Chapter 8
Basten
Drahallen Hall’s great room reeks of last night’s feast, though all signs of merriment have long been swept away.
Everyone else has planted their asses in their seats—Immortal Vale at the place of honor, Iyre, Artain, Samaur, Woudix lined up beside him, Sabine opposite.
Maximan sits, too—we had no choice but to tell him about the woken fae, and he still looks shellshocked.
I can’t sit. My boots scuff the stone as I prowl behind them, shoulder tight, jaw grinding. Because the one thing in this room that rattles me isn’t the gods.
It’s that empty chair facing Vale. A throne, just like his. A king’s place. Waiting. Daring me to claim it.
It took half a day to summon the rest of the fae here, from whatever bullshit they were up to, as well as the most influential human leaders, who stand around the edges.
Captain Tatarin, head of Volkany’s mage army. Captain Vallois, the elderly yet graceful female leader of the archers. Captain Perrin, a block of a man who oversees the infantry. And the stoic Captain Huntill of the cavalry.
“Lord Basten, if you continue to avoid sitting in your seat, we’ll never get on with the day.” Artain circles his long fingers methodically on his wine goblet’s base like setting a snare.
Sabine nudges my heavy chair out an inch with her foot.
It still grates my nerves to take a throne—let’s face it, I’m not anyone’s first choice for leadership material—but when she sets those soft eyes on me, beckoning with a pat on the chair’s armrests, my coiled muscles slacken.
I sink down, growling my unease.
“Now,” Vale starts, ignoring my grumbles, hunching forward over an unrolled map of the Near World. “Maximan says that King Rian was last seen—”
“Uhhhnnhnnn.” A groan rolls out from the southeastern corner of the great hall, where Grand Cleric Beneveto’s cadaver is strapped to a chair with leather binds.
Vale’s jaw snaps shut, frustration sparking in his icy blue eyes. He draws in a long breath to find his patience. “As I was saying, if we are to take—”
“Uhhnnhhhnnnnhn.”
His words halt. again. He grimaces. “If we—”
“Huuhhhnnhhuhh.”
Vale tosses up his hands, sitting back with his own groan. “Can’t someone shut up that fucking cadaver?”
Immortal Samaur leans forward, showing off a flash of his golden front tooth. “How exactly do you propose it, brother? Slit his throat? The man is already dead.”
Another moan rattles out of Beneveto’s body, this time punctuated with some phlegm-filled gagging, then a loud hiss of gas from somewhere I’d prefer to remain a mystery.
Captain Tatarin hides her snicker behind her hand, turning toward the window as though something has suddenly caught her eye.
“Then get a damn Deathraiser in here,” Vale demands, “and find out how to kill an already dead man!”
“I can silence him,” Woudix utters, resting his hands flat on the table.
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Oh, fantastic. Woudix is the last person I want to hear from. I fight the urge to tighten my fists on the table as I imagine how good it would feel to slam it into his pale face.
It’s a toss up, really. Which one I hate most.
Immortal Iyre stole my memories.
Immortal Artain tried to kill me.
Immortal Vale also tried to kill me.
Apparently, it’s open hunting season on Basten Bowborn.
But right now, my ire fixes on the handsome God of Death who just has to put his hands all over Sabine to unlock her powers.
“Do it,” Vale mutters, massaging the bridge of his nose.
Woudix pushes back his chair, scraping the hard stone, and stalks toward Beneveto like a wolf. The cadaver’s jaw snaps hard, his broken and bloodied teeth glistening, like he wants to take a bite out of the god.
Fuck.
I recoil, leaning back in the throne. No wonder he was brought to Volkany in chains.
The woken dead have a taste for…flesh?
Woudix approaches in deathly-calm steps, circling the bound and chained cleric. Slowly, his human glamour falls away. Black fey lines break out on his exposed wrists and neck, climbing up his pale temples. His eyes turn entirely black, like window glass at night.
Beneveto snaps his jaw, almost biting Woudix’s outstretched hand.
Woudix doesn’t fucking blink.
He whispers low, in a language that doesn’t seem a part of this world, and sparking black fey shoots out from his fingertips straight into Beneveto’s gaping mouth.
Beneveto’s body goes rigid, then jerks wildly as if fey is bouncing around inside him from throat to belly, dissolving his guts from the inside out.
The cadaver begins to weep thick, gelatinous tears.
More of the clear substance, swirling with faint pearlescent sheen, drips from his ears, nose, and mouth.
Whatever the thick substance is continues to ooze out of his pores until his rotting skin gleams and his clothes are soaked.
