Chapter 3 #3
Servants can’t bring trays of honeycakes fast enough to satisfy my roaring belly—I drain the wine goblets, lick the plates, and still crave more.
Priests cart in overflowing baskets of offerings from my devotees, anxious to win my favor.
I roll every string of rosewood beads between my fingers, breathe in every bundle of rosemary, rub every silk scarf over my shoulders, my thighs, my breasts.
I want to devour every texture, every taste, every scent.
Each time I touch an offering, the chaos inside me eases. The punishing wind down the chimney fades into a breeze. For a moment, I can breathe.
And sex. Gods, the sex.
Basten and I hardly come up for air. It’s been a constant tangle of limbs, stroking and squeezing, a collision of hips only broken to throw a reindeer pelt blanket over our naked bodies when the blushing maid brings in our breakfast trays.
Deep claw marks run down every inch of his back. His neck is bruised from my kissing.
His wrist is marred by my teeth marks.
It…gnaws at me. My father’s warning that acolytes don’t live longer than a few months. I try not to drink from Basten, and push for sex or prayer instead, but every little flash of his tanned skin only makes me more ravenous. Here and there, I can’t help but take a few deep sips.
He begs me to use him and swears I won’t hurt him—but he’s human, and I know his strength is no match for the hunger inside me. Yet still, he offers himself. Again and again. Until I’m terrified I’ll break him.
Somehow, night after night, he proves even stronger than I knew.
And that gives me hope that we will defy the odds.
Over the days, something shifts. Each night, the Gloaming fever burns a little less. The frenzied wind loses its edge. The floorboards no longer quake with every step. I begin to feel…not myself, exactly. But as though the clouds have lifted.
And then one morning, I blink awake with Basten’s slumbering arm thrown over me, and for the first time, I’m not famished. No restless wind whips the trees outside. The hawks circle smoothly.
With this new stillness, a strange power raps at my pulse.
Basten snores in my ear, worn out from last night’s exertions. I rub my bleary eyes and get out of bed, then slide on a robe and open the door.
I step into the hall for the first time in days.
To my surprise, overflowing piles of offerings fill the hallway. There are flower bouquets. Brown loaves of bread by the dozen. Fragrant bundles of fresh-cut lavender.
The heavyset, grizzly-bearded captain posted outside my door straightens in surprise before quickly dropping to one knee.
He lowers his head to me in a rush. “Lady Solene.”
I stare, blinking a few times before I realize he’s speaking to me.
It’s…going to take a while before I get used to that name.
And all the bowing.
And the offerings.
“I—wanted some fresh air,” I say, my throat raspy and unused. “I thought I’d go for a short walk. Just in the gardens.”
Without lifting his head, his eyes shift nervously to the left, and before I can ask what the problem is, voices rise from around the corner.
“Lady Solene? Is she awake?”
“Is that her?”
“Is she here? Lady Solene! Goddess of Nature, gift us with your presence!”
Eager feet scuff, and more voices rise and fall, and before I know it, a practical battalion of worshippers storms around the corner.
Their eyes are wide, adoring. They clutch their hands to their chest in prayer. Worn, wrinkled clothes hang off their frames, and they carry blankets and baskets of food slung over their arms, which makes me realize they’ve been here for days. Camped out in the hall.
Waiting for me.
I retreat a step into my bedroom, hand flying to tighten the folds of my dressing gown. The army captain bolts his feet and pivots hard on the devotees, drawing his sword with a metallic ring.
“Back!” he commands. “You heard Immortal Vale’s command. All pilgrims seeking an audience with Immortal Solene must wait in the second-floor library, outside the boundary of the royal residential hallway.”
But a bright-eyed young mother, cradling her infant in a woolen sling, wags her finger at me. “It’s really her! Look at her ears, it’s true!”
My face blanches. I clap my hand over the shell of my ear, eyes widening to find that it does, indeed, rise to a soft point. When I drag my tongue across my teeth, they snag on incisors. But my skin? It’s pale. Still in human form. No glowing lines to blind them with.
By the gods, I’m only half in human glamour, still groggy from sleep and the Gloaming.
I might as well be half-dressed.
“Umm…” I squeeze my ear, not sure how to banish the point.
“Lady Solene!” A lanky man with a limp hobbles forward, swiping off his woolen cap and clutching it in his calloused hands.
A spiral tattoo, reminiscent of swirling water, marks his chin.
“Give us your favor, my lady. It’s a blessing from Vale himself that you’re waking exactly when we need you most.”
As the worshipper approaches, the army captain thrusts his sword forward as a warning. “You’ve already cluttered the hallways with your damn offerings, now get back before I have to clear you out of the way, too!”
He raises the sword, taking a menacing step forward, and the crowd’s worshiping rumble rolls into uncertainty. Still, the rag-tag pilgrims’ eyes gleam with determination. I spy more of the same spiral chin tattoo among the crowd—it must be their people’s mark.
The limping man dares another step forward, even with the guard’s sword aimed at his chest.
“Damn you,” the captain caws, “I said stay back!”
