5. Basten
Chapter 5
Basten
E yes like the ocean shallows.
One perfect freckle on her right cheek.
Those breasts .
I’m moaning aloud like a thirteen-year-old boy when I wake, all tangled in Rian’s sheets, a sheen of sweat coating my skin. She’s there. Right at the edge of my mind. In the dream that’s slipping away…
“You filthy fucker.” A pillow smashes into my face. “That’s the last time I give you my bed.”
Groggy, I blink awake to find Rian folding his blanket from where he slept next to the fireplace.
I run a hand through my damp hair. “What—what are you on about?”
“If anyone’s going to stain my sheets with nighttime spunk, it’ll be me. With the town’s latest whore. Now clean yourself up and finish packing. The carriages will be ready to leave at dawn. Unless you’ve changed your mind about coming to Old Coros? Decided to stay here and make love to my mattress? ”
I throw the pillow back at him. “Fuck you. I’ll be packed.”
It doesn’t take me long to gather my things. I nod to the guards as I leave the castle and head for the city gates.
As I make my way to the game warden’s cottage I call home, I’m struck by how deserted Duren is. Most of the shop windows are boarded up in fear of looters. The markets are empty. The only increase in traffic comes from more drunks and opium hounds than usual, staggering down alleyways or passed out in doorways. I guess everyone deals with the news of the Third Return in their own way.
In another life, I’d probably be with those bums. Drooling into the filth. If Rian hadn’t seen potential in me all those years ago.
When I finally shove open the door of the game warden’s cottage, I take a moment to look at my home—my life—with a stranger’s eyes.
The unmade bed.
The carelessly stocked cupboards.
The single chair by the fireplace.
Rian gave you a chance to make something of yourself, and this is the best you did? Bravo, Wolf. Bravo.
It doesn’t take long to pack my knapsack with my few belongings. My bow and quiver go into the pile of things to take. My hunting knives in their leather roll-up bag. An extra pair of boots and two pairs of woolen socks. When I get to Old Coros, my backwoods forest garb will make me look like a caveman compared to the capital’s prissy highbrows, but so be it.
I tug out a few extra pairs of trousers and shirts, but when I root around in the back of my dresser drawer, an unexpected scent smacks me in the face .
Before I can stop myself, I grab a ratty old shirt and press it against my face. I breathe in deep, like an opium addict getting his next hit.
Violets .
Instantly, I’m slammed with desire so strong that my heart tries to fight its way out of my chest. My pulse flares, sizzling like oil tossed onto a fire. All that’s nothing compared to the damn surge of blood to my cock, which instantly hardens.
It’s her scent. It has to be. She must have borrowed this shirt.
The faceless woman I only know as the Winged Lady, because a single minute after hearing her name, it keeps getting sucked back into that yawning abyss in my head.
But this? The scent of violets? The muscle memory of a woman’s skin smooth as petals? This I haven’t forgotten. It lives somewhere beyond the part of my mind that Iyre ripped out.
My legs go slack, and I sink down to my bed like a sack of beans, causing the joists to groan under my weight.
A matching groan rumbles out of my chest as I bury my face in the shirt again, rooting like a damn pig for every last trace of her scent, breathing her in as fast as my lungs can fill.
My arms start shaking uncontrollably. A rush of panic rises in me, the feral urge to swing at anything that dares approach me, blinded by a need to remember, to REMEMBER…
I growl into the shirt, fingers twisting in the fabric, ready to tear the world apart for a single memory of this woman.
“Wolf? May I enter? Um—is this a bad time?”
A woman’s soft voice at my door makes me jump, and I stuff the shirt into my knapsack, though it’s a challenge to convince my fingers to let it go.
“Lady Suri.” My voice is gruff as I quickly curse myself for leaving the front door open. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She steps into the game warden’s cottage apprehensively as though I might have set snares in the floorboards. As her wide brown eyes scan my humble pantry, the underwear hung to dry by the fire, the piss-bucket under my bed, I take a closer look at the Lady of Bremcote.
Truth be told, I’ve never paid much heed to Suri. When I first met her, she was an afterthought. The pretty young Kravadan girl unfortunately married to Charlin Darrow.
When Charlin came to Duren to blackmail Rian and brought Suri with him, I found her a curiosity. She managed to maintain a sunny disposition even while married to a drunken lout. Hell, she even cried at his death. Somehow, she’d been able to see the sliver of good in him when no one else could.
Fuck if I know how.
Suri stops her inspection of my meager belongings when she spots my half-packed knapsack. Eyebrows lifted in surprise, she says, “You’re going to Old Coros with the Valveres?”
