“Basten?” I shake him with eggshell gentleness.
Suddenly, he awakens with a jolt. He sits up fast enough to kick over my knapsack, his hand flying to his neck. His breath comes fast and hard.
“Sabine?”
“Shh, it’s okay.” I rest a calming hand on his shoulder. “You’re all right. We’re safe. We’re in the ruins of an old barn I found. I brought you here with the horses’ help.”
His eyes—wild like an animal’s—lock onto me. He still has his hand clutched around his throat. He swallows hard and winces, like it pains him.
I flinch with guilt.
“I’m making pine needle tea,” I rattle out fast, moving back to stir the pot to busy myself. “I added some berries for taste. There’s wild bergamot, too. It’ll ease your sore throat.”
He takes a moment to look around the old sheep barn, reassure himself that both horses are here and safe, and only then slides his feet under him and sits up.
He sniffs the air. “Sulfur.”
I bite my lip, stirring the pot. Willing it to bubble faster.
“Sabine.” His voice is so hoarse he can barely speak. “What…what was that back there?”
“Blue smoke exists in nature,” I explain, wincing as my voice comes out sounding defensive. “I read about it in one of Woudix’s books. When a crack opens in the earth, sulfurous gas can rise, and when it’s ignited, it burns blue and hot. It’s called brimfire.”
He watches me for a minute like a hawk. “I wasn’t talking about the fire’s damncolor.”
I clear my throat, digging in his knapsack for a tin cup.
“Are they all dead?” he asks, voice hollow.
A stitch in my stomach tightens. I busy my hands by wrapping a towel around the pot so I can move it off the fire. As an afterthought, I flick my fingers, and the fire snuffs itself out.
“They were always so cruel to the goats.” I explain, not looking at him. “They’d separate the newborn kids from their mothers within days, so they’d produce more milk, and have me feed the babies watered-down gruel mixed with egg yolk instead. Those two workhorses you saw are named Mayflower and Bluebell. Once, Sister Ruby whipped Bluebell hard enough to break the skin. An infection set in. Bluebell fell lame, but they only whipped her harder.”
His voice is hard, uncompromising. “Sabine—are they alldead?”
I pour him the pine needle tea with badly trembling hands, sloshing half of it onto the dirt floor, pretending he hasn’t spoken. As if tea can make everything bad go away. “The land the convent was built on was once a beautiful glen, did you know that? An old turtle told me, who’d lived long enough to see it. The Red Church cut all the trees. Tore up the earth for stone. Built that abomination instead. Here—tea.”
I pass it to him, not meeting his eyes.
Finally, he takes it. He says flatly, “So they’re dead.”
“I…assume so.” I quickly turn to smooth the wrinkles from my saddle blanket. “You were never in danger, though. I want you to know that. I knew what I was doing with the vine. Just trying to keep you from getting hurt. It was better if you were unconscious—I could keep you away from the smoke. I promise, I was in control, even though it might not have looked like it. It wasn’t like during the Gloaming. And see?” I stretch out my hands toward the fields beyond the barn ruins. “Bremcote, the fields, everything is safe. I didn’t singe so much as a blade of grass beyond the convent walls.”
Finally, there are no more wrinkles to smooth. No more hay to pick out of my hair. No more pots to fiddle with.
I rub the back of my neck as I kneel next to where Basten sits, and for a long time, silence stretches between us.
I find the strength to look him in his bloodshot eyes. “You know I’d never hurt you, right?”
My voice comes out in a whisper, breaking just like my strength.
Somewhere far off, a coyote howls.
I can feel the ghost of my father’s words.Acolytes count their lifespan in months, not years.
Basten sighs deeply, scrubbing his hands over his face as if he’s as exhausted as I am. When he finally looks up, the wariness has eased into concern. “It isn’t my place to scold you, Sabine. It’s to support you. Hell, I gave myself to you. Idolet you hurt me—willingly. You can bleed me. You can break me. I’d give my life to you, if you asked it. The thing is, I don’t want you to take it on a lark.”
The reek of smoke clots in my mouth. “What happened in the convent wasn’t alark.”
