32. Sabine
Chapter 32
Sabine
T hat pretty fae bastard .
The Night Hunt is on the verge of starting. Any second now, the rooftop bellringer will signal Seventh Hour, when I’m supposed to run into Vallen Forest and hide. Already, I feel the pull of animals in the woods calling to me, standing by to help me. Sensing my need.
But now? A shiver runs up my limbs. I exchange a nervous look with Basten as I hug my arms close.
“You can’t change the rules now, Artain,” I spit.
“There’s no change.” Artain plucks a tiny green inchworm off his tunic. “The deal we struck is binding. It’s really more of a…footnote.”
My stomach tightens. I don’t have time for this. I only have an hour to get a head start from Artain. Once that bell rings, I need to run .
“What kind of fae bullshit is this?” Basten demands, the cords in his neck straining.
Artain holds the inchworm up to the light, watching it crawl down his finger. “If Lord Basten wins, you’ll be free to leave Drahallen Hall with him, Lady Sabine. As per our terms. However, at that point, our game will be over. Including its binding rules. There will be nothing to stop me from putting an arrow in his skull then .” He puffs on the inchworm to send it flying into the air. “How’s this for a footnote? If Lord Basten wins, I kill him right after.”
My cheeks blaze red. “That isn’t fair!”
Artain smooths a wrinkle out of his tunic. “It is fair. It adheres to our deal.”
Anger floods me as I fight the urge to grab his bowstring and wind it around his neck. As much as I want to see his pretty eyes bulge out, I have to be smart. Quick thinking, too. Because that bell is going to ring at any moment. And Artain won’t wait around twiddling his thumbs for me to argue with him.
“You gods-damned lying bastard.” Basten draws his hunting knife in one smooth move. “If we can kill each other outside of the game, then I’ll do the honors now, before it even starts.”
He lunges for Artain, but Artain has his bow at the ready. He was waiting for this. Basten’s blade catches Artain’s bow in the center, deep enough to stick in the wood. Artain gives a cold smile as he draws his own hunting knife with his free hand.
“You’re welcome to try,” Artain hisses.
“Basten, don’t!” I yell. “You can’t win hand-to-hand combat against a god!”
But Basten ignores me, circling Artain in a fighting stance.
Gods, he’s going to get himself killed.
“Wait!” I lurch forward to grab Artain’s sleeve, holding his arm back, and say in a rush, “End the game now. Or wait for the bell and end it then. You’ve won, Artain. That’s what you want, isn’t it? I’ll spend a night with you!”
“Sabine, no .” Basten wrenches his knife out of Artain’s bow with an angry grunt.
“It’s that or your life!” I tug harder on Artain’s shirt, twisting the cotton in my fingers to jerk him around to face me. “It’s an easy choice. One night and it’s over.”
Artain looks down at my hand on his bicep with a calculated smile that makes me feel like I’ve walked into a trap.
“An easy choice? Hmm, perhaps not that easy. You see, princess, when we set the terms, I didn’t say one night. I said that when the sun sets, I’ll have you for the entire night.” He toys with the edge of his blade. “And the sun sets every night.”
I rip my hand away like he’s on fire, retreating with fear building in each step. “No—no, that’s a lie. You always joke about spending one night with me. One.”
He uses the knife blade to clean a spec of dirt from under one fingernail. “That’s your fault for assuming that’s what I meant when I set my wager.” He shrugs impishly. “ Every night with Lady Sabine. Vale might not like it at first, but he’ll come around. Who could be a better prospect for his precious daughter than a god?”
My throat closes up, choking me, but Basten interrupts before I can spit pure fury at Artain.
“You planned this all along, didn’t you?” His muscles twitch, but he marshals his temper and slams his knife into a tree trunk instead of Artain’s skull. In a tightly coiled voice, he says, “No weapons. No powers. No game. Just you and me—we decide this here and now with our fists.”
