27. Bastian
Bastian
K at urged our stags through the city gates as they turned from the clear crystalline of Luminis to the smoky quartz of Tenebris. The lack of moon had us both tense, but I kept my voice steady as I told her the most direct route to the palace.
The streets were empty—any sensible person stayed inside with doors and windows shut to keep out the Wild Hunt. Evergreen boughs decorated archways and the bridges between towers, ready for the coming Winter Solstice.
I found my thumbs circling Kat’s hips again, though I’d have been lying if I’d said it was only for her comfort.
When we reached the palace, the sunset blazed behind us, and twilight’s indigo sky rose behind the turrets and spires. From inside the guard house, a woman peered out and waved us through. On the new moon, even the guards stayed safely indoors.
We trotted across the bridge, Kat’s body thrumming with tension. River Velos’s magic hissed over me. Stay out . If I were fully unseelie, I wouldn’t be able to cross at all.
The stable yard was empty and silent as darkness closed overhead. We hurried into the covered aisle, led the stags into the nearest stalls, and shut them in safely.
Kat was opening the double doors into the yard when I heard it.
The huff of a stag ridden hard. The clink of armour.
Heart lurching, I grabbed her. One hand over her mouth, I pulled her back. Her body tightened but she didn’t fight.
“They’re here,” I whispered against her ear. I didn’t know how. They shouldn’t be able to cross the river. Unless they weren’t unseelie as we’d always believed, but something else .
The pulse leapt in her throat, close enough I could feel it on my chin, but she dipped her head in acknowledgement.
Slowly, slowly, I backed from the door.
Outside, hounds sniffed at the paving and whined, frustrated they couldn’t find what they’d scented.
We drew level with the door’s hinges and a thin crack looking out onto the yard.
White hounds with burning red eyes circled the yard, like Fluffy and yet not. Her playful bound was nothing like the focused lope of these hellhounds.
Thirteen steeds, some stags, some horses, all skeletal with flesh hanging from their flanks and necks. They pawed the ground and snorted. Steam billowed from their flared nostrils and curled around their riders.
Even my fae sight couldn’t pierce the darkness that gathered around them.
Riding the largest stag, wearing a spiked helm, their leader said something in a voice that was ice scraping over steel. I didn’t know the language, but each word skittered down my spine like the blade of an enemy I’d forgotten.
Their nearest companion nodded and turned, surveying the yard. Deep inside a hood, a pair of pale, glowing eyes locked with mine. In my arms, Kat went rigid and made a soft sound against my palm.
The hounds lifted their heads, flaming ears pricking as they sniffed the air.
Barely breathing, I eased my shadows to the door and pulled it shut. At the click of the latch, my shoulders sank and Kat sagged.
“Fuck,” she muttered when I released her. “Did you see?”
“Oh, was there something out there?”
She spun, then huffed a disbelieving laugh at me.
I grinned back, able to joke now we were safely shut in. The Wild Hunt couldn’t enter a building with closed doors and windows.
She glanced towards the yard. “Have you ever known anyone to see them and live to tell the tale?”
“I saw them once. But otherwise… no. I suppose that makes us lucky. Looks like we’re in here for the night.”
Her eyes widened at me. “You’re doubly lucky.” She shuddered as if shaking off what she’d seen in the yard. “Well, it’s not my first time sleeping in a stable. Though deer smell different from sabrecats.”
She took care of the stags, who we’d abandoned into their stalls in our rush, while I climbed into the hayloft and used the blankets from our travels to make a bed in the straw.
When she climbed the ladder after me, I bowed with a flourish. “Madam, may I welcome you to the Marwood Inn?”
She chuckled and took in the blankets and the twinkling lights I’d gathered under the hayloft’s rafters. “And how long have you been in the innkeeping business, Mr Marwood?”
“Not very long. I’d welcome any feedback madam has on my humble establishment.”
“Hmm.” She patted the bed I’d made from bales of hay before sitting on it experimentally. “The beds are surprisingly comfortable. Sorry, bed .” She raised an eyebrow at me.
“My apologies, madam, space is at a premium.” The hayloft was packed with straw and hay, leaving only an intimate corner for us.
“And you don’t appear to have any kitchens.”
