Exiled Guide Tamed the Beasts novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Bastian

Selene's POV

Rafe found me in the corridor with the Warden's slate in his hand and Kit at his shoulder.

I read the log twice, and when I looked up, Rafe had gone very quiet.

"She knows," Kit said. "She knows Stellan's clear, and she thinks you did it."

"I did do it," I said. "I just don't know how, or why, or what it was for."

"Tomorrow she lands with troops," Rafe said. "Tonight, nobody talks about this. Act the way you always do. Dull."

"And me?" I asked.

He looked at me.

I thought of the last thing we had done in that locked steel room, and I saw him think of it too.

"You do what you want," Rafe said roughly, and left.

I did not sleep.

At midnight I walked down the corridor and stopped at the last door.

Bastian's cell was bigger than the others, because he did not fit in the standard ones.

I had not knocked, and I had not locked my own door behind me.

He opened it anyway.

He stood there in a loose grey shirt, enormous, with his beard rumpled and his eyes soft.

"I heard you coming," he said.

"I'm not here to dress your shoulder."

"No."

"I don't know what I'm here for."

"Come in," Bastian said, "and sit down, and I'll make tea."

There was a small kettle in his cell, and two chipped cups.

I sat on the edge of his cot and held mine.

I watched him move around the tiny space, setting each thing down with his huge careful hands.

He sat across from me on an upturned crate that creaked under him.

"I remembered something today," he said.

"What?"

"When Stellan showed us his back, I got a feeling I'd been in that room before. Not in it. Next to it. Through the wall."

He looked down at his tea.

"Nine nights I lay in the dark and listened. I thought it was screaming. Stellan never screamed once. It was very quiet. And there was another voice."

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