21. Basten
Chapter 21
Basten
W e don’t slow from a gallop until we’re ten miles north of Old Coros. Tòrr runs with such effortlessness that not a drop of sweat mars his glistening black coat. But I’m huffing and puffing, and foamy sweat clings to the contours of Myst’s shoulders, too. I can hear her breath straining with each stride.
Sure, she’s a crazy old mare who couldn’t stand me before she begrudgingly came to like me, but I have to give credit where it’s due—she’s relentless when it comes to keeping up with a monoceros.
Farmland stretches on either side of the road. A few barns dot the landscape, but there’s no sign of any people.
I lead the horses off the road to a stream running along a pasture where they can drink their fill. I dismount straight into the stream, boots splashing in the shallow water, and crouch down to cup water around the back of my neck.
The coolness soothes my heated skin but does nothing to calm the storm inside me .
Damn you, Rian. Back at Hekkelveld Castle, rage wanted to burn through me like wildfire, but now, in the quiet of the pasture, it’s choked out by blind faith—something I’ve never operated on before. The feeling is both terrifying and exhilarating, stepping off a cliff and trusting the wind to catch you.
Sabine? She’s my wind.
She’s my everything —my redemption, my revenge, my future. It may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done to put my faith in a woman I can’t remember, who the rest of the world branded a traitor. But for the first time in my life, I’m going to follow my heart.
Leaving the horses to drink, I park my ass on the grassy bank, then unstrap my wrist guard and run my fingers over the scars that spell out S-A-B-I-N-E.
Goosebumps ripple across the skin.
Next, I take the letter Suri gave me out of my knapsack. A smile tugs the corner of my mouth as I open it to reread thirteen-year-old Sabine’s handwriting, which conveys a hopeful spirit that I can’t help but believe she still has at twenty-two.
Then, I pull out my old shirt that Sabine must have borrowed. I can’t resist burying my face in it, hungry for a scrap of that feather-light trace of her scent. A burst of violets fills my nose, as intoxicating as gin.
I mutter to myself, “Only an idiot would believe in fated mates, Wolf.”
Which makes you an idiot, friend.
Shaking my head, I chuckle softly at my own bull-headedness as I set the shirt aside.
Lastly, I fish Rian’s locket out and cradle it in my palm.
The golden “S” on the front winks in the dappled sunlight, tugging at some hidden corner of my heart. My mind screams at me to think logically about this senseless quest, but my heart? My heart is certain.
Her name on my arm.
The letter.
The shirt with her scent.
The locket.
That’s all I need to lead me to this woman who I’ve dreamed about every night, tossing and turning, groaning with a visceral need to hold her.
The horses snort nearby, oblivious to my turmoil. I shift, trying to get comfortable on the streambank, but my body is too keyed up. Every muscle feels coiled tight, ready to spring. The knowledge that she’s out there makes my pulse quicken.
I’m coming, Sabine.
I’m pulled out of my thoughts by a sharp stomp to the tip of my boot.
“ Ow! ” Clutching my boot, I shoot Tòrr an incredulous glare. “Stop doing that! You broke another damn toe!”
He stamps his hoof next to words he’s written in a patch of damp soil beside the stream.
U-P L-A-Z-Y
“ Lazy ? Look, humans require this thing called rest. And two other extravagances called food and water. And if we’re feeling really excessive? Coffee. ”
I wrench my cooking pot out of my knapsack to wave in his face.
Tòrr blasts steam as he stomps off toward Myst, tossing his mane and pacing until she admonishes his frivolity with a swift smack of her head against his.
“And I thought good, old-fashioned mortal horses were stubborn,” I murmur as I stuff the pot back in my bag. “I don’t know how Sabine put up with you.”
I pull off my boot and grimace at the bruised second toe.
As I bandage it, I think more about Sabine. If we’re truly fated to be together, I guess I’d better get good with animals real damn quick.
Horses. Monoceroses. Anything that crawls or flutters or fucking slithers. The gossip about her in Hekkelveld Castle was all chipmunks-this and butterflies-that .
It isn’t that I dislike animals. Not at all. It’s just that I’ve spent years avoiding them.
It started with Onno.
I loved that damn scruffy dog with every tiny bone in my ten-year-old body. He was the only joy I found in the abandoned stables where Jocki kept boys and dogs locked up when we weren’t in the fight ring.
