Chapter 12 #2
Damn right, I think to myself, because a part of me will always want to see Sabine’s enemies bow to her. You fucked with the wrong little violet.
“Sabine!” the woman cries, one hand on her unkempt red robes, a filthy apron thrown over top. “What are you doing back here, girl?”
I wince at that. Girl. As if she’s still the servant who scrubbed their floors. Surely—surely—rumors have reached them that their former ward is no one to trifle with now.
“Sister Rose,” Sabine says, drawing herself up to her full height like a queen about to lay down a pronouncement. “It’s been a long—”
Sister Rose suddenly bursts into laughter, cutting her off.
The crone doubles over, gripping her belly to hold in her cruel taunts.
“By the gods, am I looking at that same old nag? Myst, was it? Lords above! How is it still standing? We all thought it would collapse on the road to Duren, all bones and sinew. Not enough meat for the coyotes.”
Sabine’s lips hang open in shock. She looks frozen—except for her rapidly reddening cheeks.
I shift on Ranger, snapping to alert.
The Sister doesn’t seem to notice Sabine’s growing anger—or care.
“Oh, that fine lord who bought you didn’t keep you long, did he?
Must have seen how much trouble you were, just like we knew he would.
Threw you out, eh?” She ducks her head back through the gate.
“Sister Ruby! Sister Scarlet! Come see the latest riffraff to blow up to our doorstep!”
No, I think to myself sharply. No, lady. Shut up.
In fact, I swing off Ranger and stride toward her, rage burning me up like a candle. I grab the woman by her shoulder, fisting her filthy robes in my hand. “You seem to forget your place. You’re speaking to a princess.”
The woman’s sneer falters to find a six-foot-six-inch beast hulking over her, but she must think her saintly robes will shelter her from violence, because she tries to pull away indignantly.
Another woman pokes her head out of the gates and bursts into laughter. “Princess of what,” she sneers, “the land of filth?”
These. Fucking. Women.
Oh, little violet, I think. I’m sorry I doubted you.
“I knew Sabine’s time here was bad,” I mutter. “I didn’t realize what bitches you are.” Still gripping the woman by her robe, I tilt my head back toward Sabine. “Wildcat, you want me to lock them in the cellar and throw away the key?”
But there’s no answer behind me.
Sister Rose’s face changes. Her tight wrinkles sag, jowls loose as she stares behind me. The other women fall silent, too. One of them drops to her knees, hands clasped in supplication.
“Immortal Iyre, help us!”
Then, I see it. A reflection in the watery mirrors of Sister Rose’s eyes. It’s Sabine, still atop Myst, only she’s dropped her human appearance and now burns like cold, silver fire.
I let go of the nun, and she falls onto her knees with the others, immediately dropping her head in prayer.
“Please,” Sister Rose begs. “Please. Immortal Iyre, here our prayers—”
“Iyre won’t save you,” Sabine snaps, her voice like flint striking stone.
“Believe me, I know her. She’s not your savior.
Still, it’s fitting you pray to her—because she’s every bit as cold and cruel-hearted as the lot of you.
You want virtue? You want grace? Then you’ve chosen the wrong Immortal.
Iyre doesn’t care who you are or how hard you pray. She taught me that herself.”
One of the women starts sobbing. The third scrambles to her feet and runs back into the Convent.
Sabine opens her palm, fey sparking, and pebbles from the wall loosen in a gust of wind, raining down on the other two women.
She warns, “You’d best run back inside, too.”
The women don’t hesitate. They push hastily to their feet, turn, and stumble over each other to scramble back into the safety of those stone walls.
Sabine throws open her arms, and a gust of wind throws open the enormous, heavy oak gates.
Her eyes are silver mirrors, pooled with her fey blood.
When the doors slam open, the Sisters inside shriek. Two of the three from outside run straight for the chapel, throwing themselves against the door, pounding on it with their fists.
“Matron! Matron, come at once!”
The third Sister falls to her knees in front of a stone statue of Immortal Iyre, choking on her own prayers as she garbles them out between kisses laid at the statue’s feet.
With a hiss, Sabine lifts her hand, and a vine bursts from the floor, knocking the woman backward, away from the statue.
The rest of the convent’s population—maybe a dozen red-robed women—are still at their work tasks, only now catching onto the disturbance. One leads a goat by a rope toward a pile of rotting vegetables. Another hauls a wooden wheelbarrow laden with a cider barrel.
The chapel door opens, and that old bitch, Matron White, strides out.
“What is the meaning of this?” she demands, only to drift to a stop when she sees Sabine in her full fae splendor, blazing as deadly and bright as a star fallen to earth.
“S—Sabine Darrow?” she stutters.
Her eyes flicker to me, but if she recognizes me, it’s dim in comparison to her shock.
The other Sisters wail and fall to their knees. The one with the apple cart cries out, “Sabine, forgive us! We did not know what you were!”
This causes the Matron to snap back to her senses with a deep scowl. “And what is that?” she sneers, her words directed at the Sister, but her eyes on Sabine.