“No.” I plant my palms on Basten’s broad chest, shoving him back from Artain. But he might as well be an anvil. He barely budges. His eyes glow like hot coals, his skin burns beneath my hands. I shout, “He’ll kill you!”
The tendons on his neck bulge out as he bares his teeth. “I’d sooner die right now than see you bound to be his slave every night.”
I shove my heels into the ground to brace myself as Basten pushes against me, trying to get to Artain. “Hey. Hey, look at me! This is what he wants—to pit us against each other. So he can win the game!”
“It isn’t a fucking game anymore, Sabine! It’s your life! It’s every night!”
In the distance, the bellringer signals Seventh Hour.
Oh, no.
No, not yet…
My stomach drops.
The bell’s echo reverberates from my toes to the tips of my fingers, pressed against Basten’s chest, leaving me feeling as hollow as that damn brass bell itself.
In a flash, the breath vanishes from my lungs. I try to heave, but my ribs crush inward like I’ve been slammed by the bell clacker, unable to get air.
My eyes lock with Basten’s. In all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen bald-faced panic burn in his pupils. But now, they’re blown big as pennies.
The bell hasn’t even stopped ringing when he murmurs hoarsely, “Sabine.”
A ragged cry tears from my throat. “Basten—I’m sorry.”
Throwing all my weight forward, I dig the heel of my palms into his left lower ribcage where he was hurt in the Everlast. He clocks my movement a fraction too slow to stop me.
Groaning, he doubles over to clutch his side .
I trip backward in a blind rush, hands snagging in doghobble bushes, as a phantom pain pinches in my own ribcage.
“I’m sorry,” I choke. “I can’t let him kill you.”
Basten tosses his head up, hair already sweat-soaked as it streaks his forehead. “Sabine, don’t run!”
But I have to.
Can’t he see? If I stay, then he dies.
His shouts are barely afterthoughts as I turn and tear through the doghobble like the frightened fawn that I’m supposed to play.
At the edge of my periphery, I see Artain pluck one of the doghobble leaves I brushed by, crushing it in his hands and burying his face in his cupped palms to memorize my scent.
Screw Artain. Screw all of them. I fell right into the beautiful trap they laid out for me, baited not with honey wine and gowns but with the promise of freedom.
Of a family. Of a home.
They made me feel like I belonged .
But I can’t think about that right now. It’s not just Artain I’m running from. I have exactly one hour to put some distance between me and Basten, too. I don’t have a sliver of doubt that he’ll get himself killed to keep me out of Artain’s possession, if he can.
I know what he thinks of himself: A sinner. A street rat. Only good for his fists. But what I see is the heart of a king beneath the bruises, someone who would travel to the ends of the earth to keep me safe even if it means tipping himself head-first into the underrealm.
Once I’m far enough into the woods that I can no longer see the castle spires above the trees, I stop at a pine tree, catching myself against the rough bark, taking a second to find my breath.
Overhead, a crow caws.
Pressing my forehead against the bark, I murmur aloud, “Basten will do everything he can to catch me. I need to run. To hide. To confuse his senses.”
My mind stirs with a flicker of possibility. Slowly, I lift my head and squint at the crow. They’re always bringing me little tokens—acorns, shiny bits of metal, pretty rocks.
Friend, can you bring me something specific?
It tilts its head. What object, bird-talker?
I lick my lips, thinking of what could be close by. A quartz stone. And anything metal—iron or steel.
It caws again and flies away.
As I wait, every second stretches like a taut bowstring, and my panic fills the silence. My breath rasps. My pulse hammers. I want to crumple. To curl in the dirt like autumn leaves. To shatter into dust.
But I can’t —the only way to keep Basten alive is to keep moving.
My head jerks up just in time to see the crow circling back. It drops two objects at my feet: A hunk of raw quartz and a rusty steel belt buckle that it must have scavenged from a soldier.
Moving fast, I arrange a handful of pine needles over twigs. My hands are shaking, but after a few strikes of the quartz on the metal buckle, I manage to get a spark.
