Chapter 10
Basten
This gods-damn comb.
Standing waist-deep in the stream, naked as the day I was born, I drag a silver comb I pilfered from Drahallen Hall through my dripping hair, where it catches on a snag, and no matter how I tug, won’t work itself free.
I’m not one for combs in general—let’s be clear. But I have plans for today. Big plans. And it won’t do to have pine sap tangling my hair in filthy knots, my usual look.
I left Sabine back at the clearing to groom Myst, who decided straight after tromping through the stream that was the perfect time to roll in a patch of dirt.
Sabine will be busy for a while.
Water runs down my bare torso, frigid as glacier ice, finding the valley between my muscles. Winter is coming to Volkany, and it won’t be that much longer before it reaches Astagnon, too—trailing our heels on this journey like a silent hunter.
But I clamp my jaw against the chill. It keeps me alert—not that my nerves need any more stoking today. I’m practically jumpy as a baby goat.
“Come…on.” I tug the comb once more, and it finally pulls free.
I toss the comb on the riverbank, next to my open knapsack. The bar of lye soap, too. It’s done as much damage as it can. I’ve scrubbed every damn inch from my scalp to my toenails, until my skin is raw, and I smell fresh as a damn chambermaid.
As I grab my towel from a tree branch, the forest mouse scampers onto a river rock near the bank, wiggling her whiskers at me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter. “I’m hurrying.”
Truth be told, it wasn’t easy to set up my plans for today with a mouse.
I don’t have Sabine’s godkiss; I can’t understand its squeaks, and it can’t make sense of my barked curses.
I was hopeful that we’d manage, since we reached a tentative way to communicate while exploring the murals in Drahallen Hall’s basement.
Turns out we were back at square one. Before I left Norhelm, the mouse and I spent a few frustrating days pointing at book illustrations to one another and trying—uselessly—to reach an understanding. If it hadn’t been for Captain Tatarin’s intervention, we’d be sunk.
One of her spies reported seeing me in the library with a mouse on my shoulder. She came to me, suspicious at first, until I explained my plan. She stared at me like I’d sprouted a second nose, then burst into laughter.
“Oh, men,” she chuckled.
She sent for a member of the army’s mage division who was godkissed with the ability to communicate through art across any language. Apparent, that even goes for squeaks.
The young man pulled out a slate tile and a horsehair brush. He dipped the tip in water, then painted on the slate in quick strokes that soon evaporated, leaving room for another set—but his skill was so keen that within merely a few gestures he could convey an entire scene.
The mouse dipped her paw in his water pot, then swept it over the slate, communicating back to him in a way that made no damn sense to me. But the artist could read pages in those paw prints.
Luckily, Captain Tatarin and her mage also understood the word “discrete.”
So, here I am in the middle of the Volkish woods, about to do the craziest thing of my life.
But, fuck it.
There isn’t a crumb of doubt in my heart.
I’ve wanted to marry Sabine since the first time I saw her.
Or, rather, the first—new—time seeing her.
When I entered Drahallen Hall in chains, and she had her lips all over that bastard Artain’s navel, and she looked at me with those big sea-blue eyes so full of surprise.
I fell for her all over again.
Hard.
So hard I haven’t recovered from the fall.
I wade to the bank, scrubbing the towel over my hair, and then climb out and wrap it around my waist. The mouse bobs on the river rock, knitting her little paws together in excitement.
“Moving as fast as I can here, furball.”
I throw the towel aside, naked to the world, and take a deep breath.
My last breath as a bachelor—if fate is kind to me today.
As I reach for my trousers, a pair of goldfinches land on my knapsack, inspect the silver comb, and then fly off as if on a mission.
I dry my ass and pull on the trousers, doing up my belt.
Then, I tug on the fancy embroidered cotton shirt Captain Tatarin insisted I pack instead of the loose linen ones I’ve worn forever.
It’s not my style—black with golden threads woven in the shape of antlers over the shoulders—but I suppose I can be uncomfortable for a few minutes.
The mouse watches as I button up the shirt, wrinkling her nose as her head turns this way and that. As soon as I reach the top button, she leaps onto my trousers, digs in her tiny claws, and crawls right up the fabric.
“Hey! What the hell?” I hop from one foot to the other, tickled by the pinprick claws poking through my clothes.
She finally settles on my left shoulder, then begins combing her tiny paws through my hair. I flinch and grumble, but she seems determined to fix what the comb could not.
