Chapter 14
Torver’s mind reels with the horrid possibilities.
Winander could be an Enforcer planted in the retirement village, sent ahead to lure them in with some attracting magic in order to gain their trust. Or maybe the blond stranger is waiting for the right moment to turn them over to the chainmailed hands of the law?
Torver’s skin ripples with dread when Bassen tells him what her magic is.
She doesn’t hesitate and Torver’s head tilts in confusion when Winander is unafraid.
He doesn’t pale, doesn’t run, only tells her what his magic is in return—it’s the very opposite of hers, he says with a grin.
Where Bassen takes life, Winander takes death and Torver doesn’t like that. It’s convenient.
“Bass—don’t tell him anything else!” Torver scowls, even when she shoots him a cutting look. He thinks of Lavellin, hidden up the hill. Their plans to try and kill the Beast.
And they’ve got no idea who this man is. Torver doesn’t like the way that Bassen trusts him both instantly and entirely. Who else has Bassen ever been sure about? Only him, all those years ago. A half-frozen child with an indecipherable accent, appearing from the fog like a borderland changeling.
Bassen takes Winander by the hand and she begins to lead him back up the hill, grinning stupidly, like she’s not even thinking.
“Bassen.” Torver chases after her, ignoring Winander’s curious gaze. “What are you doing? What pull does this guy have on you?”
He turns his attention on Winander.
“Hm?” He tries to make his eyes vicious, isn’t sure if it’s working. “What are you doing to her?”
Winander smiles, the angle of the sun igniting his hazel irises in gold. “Whatever it is, son—she’s doing it to me too.”
He puts a hand on his own chest and looks down at Bassen. Torver bristles at being called son by a man his own age.
Bassen’s face softens. “Torver, please,” she says. “I trusted you about…our friend at the top of the hill. I need you to trust me about this.”
Torver inhales at length, regretting for the thousandth time that he has no magic of his own. Nothing he can protect them with. He is defanged and clawless. Stupid, stupid boy.
“If he turns out to be an Enforcer, I will never let you forget about it,” he concedes bitterly, before adding—“Because I’ll be dead.”
Winander lets out a laugh that etches lines at the sides of his eyes.
“No Enforcers for miles, I assure you.” He touches Torver’s arm amicably. “No need, is there? No crime here—this is a retirement village.”
Bassen tugs at Winander’s hand and leads him up the hill, where the elderly residents can’t overhear them through their windows—if their hearing is even that good anymore.
She looks at Winander, seemingly forgetting about Torver, and he can’t help but pout, watching her lavish her attention on this blond stranger.
Why isn’t he afraid of her? What is he hiding?
Their arms touch as they walk and they blush and they giggle.
“We should introduce you to our friend,” Bassen says. “It’s a—”
“Bassen!” Torver pulls her to a stop with a hand on her shoulder. He might have pulled too hard in his panic because she winces.
Winander nods knowingly. “Something illegal, is it? A scroll fraudster on the run? I promise I won’t tell.”
Torver bores his gaze into Bassen’s black eyes, her pupils indecipherable.
“Torv, trust me,” Bassen says. “If I’m wrong, I swear I’ll…”
She swallows hard.
“I’ll do what needs to be done.”
Torver doesn’t like that idea either, but it’s clear that Bassen won’t be persuaded from her bone-deep trust in this alluring stranger.
Torver grumbles the word:“Fine.”
He narrows his eyes at Winander, who smiles at him again.
“So, our friend that you’re going to meet is a fae.” Bassen rubs her shoulder where Torver had stopped her and a knot of fear writhes in his stomach at her admission.
Beast below, he hopes Bassen is sure about this.
“What’s a fae?” Winander’s voice is edged with the smile plastered to his face, looking down at Bassen. He’s shorter than Torver, but that still makes him stand half a head higher than her, even with her white hair fluffing in the breeze.
“Oh, right,” Bassen laughs. “I forgot. It’s from across the border, from the castle Rath.”
Winander’s gait falters, he laughs uneasily.
“Tell me I misheard you,” he says, turning to address the comment at Torver too.
Bassen just smiles, eyes glittering. Winander’s face slackens.
“You have a Rath!” he exclaims in disbelief. “You’re a death-giver, we’re somehow linked at the soul, and you have a Rath with you?”
His expression is somewhere between giddy and scared. Finally scared.
“I—I won’t tell.” Winander runs a hand through his hair, letting out a breath. “But—wow. That is so illegal.”
“Oh thanks, we hadn’t considered that,” Torver grumbles.