“She is fae!” another wails.
My heart’s clawing at my ribs. The soldier in me is braced for a fight—but I can’t tell where to point the blade. Sabine sits on Myst like a storm barely tethered, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to help her or stop her…or if I even can.
“She’s not fae,” the Matron sneers. “The fae still slumber underground in their dirt tombs. This is some trick. She’s charmed some godkissed mage—this brute here, no doubt.” She jerks a finger at me. “It’s a trick.”
I step forward, placing myself between Sabine and the Matron, heart pounding as I scramble to diffuse the tension. But before I can speak, Sabine dismounts from Myst.
“You pray to the fae,” Sabine says, the ground rumbling underfoot in a way that makes me shut my mouth. “And yet you do not recognize one standing before you.”
I groan inwardly. So much for keeping her fae nature a secret.
“You?” the Matron sneers, and I have to admit, the woman might be dumb but has balls of steel. “You’re just a traitor, flesh and blood, no more fae than that goat.”
Sabine stretches out a long finger. “That goat?”
Oh, fuck.
Sabine presses her hands together, and the goat lowers his head like a puppet, then charges the Matron. He’s no ram, but his horns are powerful enough to slam into the old woman’s frail hips and knock her to the ground.
She cries out weakly, waving a gnarled hand in the air. “Sister Rose—help me up! Fetch my prayer stick. This wicked girl isn’t so big now that I can’t still beat her into submission!”
The other Sister doesn’t move a muscle, but the Matron manages to push to her feet regardless. She shuffles over to snatch up a wooden staff and raises it high toward Sabine—but then smiles darkly.
She turns instead and slams it over the goat, who lets out a pained cry.
Oh, lady. That was a mistake.
I whirl on Sabine, gripping her shoulders, using my body to block her direct sight of the Matron. “Hey. Wildcat. Stay with me.”
Sabine’s lips peel back in a hiss like a beast, her head twisting to try to see around me.
“Eyes on me,” I urge. “Remember?”
“Basten,” she growls. “Let me go.”
“Let me deal with them. I’ll fucking make them rue the day they ever raised a hand to you. You don’t want to do this, Sabine. Your powers…you could destroy half of Astagnon.”
“No.” Her voice is dangerously deep. “Only the part within these walls.”
She sweeps her hands out, and hot bursts of fey blister from her palms. The bolts shoot out to the rooftops, where the dry, aged thatch catches fire immediately.
This fire isn’t like anything I’ve seen before.
It burns a cobalt blue. Blue-tinted pillars of smoke, reeking of sulfur, rise into the night.
I stumble back, heart thrashing.
This…this isn’t natural. At least it’s no fucking part of nature I’ve seen.
In seconds, the bunk houses, the storerooms, and the goat barn go up in flames.
As the Sisters scream, Sabine continues to steadily pluck her fingers in the air.
The barn door swings open on its own, and the goat herd suddenly bursts out, running straight for the convent gate as if herded there.
Two tired old horses break free from the barn, stampeding out of the convent’s walls.
Rabbits scamper out, too, along with a whole family of mice.
Insects wriggle up from below ground and fly or crawl through the gate.
So much for rotten apples, I think. She’s about to wither everything within sight.
Sabine slams her hands closed, and a gust of wind closes the gate again behind the animals. She crooks her finger, and the deadbolt lock falls closed.
“Don’t do this.” I grab her arm, forcing her to face me, gripping her chin in my hands. My mind is racing. I haven’t seen her like this since the Gloaming. “Me. Focus on me. Like we do when I’m fucking you.”
“Let go, Basten!” She makes a fist in the air, and a vine bursts out of the ground to wrap around my boot.
I don’t know what to do.
I can’t stop her.
She’s so much stronger than me—she’s stronger than anything beneath the clouds.
She lifts her hands, fingers oddly angled downward. Her hair writhes around her like living creatures. A circle of swallows from the chapel steeple circles overhead, like a crown of feathers, before flying over the wall, away from the cobalt smoke.
A cold jolt lances through my chest—not pain, exactly, but something worse. The moment my eyes lock on her, I know. That pose, the animals—it’s the exact image etched into the foundation stones of Drahallen Hall.
Immortal Solene, poised above burning Calisyrune.
“Little violet—” I try, but the vine curls up around my chest, continuing up to my neck, and squeezes just enough that I can’t speak.
“You prayed to the wrong fucking goddess,” she says to the weeping women.
And brings her hands down.
The ground tears open, the reek of sulfur gas pouring up. Matron White is swallowed whole. Not even her screams escape the pit. The other Sisters run for the gate, clawing at it, but Sabine sweeps her hands wide, and the blazes of blue fire streak across the courtyard.
Smoke fills the courtyard, so thick and blue that all I can make out of the women are their falling corpses.
“Sabine…” I choke out, but the vine tightens on my throat.
I know she means to keep me quiet. To keep me restrained so I won’t get hurt by her blue fire. But she doesn’t realize…
She doesn’t know…
She’s killing me.