“I’m not talking about my body!” I snarl. “You ruined me!”
My voice is breathless and broken. He ruined the hopeful girl I was, the girl I could have been. Because it’s impossible to see a future now. For a brief, shining moment, it was so clear, like in my dream on the beach. Basten and I together. Now, the future is like staring into a deep pool with no end. I never got to see the ocean. Never put my feet in the sand. Instead, I feel tossed in murky waves, plunged into stormy waters where I can’t tell which way is up.
I tear at my chemise’s laces as fresh tears blur my vision. Because he’s won—not Basten, but Rian. Because ultimately, it all comes down to Rian. He wants my naked obedience, and I have no choice but to surrender it. I tug angrily at the fabric until it pools at my feet. The waterfall’s cool mist fans over my bare skin, making me shiver. I don’t even have my long hair to shield me anymore.
Basten tugs his shirt over his head and tries to press it into my hands. In a strange tone, he says, “Here. Wear this. Damn the rules. Rian will take out his anger on me, not you.”
A cruel laugh bubbles from my throat, sounding more like a sob. It’s a hell of a time for him to break the rules.
“I don’t need your help.” I ignore his offered shirt. Instead, I rest my hand on Myst’s withers. She lowers to her knees so I can swing one leg over her back. Without my hair, I feel fully exposed, as though the entire forest can see through my skin to the shredded heart beneath. But the forest? I can trust that. Nature will never betray me like a man.
Myst stands, and I tower over Basten.
“You will regret this, Basten Bowborn. I’ll make you regret it.”
A white moth flutters out of the cave’s shadows and lands on my left breast, just above my heart.
The little moth extends its silken wings over my skin. A woefully insufficient shield for an entire broken body. The tiny thing can’t shelter me from what’s coming. But it’s trying. It isn’t giving up. So neither will I. And for half a breath, the murky waters I’ve been drowning in clear. For a glimmer, I see hope. I don’t know what exactly awaits in Duren. I can’t read the future. But I can steer the reins that I’m given.
And every bullheaded man in my life—my father, Lord Rian, and especially Basten—will see how a woman’s defiance can burn brighter than the stars.
Chapter 24
Wolf
We travel in silence for hours. Sabine said not to speak to her, and that suits me fine. Because I wouldn’t know the first fucking place to start. I broke her heart in the waterfall cave; I had to. I had to make her believe that I was as much a bastard as they used to call me—Basten the Bastard—and build up her hatred until she gave up hope of a future together. Given the contents of her father’s letter, there’s only one way to keep her safe, and it’s sure as hell not the two of us cozied up in seaside inns. It’s with Rian’s private army of five thousand Golden Sentinels.
An owl swoops down from a pine tree to land on Sabine’s right thigh, and I flinch. It started happening as soon as we left the waterfall cave: This unnerving parade of winged creatures flocking to her. First, a tiny white moth landed on her left breastbone. It was joined by a half dozen more moths, brown as bark, settling on her belly. By the time the waterfall was out of earshot, a raven came to roost on her shoulder. Then a fucking goose, white as snow, nestled on Myst’s withers between Sabine’s legs and extended its wings like a loincloth.
Every few minutes, a new winged animal joins the flock.
A nuthatch on her knee. Delicate lace moths on her breastbone, like a neckline. Colorful butterflies on the curve of her hips.
Is she doing this? Calling the animals? If she is, then her message is pretty fucking clear: If everyone in her life will deny her even the dignity of clothing, then she’ll clothe herself with the creatures of the forest.
But something tells me she isn’t calling them, at least not with words. That the insects and birds are coming on their own, drawn to her pain like moths to flame.
It’s unnerving, this ever-expanding mantel of winged beasts she is surrounding herself with. Another raven perches on her opposite shoulder, wings stretched toward the sunlight filtering through the forest canopy to give her the uncanny look of an angel. But not a gentle maiden of the clouds—oh no. Dressed in birds and moths that match the forest colors, Sabine looks like she’s stepped out of the pages of the Book of the Immortals. There’s a tale in Immortal Thracia’s section where the stars are dimmed by magical lanterns erected by the other fae, so their revelries could continue into the dark night. As Goddess of Night, this offended her. In her anger, she transformed herself into a giant egret whose powerful flapping wings put out the lanterns.
I don’t know if the ancient fae actually had the ability to transform themselves into beasts—it seems beyond even their magic. But watching Sabine shield her broken heart with an armor of wings, I believe in the divine.
My own armor, the leather breastplate with the Valvere crest, does fuck-all to shield the remains of my tramped heart. I have only myself to blame. I destroyed the one good thing in my pathetic life. The only chance I had for happiness. Guilt weighs me down like my rucksack is filled with boulders. She hates me, but it’s nothing compared to how much I hate myself for what I did to her.
Still, I don’t regret my choice. Sabine’s only chance is through Rian’s protection. But I sure as hell regret taking her to bed, and promising her I’d run away with her. In that moment, I was ready to swim across the fucking Panopis Sea for her. If I’d only read her father’s letter earlier, I never would have let it go as far as it did.
And now I’ve lost her forever. I was a fool to think I ever had a shot with her in the first place—it never would have worked out. I don’t get nice things after the sins I’ve committed.
The first time I killed a man, it was to spare Rian from having to do it. We were eighteen, sparring in Sorsha Hall’s courtyard, when Lord Berolt dragged in some scum who had beaten a prostitute to death in one of their brothels. He ordered Rian to carry out the man’s death sentence. Rian hesitated at the idea of taking a life, even a villain’s, so I stepped in to do the task with my fists. Halfway through, Rian joined in. That first murder bonded us; we both had blood on our hands.
The murders got a lot easier after that first one. I didn’t mind when it was killing bad men, and at first, that’s all it was—rapists and abusers who had crossed the Valveres’ business empire in one way or another. I could easily justify their deaths. In my way, I was making Duren safer, not just for the Valveres but for riffraff like I’d been as a boy and whoever my whore of a mother had been. And I was good at it. So good that when Rian stepped into his father’s shoes as high lord, I was the first one he’d summon if he had a job. Slitting throats became as second nature as scratching an itch.
My abdomen clenches like something I ate isn’t sitting right, like the past is trying to claw its way back. Not all the jobs Rian gave me were as justified as those first ones.
So many sins.
So many innocent people I killed. Women I’ve hurt. Families I destroyed with extortion and threats.