46. Bastian
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
BASTIAN
F eeling crept back into Bastian’s body so, so slowly. Not nearly fast enough.
They hadn’t bothered tying him down like they had Isolde, relying on the paralysis to keep him still as long as they needed.
Selene disappeared from view and reappeared with a dagger in one hand and a silver goblet in the other. He couldn’t see Everett, but Anselm…
Anselm sat to one side of the stone circle, watching Bastian with mournful eyes.
Is that why you did it? Bastian wanted to scream at the man he’d called his father for twenty-two years. Is that why you turned me? For the same reason Selene turned Isolde? Because you needed a fucking sacrifice?
That was why Anselm had disciplined Everett after Bastian’s Punishment. Not because Bastian was his son, and he loved him enough that he couldn’t bear that Everett had hurt him.
But because he needed Bastian’s blood to make himself immortal. And Everett had almost killed his sacrifice.
Across from Bastian, bound to her own altar, Isolde wept. Silent tears poured over the bridge of her nose, down toward her temple, as she stared at him.
Selene went to the hole carved in the center of the courtyard and lowered the goblet into it. Then she rose, still holding that dagger in her hand, and came toward Bastian.
“Anselm wanted to be the one to do it,” she said softly, curling her fingers around his foreleg and drawing it toward the edge of the altar.
“He felt it was the least he deserved, to have to carry the memory of being the one to end your life for an eternity. But my blood doesn’t let him control the shift anymore. ”
Bastian willed himself to move, to lash out at Selene, to snarl— anything . But all he could do was whimper, a pitiful, useless cry, as Selene pressed the tip of her blade to his foreleg. He felt the pain, hot and sharp, as she carved a line towards his paw, but all he could do was watch.
On the other side of the circle, Isolde had begun to scream. She thrashed at her binds, yanking viciously at the ropes as she watched Bastian’s blood trickle down the side of the altar, rolling along the slope toward the center of the courtyard.
“Don’t touch him,” she yelled, her back arching off the stone as she fought to get free. “Bastian! Let him go!”
“Be silent, Isolde,” Selene ordered. “And hold still.”
Isolde did no such thing. She continued to thrash, shrinking away from Selene like a frightened animal as she came toward her and lifted the bloodied dagger. Selene seized Isolde’s forearm, pinning it to the altar as she sliced her vein open from wrist to elbow.
Isolde’s screams turned agonized as that knife split her skin, and Bastian’s chest filled with primal, useless fury. He fought to move, to try to stand, to drag himself across the stone to her if he had to. All he could manage was a minuscule twitch of one back paw.
Isolde fell silent as Selene stepped away, her blood pouring down in a sheet of crimson.
Her eyes found his once more, her tears still flowing.
Silently, her lips began to form words. “I love you.”
Bastian couldn’t speak, so he blinked his response back at her. Three times, slow.
I
love
you.
Isolde’s beautiful face crumpled, but she gave him a small nod of understanding.
“Everett,” Selene ordered, turning.
Everett trotted obediently into view and sat down at Selene’s feet, gazing up at her like a pet waiting for a morsel. Selene lifted the dagger to her own wrist and made a shallow cut. She lowered her arm, held it out to Everett, and he began to drink, his tongue darting out to lap at her blood.
A moment later, he shifted into his human form. The cut Isolde had given him still bisected his face, carving through his eye and across one cheek. The eye itself was unscathed—shame, Bastian thought—but the wound looked likely to scar. His shoulder bled, too, from the knife Isolde had thrown.
Anselm’s betrayal cut Bastian deep, but lying there on the altar, his blood flowing onto the stone, staring at the Wolf he’d called his brother for twenty-two years… that betrayal hurt so much worse.
Anselm had been like a father to him, yes, had raised him and taught him to wield a sword and given him the apprenticeship with Lake Hall’s blacksmith. For so many years, his life had been far better than he ever could have hoped if he’d grown up in the backwater village where he’d been born.
But Anselm had always had his duties as pack leader occupying him, pulling him away from his family.
Everett had been the one Bastian had spent the years with, sparring and drinking and swimming in the lake.
Bastian had been able to forgive Everett the Punishment—he’d deserved it, for abandoning the pack—but this…
Bastian didn’t know if Everett was truly the beast of Bloodhaven, or if it had been Anselm all along. At this point, he wasn’t sure it fucking mattered.
