Chapter 17 Sabine
Sabine
Midday sunlight spills through the bedroom window to light up the mauve folds of my coronation gown. The buttons are all fastened, all three hundred of them. My hair has been styled by the kingdom’s finest beauticians. I’ve been scrubbed down to my toes.
We’ve barely been in Astagnon three days, and already, we’re about to call ourselves its rulers.
The Valor Bell chimes in the distance, and I count the gongs.
“Eleven,” I say as I turn to Basten. “One more hour as commoners.”
Basten leans on our bedroom’s large table, dressed in a shirt embroidered with deer antlers, as he fumbles with golden cufflinks. Without meeting my eyes, he murmurs, “Darling, there’s never been anything common about you.”
I take pity on him and help him with the cufflinks, then smooth my hands over his shirt’s antler embroidery.
Already, it’s become the symbol of his reign.
We have Ferra to thank for the inspiration; she latched onto the interlocking antler pattern immediately and promptly ordered new banners to be sewn, as well as for the symbol to be hastily stitched onto every royal soldier’s shirt, and the emblem to be painted on the castle gates.
Basten plucks at his belt, unfastening and fastening it again.
“Are you well?” I ask, picking up on his uncharacteristic tics. “Don’t tell me the bold Basten Bowborn, who faced down a goldenclaw, is nervous.”
He combs his fingers through his hair, messing up the style Ferra spent an hour on, and frowns down at the table.
The surface is inked as a map of Astagnon, from the Mag Na Tir Forest to the Panopis Coast. An iconic table. One of a kind, transported here from Sorsha Hall at Rian’s command.
For his new bedroom—our bedroom now.
It’s strange, settling into a space where Rian once lived.
The room bears all the marks of him everywhere we look.
The enormous bed dressed in black silk sheets—Rian’s favorite color.
The heavy oak furnishings still bear the Valvere coin emblem.
Even the sideboard is stocked with his favorite brand of whisky.
He was only here for a few months—but his ghost is everywhere. I swear that, at times, I can even smell his incense.
“Nervous?” Basten says, still not quite meeting my eyes. “No. I was nervous when we were married, afraid you’d turn me down. This is a piece of cake. You know I just bristle at all the decorum.”
I give him a sympathetic smile. “You’re going to have to get used to it. We both are.”
I go to the window, peering down anxiously at the courtyard. The castle gates are quiet now, but I know that the Golden Sentinels camped out on the other side might stage another attack at any moment.
“What are people in town saying about today?” I can’t keep the squeak out of my voice.
He pauses, listening, and then clears his throat. “Nothing for you to worry about. Folke’s been spreading rumors that all that talk about you being a traitor was spread by Rian. That Rian wanted to discredit you.”
“And it’s working?” I press. “People believe it?”
He hesitates. “Some do.”
My meager bravery shrivels. There’s something odd about the way he’s holding back, only giving me partial truths.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask.
Basten finally settles on a belt hole and secures it, saying breezily, “What? Nothing.” Then, he glances at Rian’s brass clock on the mantelpiece. “The guards will be here soon to get us—are you ready?”
I study him for a few moments, trying to figure out what’s going through his head. There’s something he isn’t telling me. At the same time, I don’t want to press too hard. Because it could open up the fact that I’m hiding something from him, too: Woudix’s secret visit in the woods.
I turn back to the window, and a different type of fear spreads up my throat, bitter and tangy. “Today the people are going to crown me as their queen—and I’m lying to them. I’m not even one of them. Not human.”
“Hey.” Basten takes my hands, then steps back to take me in, wearing the coronation gown.
His voice is low and steady. “Look at you. If there’s a lie here, I can’t find it.
From where I stand, you are every bit a queen.
” His thumb brushes my knuckles. “Fae, human, all that matters is where you heart lies.”
A swell of love for him—tangled up with my own hopes and insecurities—bubbles up around my heart. I squeeze his hands, looking down at my wedding ring.
“I can do this.” My voice hitches at the same time that my fae blood burns, wanting release. “As long as you’re at my side.”
He leans in to kiss my forehead, and there isn’t a trace of deception now. “Always.”
We’ve barely broken apart before a knock comes at the door.
We following the royal guards through the castle and into the Reliquary Garden.
Hekkelveld’s layout is the inverse of the one at Drahallen Hall—the gardens here are within the main castle’s star-like wings, not outside of them.