Blast —it goes out.
Hunching over, I concentrate and get another spark. I breathe oxygen onto the spark until it catches and starts smoking. I stand up, fanning away the smoke, coughing as it spreads .
That will confuse him.
The crow flits its wings. Go left, bird-talker. To the river. The water will hide your sound.
I start moving again, veering toward the left. Soon, the ground slopes sharply downhill toward the Ramvik River valley. I can’t spot the river through the trees, but I can make out its shushing roar.
Will it be loud enough to mask me from Basten’s ears?
I start down the slope at a run, but after about twenty feet, my boots slip on damp leaves. I lose my balance, slamming onto my left hip, skidding downhill a few feet until I can grab ahold of a root. “ Dammit! ”
Damp, loamy earth stains the backside of my trousers, leaving my lower half clammy and cold. I push to a careful stand and brush the soil off my hands, frowning down at the skid marks my boots left behind. If Basten comes within a quarter mile of this slope, he’ll spot my tracks in a blink.
Still, the only way to the river is down.
So, I grab hold of twisting rhododendron branches for balance as I descend, trying to hop from rock to rock so I don’t leave prints. It’s painfully slow going, and I’m not even sure it’s effective. My boots leave damp prints on the rocks, just as they did the dirt. I might as well be painting a bright red blaze that says: SHE WENT THIS WAY.
I crouch down to unlace my boots, then knot the laces together and sling them around my neck so I can walk on dry sock feet.
It isn’t long before the rocky outcropping ends at a cliff. I dare a peek at the Ramvik River, fifteen feet below, its whitewater cascades sluicing down a canyon.
If it were the slow-moving Innis River back in Astagnon, I might risk jumping in. I could let the current carry me downstream, where hopefully Basten wouldn’t think to follow.
But the Ramvik River is a beast. Filled with rocky waterfalls, I wouldn’t make it twenty feet before falling over a cascade and crashing onto jagged rocks.
So, I skirt the cliff’s edge, balancing as best I can as I follow the river upstream. More tangled rhododendrons block my path and require contortion to squeeze between their branches. Roots snag at my socks. Rough bark scrapes my arms. I finally reach the loud, rushing river’s bank, and follow it upstream.
Now that I have some degree of cover, I rack my brain for a way out of this. Artain screwed Basten and me both. Here we thought we were so clever to trick a fae into a bargain, but we should have known all along that we were the ones being played.
Take stock of your options, Sabine.
If Basten catches me, I might as well drive an arrow into his skull myself. I don’t doubt for a second that Artain will make good on his threat, no matter how much I beg otherwise. Basten has a king’s blood, but he’s still human. Artain wouldn’t think twice about stamping out his mortal life.
Which leaves letting Artain catch me. It would be easy enough to accomplish. Vallen Forest is filled with creatures who would gladly lead me to Artain’s location once Eighth Hour tolls.
I could simply fall to my knees and surrender.
Basten would live.
But what would happen to me?
A chill settles into my bones as I picture my future as Artain’s nightly plaything. Not just one night, but every night. Until now, he’s behaved for my father’s benefit. It’s as if I’ve been living in a grand performance, unaware that the spotlight has only shown on what the fae wanted me to see: the smiling acolytes offering their blood, the hedonistic parties, a doting father.
I never thought to pull back the curtain to see the shadows lurking backstage—until Basten arrived.
And if Artain wins?
I close my hand over my neck, rubbing my thorn-scratched skin as if Artain’s pointed incisors were already closing in on my jugular.
I duck beneath a branch, my feet pounding the earth as I try to put as much space as possible between me and Artain. Initially, I’d dismissed him as a harmless fop, but I see now how wrong I was.
My stomach lurches as I swallow down bile, fighting against the terrible images that fill my mind. How many nights can I fend him off? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? He’ll have me on my back eventually, taking what he wants.
No—I won’t let that happen.
