Chapter 12
Basten
Two more days until we reach Old Coros.
The closer we get, the more the old injury in my shoulder hurts.
Sure, any soldier’s body is a smorgasbord of old aches and pains, but this feels different.
It’s as if with every one of Ranger’s steps, my body tries to tighten like rusty armor.
Like I’m headed straight into war, and it’s shouting at me through the pain: Remember how much this hurt? Why do this again?
There’s a part of me that would love to jerk the reins to a sharp left, get the hell off this route, and ride straight to Salensa with Sabine.
See the ocean, like she always wanted. Hunt for damn seashells.
Eat oysters until we burst. Say fuck it to the world of gods and men alike and dive through the waves.
But I’m going to be king.
King, like in a fucking fairy tale.
The sun is painting the back of my neck red, burning deep into my aching muscles, and if it’s possible to sweat on the insides, I would be.
I glance at Sabine. “There’s an inn a quarter mile ahead, if I remember right. We can stop for lunch.”
Her head bobs in a nod that feels automatic, like she’s a million miles away.
I try again. “I’d kill for something other than hard tack.”
“Mmm,” she agrees vaguely, distracted.
I give her a closer look. The wedding was damn blissful perfection, but in the days after, we’ve both fallen silent. I’ve been mired in my own thoughts—worried with every step toward Old Coros about what it will mean to wear a crown.
Of course, it makes sense she’s a mess of fears, too.
I give my senses free rein to inspect her, pick up her little tells. Her stomach is grumbling—she’s ignored her hunger pangs. She’s worked her wedding ring so much that it’s worn a groove in her skin. She’s squeezing her legs too hard around Myst.
I start, “Anything on your mind?”
Her lips twitch as if unsure what—or how much—she wants to say. The sun disappears as we plunge deep within a copse of black walnuts, working a chill into my limbs. A part of me wonders if the trees stretched extra tall, just now, so the shadows would match their goddess’s mood.
My attention snags on her veins, pulsing beneath her skin with something thicker than blood. She’s fighting an urge. Something dark.
For what? For…my blood?
“I want to go to Bremcote,” she says suddenly in a deep voice I barely recognize as her own.
Oh.
I swallow, telling myself to keep a steady breath, but even Ranger beneath me picks up on the shift in my nerves. He flicks his ears back in alertness.
“Into the actual town?” I clarify. “There’s a path around it. We needn’t go directly through it.”
“Into town,” she says.
My wildcat is flashing her claws.
“As you wish.” I keep my voice neutral, giving her restlessness nothing to rebel against. “After lunch, we’ll take the road south and be there by this evening. You can visit with your old servants over some pints.”
A light flashes, like sunlight glinting off Myst’s polished saddle buckles—but then I feel an odd chill and realize Sabine’s fey lines are breaking out on the exposed skin beneath her dress sleeve, creeping up along her neck above her neckline.
She doesn’t seem to realize she’s dropping her glamour.
“Not the manor house.” She speaks in that deeper, older voice that sets my damn nerves jangling like an alarm bell.
“We can bypass the village of Bremcote entirely, in fact. There’s nothing for me there.
The only person who was kind to me was Suri, and she’s in Old Coros.
I bear no ill will toward the servants—they had to obey my father’s commands.
As for him, I can’t get revenge on a corpse. ”
I choke a little on the word. Revenge? Who said anything about revenge?
“That’s one good deed to thank Rian for,” I jest, still trying to break the tension. “Killing the old bastard.”
It’s dark humor, but still lighter than her mood.
She doesn’t laugh. In fact, she doesn’t seem to hear me at all.
“It’s the Convent I want.” Her eyes are wild, glowing softly. “Matron White and the Sisters.”
With every word, her fey lines pulse brighter. Sabine is blazing now, lighting up the darkened shadows in place of the sun. Ranger tries to shy away. Even Myst is flicking her ears, on extra alert.
I mutter, “Going to rot all their apples on the branch?”
Her eyelids lower, a hint of a vicious smile on her lips. But then she seems to snap out of her dark mood and says in her normal voice, “Good plan.”
We ride on. Lunch is a quiet affair. We’re the only ones at the ramshackle little inn, and Sabine seems distracted, plucking at her travel cloak. My hoped-for beef stew is a long-lost fantasy. All we’re offered is rock-hard bread and boiled turnips.
When we reach the next fork in the road, I stop at the directional sign.