I flip closed the knapsack flap, protective of the shirt with her scent on it.
“Of course. I owe Rian everything, least of all my service.”
Suri’s lips press tightly, her face at war with itself, before she blurts out, “If rumors are to be believed, you owe him nothing. Not when you should be on the throne?—”
I cut her so sharp a look that it silences her. For a long moment, we stare at one another as the wind makes the ceiling joists creak. The first fat raindrops of a coming shower plink on the window glass.
“I overheard Sorsha Hall’s servants packing your own bags this morning, my lady,” I say evenly. “I could just as easily demand to know why you’re going to Old Coros.”
“I’m going for a book.”
Her answer comes so swiftly that I feel like a crow smacked me in the face. Scrambling, I scoff, “What, there aren’t enough bedtime stories in Sorsha Hall’s library?”
“I’m not after a bedtime story.” Her cheeks flush as she smooths back the dark curls framing her face. She drops her voice. “I’m looking for a book Sabine was searching for.”
I step back in surprise.
Lady Suri closes the cottage door behind her and says quickly, “Before Lord Berolt’s passing, Sabine came to me for help. I wasn’t watched as closely as she was, so she thought I had a better chance of searching unnoticed.” She hugs her arms against the cold of my cottage. “She was after a one-of-a-kind set of volumes written after the First Return. She found the first volume in Sorsha Hall—apparently, it explained how the fae gods were awakened. But the second volume was missing.”
Suri glances toward the window as if the storm outside unnerves her. “Supposedly, that one reveals how humans two thousand years ago put the fae back to sleep.”
My eyebrow arches. Back to sleep? In the thousand years since the fae last walked the earth, people have spread all kinds of hair-brained lore. But not even the most far-fetched tales I’ve heard implied that humans could exert any power over the gods.
I grab a pair of socks to stuff in my knapsack .
Suri twiddles her thumbs anxiously. “Have you changed your mind about searching for Sabine?”
My hand freezes at the sound of the name. My knuckles go white without me even realizing it, as my heart pounds so damn hard it rivals the driving rain. I hesitate, thinking back on what little I remember of last night’s dream. Of my mystery woman. No—of Rian’s former fiancée.
I turn sharply back to my belongings on the bed. I shove the socks into the front pocket of my knapsack. “Sorry, Lady Suri, but you nailed it when you called me a bastard. I don’t know her. And from what I hear, she’s a traitor to the realm.”
“For all that is holy! Wolf, you can’t actually believe that!” She throws her hands in the air. “Do you truly remember nothing?”
A muscle ticks in my jaw.
Sabine , I remind myself before the name slips away again. Sabine. Sabine.
“Nope.”
Suri’s brow wrinkles as her sympathetic nature bleeds through, and she says more softly, “She loved you. And you loved her. They wrote ballads about the two of you. A week ago, if she’d been taken, you would have scoured the earth from here to hell to bring her back. You’re a master tracker!”
“I don’t know her!”
The force of my shout startles even me. Suri’s eyes somehow go even rounder, the velvet brown irises reflecting back my face like two silver mirrors. I scrub a hand on the back of my neck, pacing in front of the bed as my blood surges.
Sabine , I repeat in my head. Remember her name, you bastard .
Once my temper cools, I grip the bedrail, hair curtaining my face like a confessional.
Quietly, I mutter, “You don’t understand, Lady Suri. When Iyre took my memory of Sabine, she took everything . I don’t remember what she looks like. Hell, I couldn’t even remember her name until you said it just now. I know nothing about her habits, her movements, her associates. I have nothing to go off. I can’t track a shadow.”
Suri’s lips press together as she watches me, and I can’t fathom what must be going through her head.
After a moment, she bites gently on her bottom lip. “There’s the story of Immortal Iyre’s Memory Bottles. If Iyre put your memories in one of her bottles, then you could get them back?—”
“None of those old stories are true,” I mutter dismissively.
“You don’t know that.”
I keep my jaw tight as I continue to pack my bag.
A stretch of silence follows, and then she reaches into the inner pocket of her cloak. “I worried that Rian might pour poison in your ear about her, so I brought you something. To remind you of her. This belonged to Charlin.”
She takes out an envelope. It’s yellowed around the edges.
She continues, “Iyre stole your memories, but not even a goddess can strip away every last thing.” She pauses. “She lives in more than memories.”
I glance sidelong at the envelope, swallowing.
I’ll give Suri credit. I’ve had my walls up since the beginning of our conversation, but she seems determined to break them down. Poor girl—she doesn’t realize that she’s poking a beast with iron-thick skin .
