Sabine smooths her hand gratefully over the horse’s flank like it’s a friend, not a beast of burden, and gives me a triumphant look.
“Didn’t your master tell you I’m godkissed?” Sabine asks with her chin high, like she enjoys looking down at me.
For a second, something ugly twists in my gut. I don’t know why, but it spikes me with a jealous vein to see such tender harmony between girl and beast. I’m not used to seeing any kindness at all. Certainly not in the Valveres’ household.
I regain my composure. “He said you could talk to animals. Not control them.”
“I can’t control them. With kind words, no one needs to.”
Can this girl be serious?
The breeze shifts, and her scent wafts to my nose again, snaring my attention for the second time.
Violets. That’s what she smells like. Goddamn violets.
The wind keeps shifting, splashing her scent around the courtyard—and it’s distracting. I need to stay sharp, aware of the scents that matter. Scents that could portend danger: smoke, steel, sickness.
But now that her aroma is in my nose, I can’t stop thinking about violets. On the list of things that interest me, flowers have to be at the bottom, right down there with royal gossip and the latest favored eyeliner shade. But there was one time that wasn’t the case. I killed a prized wild boar for Sorsha Hall’s midwinter feast that no other hunters had managed to bag. As a reward, Lord Rian gave me a seat at the high lord’s table. I, a bastard son from the streets, dined among lords and ladies. The feast was decadent. Cheeses from the Clarana hills. Spiced mead by the barrel. The boar itself, roasted and served with braised root vegetables and buttery sage sauce. But the finest of all was dessert: delicate honey cakes dripping with iced sugar and dotted with violets. Those little candied buds were the most sinful thing I ever put in my mouth.
Earthy, sweet, delicate.
I’d do anything to get the taste of violets in my mouth again.
“Wolf Bowborn. Wait.” Lord Charlin waves me over, his beady, bloodshot eyes blinking fast.
I adjust my bow slung over my shoulder and make my way to join him.
He props his hands on his hips like he’s about to give me a lecture. What a fucking oaf.
“This marriage means I’m to be Lord Rian’s father-in-law. You tell the high lord and his family that I have certain expectations. When I next come to Duren, I want gratis coins to spend at the gambling houses. As well as choice seating at the arena.”
This buffoon has reeked of whiskey since he first stepped out of his house. Not the expensive kind the Valveres drink, either—something cheap, probably cut with turpentine. Fuck, it’s not even mid-morning.
“Let me make one thing clear,” I say slowly, so that his pickled brain can process my words. “Lord Rian bought himself a wife, not a father-in-law. If you set foot in Sorsha Hall without an invitation, I will personally see to dragging you back to Bremcote myself.”
Lord Charlin’s eyes bug out in indignation. He takes a few rageful breaths before sputtering, “She’s my daughter.”
“Not anymore, she isn’t. You sold her to save your own skin. The only man with a claim on her now is my master.”
I can see that this painful truth eats him alive, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He might have the finest manor house in Bremcote, but that makes him a king among ants. The Valveres are interested in him only as far as his humiliation is entertaining to them.
Still, a slow, sly smile crosses Lord Charlin’s face. He stuffs a hand into his breast pocket and comes back with a letter, sealed with wax and stamped with his crest.
“Give this to your high lord,” he sneers, smashing the letter into my palm. “Tell him that if he wants what I’ve written about in there, he’ll have to be more welcoming to his father-in-law.”
As much as I’d like to shove the letter back in his face, I begrudgingly accept it. Who knows what scheme or secret is scrawled inside—it’s up to Lord Rian to determine its value, not me.
When I return to Sabine, anxious to get on the road, my keen eyesight sharpens in on something in the horse’s mane that wasn’t there a moment ago.
The seashell now hangs from a strand of its mane.
Now this is interesting, I think.
The girl tried to hide the shell there while my back was turned. Lord Rian didn’t permit her any clothes, bags, or belongings, so she had no place to hide the bauble on her own body.
What does such a paltry shell mean to her? Why cherish it so?
I file this curiosity away as I look toward the rising sun. We need to be moving.
“Say your farewells,” I order her.
Lord Charlin’s dark-skinned wife, who can’t be much older than Sabine herself, approaches the horse and clasps hands with Sabine. In a sweet chirp, she says, “We’ve put out the order that no one in Bremcote shall look upon you. All doors will be closed, all windows shuttered. Beyond that . . . ” The young woman’s voice breaks. “We’ve sent requests to the towns beyond also to close their shutters, but we have no official influence over them.”
“Thank you, Suri,” Sabine says solemnly. “You’ve been so kind. I won’t forget it. I wish we’d had more than a few days together.”
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.