As the ground turns muddier, I stop to tug my boots back on as I try to think my way out of this. Would my father even let Artain carry out either threat? I’m his daughter; he wouldn’t want me reduced to a god’s toy. And letting Artain kill Basten would be political suicide, when the fae need him to deliver Astagnon.
On the other hand, I’m thinking of my father as rational. Fair. Human . When in reality, his fae mind is probably as devious as Artain’s.
Twisting Basten’s ring, I take stock of my surroundings. I’m about two miles from the castle’s southern gate. Maybe less, since it’s slow going to move through the underbrush.
That’s not nearly enough distance for? —
A distant, faint bell clangs through the trees, halting my thoughts.
My stomach drops.
“Oh, hell .”
How has it already been an hour? Immediately, my pulse flares, stoking my dwindled energy until I’m back to running through the woods. Now that Basten and Artain are on the hunt, I have to keep my wits about me more than ever.
Friends . I project my thoughts through the trees. I need your help. Is anyone there?
For a moment, there is only silence, but then, a red-breasted robin swoops down. He flies alongside me from branch to branch, cocking his head in interest. I am here.
Thorns lash at my arms, shredding my shirtsleeves, but I push through them. I need you to gather robins and have them track two huntsmen coming this way. One is fae. The other human. Can you do that?
Hold tight! The robin flits off into the canopy.
Leaves crunch to my left, and I snap my head around to see a doe gliding alongside me, her graceful strides like a whisper through the underbrush.
Why do you run, human? she asks curiously.
I’m being hunted. I pause to climb over a fallen trunk before continuing. Is there somewhere I can hide? Somewhere difficult to track?
As the doe lopes beside me, her soft brown nose twitches. Den near the still-water pond. We deer hide there from hunters.
She stops and points her nose to the right, back toward the way I’ve come. My chest heaves as I pause, turning to look back through the trees. There’s a gap where a widowmaker must have fallen, and it gives an unobstructed view of the top spires of Drahallen Hall.
The hair lifts on the back of my spine. The last direction I want to go is backward, but what choice do I have?
I nod, breathless. Take me there.
Hiding is a risky strategy. It means voluntarily trapping myself. Easy prey. But the other choice is continuing to run and that’s…not ideal either. I’m already out of breath. My muscles ache. Not to mention that running means spreading more tracks across the forest.
The doe darts down a game trail I hadn’t noticed.
I follow her at a run, thankful for a clear path after miles of brambles. My ears pick up on the roar of flowing water again, but when I glimpse a waterway ahead, it isn’t the raging Ramvik. It’s a medium-sized tributary stream about ten feet wide.
The doe follows the game trail along the riverbank for about a quarter mile before my feet sink into soft mud. When I lift my foot, water immediately fills the depression.
Just ahead! the doe says encouragingly.
We follow the tributary to its source: a large, marshy pond surrounded by river birches, with a beaver’s den damming one end. I can hear their squeaky voices coming from inside, sounding like burbling water. A grey heron languidly strides through the water, and a fish jumps on the other side. Dragonflies buzz around the reeds.
I pause, struck.
It’s a beautiful scene. Peaceful. For a second, my heart latches onto this brief window of calm.
Then, the robin lands on a branch beside me, hopping in agitation, and my bubble of calm pops.
Did you find them? I ask, stomach knotting.
He fans his wings, a signal of warning. The human huntsman is at the high river cliff.
I swallow a dry lump in my throat. Basten has already tracked me to the cliff? How is he moving so fast? I can only hope I didn’t leave enough tracks for him to follow, but I know his skill.
And the fae huntsman? I tighten my hands into fists.
Harder to track. The robin hops to another branch. He moves fox-fast. He ? —
A second robin lands on the neighboring tree, frantically fanning his wings. The fae is headed this way!
I suck in a gasp. “That’s impossible. Not even the fae can move that fast.”
But a second deer bounds out from the copse of river birches, her white tail flashing in warning as she runs. A huntsman! A fae huntsman comes!