I grab the letter. “Whatever this is? Yeah, I don’t care. I don’t think about whoever this woman is. I don’t dream about her. I don’t miss my lost memories. So good luck finding your little book in Old Coros. I’ll be right where I belong. At Rian’s side.”
I make a big show of crumpling the letter and tossing it into the cold hearth.
I tie my knapsack with jerky movements, then sling it over my shoulder. I’m twice Suri’s size, and in a few steps, I’ve herded her to the door.
Her eyes spit fire at me, furious that I would so easily turn my back on the woman I supposedly loved. And damn, if I’m not a little jealous of a friend like Suri. When everyone else has turned away from my mystery woman, Suri has stayed true.
I lean in the doorframe, letting my height intimidate her, as I bark, “Now scamper off before the rain ruins your gown.”
Suri’s cheeks bleed red with disappointment. She tips her chin up, looking me in the eyes like she can see right through my forced bravado, and murmurs, “I knew Rian didn’t deserve her. I thought, maybe, you did. But you and the High Lord? You only deserve one another.”
She slams the door behind her.
I let out a long exhale, running a hand over my face. I listen for her departing footsteps outside.
As soon as she’s gone?
“Fuck it.” I scramble to the hearth and unfold the crumpled letter, reading greedily.
Dear Papa ,
My thirteenth birthday was last week, and I think you would be astonished by how much I’ve grown. I can now reach the highest shelves in the chapel. Matron White says I shall soon tower over Sisters Rose and Scarlet, which will be useful when it comes time for spring cleaning. You will be pleased to hear I am diligent in my studies and have not missed a prey session all year, even when I was ill with the wintertide fever.
I am happy to report that Myst is in good health, though the confinement of the convent does not soot her free spirit. I’ve spent my time on useful pursuits, such as tending to the goats, brewing cider for the Sisters, and honoring Immortal Iyre by polishing her temple’s floors. I am not always perfect in my obedience, according to Matron White, but I promise you that I shall not stop striving to correct my failings until I make you proud of me.
I was sorry that you were unable to visit on my birthday yet again, though of course, I understand you are needed at the Bremcote estate. I miss you and the servants deerly and would like to come see you. It would hearten me greatly to pay my respects to Mama’s grave. I know you have said no in years past, but this year, would you grant me permission to return for a visit?
Your daughter,
Sabine
The letter shows the hallmarks of an uncertain young girl trying her hardest to paint a happy veneer over misery. The handwriting is careful to the point of shaky perfection, as though she rewrote the letter a dozen times to get it right. The girl behind these words is so transparently desperate for even table scraps of her father’s attention. The few misspellings—prey for pray, soot for suit, deerly for dearly—cause my brick-hard heart to soften .
She was so young when writing this. So damn alone.
A child.
And her bastard of a father probably didn’t even respond.
A surge of anger at Charlin Darrow—at everyone who failed her—screams at me to crumple the letter, but I force myself to resist the urge. Because what Suri said was true—this is a piece of my mystery woman.
She lives in more than memories.
I sink onto my bed beside the knapsack, smoothing out the letter to re-read it. With every pass, I feel like I know this girl a little bit more. The way her “t’s” are crossed with an upward tilt betray a hopeful spirit even in the midst of her imprisonment. Her naive devotion to a man who couldn’t give a damn about her shows her unfaltering kindness.
I’ll tell you what I don’t see—the slightest glimmer that this girl has a traitorous bone in her body.
It fills me with a cascade of questions that tumble over me until I’m drowning. Now that Sabine is grown, is her spirit still as unbroken as the girl who wrote this letter? Does she feel rage toward the Sisters who neglected and abused her? Does her drive to find the good in the world persist?
I trace my finger along the name at the bottom of the letter.
LOVE, SABINE .
As long as I have this letter, I’ll have her name. But letters can burn. Be destroyed or lost. And if someone found this letter on me? I might as well fuck Rian’s fiancée in front of him all over again.
As the rain drives against the tin ceiling, I spare a brief moment to take a breath. My fingers knit, wanting to hold onto the name like a gods-damn jewel.
That brief breath is all I can spare.
I fall on my knees by the bed, tearing through my knapsack until I get my hunting knife. The blade gleams in the rain-washed light from the window.
Jaw clenched, I roll up my lefthand sleeve to my elbow, then set the knifepoint against my flesh.
The blade is twelve inches, a brutal tool, but I’m practiced enough with it that I could skin a pygmy mouse without nicking a single organ.
Biting down on the inside of my cheek against the pain, I begin to carve the letter S .