Chapter 7
Despite there being no one around to witness, transferring Lavellin from the wagon, up the stone steps, and into Bassen’s house is a nerve-wracking endeavour.
Particularly when its arm brushes the iron horseshoe nailed to the doorframe.
It lets out a sharp yelp, the metal burning its fae flesh through a rip in its clothing
When they’re safely inside, Bassen slams the door behind them but it doesn’t give Torver the comfort he thought it might. His breaths still come heavy.
“Are you okay?” Bassen asks. “I know that was nerve-wracking with the Enforcers so close, but—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Torver presses his lips into a line, because if it can happen to Wast, then it could happen to— and Bassen can’t know that he knew him—she’d be so disappointed—and where will he get his new papers from now—those stupid Enforcers—
Bassen wipes her hands on her dress, the movement catching his eye.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Her gaze finds his and he feels pierced. He swallows it down and twists the string on his finger.
“I just—executions make me nervous,” he manages.
“Understandable,” Lavellin says, extricating itself from the blankets. “It would be strange if they didn’t.”
Torver takes a deep breath, soothed by Bassen’s hand now on his shoulder. Lavellin’s arm now has an angry red welt, and it rubs the mark tenderly.
“So,” Torver manages, taking a step towards it. “Iron, hm?”
It ceases its rubbing and drops its arm. “Indeed.” It flashes a quick, detracting smile.
Bassen shakes her head, surveying the entrance hall around them.
“We’ve got a fucking Rath in the house, Torv.” She wipes her hands over her face. “When did it come to this?”
He shakes his head, is about to say something about it being a long day, but Lavellin says—
“Ask King Eveling.”
Torver’s laugh takes even him by surprise.
“I suppose you’re right,” Bassen concedes tightly. “We should…Well, I’ll go and take the wagon back to the rental yard. You stay here, Torv. You seem—tired. We can deal with everything else in the morning, when we’re thinking straight. Okay?”
Torver nods, a warmth spreading across his cheeks. The realisation that she’d witnessed him have some kind of mental attack; a crash of anxiety that had pulled him under like a wave.
“Don’t think about that execution, yeah?” She pulls him into a hard hug, murmuring into him so that the words are warm on his neck. “It won’t be you.”
She pulls away and meets his eyes. “I will never let that be you.”
The words soothe him for a second.
“Don’t wait up,” she adds. “We’ll reconvene in the morning.”
She turns to go, her white hair fanning behind her, but a thought occurs.
“Which room do you want Lavellin in?”
His question causes Bassen to pause with her hand hovering above the brass doorknob.
“I’m still not convinced it isn’t a spy,” she says, as if it isn’t there. “You can share your room with it, since this whole thing was your idea. Keep a close eye on it.”
Lavellin gasps indignantly and when Bassen leaves, Torver watches the door shut with a reverberating finality.
Lavellin’s presence burns like a hot mist at his back.
“I’ll ignore that rude spy accusation,” it tells him grandiosely, “if you tell me what that crowd was all about.”
If Torver listens closely, he can still hear those crowds. They must be near the square by now. He turns.
“Let’s get you sequestered away first.”
He beckons Lavellin upstairs, away from the door and certainly away from the downstairs windows that anyone could look through.
As they go, Torver explains the concept of a public execution procession, catching sight of Bassen’s remaining job scroll that she had left on a sideboard in the hall below.
He doesn’t suppose they’ll get to that job now.
“Your ruler really does kill your own citizens, then?” Lavellin asks, ascending the stairs with an annoying grace. Torver, meanwhile, struggles to disguise the heaviness of his breathing.
“We don’t have rulers,” he reminds it tersely. “Not really.”
“But there must be people who organise things and tell people what to do, surely? Like at home in Rheged—” Torver’s eyes widen at the name of Lavellin’s kingdom. He’s only heard it referred to as up there or across the border. “—King Eveling and the advisers make the rules.”
“Well,” he shrugs. “We still have no rulers. But the Enforcers can execute anyone who breaks the law—but they do it publicly when the Meddera want to make a point about something.”
“And what’s the Meddera?”
“Senior Officials elect them every five years to oversee the Courts.”
“Aha!” Lavellin’s face lights up. “So you do have rulers.”
Torver grumbles. “No, we don’t. Not…officially, at least.”
This seems to satisfy the fae.
“And what point were your Meddera making today?” Lavellin takes the last few of the broad oak stairs two at a time, arriving on the carpeted landing in a skip.