“Wait!” My feet sweep me forward, my hand falling away from my ear. “Stop, don’t hurt them!”
I’m too short to reach the guard’s raised sword, but on impulse, I lift my palm. I don’t even know what I’m doing. Just following some deep river of knowledge in my bones.
My palm tingles like frostbite.
The guard’s steel glove suddenly frosts over from the base to the fingers, an icy coating spreading up his sword blade in snowflake patterns.
He yelps, stumbling backward, tugging desperately to get the gauntlet off. It falls to the floor with a hiss of ice. Beneath, his bare hand is red, chapped. Nearly frostbitten.
A hush falls over the hallway.
As though one, all eyes turn to my raised palm.
“The Wilderwoman,” a gap-toothed woman utters as if in a trance, speaking Immortal Solene’s moniker.
The air begins to spark with renewed eagerness, and I can feel it—the coming storm. My heart pounds as I step forward with a hand tentatively raised, afraid to rest it on the guard’s shoulder to check on him, in case I turn him to pure ice.
“I’m…sorry,” I gasp, bending down to grab a pair of woolen mittens from among the offerings. “I—I just didn’t want anyone to be hurt.”
As if a peace offering, I offer the captain the mittens.
His breath is quick, like he’s facing off against an enemy army. Even though it’s only me.
He bows his head again.
“They’ve been here for days,” he explains, sliding on one of the mittens with a nod of gratitude. “Immortal Vale consented to them leaving offerings—” he nods to the piles overflowing outside my door. “—but it’s an audience with you they want. Say they won’t return home without one.”
“We’ve no place to return to!” the lanky man cries, clutching his woolen cap harder. “No home, not anymore, thanks to King Rian Valvere!”
My spine pulls straight at this, the other mitten slack and forgotten in my hand. I feel it slip from my fingers and fall with a whisper.
The hallway lanterns flicker unnaturally.
“What about Rian Valvere?” I demand, my soft voice suddenly bladed.
The captain falls back, eyes darting between me and the pilgrims. Most of them are eyeing the oddly-behaving lanterns apprehensively, but the man with a limp steps forward.
“My lady, we’re from the Lunden River valley.
” He motions to the dozen or so pilgrims behind him.
“King Rian poisoned the river that flows across the border into our lands. The fish are all dead. The wildlife sickened. The forests are dying. Entire crops have turned black, leaving us with nothing. We traveled a week with only the clothes on our backs and what meager offerings we had, when we heard the rumors you’d Risen.
It’s divine fate. Our river is poisoned, and a day later, the Goddess of Nature rises.
The only person who can heal our river!”
One by one, the pilgrims drop their knees and bow their heads.
I gape at them openly. From their strained but shining eyes, I can tell that hope is the only thing that’s gotten them this far. My eyes fall to the baskets of dried trout, the mended nets. Every scrap of value these people have, they laid at my feet.
My palms tingle, fey energy prickling beneath my skin, gently asking me to be set free.
I want to help these people, I think. Right Rian’s wrong.
Yet, as soon as I have that thought, I think of when my powers decimated the great hall.
I squeeze my fists tight to silence the fey.
“I can’t,” I blurt out, as a wave of panic crashes over me. Before I know it, I’m stumbling back to the safety of the bedroom. “I’m so sorry. I want to help you, but I…I…”
I might raise the river to drown you instead.
The worshippers push forward despite the captain’s attempts to hold them at bay, pleading voices like nails down my back.
“I’m so sorry,” I choke.
I slam the door behind me, back pressed against the wood like a cornered animal, breath so fast and thin that I’m afraid I’ll pass out.
At the sound of the slamming door, Basten jerks awake. Groggy. Exhausted. He rubs his bleary eyes.
“Sabine?”
There. My name. My real name. It’s like music to my ears that someone still sees the girl in me.
With a broken gasp, I stumble toward the bed. “Basten, I can’t do it. They ask too much. I want to help, but I’m afraid I’ll destroy everything. I…I don’t know how to do what they need me to do.”
He sits up in bed, raking back his tousled hair, then throws off the covers and swings his legs out so he can pull me into his arms. “Hey. Easy, violet. We’ll find the answer. Get someone who can help. Even if we—” he grimaces, “—have to ask one of the fae to train you.”
I collapse against him, my fingers twist the bedsheet like a lifeline. “So many people were hurt when I made the Ramvik River rise. People nearly drowned. What if I hurt someone again?”
He cups my face gently. “You saved my life.”
I still. Slowly, I hiccup. “What?”
“Your father would have slaughtered me if you hadn’t cracked open the earth with your fury. The river came alive for you. You made roots burst through stone and drag him to his knees. You forced him into a bargain for my life.”
I blink, lips parted, robbed of words.
“You think you don’t know what you’re doing,” Basten continues, smoothing his hand down my wild hair, “but even without your control, your power chose life. It chose me. That kind of instinct? That’s not destruction. That’s mercy, Sabine. That’s love.”
I burst into tears, the ground softly rumbling underfoot, and fall into the arms of the only person who still sees me as human.