And when Jocki got jealous of my bond with Onno…
And forced us, boy and dog, into the ring as opponents…
Well.
Strangling your only friend at ten years old sets a remarkably solid foundation for a lifetime of psychological scars.
After Onno died, I ran away. Hating Jocki. Hating myself. Hating the gods-damned world. My godkiss made it easy to survive on the streets, though I was painfully alone .
Once, I wandered into a nicer part of town and saw a teenage girl leave a perfume shop with a beautifully wrapped package. The package was bathed in the smell of jasmine, but the odor of the bottle within made me stop in my tracks.
Thorn Apple is commonly known as an odorless poison, but that’s only to the ungodkissed nose. Jocki kept a supply of it to use on his enemies, and to me, it always carried the faintest scent of grass. It can be easily confused with burdock root, a fixative for stabilizing volatile compounds like perfumes.
I snatched the package from the girl’s arms and threw it into the North Innis River, causing a carriage to screech to a stop and dozens of onlookers to gawp.
“That perfume was made wrong ,” I explained to the girl. “ It’s poisonous. One spray would have killed you.”
The girl swooned, falling all over me to thank me for saving her. “ Let me repay your kindness with a meal, you poor starving boy ,” she said. She insisted I follow her to a tavern.
As soon as we were down an alley, away from prying eyes, she spun on me with a knife to my throat. “ You idiot—you nearly ruined everything!”
It turned out that the girl, Annabella, worked for the perfume maker, a portly woman named Madame Caleau, whose real business was poison. I’d nearly exposed their operation and probably would have lost my head for it, if Annabella hadn’t paused long enough with her knife pressed to my throat to ask:
“How did you know it was poison, boy?”
Luckily for me, a godkissed boy able to sniff out any scent was worth something to a poison manufacturer.
Madame Caleau and Annabella gave me three square meals and a cot in the perfumery’s stock room, and more importantly, evenings filled with laughter as we would mix poisons and speculate about our clients’ gambling debts. Annabella teased me mercilessly for my cracking preteen voice, at the same time that she would stay up until dawn sewing me new pants to fit my growing legs. Madame Caleau mothered me like a hen, always trying to tame my unruly hair, chiding me about putting more meat on my small bones, worrying herself when I didn’t make it home from a delivery until dawn.
Their vocation was to take lives—but they gave me one.
My happy life with them came crashing down when a crime lord decided to take over the poison market for himself. While I was on a delivery, his men burned the perfumery with Madame Caleau and Annabella inside. They caught me when I returned, beat me within an inch of my life, and sold me back to Jocki.
And the Golden Sentinels? They looked the other way. Crime ran every aspect of Duren’s economy from the Sin Streets to Sorsha Hall. And all of it was permitted, even promoted, by the Valvere family.
Who, of course, took a cut.
Suddenly, a snarl from a small copse of trees near the stream pulls me out of the past.
Immediately, the musty scent of fur hits my nose.
A huge gray wolf is crouched on the other streambank with his sights set on Myst while she munches grass, unaware.
Alarm shoots through me as I scramble for my bow. “Myst!”
Before I can reach my knapsack, Tòrr rears up from the middle of the stream. Water pours off his iron hooves as he paws the air, letting out another one of his unnatural shrieks. He lifts his massive head toward the sun, and a strange ringing sound starts.
Bands of shadow ripple across the ground as the air grows cold. The hair on my arms lifts like lightning is about to strike.
Then, a burst of light explodes across my eyes.
Crying out, I roll away, throwing an arm over my face. Intense heat licks at the back of my neck. When I ease my eyelids open, my vision slowly refocuses.
Where the wolf had been is now a pile of ash on burned grass.
I fall back on my elbows, eyes wide as I take in Tòrr.
He lowers to all fours in the stream, shakes himself, then trots over to rest his chin on Myst’s neck.
“Okay.” I smooth a shaky hand over my face. “Okay. Right. I guess you can still use your powers.”
Myst nuzzles Tòrr as I go to inspect the wolf’s remains. Other than some singed tufts of fur, there isn’t so much as a claw left.
Curious, I point to the ruins of an old, abandoned shed on the far side of the stream. “Show me again what you can do. I want to see.” Tòrr swings his head to peer at the shed. “Go ahead. As long as it isn’t me you’re crispifying.”
Tòrr tips his head to the left, into a beam of sunlight pouring through the trees, and another fireball instantly incinerates the shed.