No matter what Everett had done, whether he’d slaughtered innocents or not, the fact that he would sit by while Anselm murdered Bastian… that hurt went deeper than anything else Everett had done. That carved away a piece of Bastian’s soul.
“Wait until the eclipse is at its zenith,” Selene instructed Everett now. “When the red begins to fade from the moon and the goblet is full, take it to Anselm. He will drink, and then you must bring it to me.”
Everett nodded, and walked back out of sight. He didn’t so much as glance in Bastian’s direction.
You were my brother, he roared, the words trapped within his mind. You were my brother, and I loved you, and this is how it ends?
No.
Fuck that.
Across the courtyard, Isolde gazed at him with despair etched all over her face. Her eyes, shining silver with her tears, were wide and hopeless. Frightened. Convinced she would die, and Bastian with her.
But Bastian wouldn’t allow it—not if there was even a sliver of hope that he could stop this. That he could save her.
If he didn’t survive this, so be it. At least if he died tonight, he’d be free of the curse Anselm had bestowed by turning him.
He’d be free of the pain and the betrayal, of the ache in his chest that was worse than whatever physical pain his family—the only true family he’d ever known—had dealt him.
But Isolde deserved to live.
He’d seen the fear in her eyes when Everett had tried to stake her, and when the nighstbane had stolen her vision in the forest that night.
He’d seen the way she fought when she thought he was there to hurt her, the wild desperation to escape, to survive.
Maybe she’d never feel the sun on her face or eat human food or any of the things she’d lost when she became a Vampire, but at least she lived .
The moonlight could still silver that beautiful hair of hers.
Her eyes still twinkled like the surface of a frozen lake.
And Bastian would be damned if he let her die.
His eyes darted over the altar where she was bound, his mind spinning.
The end of the rope around Isolde’s left ankle was loose, worked free in her thrashing before Selene cut her.
All she’d have to do would be to twist her foot, to jostle it until that loop came the rest of the way undone, and that leg would be free.
If she could get the rest of her binds undone—or even just one hand, so she could untie the other ropes…
Bastian focused all his energy on getting his limbs to move. Even just one of them. Baring his teeth with the effort, he forced every ounce of strength he had into his bleeding foreleg. It shifted—just an inch.
But Isolde saw. Her eyes darted downward, then back to his. Bastian flicked his own gaze toward her ankles.
Slowly, she twisted her leg. The end of that rope slid free another inch. Isolde hesitated, her gaze darting around the courtyard to Selene, Anselm, Everett. And then she gave Bastian a small nod. Determination replaced the desolation in her eyes.
Selene was watching, though, her dark gaze trained on Isolde and the trickle of dark blood that ran from her arm, down into the divot at the center of the courtyard. Without some sort of distraction, Selene would notice right away if Isolde started yanking at her ropes.
Isolde, apparently, had the same thought.
“Selene,” she said, her voice hoarse from screaming. “There’s one more thing I want to know before I die.”
“Is that so?”
“Was it you in the woods that night, with the nightsbane?”
Bastian’s anger spiked at the memory, and he gained a little more feeling in his hind legs. The knife wound to Isolde’s chest, her panic when he’d found her between the trees, blind and bleeding. That vision still plagued him every time he closed his eyes.
He shifted one foreleg, hauling it closer to his body.
“No. But that is where I got the idea to use the nightsbane on you tonight,” Selene said.
“I was sick with worry that whole night, you know. Anselm came to me afterward and told me what had happened—that you’d almost caught him, and Everett had stopped you with a poisoned blade.
Then you didn’t come home, and I feared Everett might have killed you with too strong a dose. ”
“Oh, and what a shame that would be,” Isolde sneered, her face twisting with disdain, “for you to lose the precious sacrifice you spent ten years fattening up for slaughter.” She yanked at her bonds, then, in a show of anger—a clever way to speed along whatever slow progress she’d been making as Selene spoke.
“Well, yes,” Selene replied, unconcerned.
“The ritual stands a better chance of working if the sacrifices are older—the bloodlines more potent. Bastian’s blood is likely not at pure as yours, since Anselm refused to change him until we couldn’t wait any longer, but your bloodline should be well established by now. ”
Bastian’s gaze swung to Anselm, who was already staring back with wide, sad eyes.