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.
Lord Rian’s presence was magnetic from the moment he stepped into the church, but the others’ responses to his appearance truly made me take note. Every bachelor stiffened in jealousy. Every girl jutted out her chest and ass, hoping to catch the attention of the handsome young lord.
He never spoke to me. He never asked my family name or about my godkiss. To my recollection, he looked at me only once—just a flitting pass—before continuing on to the other girls.
So why, in the name of the Immortals, did he pick me now?
Wolf and I pass a shuttered apothecary shop. True to Suri’s word, we haven’t seen a single soul in a dozen blocks. At this time of day, the streets should be bustling with wagons and market-bound vendors, yet it’s utterly empty. Every shutter is closed, even on The Wilderwoman Tavern, with its carved sign of peach-skinned Immortal Solene with ivy woven in her braid and glowing fey lines along her hairline. I glower. She isn’t exactly my current favorite of the gods, given this damn ride is supposedly in her honor. The quietness is eerie: not even the convent was this still. There should be the crack of a blacksmith’s hammer, feet squelching through the mud, the shrieks of playful children.
Wolf rubs his shoulder that looks like it might have sustained an old injury. He seems as unnerved by the quiet as I do. “I guess the townsfolk respect your father’s orders, after all,” he says, his surprised tone making it clear how low he thinks of my father.
At least we agree on one thing.
“Not him,” I clarify. “His new wife, Suri. They like her. Everyone likes her. If she asked them to throw themselves into the Tellyne River, I think they would.”
Wolf snorts.
I shift my position on Myst’s back. From this angle, I can almost see down the front of Wolf’s shirt. The leather breastplate hugs his torso, but his shirt is loose at the collar, unlaced. On a hard swell of muscle, I glimpse the edge of his godkiss birthmark.
Gripping Myst’s sides more squarely with my calves, I lean over to try to see more . . .
Wolf snaps his gaze to mine. Amused, his eyes taunt me. “See something you like, my lady?”
My legs clamp harder around Myst and, sensing my embarrassment, she warns me, He smells like a predator.
For good reason, I communicate back bitterly.
“We’ll follow this road as far as Polybridge,” Wolf says with matter-of-factness, like he’s giving orders to a soldier. “From there, it’s north through Middleford, and then across the Innis River. It would be safer to traverse backroads, but my master desires that we pass through towns and villages so the whole kingdom knows of his impending marriage. If the weather holds and we move swiftly, we can make the journey in as few as nineteen days. Rain could delay us, or trouble on the road.”