Steel Heart Iron Claws (The Godkissed Bride #2)

1. Basten

Chapter 1

Basten

B lackness roars inside my skull. Pain stabs behind my left eye like a hatchet to the brain, and I grip the sides of my head before the gods-damn bone splits apart. But there’s more than just pain, isn’t there? There’s something worse.

Darkness.

Nothing.

A fucking void .

Remember her! a voice screams in the back of my mind.

But the memory of whatever—whoever—my mind is trying to cling to slips out of my grasp. I chase after it, stumbling through the midday woods, swiping my hands through empty air as though I can catch the fleeing memory like lightning bugs. But, of course, my hands come up empty.

Before I can drag in my next breath, the void roars again.

Wait…what was I even trying to remember?

A curse rumbles out of my chest and echoes among the trees, sending a flock of crows into flight. Their frenzied wings make me flinch.

My damn armor is too tight. Something is wrong. I’m forgetting something important. I can’t fucking breathe…

In unsteady footsteps, I rip at the buckles of my breastplate as I lurch toward the sound of voices ahead through the trees. With my godkissed senses, I should be able to pick up on every word from hundreds of paces away, but now, everything is a blur. The voices blend with the sound of the clouds roiling overhead, of crows screeching, of my own raging pulse.

I stumble to the edge of a clearing filled with elegantly dressed lords and ladies who make their way toward a row of waiting carriages. Their backs are to me, so I have a moment to observe and try to figure out what is happening.

Why is my head so damn foggy?

The clearing’s tents are black—a foreboding color. A red-robed priest carries an elm staff and a gilded copy of the Book of the Immortals. A patch of freshly turned dirt sprinkled with rose petals reeks of earthy clay.

It’s a gods-damned funeral.

Lord Berolt’s funeral.

Thank fuck—it’s coming back to me now.

The blessing over his ashes. The notably dry eyes of attendees who loathed the man. Then, after the ceremony, Lady Eleonora pulling me into the tent with Rian to confess a long-held secret that upended both our lives in a second.

“Wolf?” Lady Suri notices me first. She’s the young widow of Lord Charlin Darrow, a loathsome minor lord from Bremcote who did her a favor by choking on his own blood. She cranes her neck to search behind me as though surprised I’m alone. “What…what are you doing back here? ”

Her pretty brows pinch in concern.

I open my mouth, but there are no words. Why am I back here?

The last thing I remember, I was leaving Lord Berolt’s funeral in a rush, determined to plunge deep into the woods, away from the crowd, with no intention of ever returning. For all I cared, everyone in this gathering could fuck off to Old Coros and leave me in peace.

But I wasn’t alone. There was a woman in the woods with me…

Lady Suri’s question draws the attention of the other attendees, who turn and stare at me in utter shock.

What the hell? Is there a wildcat clinging to my back?

Wildcat .

Something about the word triggers that void where a memory of someone is missing, and my chest feels tighter than ever, so tight that my lungs scream with the force of a thousand gales. No matter how much I pull at my breastplate’s buckle, it won’t loosen.

I can’t fucking breathe!

Panic cuts into me like a knife. I drop to my knees, loose hair falling over my eyes, bracing one arm against the dirt to keep from falling.

Remember! You bastard, remember!

But there’s only blankness.

Blankness.

Blankness.

Rian shoves his way through the funeral crowd and draws up to a sharp stop in front of me, staring down with incredulity on his face—but I don’t have time to think about Rian. The emptiness in my head swallows all my reason until I’m clawing at the dirt, a roar tearing from my throat .

“Wolf, what the fuck happened?” Rian clasps my shoulder to calm me. “Where is?—”

The instant I feel his touch, I toss his hand away with enough force to knock him back onto his ass. That triggers his guards, who draw their swords in one fell motion.

Without hesitation, they swarm me.

And that’s when I really fucking panic.

My mind goes blank. My body takes over. Acting on instinct like a cornered cur, I shoot to my feet, throwing a punch at the nearest guard’s chin, which sends him hurtling backward. I dodge the second guard’s sword, only to square a strike in his side.

Screams ring out from the crowd. The voices sound strange, too far away. The whole clearing reeks of impossible smells. Winterberries. Fallen snow. An ocean breeze.

My godkissed senses are going fucking haywire.

My heart thunders in my chest, blood roaring in my ears as I pivot on my heel, evading a sword aimed at my midsection. The blade grazes my shirt, and I lunge forward, driving my shoulder into the guard’s chest, feeling the impact ripple through my bones. He stumbles back, and I slap my hand over his on the sword hilt, twist the sword from his grip, and swing it around in a wide arc.