Which means the gardens are smaller, more intimate, but today the Reliquary Garden is packed to within an inch of its life.
As far as I can tell, most of the attendees are castle staff and advisors, by necessity.
The city is at war, so citizens of Old Coros can hardly stroll through the barricaded castle gates to witness the ceremony.
But I spot heralds posted high atop the castle walls, ready with flags to alert the city to their new king and queen.
Basten holds my hand with a firm grip—sturdy as stone—as he leads me down the pathway toward a makeshift dais that has been erected by the Wall of Remembrance, where murals of the great kings are etched in white marble.
Maybe a graveyard isn’t the most romantic place for a ceremony, but then again, this isn’t our wedding. Our wedding was perfect in its simplicity: The birches. The forest mouse. The deer bowing before us.
This coronation? This is deserving of all the weight and gravity of centuries of rulers before us.
The attendees gathered between the headstones crane their necks, eager to see every second. This many eyes on me make me want to shrink into myself. Hide behind the heavy gown. Two elderly men in the front row—old generals—whisper among themselves, eyes locked distrustfully on me.
The crowd shifts and murmurs. I don’t need Basten’s hearing to pick up on my name whispered from one person to another, and it feels like a flock of crows takes off in my stomach. All fluttering wings, sharp caws.
Are they whispering that I’m a traitor?
Calling for my arrest?
Or have Folke’s whispered rumors worked?
Out of the corner of my eye, I glance at Basten, searching his face, aching to know what his godkissed senses are picking up in the crowd’s murmurs. His jaw is tight, his freshly shaven face grave—the weight of what this day means for him carved into every line.
After all, when the sun sets, he’ll be a king.
Everything will change.
And yet—even standing beside his own crown—his eyes keep coming back to me like I’m the only thing that matters.
And, gods, nothing in this world could ever matter more to me than him.
Ahead of us, Kendan stands on the dais behind a podium that is draped in a banner with Basten’s antler crest, looking official in his Lord of the Iron Banner chainmail sash. On two velvet pillows beside him rest the king and queen’s crowns.
The larger of the two is forged black steel, intricately shaped like a wreath of raven feathers. The smaller—mine—is a circlet made from a single, thin steel feather, dipped in gold at the tips.
I’m so fixated on the crowns that it takes me a moment to notice, from the corner of my eye, bright red robes among the crowd.
A dozen Red Church priests and Sisters stand on either of the dais’s sides, like a gauntlet I’ll have to pass through to earn my prize.
My feet stumble to a stop.
“What—what are they doing here?” I whisper in Basten’s ear.
“We need the support of the Red Church,” he reminds me, low and quick.
Basten might have a point, but the fae in me doesn’t want to hear it.
The silver energy beneath my skin pulses with anger, wanting to be let loose.
Sure, these aren’t the same Sisters who locked me in the convent’s cellar for days on end with nothing but brackish water to drink.
And yet these Sisters, here and now, wear the same familiar red robes, severe Immortal Crown braids, and deep frown lines edging their lips.
Are they really any different?
In fact, that last Sister on the left, the one with a bandage on her neck, could be the spitting image of Matron White.
In fact, it’s unnerving, the similarities. Every step closer, I keep waiting to see a different chin, green eyes instead of blue.
When we’re ten feet away, my feet stop dead.
It’s…her.
It is Matron White.
I lurch backward, heart fumbling wildly in my chest. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be more than ash!
I gasp, clutching my chest, so stunned I feel frozen.
Basten suddenly curses under his breath, and turns sharply to face Kendan, voice a low growl. “She wasn’t supposed to be here!”
Kendan shifts his weight, anxious not to ruffle feathers on such an important day. He mutters quietly, “It was a last-minute decision. We knew you wouldn’t support it, but you’ll see that her presence is necessary.”
“Wait.” I grab Basten’s shoulders, fingers digging in like claws. “You knew Matron White was alive?”
He winces, turns to me with soft eyes and starts to explain, “Sabine—”
But Matron White steps forward, stealing the attention, and falls dramatically to her knees at my feet.
Her head bows, her hands reach up beseechingly, her eyes roll back in her head as though she’s prophesizing. “I sense it…a change in the air…divinity itself walks amongst us…this woman, she is not mortal! She is greater even than a queen. She is fae! She is a goddess! She is…Solene!”
The crowd stirs, voices rising in confusion.
Basten tenses, his fingers coiling into a fist, and mutters low and angry, “You scheming bitch.”