Page 75 of White Horse Black Nights

I turn to Basten, frowning. “You sent a message this morning? Where?”

He briefly shoots a damning look toward Myst, but he has to know that she and I tell each other everything. As he tears into a freshly roasted hunk of squirrel meat, he mutters, “North. To tell them we’ll arrive tomorrow afternoon.”

I give him a crooked smile, confused. “North? Salensa is west.”

Did our lovemaking knock something loose in his head last night? He’s a hunter. He knows directions as well as he knows that the sky is up. My heart starts squeezing strangely, thrashing like a snared rabbit.

“We’re going north,” he grunts curtly.

My crooked smile stretches wider, increasingly uncertain, as I shake my head back and forth. What is he talking about? The only town of consequence in the north is Duren. Other than that, it’s just the Blackened Forest, and eventually, the border wall with Volkany. I may be no master of geography, but there’s no plausible way that heading north could take us to the coast. In fact, going anywhere near Duren would only put us squarely in the Valveres’ territory—straight into the enemy’s den.

An invisible fist tightens around my throat as a dawning fear sinks into me like fingernails down my back. My heart starts thrashing harder, a trapped animal who now sees the hunter closing in.

He’s betraying me.

The certainty of it pierces me like a blade.Dear gods.It can’t be true, can it? I’m overreacting. And yet I know in my core that I’m not. Basten is taking me to Duren just like he always planned. He’s going to deliver me into Lord Rian’s arms despite everything that happened last night, all our whispered plans and promises. Despite the fact that he had me moaning his name. Despite his own passion!

I gape at him in disbelief. Is it true? Basten is just another man who will tell a girl anything to stick his cock in her?

I stare at him as I slowly drown in disbelief. My lungs struggle for breath. Panic sinks into my bones. My voice is barely audible as I whisper, “It—it was a lie? Salensa? You’re still taking me to Rian?”

His jaw locks as he stands and brushes ashes roughly from his palms, not meeting my eyes. “Oh, come on, Sabine. Not even you can be that naive. You know I work for the Lord of Liars. I’ve learned a thing or two about lying.”

I flinch like I’ve been slapped.

I still feel numb, but the trapped rabbit in my chest refuses to go down without a fight. As anger coils in my chest, I snarl, “So you just wanted to fuck me? You played me?”

He scoffs as he starts rolling up the blanket to pack in his rucksack. “I guess you have me figured out, little violet.”

There’s a meanness in his voice that is utterly foreign. Basten is many things—grumpy and cold and quick-tempered and violent—but not mean. We’ve spent every hour of every day together for weeks, and I’ve never heard that tone. He doesn’t play games, either. Everything about Basten is as unpretending as the animals that make their home in this forest, who couldn’t deceive even if they wanted to. It’s one of the things that draws me to him. He isn’t about games. He’s the opposite of the man who bought me as a bride and forced this twisted ride.

Iknowthat about Basten. I knowhim, maybe even better than he knows himself. And everything he said to me last night wasn’t a lie.

My lips purse tightly. “No. I don’t believe you.”

He stiffens again, but only briefly before cramming the blanket into his rucksack like it’s insulted him. “Believe it, little violet. You’ve been locked away too long. You’re pretty but not smart. Men lie—accept it.”

There it is again—that cutting blade that isn’t him.

With my heart thrashing in my throat, I rest a shaking hand on Myst’s arched neck. My brave girl. Thank the gods I have her. She’s always brought me back from the brink of panic.

I ask her,Tell me more about where you went this morning. I want to know exactly what happened from the moment he woke.

She leans her weight into my palm.He never woke.

It takes me a second to catch her meaning.You mean he never slept?

You slept, he did not. There was a leaf in his bag. Its markings scared him. He smelled like fear.

It can be difficult to understand an animal’s meaning, even if their words are intelligible, I can’t make sense of what Myst is trying to tell me. She sometimes calls paper a leaf, but that’s my only clue.

I stomp over to Basten’s rucksack and start wrestling to pull out the blanket he’s stuffing in, searching for this mysterious piece of paper.

“What the hell are you doing?” Basten snaps.

“Where is it?Whatis it? Myst says you read something that upset you.” I tear into the contents of his rucksack with feverish intensity, past hard rocks of stale bread and leather pouches of coins. As soon as my fingers graze on a folded paper, he seizes my wrist and wrenches my hand violently away from the bag.

“Sabine, stop!”

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