My senses explode with information, each breath sharp with the scent of pine resin and iron. The guards' movements slow to a crawl in my mind’s eye, every twitch and flinch telling me what they’re about to do.

I duck the nearest guard’s swing, his blade hissing through the air where my head was a heartbeat ago.

The taste of copper coats my tongue as my teeth gnash together, biting into my tongue .

I ram my elbow into a third guard’s throat. His windpipe collapses with a sickening crunch. He drops to the ground, gurgling, his sword clattering beside him. The world blurs at the edges, but my focus narrows to a razor’s edge.

“He’s having a panic attack,” Rian says.

He snatches the elm staff from the old priest’s hand and rams it straight into my solar plexus, knocking the wind out of me.

I double over as pain shoots through my nerves. It’s enough of a pause to give the guards a chance to wrestle my arms behind my back and force me to my knees.

Chest heaving, I watch through my sweat-soaked hair as Rian tosses the elm staff aside and squares up to face me. He slowly sinks to one knee so we’re eye-to-eye and grips my jaw to force me to look at him.

“In the name of the fucking gods, Wolf, what’s wrong?”

Fighting for words, I murmur haltingly, “I was…with a woman…in the woods.”

“Sabine,” Rian says plainly, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

My heart clamps like a fist in my chest.

Sabine?

Despite my body’s reaction, the name means nothing to me.

I slowly shake my head, struggling to push through the haze clouding my memory. “She had fire-red hair down to her waist. A white gown with a red key embroidered on the chest.” I spit a line of blood into the dirt. “Fey lines on her arms. Fucking pointed ears, too. It was the Maiden. Immortal Iyre .”

A deafening silence falls over the crowd. No whispers follow. Not a word of gossip, not even from that snake, Lady Runa Valvere.

What I’ve said has robbed the words from dozens of mouths. Even the wind seems to die down until not a single leaf quakes.

Rian finally breaks the silence by grabbing my shoulder. “Immortal Iyre approached you in the woods? You vow to this?”

“ Tamarac .” It’s our boyhood word for complete honesty with one another. I spit out another line of blood. “I’ll swear by whatever god you name that it was her. She appeared in human form but then dropped her glamour. She confessed with her own glowing lips who she was.”

The crowd lets out gasps, and someone wails.

“Release him.” Rian signals to the guards, who let me go. Then his eyes dart to Maximan, the gruff guard who’s been in the Golden Sentinels even longer than Rian’s been alive. “Maximan. Take some men to search the woods.”

“Don’t bother searching for Iyre,” I say. “She’s gone. She cut a portal in the air and stepped through it as easily as crossing a threshold.”

Lord Gideon Valvere murmurs to Rian’s grandmother, Lady Eleonora. “It will be chaos in the streets when this news reaches Duren. We must make haste before the riots begin.”

Already, the crowd erupts into chaos, faces pale with terror as people shove past one another, scrambling for their carriages. Wheels creak and horses snort, hooves striking the ground as drivers whip the reins, desperate to flee to Duren and warn their families before it’s too late.

My eyes latch onto one of the only figures remaining behind: Lady Suri. Her russet arms are folded tightly over her small chest. Her usual sunshine smile has vanished, and now her face is as stark as the night sky.

She drops to her knees next to Rian and grips my arm tightly.

“But where is Sabine, Wolf?”

Again, that name. Sabine . Who are they all so worried about? I told them that Immortal Iyre walks the earth, heralding the Third Return of the Fae, and they seem more concerned with a stranger.

I shake my head. “Did you hear what I said, my lady? The fae are waking. Immortal Iyre has risen from a thousand-year slumber, and we have no idea which of the other ten have also risen. Truth be told, we’re lucky it’s only Iyre. If it had been Woudix, or Meric, or Vale himself?—”

Suri lays into me with an open palm slap to my right cheek.

Her walnut brown cheeks are flushed, her eyes sparking furiously. “I heard you plain as day, Wolf Bowborn! Did you not hear me ? Where is Sabine?”

“Lady Suri, calm yourself.” Rian grips her hand to keep her from slapping me again, but she shoves him away.

“She’s my friend!” Suri cries. “And she was your fiancée until an hour ago, Rian!”

“Fiancée?” I spit out the word like sour grapes. It’s so preposterous that I almost laugh. “Rian has no fiancée.”

As soon as I say the words, however, a pain in the back of my head throbs.

Suri explodes at me, “Right, because you took her for your own! You promised to keep her safe! You said you’d put your own life above hers! So where is she?”

