Chapter 30
Basten
Idon’t give a fuck about the fae, and I definitely don’t give a fuck about drinking with them.
Still, appearances matter. That’s the thorn in my side ever since taking up the crown; I can’t just saunter off after my royal duties are done for the day and kick my feet up next to a roaring fire. Royal duties are never done.
Especially when the gods are pouring you wine.
So, Sabine and I smile into the late evening on the Immortal Box, pretending Artain didn’t just put up one fucked-up show. Suri returns to the castle to catch up on her Castlekeep duties, but Rian, Ferra, and Folke have never left a party early in their lives.
“You rode well, King Basten.” Captain Tatarin tips her silver goblet to me. The painted hearts on her cheeks are smeared, but she’s one of the rare sober ones gathered in the box—her goblet holds only water. “Not every man would go up against a monoceros with a goddess on his back.”
I wrap an arm around Sabine’s back. “Myst nearly threw me when we hit that forest set. The one with the actors. Guess we forgot to tell her the spears weren’t real.”
Tatarin and Ferra, beside her, laugh.
Vale catches the last bit of the conversation and joins in. “You might be interested to learn that in the true Race of Sun and Moon, both kings were slaughtered long before they ever reached Calisyrune. One by warring pirates, and the other succumbed to an infection.”
Vale blinks pleasantly, as if he’s just told a highly entertaining anecdote.
Ferra’s eyes widen to show the whites, but she quickly clears her throat. “Right…if you’ll excuse me.” She goes off in search of Folke.
Captain Tatarin waits a beat before pasting on a smile. She raises her glass again. “Here’s to the old scribes who turned tragedy into stories.”
Sabine and I exchange a quick, wary look before weakly raising our glasses.
The Valor Bell chimes in the distance from Valor Circle. I count the chimes. Ten, eleven, twelve. Midnight.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Artain snake his arm around Woudix’s neck and tip his head up to whisper in the God of Death’s ear. He doesn’t speak in the Common Tongue—it’s some language I don’t know. Samaur comes over to join them, rubbing his hands together.
Trouble practically sparks in his golden eyes.
The three of them set down their goblets and quietly leave the box.
I squeeze Sabine’s hip, hard, like a signal. “Excuse me—the latrine calls, if you’ll allow me leave.”
An indulgent smile curls her mouth, but the shrewdness in her eyes tells me that she knows perfectly well I’d never ask her permission to go piss.
“Granted.” She mockingly bows, a genie granting a wish, and everyone laughs again. She lifts an eyebrow. “I’ll meet you later in our chambers.”
I signal to Rian. “Come with me—hold my cloak while I piss.”
As we leave, Captain Tatarin starts retelling a bawdy story about two of her soldiers she caught in the woods in a compromised position, and thankfully, no one watches us too closely.
“So where are we actually going?” Rian whispers as soon as we’re in the arena’s breezeway, out of earshot from the others.
I drop my pretense of good humor and mutter darkly, “We’re following the Blades. Artain, Woudix, Samaur. I don’t trust those bastards.”
Rian’s mouth curls in a grim smile. “Kendan didn’t think it necessary to have spies on hand tonight, but I knew better. I quietly tapped a few old connections. They stocked some weapons caches in all the usual places—like we talked about.”
A pulse of relief goes through me. Just like old times. “Good. Here—trade cloaks with me.”
We reach the latrines and squeeze into one of the stone chambers. I quickly swap cloaks with him, unbutton my royal shirt, turn it inside out, then tie a cloth around my face.
As we exit the arena into a cobblestone square, if one so much as glances at us, we’ll look just like two more commoners in the festive crowd.
I close my eyes and smell the air for a trace of iron—the underlying scent of any fae.
“This way.” I tap Rian’s shoulder and head toward Varn Row, the market district, which is all but a ghost town at this time of night.
Rian’s footfalls fall in step with mine. To any passersby, we might look like twins. Brothers, at least. We know one another so well that we barely need words as we navigate the streets with just a look or a small gesture.
“Basten,” he says eventually, breaking the quiet. His voice hitches. “I just want to say. Gods, not to be overly emotional or anything, but you and Sabine accepting me, sins and all. Bringing me into the fold. It means, well—”
“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter.
He laughs softly, then gives me a grateful nod.
“There. They turned left at the corner.” I head for a dirt road up ahead.
“What do you think they’re up to?” he asks.
“Hell if I know, but nothing good. They went behind Vale’s back with that deadman’s puppet show. That was bold. There’s no telling what stunt they might pull next.”
