She puffs angrily and continues kicking the stall. I’m vaguely aware my cheeks are wet with tears. My heart aches to be torn away from her, though it was always the plan to separate and then buy her later under a false name. In the meantime, Basten will find her—he’ll take care of her for me.
Adan stops at the stable’s entrance, scanning the street before wrapping a hand around my back and leading me in the opposite direction from the still-smoldering inn. I hobble on my wounded foot, feeling as stunned as if I’d fallen through ice into a freezing lake, unable to trust that I’m making the right decision.
But, I saw a chance—and I had to take it.
Maybe Adan will turn out to be the love of my life, after all. It doesn’t really matter. Right now, he’s only a means to an end. He can get me out of Blackwater and hide me from the Valvere family’s forces. This is the best shot I have for true freedom.
As to matters of the heart, well, right now, I need to save my damn ass.
Gritting my teeth, I banish all other thoughts out of my head—and my heart—and hurry with Adan toward the docks.
Adan’s vessel is a single-mast sloop that’s seen better days. Crabbing cages clutter the deck, along with barrels and some wooden buoys. It’s a humble fishing vessel, or at least disguised to look like one.
Three men sitting on the crab cages bolt to their feet when they see us hurrying down one of the docks. Moonlight bathes them in a bluish glow. These must be Adan’s brothers. They share his fair hair and sunkissed skin, though they seem older than him by at least a decade. Strange—Adan never mentioned he was the youngest of his family by far.
Of course, Adan hasn’t told me much at all. He’s a stranger.
My pulse scrambles as I worry, once again, if this is the right decision.
“Quickly,” one of the men orders, holding out his hand over the gap between the dock and the boat. “Pass her to me.”
Adan helps me step precariously onto the rocking sloop, where I clutch onto the deck railing to steady myself. He jumps onto the vessel behind me, and immediately starts untying the rope tethering us to the dock.
“Get her hidden,” one of his brothers hisses sharply to Adan. “I’ll handle the boat. Here.”
He shoves a bundle in Adan’s arms.
Clutching the bundle under one arm, Adan takes my hand, leading me toward the cabin. “Hurry, Sabine. We can’t take the chance anyone sees you.”
I follow him down a narrow set of stairs to the tiny cabin—if it can even be called that. It’s barely large enough for a person to lie down in, and half of it is currently packed with fishing nets. I have to stoop to keep from hitting my forehead on the ceiling.
Adan motions for me to curl up on the fishing nets, and then he starts pulling clothes out of the bundle. A crofter’s dress. Worn leather shoes. A white bonnet.
“We assumed you’d be naked,” he explains with the ghost of a half-grin, motioning to my sage green dress.
“Oh. Right.” I don’t want to reveal that Basten gave me my dress, because that might raise too many questions. “I, um, grabbed a dress from a clothesline while I was running from my guard.”
“He’s one hell of a brute, isn’t he? Maks and Bertine have been following you since Polybridge, looking for an opportunity to overpower him and take you, but we didn’t anticipate he’d be both godkissed and as strong as an ox.”
Apprehension prickles the hairs on the back of my neck.
Adan’s brothers have been following me? Yes, Basten is strong as an ox, and now he’s too far away to help me if I should need it. So is Myst. I’m on my own.
I swallow down a pebble of fear rising in my throat. “Where are we going? Those are your brothers, right?”
Adan nods, distracted. The sloop rocks sharply as we enter the river’s current. I grip the edge of a crate to steady myself a second before my head would have knocked against the low ceiling.
Adan rests his hand on my knee, his gaze eating me up now that it’s just the two of us in the shadowy cabin, with only a thin beam of moonlight slicing down from the stairs to light up his green eyes.
He smooths his hands down the hair on either side of my face, drawing me closer. “By the fae, Sabine, I’ve wanted to do this every second since I laid eyes on you.”
He pulls me into a kiss. Startled, my breath stalls in my lungs. His kiss is more aggressive than I’d have expected, his lips demanding my response. My thoughts freeze. Operating on instinct, I go through the motions of kissing him back, because my brain can’t function fast enough for any alternative.
But as our lips play against one another, I feel nothing. I’m too shaken from the fire and everything that came before it. My body feels only numb. Adan breaks the kiss with a satisfied moan, unaware of my arrested ability to process what just happened. He passes the bundle of clothes to me.
“You should change into these. We don’t want anyone recognizing you or the clothes you were wearing.” He stares at me, expectantly, and my pulse raps against my temples.
I blink. “You mean you want me to change here? Now?”
He gives a laugh that rings bitterly. “Every other man can see you naked, but not me? Is that it?”
My lips part, but only silence emerges. That’s what he’s thinking about right now?
His eyes soften as he runs his hand down the contour of my face. He gives a slight chuckle. “I’ll go up and give you some privacy. But there’s one other thing. How I said Myst was too recognizable to take with us? The same goes for your hair. It’ll identify you immediately.” He draws a long, thin knife from the bundle. “I’m sorry, I truly am, but we have to cut it off.”
A tightness knots in my chest. “My hair?”
“I know you prize it, but there’s no other way.”
He doesn’t understand. I don’t prize my hair, not in the slightest. In fact, my hair is the symbol of the binds that kept me imprisoned in the convent and my father’s house. I was forced to grow it out as long as possible to make me more appealing to a suitor.
Just one more way Adan is a stranger, and I am to him.
“Do it,” I say, tilting my head to give him the right angle. He seems surprised by my readiness, and he looks regretful as he saws through the thick tresses at my nape. I close my eyes, feeling the gentle tugs on my scalp like a thousand tiny fingers. Separating me from those shackles. Transforming me into something new, no longer the pretty girl able to fetch a high price.
When it’s done, and the rope of my severed hair is clasped in Adan’s fist, I run a tentative hand along the rough-cut edges that hang an inch above my shoulders. A part of me feels missing. Without my hair’s weight, my head feels too bobbly. And yet, at the same time, free.
Adan carefully stuffs my severed hair into the bundle. I suppose we can’t just leave it out loose in the boat.
One of his brothers shouts something down, and Adan squeezes my knee. “Stay down here. Don’t make a sound.”
Before he leaves, I snare his wrist as a shard of fear cuts into my chest. “Adan, everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”
He gives me a smile that, in the dark shadows, doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Everything is going to be exactly as it should, Sabine.”