Every voice in me screams to keep riding, to follow the road straight to Old Coros. Gods only know what’s happening behind those walls—cloaked priests conspiring, Golden Sentinels smuggling Rian in through a bread wagon. The need to be there claws at me.
But the quieter Sabine gets, the more I feel her slipping away. And that terrifies me more than anything behind city gates. I need to talk to Folke once we get to the city. Gather my allies around me. Start making contingencies—not just in preparations against Rian.
Maybe—gods help me—against Sabine, too.
Sabine stares at the directional sign, chewing on her bottom lip. When I ride up beside her, she flicks me a smile that feels a little forced. She tries for a joke. “Prepare to rot apples.”
I smile back, relieved—but it doesn’t reach my eyes.
We pass a sprawling sheep farm dotted with windmills.
It’s familiar. This is the same route I took when Rian first sent me to pick up Sabine to escort her to Duren.
I might have lost my memories of her, but I remember my feelings before I arrived at Bremcote.
Before I met her. I was furious to be sent to a backwater village after some pretty girl—I wanted to be at Rian’s side.
Protecting him from enemies. Trying to get back in his good graces.
We pass through the few roads that make up Bremcote village, but all the shepherds are out with their flocks.
The only people we cross paths with are a pack of children in burlap clothes, who chase after a wooden hoop with such glee that we’re ignored.
Once, a merchant steps out to stretch on his general store’s front steps, and he takes one look at Sabine—even in her human glamour—and pivots back inside to shut the door.
Chances are good he recognizes her. By now, surely gossip has spread about King Rian’s former fiancée, the godkissed girl from Bremcote who turned out to be a Volkish traitor.
There’s a chance he’ll send a message to Old Coros, but then again, we’ve passed dozens of travelers on this journey who have slid Sabine a wary look. Besides, Rian’s forces have to know it’s only a matter of time before we return.
Sabine takes the lead now that we’re on her home turf. She leans forward on Myst, eyes hungry as she scans the rolling hills outside of the village.
“It’s pretty here,” I observe. “Like a painting. Ponds and sheep. Willows.”
“I guess,” she agrees.
After the next rise, I try a more direct approach. “Want to talk about it? The Convent?”
Her lips press tightly together. She gives a sharp shake of her head.
I sigh inwardly. Great work, Basten. Like always, I’m not the best with words. Or feelings. Or especially putting them together. This is so far out of my wheelhouse I might as well be two kingdoms over.
But I try again.
“Let’s remember, no one knows you’re fae. Not yet. We’re saving that secret until the right time.”
“I remember,” she reassures me.
I flick my eyes to the road ahead. “Why not let me deal with the Sisters. I have no qualms about rubbing old ladies’ faces in goat shit. I’ll tell them you sent a message—me, with a wooden baton to break down the damn cell they used to lock you in.”
She flicks me a grateful glance but shakes her head. “Thanks, but I need to see their faces myself. I want them to see me. Think hard about how much they wronged me and Myst and—”
We crest the hill, and I see it before she does.
But only by a split second.
Sun-bleached stone walls ten feet high, surrounding several acres, with a heavy oak gate. The only thing visible above the wall is a church spire.
Out here in the middle of nowhere, it can only be one thing.
Sabine settles back in the saddle as if struck. Myst stops short, too, her tail swishing in irritation.
I rub my shoulder—that damn old ache is going to kill me. “So that’s it?” I ask.
“That’s it.” Her voice is distant.
I’d clung to a small hope that maybe the Convent had been shut down, or the old Sisters inside had all died from some plague. But even from here, I can smell a cookfire burning. Hear the bleating of goats, followed by a woman’s sharp scold to them.
Sabine nudges Myst forward with a heaviness like they’re both somewhere I can’t reach them.
“Fuck their apples, right?” I say.
And get no response. As far as Sabine is concerned, I don’t think anything exists anymore beyond her and the Convent.
We’re twenty feet from the gate when the hinges suddenly groan, and a bent-over woman shuffles out, dragging a sack of apple mash with bees buzzing around it, muttering curses under her breath.
She stops short when she sees us.
She’s younger than I expected. Maybe late forties.
The only Sister I’ve met before was the ancient and wizened Matron White, when she came to Hekkelveld Castle for Rian’s coronation.
But despite this Sister’s relative youth, the deep sags at the corners of her mouth speak of decades of scowls, frowns, and sneers.
Her eyes scan over me—a ripple of licentious interest entirely unsuitable for a nun—but then land on Sabine.
Recognition fills her eyes. She positively yelps in surprise.
I see Sabine straighten, hear her pull in a clean breath.