The first doe nudges me sharply in my side. Urging me to follow the other deer. For a second, I’m frozen, eyes scouring every shadow to see if they’ll take on Artain’s form. But then my senses snap back into place, and I run.
Pumping my arms, I catch up to the deer. A third has joined, running alongside me. They scamper over a small hillock and then vanish, seemingly straight into the ground.
I come to a skidding stop, pinwheeling my arms, afraid I’m about to tumble through a fae door.
But it’s only an eroded space beneath massive tree roots. A herd of six deer huddle within, so tightly packed that I can’t tell which limbs belong to which bodies.
The deer are quiet as clouds, perfectly camouflaged by the dirt walls. I could walk two feet away and not see them.
Quick . The young doe wiggles her ears at me. Hunker down with us !
I have to wriggle head-first through the narrow space between the exposed roots. It’s a tangle of knobby knees and clattering antlers as I scramble to the back of the den. The deer move in front of me, their warm bodies hiding me from sight. I can feel their quick heartbeats flutter beneath soft fur.
A robin lands at the edge of the den. Not a sound, now! He approaches!
I clamp a hand over my mouth to muffle my breathing. Artain doesn’t have Basten’s godkissed hearing, but he’s still God of the Hunt. He’s spent thousands of years honing his senses to track his quarry.
A young doe gently presses her head against my arm, and only then do I realize I’m shaking.
“Sabine!” Artain’s voice tears like thunder through the woods.
Oh no. Oh, gods, no.
My muscles clench as I try to hunch further into the den, wishing I could disappear into the dirt. Ninth Hour hasn’t even struck—and he’s already found me?
How did I ever think I could make it until sunset?
“I know you’re here!” he calls. “You leave a trail as wide as a goldenclaw, princess. Here’s some advice for next time: get yourself a pair of boots with a tread that doesn’t catch every dirt clod in the forest. You might as well have drawn me a map.”
My toes curl in my boots. This can’t be happening. He can’t win this easily. I refuse to spend every night of my life at his beck and call, satisfying whatever lurid fae needs he can dream up.
A twig snaps loudly close by—that can’t be an accident. Not with him. He wants me to know he’s closing in .
I brace my hands over my head, huddling closer with the deer. My mind races. A part of me wants to just end it. This terrible torture. This awful anticipation. At least that way, I know Basten will live.
But for how long? a voice warns in my head. You know he’ll get himself killed trying to free you from being Artain’s plaything.
“Where are you, princess?” Artain’s voice cuts with a sing-song lilt. “Do I need to stab my knife through every fern until you squeal?”
The game’s terms state that he can’t harm me, only catch me. Still, that’s little reassurance now, when a much darker fate awaits.
“Ah…what’s this? A strand of your hair caught on a branch? By this hill marked with deer prints?”
Fear jolts through me as his voice blasts mere inches outside the den. I press my palm harder against my lips, but I can’t hide my rickety breath.
There’s a terrible moment of silence, and then a scuff as his boots come to stand at the den’s opening.
I’m trapped. Cornered.
So afraid that I might piss these damn trousers.
He stoops, smiling like a jackal as he peeks between the roots. “Hello, princess.”
In that instant, something changes. I change.
Awakened by fear, it’s like a different self takes me over. Some deep energy explodes through my skin.
Suddenly, I’m outside of my body, fracturing into six different pieces. Those pieces slam into each of the huddled deer, and before I can blink, the deer herd burst out of the den. A hoof smacks into my thigh, sending pain shooting through the muscle. The young doe knocks my other leg over as she bounds out of the den. The big buck’s antlers crack against my temple, but I barely feel anything.
Because I’m not in my body anymore. I’m in theirs .
I puppet the deer herd on pure instinct and adrenaline, barely cognizant of my actions. My fingers twitch as I force the deer’s bodies to knock Artain to the ground.