The goldfinches return with a stem that they unceremoniously drop on my head. I duck from the floral assault, snatching the stem. It’s a thistle. So dark purple it’s nearly black, wild, and as coarse as me.
“Sure, sure, I’ll admit it,” I mutter aloud. “Good choice.”
How wildlife knows that I’ve planned today as our wedding, I have no fucking idea—but I’ve learned to shut up and accept the impossible whenever Sabine is around.
So, I slip the thistle stem into my upper buttonhole, twisting it about a dozen times to get the best side showing.
The mouse’s claws still pluck at my hair, and I grumble, my voice rattling with nerves, “Done yet?”
Fuck me sideways. Between flower-delivering birds and a mouse’s preening, I’m like a gods-damned storybook princess.
My chest rattles like a dice cup. I’ve never felt nerves like this, not even on the battlefield. I tell myself to calm the hell down. Sabine said she’d marry me. We’re engaged. She still wears that frayed bit of twine like it’s gold and diamonds.
Which ought to reassure me.
Except I don’t remember giving it to her.
It was before.
Before Iyre stole my memories, before her father drove the Serpent Knife into her chest, and a slumbering goddess awoke in her skin.
In so many ways, Sabine is the same girl she used to be—the one who warms my heart and makes my blood hot.
But even with all my heightened senses, I can’t see what’s going on inside her head.
Gods help me, I don’t know if one of the ten rulers of the known world will still accept a brute like me.
Well, you bastard, gotta try.
I throw my shoulders back, smoothing a wrinkle from my shirt, nudging away the birds trying to adjust my boot laces. “That’s enough, ladies.”
With my heart practically lodged in my throat, I make my way back to the clearing on shaky legs, clearing my throat about a thousand times.
I stop at the edge of the clearing, hanging back behind a cluster of holly. I want to simply look at her for a moment.
Sabine has her back to me, hands resting on her hips, horse brush dangling from one finger, head cocked at a curious angle.
I don’t know what has her attention, but I’m struck speechless. Because there’s a chance—if she says yes, which let’s be honest, is more than my grumpy ass deserves—that this honest-to-fuck goddess will be mine forever.
I muster my courage and step forward, a twig snapping under my boot.
Sabine’s head jerks at the sound, but she keeps her eyes on Myst. “Basten, come look at this. It’s the most peculiar thing.
These chipmunks appeared out of nowhere to crawl all over Myst’s mane and tail.
I thought they must be hunting up nesting materials, but no—they’re braiding her hair!
They even tried to braid mine, but I told them it tickled too much.
Isn’t that strange? They won’t tell me why, sneaky little things.
And a whole flock of blackbirds has been dropping wild gorse and heather blossoms all over the clearing. I didn’t call them, I promise—”
A soft laugh huffs on my lips, because that little forest mouse has worked a gods-damned miracle. Somehow, even though, according to Sabine, most creatures can’t communicate across species, the furry wonder has set up a wedding party complete with flower garlands.
At my silence, Sabine looks over her shoulder, eyes still bright with wonder from the animal activity. But then she sees me—in this ridiculous fancy shirt, hair combed for the first time in weeks—and her expression shifts.
The amusement fades.
Her mouth parts slightly, eyes going wide again, but not with charm this time. More like disbelief.
The thistle in my buttonhole, the flowers blanketing the clearing, the braids in Myst’s hair.
“O—oh,” she says softly.
A moment of terror slams into me. Fuck, is that a good “oh” or a bad “oh”? Until I hear the sweet little hitch in her breath, the soft flutter of her pulse that I recognize as joy.
Thank the fucking gods.
She continues to stare at me like I’m a painting come to life as I approach slowly, rubbing my hands together as I give a nervous chuckle.
“Sabine,” I start, stopping awkwardly a few feet in front of her, then have to clear my damn throat once more.
“We’ve both known each other by so many names.
But, to me, across lost memories and ones made anew, you’ll always be my violet.
The sweetest damn thing I’ve ever tasted.
Better than candied blossoms. Better than anything. ”
I swallow hard, heart pounding.
“If you’ll have me now, I’d like to make you my wife.”
I’ve never seen bigger eyes, even on a doe with her sights set on my arrow.
“B—Basten,” she sputters, and as though jolting from a spell, starts combing through the tangled curls of her hair, suddenly aware of the dust on her travel clothes. “I—I don’t know what to say. How did you— I don’t see how you— And here? Now?”
She sweeps her arms wide to gesture to the clearing.