Woudix snaps, and the substance begins to boil right there on the cadaver’s skin. Wisps of vapor rise into the air to disappear into nothing.
The cadaver shakes violently one final time, a hoarse groan on his lips, and then slumps backward.
No one speaks.
Everyone waits to see if Beneveto will move again.
There isn’t a face in the great hall—human or otherwise—that isn’t pale as a fucking sheet. That goes for my own, too. Because it’s one thing to see the gods spark fey at their fingertips to heat their lukewarm cup of wassail. Another thing entirely to watch a soul bleed out of its casing.
“So that’s how we go in the end?” I mutter, reaching for my wine goblet. “I’d better drink deep and live harder.”
Woudix slowly circles toward me with a face as stolid as fucking granite. “If you’d rather, I could harvest your soul now, Lord Basten. Save you the torment of decades of human suffering.”
His black fey sparks at his pale fingertips.
I lean forward. “Try it—I dare you.”
Sabine presses her foot against mine under the table, sliding me a warning look.
Woudix smirks softly as he slides back into his chair at the table, folding his hands as if he didn’t just suck a spirit out of Beneveto’s body.
Discreetly, I wipe away a bead of sweat on my temple. For all my jokes, a part of me does wonder if that ass, Beneveto, is at peace now. It was a hell of a thing to watch, but I have to admit, there’s a lightness to the room now that he’s gone.
The cadaver is still, finally. Beneveto’s soul peacefully ushered to the Underrealm.
Clean and final—an easy end. Unlike the absolute fuckery of the future I’m facing down.
But I get a whiff of violets as Sabine leans toward me, placing her hand over mine, and I snap back into reality. Sure, death might bring a certain calm—but what use do I have for peace if Sabine isn’t there?
“As I was attempting to explain,” Vale continues, tapping a heavy finger on the map.
“If we consider Maximan’s information and that of our own spies—” he gestures to Captain Perrin, “—it’s likely that King Rian will attempt to flee to his family’s hometown of Duren.
Unfortunately, we do not know how much progress he's made, or what course he might have taken.”
He drags his finger over various inked pathways from Old Coros to Duren.
Captain Tatarin toys with the dangling timepiece around her neck, nimble fingers plucking at the chain. “What are the chances the Golden Sentinels will remain loyal to the Valvere family if Rian attempts to reassert his power from Duren?”
“It’s almost a certainty,” Maximan utters bleakly.
“The Golden Sentinels have overtaken most of Old Coros and driven the royal army and Rian’s opposition to within the gates of Hekkelveld Castle.
The Sentinel army is ten thousand strong.
The Valvere family well paid them. Privileged them with wine and women.
Since being incorporated into the royal Astagnonian army, they’ve had their pay cut in half and their workload doubled.
Many—if not most—were more than happy to rise up against the opposition.
They want Rian back in power. In Rian’s absence, his generals, called the Cold Coins, are in charge. ”
“And the royal army?” Artain asks, flicking a speck of dust off his leather tunic.
“They remain loyal to the throne, and whoever sits in it,” Maximan answers.
“But there are half as many of them as Sentinels. Many are advanced in age and untested. For the last fifty years, the previous king relied on the Valveres’ Sentinels as mercenaries to do the kingdom’s fighting. The royal army was ceremonial.”
“Lord Kendan,” he continues, “was the one who captured a sentinel and learned of Rian’s escape plan.” He drags a hand over his rough beard. “Called it some maneuver, something like, Tamarind…”
A shard of ice buries itself in my belly. In a hollow voice, I ask, “Tamarac?”
Maximan bows his head to me. “That was it. The Tamarac Maneuver.”
I sit back, reeling. It feels like a damn storm is stirring in my gut.
Tamarac—that was our private word for complete honesty with one another. It meant trust. Bound us closer than brothers. And now Rian uses it as the name for his coup? He might as well be reaching across the border wall to stab me in the back. Either he’s mocking me, or sending a message.
What kind of man has the balls to betray Sabine, lie to me, and still dare to whisper “tamarac” across the wind?
Sabine’s fingernails curl over the map, shredding it until all that’s left of the illustration of Duren are some surrounding barley fields. A chill radiates from her stiff posture, as though she’s ready for war.
Her incisors are out—flashing in the candlelight. She practically hisses, “Rian poisoned the Lunden River valley—why don’t we repay his kindness? Send a flock of starleons to rain plague on his precious city?”
“There are civilians to consider,” Captain Tatarin chimes in, measured and reasonable. “Tens of thousands in Duren might die. Women and children, too.”