The first two deer out of the den side-swipe him, making him lose his balance. A third gives him a sharp kick with her hind legs, sending him stumbling to the left.
But the damn bastard is still standing.
Baring my teeth, I dig my fingers in the air with a forceful shove. The big buck lashes forward with the same forceful movement, head lowered. He crashes his massive rack into Artain, who tries to escape the strike but doesn’t make it in time.
An antler spears his left shoulder.
My breath catches. I can hurt him—how?
The terms said they couldn’t hurt me or each other…but no one said I couldn’t.
I jerk my hand back. The buck mimics my act, pulling out his antler.
Could I even… kill him?
With a grimace, I brace to shove my hand forward again to direct the buck to stab Artain in the heart this time, but before I can?—
Artain moves inhumanly fast, swinging around his bow. He draws and nocks an arrow, pulling back the string to aim at the buck.
Reality slams back into me—my lungs, my heart—as I’m thrown out of the buck’s body and returned to my own.
I scramble to regain control over the deer, weaving my fingers to direct their movements.
Go! I scream in my head. Run!
But the deer are sluggish from the aftereffects of my possession. Their feet wobble. The buck shakes himself, lilting to the right. He charges Artain, but Artain easily tucks into a roll to evade him.
When he rises, it’s with his bow drawn again. He fires at the youngest doe, bringing her down with an arrow straight to the heart.
“No!” I scream.
Artain nocks again—two arrows this time. He aims and fires both simultaneously to take down two more does as they flee through the doghobble.
I flail forward, clawing my way out of the den.
Artain whips around to nock another arrow. Before I can reach him, he fires on the mother doe, who crashes into a river birch. Her little fawn bounds after her, bleating, and Artain trains his sights on it as he nocks yet another arrow?—
I look away as there’s a sickening squelch.
My heart aches, but it’s too late. I did this to them. I’m a monster. I got all of them except the buck killed…
No.
No—if anyone here is a monster, it’s the man with the arrows.
With a battle cry, I burst out of the den and throw myself on Artain as he aims a sixth arrow at the buck.
I wrestle the arrow from his bow, throwing my hip into his side as I snap the arrow over my knee.
The buck takes off into the woods—the last of his herd.
Gasping, I launch myself onto Artain’s bow, trying to pry it out of his hands. His initial surprise gives way to a slow cackle.
“Little princess, you want a tussle, is that it? ”
My vision bleeds into red as I slam my knee up toward his groin, but he blocks me with a downward swing, gracefully catching hold of my thigh in the process. His fingers dig into my ass as he drags my body flush against him.
“We’re going to have a lot of tussles, starting tonight, then every night after,” he says breathily. I struggle, but he swipes my foot out from under me, slamming my back down against the riverbank.
Climbing on top of me to pin down my limbs, he forcefully smooths the tangled hair off my face. “We can start early, if you like.” He laughs. “After all, we have a long time until sunset.”
I should be disgusted, but I’m still too brutalized by the raw pain of losing the deer herd to feel much of anything at all. Their still-warm carcasses bleed out around me, their blood running in rivulets around the depression where Artain has me pinned.
He grabs my head and twists it toward the closest deer carcass.
“See what happens?” he murmurs in my ear. “When you use your power against me?”
“Their blood is on your hands,” I spit, cheek smushed to the mud. “And I’ll make damn sure you don’t get a chance to harm another breathing thing in this forest—including me.”
Before Artain can offer a retort, I bring my knee up between his legs.
This time, I catch him unaware. His eyes bulge as a moan peals out from his lips. In the split second that his guard is down, I dig my heel into the ground and use the force to cantilever my hips upward, throwing him off me.
I press myself to my hands and knees at the pond’s edge .
“Sabine. You will soon regret resisting me!” As he swipes an arm for me, I gulp in a breath and fall backward.
I plunge into the water?—
—where everything is dark?—
—and cold?—
—and deadly?—
—until a small, squeaky voice with a hint of burbling water calls, This way!