“I just…” Winander casts a glance over his shoulder at the village.
“Let me go back and get my tents. I was going to invite you to stay in my house but…my neighbours. They’re retired, so they don’t have much to do.
If old Hoath sees a Rath…it would be his delight to report it to Carlyle.
And Carlyle is a right Citadel bootlicker.
He’d ride straight off to the nearest Enforcer outpost.”
Torver’s eyes widen slightly. “Bootlicker?” he repeats.
“Can’t stand the guy myself. But it’s his job scroll to attend to the retirees around here.”
“Yes, and how did you come to live in a retirement village?” Torver’s eyes narrow once more.
Winander pushes his calloused hands into the pockets of his tunic.
“More on that later,” he says sheepishly. “But first, I have a couple of tents in the barn for when I’m out and about fellwalking. It keeps the joints supple—super important, you know? I can bring them up and you can sleep a little way from the village.”
Bassen nods vigorously, thanking him. Winander claps his hands together. Torver wonders why a young man cares so much about joint maintenance.
“I’ll pop back and get the tents, and I’ll meet you at the top of the hill, sound good?” Winander declares. “And I can meet your Rath friend too! Quite exciting really, isn’t it? It’s like something from a book! Like I’m meeting the Beast or something!”
Torver and Bassen share a look. But as Winander turns to leave, Bassen makes a stifled laughing sound.
“This feels weird,” she says giddily, turning her head to call the words to a slowly retreating Winander. “I don’t want to leave—it’s like my body won’t let me leave you! Can you feel it? That tugging?”
She presses her hand to her belly, laughing.
“I can feel it!” Winander calls back, and Torver feels his own frustration like acid in the back of his mouth.
Torver loops his arm through Bassen’s, and turns her in the right direction, tugging her up the hill.
“Bass, what the fuck?”
She has no response for him other than, “I wish I could explain! It’s probably in some book but it’s likely—”
“Forbidden knowledge,” Torver swallows.
Even those who went to the schoolhouse as children don’t know everything about magic, their own history, their own bodies.
Only sanctioned knowledge is passed from teacher to student, leaving students to fill in the gaps with whatever knowledge they can invent.
He knows for a fact that his own birth was an accident that his young mother hadn’t known how to prevent.
She’d told him as much on several occasions.
They reach the top of the hill and Torver glances over his shoulder; Winander is out of sight, and he calls to Lavellin to come out. After a pause, the blackberry thicket replies in a lilting accent.
“Is it safe? Are you sure you weren’t…followed?”
A pair of opal eyes peer through the brambles.
“It’s fine, Lav. Hurry, come on.” Torver wonders if he should be concerned with how he can’t wait to tell it. Overshadowed by his distrust of Winander, his uncertainty about the fae seems inconsequential now.
After a moment, Lavellin steps regally out of the bush, a few bramble scratches making thin red lines on its muscled forearms. Its ears are nowhere to be seen, its appearance dull and human underneath its glamour. Its eyes are steady with concentration. Torver shakes it by the shoulder.
“Lav, you’re not going to believe what went on down there,” he grasps its other shoulder with his other hand. “Unglamour, you prick, you're going to lose your mind when I tell you.”
It hesitates a second, but when Bassen confirms their safety from over her shoulder, the glamour drops. Its hair regains its bright copper shine and the planes of its face are once more as uncanny as they are devastating.
Torver runs a hand through his dark curls.
“So Bassen has a fucking fated mate or something. They just met and they’re already obsessed with each other.
She’s told him about her death magic, told him about you—and she doesn’t even know this guy!
She’s, like—connected to him on some level.
Have you ever heard of anything so mad? I didn’t even know this was a thing!
I mean I’ve read about it once or twice in romance books, but it’s real? ”
To his surprise, Lavellin is not enthralled by this information. Its expression shifts in some covert emotion before it nods knowingly.
“Her mate has some sort of life-giving or reanimating magic, I take it?” it asks.
Torver is disappointed; he feels this deserves a bigger reaction.
Bassen turns around. “How did you know that?”
A shiver runs down Torver’s spine.
“Sometimes, opposite magics call to each other,” Lavellin shrugs, as if the idea is completely obvious. “It’s rare because few magics have a true opposite, and I suppose it’s even rarer down here where you only have one magic each. Although—I suppose that would make the connection more complete.”
“How have we never heard of that before?” Torver’s low voice gutters in the rising wind. The sunset is progressing rapidly now, the sun dipping below the hills. The trees make long shadows, stretching over the vales like grasping hands.