“Ah.” I raised my hand and produced a plate with the last of our camping supplies—one apple, a heel of bread, and a piece of cheese.
“I take it back. You’re spoiling me with this bounty, Mr Marwood.”
“We aim to please at the Marwood Inn.”
I sat beside her and we shared the slim pickings in companionable silence. It felt like it once had. Like we were away in Albion where I didn’t have to think about the safety of an entire realm, where I wasn’t the Night Queen’s Shadow, the Bastard of Tenebris, the Serpent.
I could be what she called me: Bastian.
Alone with our teasing jokes, it felt like what she’d said at that party was true. I’m yours . There was no husband to interrupt us as I’d been about to claim what she’d said was mine—what she’d given freely.
Or almost freely.
Her words from a few days ago cut me as I sliced the cheese with my dagger. Was it really a choice…? Now I was free of my father’s memories of Innesol, I couldn’t escape everything she’d said.
I’d prided myself on giving Kat a choice, on being a thoughtful lover. Gods, how I’d prided myself. I was looking after her, reminding her of consent, where others had stamped all over it. And yet… I turned away when my thoughts reached that point, too cowardly to face the truth.
“Why do I feel like this isn’t the first time you’ve entertained someone up here?” She eyed me sidelong as she deposited her half of the apple core on the plate.
“I told you I was raised in the stables.”
“Hmm. I’d thought it an exaggeration. So, did you live right here?” She patted the makeshift bed.
“Not quite. There are servants quarters behind here for the stablehands. But I shared a room with my fathers, so this was where I came for privacy. I wonder…” I rummaged through the hay bundled against the rafters. “ There .”
BM . Engraved into the timber.
I leant back so she could see.
Clutching her chest, she gave a mock gasp. “Is that… vandalism , Bastian? So you were a rebellious child?”
I grinned and counted the slats up from my initials. “I just wanted to mark something as mine. Now, let’s see if my treasure is still here.” The rough wood twisted up with a bit of prying, revealing a small alcove beneath the roof tiles. “Jackpot.”
“Treasure?” She crowded close, one hand resting on my knee as she peered at the small box I pulled out, her casual contact lighting my nerves.
Three dice—our kind with ten sides, not the odd human sort with only six—a few silver coins, and—
“My first dagger!” I drew the slender blade, scoffing at how the hilt got lost in my hand. “I wondered where it had gone.”
At Kat’s curious look, I offered it to her, handle-first.
She turned it over, frowning at the fine filigree of the moths decorating the crossguard. “It’s so small.”
“Hmm.” I shrugged, clinking the coins together. “So was I back then.”
As she weighed the dagger’s balance, I stifled a yawn. “You need some sleep.” She covered her mouth, fighting a yawn herself. “And so do I,” she added with a rueful smile.
We put away my treasure, though when she tried to return the dagger to the box, I closed her fingers around it. “You keep it. A knife needs to be used to stay sharp, and I couldn’t use it for much more than a toothpick now.”
She raised an eyebrow as if to call out my exaggeration, but she squeezed the wire-wrapped hilt and nodded. “Thank you. It’s a beautiful blade.” Her gaze fell away and she shifted. “I’ll give it back before I leave.”
Jaw tight, I swallowed my reaction. I didn’t want the dagger back, and I didn’t want her to leave. Instead, I busied myself clearing away the plate and returning the box to the hiding place. Maybe some other child would find it.
We settled into bed, and suddenly the hayloft seemed even smaller. She lay on her side, back to me, and I kept to my half of the bed as I dimmed the drifting lights.
“I can’t picture you hiding away up here,” she murmured into the darkness.
“I was a scrawny child.” Something about not seeing her made it easier to talk.
Who was I fooling? The fact it was Kat made it easier to talk—that had been half the battle in Albion. Wanting to share everything with her but knowing she was a spy. UnCavendish had chosen well.
“I was the smallest at school. The smallest in the practice yard.”
She made a soft sound of amusement. “I definitely can’t picture a small Bastian.”
