4. Rahzlyn #2
“Betroth who?” Basil searched my eyes. “You and Jere?” He uttered something to himself before turning abruptly. With his back to me, it was impossible to gauge his thoughts. I bared my feelings for the world to see, whereas Basil battled his own storms quietly.
“Are you honestly surprised by this?”
Even through the dark, a sadness befell him.
“It’s always been the four of us. Pahn and I reading while you run around pissing off Nahn, and Nahn threatening to marry you off in return.
I never thought things would change, or that you would ever leave us.
Despite knowing how stifled you are here,” he added gently.
I didn’t object. “Marriage to the right person could be good for you. You need protection and stability. Someone who loves you for your flaws, not in spite of them. Jere… he’ll ruin you. ”
“You see why I ask this of you.”
“No, I don’t, Rahz. This isn’t like the stories Pahn used to read us at night,” he warned. “Of forgotten creatures and romantic tales. Harpies and twin flames aren’t real.”
“Twin flames aren’t romantic. Finding your other half, knowing one or both of you are destined to die shortly after? That’s a tragedy.”
Basil sighed impatiently. “Completely beside the point. Blood Sight is real, and it’s dangerous.
Even Chosen seers can only use it so much, let alone acolytes, without something bad happening.
If it works, what if I accidentally see your death?
” He looked away, grimacing. “No. I’m sorry, but no. You can refuse him—”
I barked a laugh. “Refuse the son of a baroness? Baze, come on.”
His shadowed gaze held mine as the truth sounded between us. The baroness and her son were fickle and manipulative. We’d witnessed firsthand the businesses, and people, they’d ruined out of spite.
“Please,” I begged. “I need to know what sort of fate awaits me.”
“And what good would that do?”
“It might help me make the right choice.”
“You’d be marrying into wealth if you accepted, certainly,” Basil said. “Many Chosens come from such nobility.”
“Jere would never be Chosen as the king of Gemini, let alone a guardian.”
“You never know. King Zephyr hailed from an Academy, but his predecessor, King Bartuk, was the husband of a baroness. Were that to ever happen, the Chosen’s oath of celibacy would mean you could never be with him.”
“Well, that wouldn’t be so bad…”
“There’s a reason why nobles are discouraged from having families. If any of them were to ever be Chosen, all their living blood members would have to be killed as a sacrifice. That’s the price of wielding an Astral’s power. Your children, if you bore any with him, would be executed.”
“That’s highly unlikely. I need to know what will happen should I refuse him.”
“You mean, what will happen to us and the shop should Jacostah or Jere take offense to your refusal.”
I nodded. “Nahn would never forgive me. I might be able to live with that, but the apothecary… I couldn’t do that to her. Or you.”
Dragging a hand over his face, he said, “Refusing him is dangerous. And so is this”—he gestured to my bleeding fingertip hanging uselessly at my side—“Blood Sight. I don’t know how it works. What if something bad happens?”
“Aren’t you the one who always says the Astrals and their Chosens only want to control us?” I said. “It’s probably fearmongering. Baze, I’ve never asked this of you.”
“I know,” he said, pacing. “If I were to see anything, we don’t know if the future is changeable or not. We could be messing with more lives than just yours by doing this.”
“That is worth the risk to me,” I murmured. “I won’t marry him. I can’t. I want—” I breathed through the tension fisting around my chest. “I need to know the consequences of my actions.”
“Why would you ask this of me here, now, where anyone might see what we’re doing?” He didn’t give me a chance to answer him. “You always let your emotions get the better of you.”
I lifted my chin. A small part of me hated myself for pressuring him like this, but I was drunk and desperate to avoid a fate with a man I detested. A glimmer of white hair trickled into my mind, belonging to another man who occupied my thoughts.
Kole and I had never discussed a more serious future, but maybe if he and I ran away together… Every coin I made belonged to the apothecary. Kole was only a barkeep on days he felt like working. That, and Basil might very well kill his best friend for running away with his sister.
No, we wouldn’t get far.
“Just a quick taste,” I insisted, thrusting my bleeding fingertip into Basil’s unamused face. “Remember when we shook hands to always look out for one another? After you chased me off the edge of that skyland and I nearly plunged to my death?”
His mouth pursed in deliberation. Years later, the guilt for what narrowly happened to me that day still gnawed at him. He cursed before taking hold of my pricked finger. “This could be what my dream and the cards were warning me about. And it might not even work.”
Excitement and relief coursed through me. “I’ll never ask anything of you again.”
“Hippogriff shit, and you know it.” He shook his head. “Come here.”
I stepped closer, allowing him to bring my finger to his mouth. He cast a wary glance around the dingy alley once more before tasting, his face puckered with discomfort. I brought the back of my free hand to my mouth to quell the urge to gag.
Basil scowled, lowering my hand.
“Well?” I demanded, my heart beating synchronously to the tavern’s fast rhythm of drums.
“Nothing. It’s blood. Tastes… metallic.”
I pulled out my pocketknife and cut deeper along my finger. Basil cringed before taking my hand to his mouth again. It stung where he drank, but the pain was inconsequential compared to the potential future I might need to thwart. Long, drawn-out seconds passed before he opened his eyes.
When he finally did, I gasped. His irises dazzled like the stars. He stared at me, yet I got the sense that he couldn’t see me at all.
“Baze?” I reached out to touch his face. Perhaps this was normal. I waited a little longer until seconds drew into minutes. Then his jaw went slack, leaving his mouth agape. Alarmed, I shook his shoulders. “Basil.”
Shuttering the stars away, his gaze shifted back into focus on me. “Rahz?”
“I’m here,” I assured him with relief. “What just happened?”
He blinked. “I don’t know. It’s like I fell asleep. I was here, but not?” His hands rested on his stomach. “I feel sick.”
“What do you—oh, gross,” I said as he violently vomited onto my boots. “Aren’t I the one whose hair usually needs to be held back in this alley?”
“Something doesn’t feel right.”
Concern had me biting at the chapped skin of my lips. “Let’s get you some water inside.”
It would be an hour-long trek back home, and we were both clearly in no position to make that journey yet. While the previous Geminian king had invested in better infrastructure, crossing any skybridge while inebriated was always hazardous.
A black critter skittered near our boots. I squealed, jumping toward Basil as the eight-legged creature disappeared into the shadows.
“So squeamish.” He sighed, then extended his hand out. “Let’s never speak of this again, alright?”
“Fair enough.” I slipped my hand into my brother’s and squeezed, tampering down my disappointment.
Basil cringed at my vomit-coated boots. “Sorry for those. I’ll buy you a new pair.”
I kicked the heels against the wall, rubbing off what I could. “You know, I have been eyeing those black ones with the block heel in the shop down the road.”
“Ah, so this was all part of your master plan then, wasn’t it?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Basil chuckled tiredly, relieving some of my unease. As we returned inside the tavern, a lingering chill followed us and seeped into my back. I couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever we’d done would have more consequences than either of us could imagine.