“Fuck! Yes .” I bark an awe-inspired laugh. “Oh, murder horse, the things I would burn if I had your power.”
Tòrr prances in the stream, excited by my tone. He swings his head around again until he spots a bustling sheep barn about three hundred paces away. His eyes widen gleefully, flashing the whites.
My grin falls. “Wait?—”
A burst of light has me turning my face away. When I look up, the barn is nothing but a few smoking corner posts. Bleating sheep run panicked across the pasture.
A dog starts barking.
I wipe a hand over my face. “Uh, I think it’s time for us to keep moving.”
But Tòrr prances again, kicking up water in his excitement. A wicked gleam flashes in his eyes. He keeps tossing his head. Shrieking.
Fear runs backward up my throat.
Myst nips him on the neck, but he only snorts and nips back at her. His hooves dance over the sun-dappled river rocks. His ears swing forward as he hones in on a farmhouse about a quarter mile away.
That dog must belong to the family inside. Because already, I can hear a mother’s concerned voice coming from the building. Two children’s anxious questions. A father’s heavy boot steps as he heads for the door.
“Tòrr, no!” I shout, crashing into the stream. He throws his head so violently that I can’t grab him by the mane. “Tòrr, there are people in there! A family! Innocent people, you understand? Not kindling!”
I hold up my hands, trying to herd him back into the trees’ shadows away from sunlight, but he blows an angry burst of steam at my face.
It scalds me, but I grimace and try again. “Hey! You’re better than this. You’re fae, aren’t you? It’s in your damn silver blood? You’re supposed to be superior to humans. Illustrious. Exalted. Well, with your gift comes duty. So, take some fucking responsibility. You can’t go around burning down the world because it hurt you.”
Myst nips at him again, this time deep enough to draw blood.
He finally calms down, his lungs heaving as he fights for steady breath, the vengeful glee fading out of his eyes.
My shoulders sink, my own tension melting away.
Tòrr lifts his front foot and stomps right on my boot.
“Ow!” I double over, growling now, ready to punch this damn horse in the muzzle. “Hey! Listen, you fucker?—”
Tòrr ignores me as he tromps to the streambed and writes out with his hoof in the mud:
K-I-N-G
He juts his head toward me.
I feel the sting of the accusation behind Tòrr’s pointed ears, and scoff.
“Me? You’re turning this on me? That’s your answer?”
Tòrr stomps emphatically next to the word. His eyes bore into me. This damn horse is calling me out. Hard .
I grit my teeth. “I’m a hypocrite. I get it. My blood is supposed to mean I’m a king, right? With all those same responsibilities. But the difference between you and me? The world doesn’t need someone like me in charge.”
Even as the words leave my mouth, they feel hollow. The truth is, Tòrr and I are the same. Both of us have been betrayed, abandoned, and neglected by a world that never stops taking. We both want the world to burn.
My chest feels too tight as I pace in the stream .
“Maybe we’re both animals,” I mutter, the words gruff.
But the thought feels bitter on my tongue. From everything I’ve heard about Sabine Darrow, she wouldn’t let this twisted world stand. She would tear the rot apart with a steel heart and iron claws.
She’s stronger than me.
And, dammit, I need her strength right now. I need her to show me how to be the man I must become—the man who wouldn’t let what happened to Madame Caleau and Annabella go unavenged.
I thrust my hand into my pocket and circle my thumb around the locket’s edge, focusing on the face that won’t let me sleep at night.
“Or maybe we both need to stop running.” My voice is barely above a whisper now, but it feels like a confession. “And face our duty.”
Tòrr huffs. I don’t think he wanted this. Peace. Calm. He wanted me to join in his gleeful vengeance tour.
I kneel down and swipe my hand through the mud next to the word he wrote, writing:
M-Y-S-T
I jab my finger in her direction. “That mare, there? You love her. You don’t want to lose her, but that’s exactly what will happen if you don’t tame your temper. I have a woman, too. One who I’m fighting for blindly with one hand tied behind my back. Because I have faith. You and I? We have a duty to this world, even if it’s wronged us. Maybe because it’s wronged us. Because we can make it right for those who come after us.”
Tòrr watches me in silence, his posture slowly relaxing. He blows out a long breath, his ears twitching, and for the first time, the anger in his eyes seems to dim.
“We can be better.” I stand up and rest my flat palm on his nose. “For them.”