin Streets.
The sizzle of cooking meat reaches my nose and makes my stomach rumble. Mediocre fiddle music comes out of a second-story window. As we pass a brothel with a topless whore leaning out the upstairs window, Sabine leans down to whisper to me, “Is that a Valvere pleasure house?”
Pleasure house? Fuck me. The girl is so innocent she can’t even say brothel.
I grunt in the affirmative. “This is the legal vice district of Blackwater. They call it the Sin Streets. The Valveres own most of the businesses here, including that brothel.”
A drunkard reeking of herb stumbles out of the brothel, blinking into the daylight. His eyes fix on Sabine riding Myst like she’s Immortal Solene herself, awoken from her thousand-year slumber. And in a dirty town like this, she might be the closest thing to a god.
He gapes at her, and as she passes, tugs off his cap and presses it to his chest. I roll my eyes, but a part of me appreciates that finally, someone is giving Sabine the respect she deserves. Even if it is just a drunk.
She strokes her hair distractedly as she takes in a brawl outside of a gambling den called Popelin’s Hazard.
“Immortal Popelin? The pleasure house was named for him, too.”
“He’s the God of Pleasure. The patron fae of the Sin Streets. The Valveres worship at his altar.”
Foot traffic interrupts our conversation as we cross a narrow wooden bridge that spans a secondary branch of the Innis River. A few blocks downstream, the shouts of workmen come from the docks’ direction as sailors load and unload cargo. The reek of sewage and dead fish is overwhelming. This is why I’ve always avoided crowds: the tidal wave of sensations is too much for my godkissed senses.
Bristling against the onslaught of sights and sounds and smells, I jerk my head toward a ramshackle building ahead at the end of the bridge, where the two branches of the Innis River meet, along with a stream coming from the northern section of town. It’s a three-story structure that’s seen better days, but at least the pansies planted in the window baskets give it a modicum of cheer. A pictorial sign hangs over the door, showing the meeting of three waterways.