I fingered the blanket beneath us, trying to convince myself that was an acceptable replacement for touching her. “Believe me, I was. I had my arse handed to me many, many times by every other trainee. Especially the princes, Cyrus and Sepher. They would find me outside the training yard and…”
Cyrus would fist a hand in my hair while he punched me in the gut. Sepher hovered nearby, keeping watch. The younger prince stopped helping his brother after his gift developed. No doubt his tail put him on Cyrus’s list of victims
Dawn’s dirty secret—a prince who was a shapechanger. Not everyone knew, but when he’d lost the ability to hide his animalistic nature, they’d banished him to a ruined palace outside of the city. The Court of Monsters, he called it.
Last I’d heard—I had spies there, of course—he had captured a human assassin and made her his “pet.” I preferred not to linger on what that meant—not when I’d been on the receiving end of his attentions.
“Well”—I cleared my throat and the old memories—“I’m sure you know what bullies are like.”
A low grumble echoed from her, like she was annoyed for young me.
“But it made me work harder. I trained any moment I could. I learned the dirtiest tactics. I watched for my classmates’ weaknesses and noted their injuries. I didn’t hesitate to use them. The ends justified the means.”
She half looked over her shoulder, and I caught the smooth line of her wide cheekbones. “Like aiming for the crotch.”
“Exactly. And it paid off. Eventually, I started to win.”
“Good.” The viciousness of her voice cut through the dark like my Shadowblade.
I could’ve kissed her for it, licked the taste of it from her tongue, fucked her and begged to hear more of her simmering anger. I had to adjust my trousers around my hardening cock.
Down , I ordered it. Yes, I’d apologised, but words were cheap. I hadn’t earned her forgiveness—shown myself anywhere near worthy of it. Not yet.
The story was a welcome distraction. “Then one winter, after I turned sixteen, I shot up. I grew a foot in the space of a few months and bulked out. Everyone else’s gifts had already developed, but mine came then.”
“So fae aren’t born with powers.”
“Stars above, no. Can you imagine toddlers with the power to crush bones with a thought? Or babies who can wield the weather?”
The hay rustled as she shuddered. “The stuff of nightmares.”
“Not that teenagers are much better. I’m sure my poor fathers would call that a nightmare.
They suddenly had a moody boy with unpredictable shadow magic on their hands.
Meanwhile, my classmates started to pay attention to me, and not just because no one could beat me in the training guard.
My hideaway became a different kind of retreat when I brought them up here. ”
“Privacy,” Kat murmured.
“Until I was recruited into the Queensguard, the only privacy I could get.” I scoffed at the memory.
“I’d wait in here until everyone had disappeared before frantically stripping whatever lover had come to sample Bastian Marwood, the traitor’s son.
We fucked, they asked me to do all kinds of things, like they had a list in mind before they came up here, then they left me in the hay, their curiosity and lust sated. ”
The silence drew on. I didn’t regret my past lovers, but something about admitting this to her felt… high stakes.
“You were… a novelty.”
“Not many fae with shadows—not in this realm, anyway. They enjoyed using me, and I had my fun. But… I have different preferences now.”
“You like to be the one in charge.”
She wasn’t wrong, but low in my belly something tightened to hear her say it out loud.
Keeping her hands off me in Albion had been an attempt to remain in control—of the situation but also of myself. But it was a broader preference too. In the bedroom and in life.
When I lost control, that was when things went wrong.
Another yawn dragged on me, saving me from responding.
“Goodnight, Bastian,” she murmured.
My hand pressed into the space between us to stop it from reaching for her hair, which spilled over the makeshift pillow. “Goodnight, Katherine.”
* * *
I dropped into the depths of sleep at once, like a stone cast into a lake. At some point I woke. There was no sound other than Kat’s breathing, which wasn’t the slow rhythm of sleep.
“What’s wrong?” I mumbled.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m just a bit cold.”
No fire, like we’d had in camp. And we were nearing winter. “You should’ve told me.” I lifted the blankets and wrapped my arm around her waist. “Come here.”
With a soft sound that started as surprise and melted into a sigh, she slotted into the space in front of me.
Back against my chest, backside tantalisingly close to my dick, thighs curled over mine.
I was too tired and already sinking back into sleep, unable to do anything about it other than squeeze her close and nuzzle against her hair and enjoy that simple, perfect pleasure.