Page 116 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

Woudix turns away sharply, striding off back to his altar with his hound trotting along to guide him, the dagger in his hand again, pointing down as he walks.

Then—locking the angry heat of my gaze to Artain’s—I say, “The Night Hunt is on.”

“The Night Hunt is on,” he echoes vaguely, as I’m already half-forgotten in favor of the farmgirl, who is batting her long lashes at him from across the amphitheater. Distracted, he murmurs, “Await further word from me.We’ll have to bide our time until Vale is occupied. Best he doesn’t hear of this wager until its conclusion.”

There’s a marked shift in his tone—all business, completely focused, as though he’s been steering me all the while that I thought I was the one pulling strings. A chill sends the hair on the back of my neck on end.

I swap a look with Sabine, who looks equally unnerved.

Did we just get played by a fae?

As soon as I can escape the gathering, I go straight to my stateroom and throw up in the pisspot—because, now, the deal is sealed, and there is no going back.

Chapter 30

Sabine

“His name is Rian Valvere,” Matron White says dismissively as the Sisters unload me from the convent’s wagon no more gently than if I were a barrel of cider. My father’s courtyard gates rise in front of me, cold and unwelcoming. “The High Lord of Duren. Tomorrow, one of his men will come to collect you. Be obedient. Be virtuous. If you want my advice? Say nothing of your time in the Convent of Immortal Iyre. Neither Lord Rian nor his representative will care, and you’ll only seem ungrateful to our blessed maiden, Immortal Iyre.”

The wagon rolls away, the wheels grinding against the dirt, and for a moment, I swear I feel the tremor of an earthquake beneath my feet. I hope it might split the earth open and swallow them, but it doesn’t.

They leave me here, in a place that should feel like home, but I’m a stranger.

I don’t belong here.

I don’t belong anywhere.

Every night, I watch from my tower window as the sun sets over the Vollen Mountains. In no world, in no age, could anything compare to a Volkish sunset. As dusk unfurls, phosphorescent flying insects paint the gloaming in impossible shades of greens and blues. Cloudfoxes are at their most active, scampering along the treetops. The mountains take on a purple cast, the closest ones dark indigo, and then each one beyond it a shade fainter until the last ridge is a light periwinkle so faint it melds with the sky.

I’m going to miss this.

I know I have to leave. I lost Basten once, and I won’t again. Yes, things are different between us. Still an inch out of lockstep. His missing memories hang like a silk screen between us, a perpetual barrier. One that hurts every time I look at him and see him looking past me as if trying to remember something just out of reach.

One day, I have to believe we’ll see each other clearly again.

The dinner bell chimes. But tonight, on my way to the Hall of Vale, something feels different. The musicians aren’t playing as they usually do. Servants look pale-faced. The hair on the back of my neck prickles, and the feeling of unease only grows as I approach the open doors and am hit with a strange smell.

I barely glance at the agitated crowd filling the Hall of Vale when a voice calls, “Highness?”

Captain Tatarin strides out of the hall, herding me back into the hallway. She clasps my hand briefly. Her eyes dart, distracted. Her star-shaped pin is askew.

“Tati?” Craning my neck, I try to peer over her shoulder into the hall. “What are you doing here? I thought you led a squadron to Immortal Thracia’s resting place.”

“That was the plan. We made it as far as the Lunden Valley before—” Her lips stitch together to hold back her words before she admits, “Things are bad there. At first, we thought it was a plague.”

My gaze swings sharply back to the Hall of Vale. Someone lets out a sharp cry.

As my nerves jangle, I head for the crowd inside.

“Highness, wait,” Tati says but doesn’t stop me.

The smell of singed metal grows stronger. Worried murmurs fill the air. I scan every face, looking for Basten’s.

But he isn’t here.

He isn’t here anywhere.

My pulse kicks up as I push through the crowd until I reach what they’re all looking at.

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