I couldn’t be more stunned if Immortal Artain himself had shot me with a gold-tipped arrow. My own fiancée ? By the gods, I don’t have a fiancée. I’ve barely even slept with the same woman twice. My eyes dart between Suri and Rian, waiting for one of them to break and admit this is some twisted farce, when it’s the last time anyone should be joking.

They remain speechless.

I say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Lady Suri.”

Suri launches herself at me, shaking me hard enough to throttle a rabbit. “You bastard ! You said you’d love her until the end of days!”

Her voice is so laden with pain that it breaks through my irritation. My lips part, uncertain. She must be confused. Gone mad with fear at the fae’s awakening, maybe. But her conviction clearly isn’t in question, and it softens something in me to see a woman so violently committed to a falsehood.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I wish there was something I could tell you. But I know no woman named Sabine?—”

At the same time, shooting pain stabs through my heart until I have to double over and brace my hand against my knees.

Rian hauls Suri off me, taking the blows that were meant for me as she flails against him. “Let me go! You’re no better, Rian! You were an ass to her!”

Rian’s heard enough insults in his life that he doesn’t even flinch. “Lady Suri, stop. Lady—calm yourself, woman!” He plants her firmly on the grass. “Think about what Wolf is saying.”

Suri still struggles, more insults poised on the tip of her tongue, but then a dawning realization crosses her face.

She gasps. “Iyre has a memory affinity.”

“Exactly,” Rian hisses. He gently touches his jaw where one of her blows landed as he mutters, “Did I really merit that punch?”

She doesn’t think twice. “Yes.”

Once their tempers cool, and their breathing returns to normal, they slowly turn to me with eyes full of pity.

Pity? Pity for what ?

All of this makes as much sense as laying a trap for a shadow. If this mystery woman was Rian’s fiancée, there is no world in which I would ever take her for my own. If I’m sure of anything, it’s that I would never betray the man who’s like a brother to me.

Maximan comes striding back into the clearing with his usual dour look. Quietly, he murmurs, “We tracked Lady Sabine and Immortal Iyre’s footsteps about three hundred paces to the south. The tracks vanish into nothing.”

As he always does when he’s thinking, Rian takes out his Golath dime, running it over his knuckles.

Suri huffs resolutely as she motions to a servant to bring her dappled mare around. “If Sabine’s tracks are gone, then she’s gone. You two are welcome to stay here and chase a ghost. I’m going back to Sorsha Hall. To the library, to see what the scholars have to say about fae portals.”

She gracefully swings up on her mare and takes off in a cloud of dried leaves.

Rian offers a hand to help me up. I’m unsteady on my feet, reeling like a stallion kicked me in the ribs. The funeral encampment is a ghost town now. Everyone has fled back to Duren except for a few servants and Golden Sentinels still searching the woods.

“You look like death incarnate,” Rian says low to me.

I feel like we’re boys again, when he dragged me out of the gutter countless times and nursed me back to health. In all my life, he’s the only one who’s ever given a damn about me. Even now, knowing that I’m the true heir to the Astagnonian throne and his greatest threat, he steadies me with a concerned hand.

I drag a hand through my hair. “Rian, I get that there are gaps in my memory, but I wouldn’t have betrayed you.”

His lips firm into a flat line as if remembering a distasteful meal. “Ah, but you did.”

I stare at him like he’s grown a second nose.

“This isn’t a game of Basel, Wolf.” He grabs me hard by the shoulder. “It’s love and war. You fucked my bride on a holy altar in front of me. You gave up a throne that should have been yours by blood for her. And now you’ve lost her—you really don’t remember?”

His look is keen, curious, even a touch fearful, as though my feelings on the matter truly carry weight.

Quietly, I say, “I can’t miss a woman I don’t remember.”

“You truly remember nothing? You feel nothing?” He leans closer, and I feel like I’m on damn trial here.

I shake my head and try to resist the overpowering urge to glance over my shoulder at the shadowed woods. Something calls to me from those shadows. The adrenaline coursing through my veins urges me to hunt . To find the object that I’ve lost.

To find her .

But who am I kidding? I don’t even know what this mystery woman looks like. If she is tall or small. The color of her hair. The contours of her face. Already, I can’t recall the name they said only moments ago.

Rian’s shoulders ease as he releases a held breath.

“You need rest,” he says. “Come back to Sorsha Hall with me, and we’ll get to the bottom of this. ”

“Right.” I smooth a shaking hand over my face, raking back my sweat-soaked hair again. And though my heart urges me not to, I signal the servant to bring my horse. “I’ll follow you anywhere, Rian.” I pause before adding, “As always.”