Its clothes are shredded but at least the blood on them is dry and there is nothing to drip onto Bassen’s cream carpet.
“The same point they always make,” Torver mumbles. “That they’ll always win in the end.”
He clenches his hand, the nails pressing into his palm. Like he can squeeze the thoughts, the whole day, out of his mind. He’d love to march from here and go straight to a tavern where he could drink this all away.
Instead, he leads Lavellin into his room, ragging the curtains closed with a ferocity that surprises even him.
In the dim light, he fumbles for the matches on his bedside table and lights the few candles dotted around.
It looks about, and its gaze seems to catch for a moment on the bookshelves.
As it swallows, the muscles of its jaw move in the flickering candlelight.
Then, the fae approaches him, standing close.
“I need to turn it on.” There is an urgency in its voice. “Now, if possible.”
Torver freezes. The high shelves that line the walls around them seem to hem in.
He frowns. “Oh, you mean the pain?”
“Yes.” It blinks. “What else would I mean?”
Torver deflates. He’d been quietly hoping they could discuss the Beast waking up and the fae invasion. But he looks again over Lavellin’s body, the gore not having the same impact that it once did, it still repelling him nonetheless—and he twinges with guilt.
“You can lie on the bed,” he says. “Just let me put a towel down.”
He retrieves a large, beige towel from the trunk in the hall that he spreads over his bed.
The only bed, he realises.
But Lavellin is injured and it should have somewhere soft—he’ll have to sleep on the floor.
The intimacy of his offer doesn’t hit him until a second later when he watches the strange fae settle onto his sheets, the four posters rising above it; the place he had slept last night.
It turns its head to the side to look at him and when it inhales, he knows it is breathing his scent on the pillow.
If he could have predicted this happening, maybe he would have washed it.
“This isn’t going to be pretty,” Lavellin warns him, arranging itself in a sprawl. “Remember in those woods?”
Torver blinks. “Of course,” he says.
He sits on the ground beside the bed, so that their heads are level. Its eyes, uncanny in their colour and doe-like in their largeness, are wide and glistening.
“I told you that fae can choose not to feel pain in exchange for feeling it more intensely later,” it says, arching a brow. “Do you remember?”
Torver remembers. He nods slowly, considering the symmetry of it. Fae paying a price for using magic; humans bearing consequences for not using it. The magic getting its pound of flesh either way.
Lavellin turns its face upwards, laying on its back.
“I remind you,” it says, “because you’ll have to forgive me for the fit I’m about to throw.”
Torver is about to ask what on earth it means by that, but it doesn’t afford him the opportunity.
Its demonstration of what it means by that is sudden and brutal.
The air sharpens as a moan becomes a squeal becomes a scream. Its teeth are bared in agony, its every muscle contracted and convulsing, its wounds reopening with the thrashing. A sharp crack sounds when its head whacks against the headboard.
Its long hair fans out in sticky tendrils that twitch with its writhing, with its screeching. And Torver doesn’t know what to do, but he can’t let it flail and scream like that. It will only hurt itself more and if it carries on like this then the whole street—the whole Wen—is going to hear.
Panicked, the first idea that comes to him is to climb onto the bed beside it, thinking perhaps he can deaden the screams with his body. He tries to hold it, to shush it quietly in what he hopes is a comforting way. But it doesn’t recoil, like he would.
Instead, it clings to him. Shoves its face into his chest.
It feels hot and burning and strange in his arms—but at least the noise is no longer so loud that the air stings. No longer so loud that anyone passing in the next street might become concerned, and summon an Enforcer.
It buries its angled face harder against his chest, the yowling even more muffled. He can feel how it trembles, how it has every burning muscle clenched, how it bleeds onto him.
“I’m sorry—I’m sorry about Watenlath,” he tells it. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this, I—”
Its hand finds his mouth roughly. It pulls its face from his beating heart and looks into him, shaking and furious. One gasping word. “Don’t.”
He shuts his mouth.
He holds the Rath while it shudders and he can’t help but think, can’t help but wonder—if this is how Wast will twitch on his noose. But he can’t think of that—can’t let himself—so he shushes Lavellin louder. He even tentatively strokes its fox-coloured hair.
An eternity later, Lavellin quiets. It rests where it lays, a dead weight on him. A sharp inhale. A jagged exhale.
Somewhere below them, the front door slams.