Rian stops, grabbing my cloak. The light from the moon reflects on the shimmering eyeliner lining his upper lashes. “They didn’t go behind Vale’s back.”
I wipe a hand over my face, looking left and right down the lane, anxious to follow that fae scent. Offhand, I mutter, “Yes, they did. Vale said it himself.”
“I don’t care what he said,” Rian emphasizes, his voice a low hiss. “I know a lie when I see one. I’ve bluffed my way through Basel since I was five years old. Vale might have claimed he wasn’t aware, but I assure you, he fully knew.”
A wrinkle of unease turns over in my gut as I stop and fully face Rian. “Why would Vale pretend not to know? Even act angry about it, if he condoned it?”
Rian rubs his own jaw, staring into the middle distance. “Maybe he wanted plausible deniability…I don’t know. But I’m telling you, that man knew.”
A spike of dread shoots through me. There’s something wrong here that goes beyond Artain’s drunken antics.
But before I can follow that uneasy line of thought, I catch a whiff of iron again.
We follow it through the Glassmarket and along the curving lane of High Quarter, following the city wall as it turns south, winding down grid-like alleyways—
—Until we come out right in the courtyard of Hekkelveld Castle.
Where guards are admiring their brand-new spears, freshly delivered from the blacksmith.
Spears that reek so strongly of iron, I couldn’t scent a fae within ten paces if I tried.
I drift to a stop. “Fuck.”
Rian cranes his neck. “What?”
I shake my head, sighing. “We lost them. Maybe they knew we were trailing them.” I start for the entrance, lowering the cloth around my face so the soldiers will recognize me. “Come on. Promise to behave yourself, and we can check on Sabine.”
We’ve just started up the central stairs when we nearly collide with Suri, coming down.
“Basten! Rian!” she says, startled to see us.
“Lady Suri?” Rian asks. “What are you doing up at this hour? Shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep?”
She doesn’t even bother to roll her eyes—too intent on the stack of books she’s carrying, her arms trembling under their weight.
She pointedly ignores Rian and looks at me.
“My assistant just brought me these books. When we locked Rian in the Coffin, he said he was bored out of his mind and asked me to fetch a book he’d been reading in the secret passages.
I forgot to call off the order, and my stewards just finished unearthing all the old books hidden in the passages and wiping off the cobwebs. ”
Rian perks up, stepping forward to take them. “Better late than never. I was halfway through the history of the Panopis corsair fleet—”
“You don’t get them anymore,” she snaps, pulling back the stack. “You don’t deserve them.” She pauses—something bright, almost feverish, igniting in her eyes. “But that’s not what matters. Look.”
She lifts the topmost book as though it’s fragile glass, not paper and leather.
“This,” she whispers, “is the one Sabine has been searching for. The second volume of The Last Return of the Fae. I knew it had to be somewhere in these castle walls!”
A slow, electric tingle crawls up my spine. “The Last Return of the Fae?” I turn sharply to Rian. “You knew about this?”
He shrugs, open-palmed and infuriatingly casual. And gods help me—he looks truly baffled. “Never heard of it. I told you, I was reading about the great corsair sea battles.”
I study him closely.
No twitch. No sweat. No shift of the eyes.
He isn’t lying.
I hold out my hand for the book. “I’ll take it to her. She’ll be grateful, but there was no need to get this to us tonight. Sabine already has a copy of the book. Woudix gave it to her.”
Suri hesitates before carefully passing me the volume. “Yes, I was aware of that.” There’s a hitch in her voice. “I’ve seen it. That one has no illustrations, only text. They…aren’t the same book.”
A chill tears into me, because Sabine has been putting all her trust into Woudix’s book. For fuck’s sake, it’s even supposed to contain the secret to putting the fae to sleep.
Immediately, I crack open the book.
It reeks of mustiness, the pages nearly disintegrating beneath my fingers.
I’ve flipped through the volume that Woudix gave Sabine, too, and at first glance, they looked identical.
This one is also written in a forgotten language, with only a few words of the Immortal Tongue here and there.
But come to think of it, I don’t recall any illustrations in that version.
I flip the page and freeze.
It’s an illustration—one I’ve seen before. One definitely not in the copy Woudix gave Sabine.
“Lady Suri, get some sleep,” I say, my voice suddenly hollow. “I’ll make sure Sabine gets this.”
She wrings her hands, blinking hard in the low lantern light, but nods.
“You, too, Rian,” I snap as soon as she’s gone.
“What?” His retort is sharp, wounded. He scoffs as he motions to the direction of the castle entrance behind us. “What about the Blades?”