Laying back, I close my eyes and listen to the waterfall, imagining it’s the rush of the Panopis Sea. I wish I had Basten’s senses, if only for a day. When we get to the sea, I want to hear every bubble pop in the ocean surf. Feel every grain of sand scouring my feet. Taste the layers of salt in the water. What will I say to the sea creatures? What will they say to me? Dolphins and fish and octopuses—if octopuses are even real. I know only what I’ve gleaned from overheard snatches of conversations.
“Basten?” I call.
He’s not in the cave; he must have woken early to hunt breakfast. I smooth my hand over the rumpled half of the blanket that still holds a trace of his warmth. A secretive smile breaks across my face as I roll over and feel a soreness between my legs. Pressing a hand to my mouth, I giggle up at the cave’s ceiling.
By the gods, the things we did last night . . .
What I said to Basten was true—I don’t understand how anyone could consider such pleasure sinful. For twelve years, I’ve had the virtues of chastity drilled into me. In Immortal Iyre’s chapters, she’s constantly accosted by male fae who crave her body—Vale and Woudix and Popelin—and even Alyssantha, who wants to train her as a concubine. Iyre dutifully rejects their advances, preferring her needlepoint. I was taught that Iyre was the model for all young noblewomen. What a farce. Who would choose embroidery over sex?
It isn’t until I tug on my chemise, mostly dry and clean of bloodstains, that I notice Myst is gone, too. A hitch catches in my lungs. That’s odd. Basten and Myst gone? He must have ridden her into the forest, but I can’t guess why. Maybe the waterfall drowned out the sound of game, and he had to travel deeper to hunt.
No matter. My stomach growls, but I can wait. Last night’s coals are still warm, so I blow on them until the fire roars again cheerfully. I trail a hand along my neckline, toying with the lace collar. Now that I know that every sinful act in Immortal Alyssantha’s chapters is fair game for humans, I can’t stop fantasizing about Basten and I recreating every contorted position in those illustrations.
If I can bend backward that far . . .
My cheeks start to blaze. I clear my throat, smoothing out the chemise’s wrinkles to give my hands something to do. The chemise may be stiff and secondhand, but at least it covers what it needs to. It occurs to me that I never have to ride naked again. Lord Rian’s cruel game is over. We’ve won, Basten and I, by deciding not to play.
Another hour passes before I finally hear Myst’s hoofbeats. They ride into the cave, a skinned squirrel carcass dangling from Basten’s belt. So much for making Basten walk on his own two feet, I guess. I smile to myself at how the two of them—the two souls I love most—have become friends.
Basten dismounts and crouches in front of the fire to add a few pieces of wood, his dark hair curtaining his face, his body hulking and hunched. His face has fallen into its familiar scowl like the settling of an old house. I roll my eyes fondly. My wolf is so grouchy before he has his breakfast.
I feel giddy as I teasingly throw my arms around his neck and plant a kiss on his stubbly cheek. He stiffens, which only makes me hug him harder. Last night, he touched my body in places I didn’t even know existed. There’s no room this morning for crankiness. We’re about to voyage to the ocean. Every night, we’ll mimic another sinful pleasure from the pages of the Book of the Immortals. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’ve captured true happiness in the palm of my hand.
“Good morning,” I breathe sweetly against his ear.
He gently shrugs out of my embrace so he can attend to the roasting squirrel. For a few minutes, preparing breakfast has all his attention. Finally, he drags in an unsteady breath. “Is your dress dry?”
His voice is hard. He’s determined to be irritable, which pokes a small hole in my good spirits, but I check my dress’s outer layer where I laid it out to dry.
“Yes, mostly. Oh wait, the hem is damp.”
“That will have to do. We need to get moving.”
I can’t put my finger on why Basten would be acting so distant unless it concerns last night. He doesn’t regret it, does he? That’s impossible. No one could regret the way we came together. He certainly seemed to enjoy it last night . . . and again early this morning.
Turning to Myst, I ask in my mind, Where did you two go?
Village, she answers as she chomps grass. Four hills away. He sent a message.
I turn to Basten, frowning. “You sent a message this morning? Where?”
He briefly shoots a damning look toward Myst, but he has to know that she and I tell each other everything. As he tears into a freshly roasted hunk of squirrel meat, he mutters, “North. To tell them we’ll arrive tomorrow afternoon.”
I give him a crooked smile, confused. “North? Salensa is west.”
Did our lovemaking knock something loose in his head last night? He’s a hunter. He knows directions as well as he knows that the sky is up. My heart starts squeezing strangely, thrashing like a snared rabbit.
“We’re going north,” he grunts curtly.
My crooked smile stretches wider, increasingly uncertain, as I shake my head back and forth. What is he talking about? The only town of consequence in the north is Duren. Other than that, it’s just the Blackened Forest, and eventually, the border wall with Volkany. I may be no master of geography, but there’s no plausible way that heading north could take us to the coast. In fact, going anywhere near Duren would only put us squarely in the Valveres’ territory—straight into the enemy’s den.
An invisible fist tightens around my throat as a dawning fear sinks into me like fingernails down my back. My heart starts thrashing harder, a trapped animal who now sees the hunter closing in.
He’s betraying me.
The certainty of it pierces me like a blade. Dear gods. It can’t be true, can it? I’m overreacting. And yet I know in my core that I’m not. Basten is taking me to Duren just like he always planned. He’s going to deliver me into Lord Rian’s arms despite everything that happened last night, all our whispered plans and promises. Despite the fact that he had me moaning his name. Despite his own passion!
I gape at him in disbelief. Is it true? Basten is just another man who will tell a girl anything to stick his cock in her?
I stare at him as I slowly drown in disbelief. My lungs struggle for breath. Panic sinks into my bones. My voice is barely audible as I whisper, “It—it was a lie? Salensa? You’re still taking me to Rian?”
His jaw locks as he stands and brushes ashes roughly from his palms, not meeting my eyes. “Oh, come on, Sabine. Not even you can be that naive. You know I work for the Lord of Liars. I’ve learned a thing or two about lying.”
I flinch like I’ve been slapped.
I still feel numb, but the trapped rabbit in my chest refuses to go down without a fight. As anger coils in my chest, I snarl, “So you just wanted to fuck me? You played me?”
He scoffs as he starts rolling up the blanket to pack in his rucksack. “I guess you have me figured out, little violet.”
There’s a meanness in his voice that is utterly foreign. Basten is many things—grumpy and cold and quick-tempered and violent—but not mean. We’ve spent every hour of every day together for weeks, and I’ve never heard that tone. He doesn’t play games, either. Everything about Basten is as unpretending as the animals that make their home in this forest, who couldn’t deceive even if they wanted to. It’s one of the things that draws me to him. He isn’t about games. He’s the opposite of the man who bought me as a bride and forced this twisted ride.