Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

Bastien

Bastien left his home and Thalia behind. He’d lied to her by saying he was involved with someone else but hoped it left the impression that he was going there for some warm comfort. Maybe then she’d give up this ridiculous idea that they could fall in love again.

Instead, he went to a pub near the town’s center and chose a table in a dark corner. When the barkeep brought the rye whiskey and a single glass, Bastien ordered him to leave the bottle.

He was halfway through it when Kieran found him, and Bastien wasn’t pleased to see his brother kick a chair out and sink down into it.

“What do you want?” Bastien grumbled, his head swimming a little, his tongue feeling thick.

“Ian told me you were here drowning your sorrows, and since you’re the quintessential uptight man who never gets drunk, I decided to come check it out.”

Bastien glowered at Ian behind the bar and had half a mind to beat him senseless for calling on Kieran to come here. He wasn’t a child who needed minding.

Kieran reached forward and grabbed the bottle, eschewing a glass and drinking straight from the source. He grimaced after swallowing. “That tastes like turpentine.”

Bastien ignored his brother. He didn’t want conversation. He’d had enough of it with Thalia back at the cottage. She was infuriating and nonsensical and sexier than any woman had a right to be. When he saw her in his shirt, something cracked inside his chest, and he didn’t like the feeling at all. He was overwhelmed with her—the sight, the smell, the promise. It took everything to restrain himself from taking her right there. Whipping that damn shirt off her, losing himself in her body.

She would have let him too.

He lied to her more than once tonight. He told her he never thought of her, but that wasn’t true. He’d thought about her often over the years. What was true, sadly, was that it didn’t produce much in the way of feelings, and he was easily able to brush the memories away.

But now that she was back, he’d done nothing but think of her. He couldn’t stop the memories from rolling through his mind like those movies he’d seen in the First Dimension. He was well on his way to getting drunk tonight, so perhaps he’d stop thinking about fucking her, which was at the forefront after seeing her in his shirt.

Leaning forward, Bastien grabbed the bottle and put it to his lips, ignoring his empty glass. He took two long swallows and hissed, because it did taste like turpentine.

“What is ailing you, brother?” Kieran asked as he again reached for the bottle. Bastien handed it over. “It’s unlike you to wallow.”

“I’m not wallowing,” Bastien muttered, but that was yet another lie that dripped from his mouth tonight.

Kieran grinned across the table. “I’m going to take a guess and say that Thalia coming back has turned your life upside down.”

“That’s an understatement,” Bastien reluctantly admitted and tried to ignore the pleased look on his brother’s face. Because the truth was, his life had been turned upside down the minute the spell that sent her away was cast.

Designed to harness every bit of his love for her and imbue it into her very soul, the protection magic had resulted in profoundly negative effects for Bastien.

Yes, as she faded away, he wasn’t despondent, but he was cognizant of an emptiness within. Where Thalia had filled him up, he was left with a vast chasm that made him feel… incomplete.

It took a long fucking time for Bastien to become accustomed to that feeling of nothingness. Other women couldn’t fill it, so he shoved other stuff inside that eventually rebuilt him into the man he was today.

Hatred for Ferelith was his primary fuel, and he leveraged every ounce of that passion and energy into defeating his enemies. He killed indiscriminately, as long as his opponent was working for Ferelith. His hands were drenched in blood, his soul etched with every death, and it was the only thing that made him feel whole again.

“That damn woman thinks we can pick up where we left off,” Bastien grumbled.

Kieran merely cocked an eyebrow as he took the bottle from Bastien and brought it to his mouth.

Bastien slammed his fist onto the table. “She wanted to talk about her feelings, wanted me to talk about my feelings, and then… next thing I knew, she wanted to know if I would fuck her.”

Kieran choked on the liquor and sprayed rye whiskey all over the table. “She actually came right out and asked you to…?”

“Well, she didn’t overtly say that. Somehow I was talking about how beautiful she was, and I might’ve said she was fuckable. I don’t remember the order of things. She asked if I felt she was fuckable—”

A deep furrow appeared in Kieran’s forehead, and he held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute… you actually had this conversation?”

“And I told her, there was a dormitory full of soldiers if she needed to scratch that itch.”

Kieran sprang from his chair, reached across, and slapped his brother on the side of the head, hard enough to rock Bastien. “You are a fucking idiot. You don’t say those things to a princess. You don’t say those things to Thalia. I should kick your ass.”

Bastien loved his brother. The spell hadn’t prohibited him from loving, just from loving Thalia. But he had to hold his temper because as brothers are wont to do, they’d often beat on each other in times of anger, and usually when alcohol was involved. Kieran striking him would more often than not end up with them rolling around, trading blows until they were worn out and bloodied. They’d then return to the bottle.

But Bastien didn’t have it in him tonight. Now that he was unloading about Thalia, he decided to get it all out since Kieran had been the one right by his side the last seven years, and he knew his brother was a different man.

“I told her I had another woman,” Bastien admitted.

Kieran set the whiskey bottle down. “But you don’t. You broke it off with Merrilyn.”

“Thalia needs to move on from me, and the easiest way for her to do that is to think I’m a hopeless cause. I know Thalia, and she won’t pursue me if she thinks there’s someone else. She’s not the type to get in between a couple.”

Kieran laughed and pointed at his brother. “That right there sounds like pride mixed with a bit of fondness for Thalia. You may not feel much for her, but you still respect all the qualities that led you to fall in love with her in the first place. The spell took your love, not your admiration.”

Bastien mulled that over. Kieran had said that just because his love had been removed didn’t mean it couldn’t be rebuilt. He supposed that was true, but it seemed impossible. Bastien had known Thalia since she was a child. They were the closest of friends before they became lovers but building blocks along the way had forged their bond. Those building blocks were still meaningful to Thalia, but they weren’t to Bastien. It’s not fair to her for him to attempt something that would be so one-sided. She’d get hurt all over again.

“You should give it a go,” Kieran said, and Bastien’s eyes met his. “You owe it to yourself.”

“That makes no sense,” Bastien mumbled.

“You don’t remember your feelings for her… what it was like when you were with Thalia. You walked on air, brother. You should want that again.”

Shaking his head in regrettable denial, Bastien shot the notion down in a roundabout way. “We’re at war, Kieran. Lives are at stake. Hard work has to be done. There is no time to try to regain something you say I should miss, but I just don’t. It’s a waste of my time, and I’m completely fine with the way things are.”

Kieran frowned as he studied his brother. He stood from the table. “If you’re so fine, why are you here getting drunk?”

Bastien didn’t reply, merely took the bottle and refilled his glass. Kieran turned on his heel and left his brother behind.

Settling back into his chair, Bastien continued to ponder Kieran’s advice, even though he’d drawn his line in the sand.

His brother was a romantic, nothing more.

Bastien was not.

Even if he were, resurrecting his relationship with Thalia was the last thing he’d try to do. While his emotions regarding her were almost completely dead, he could still vividly recall what that emptiness had felt like when she left.

And he was never going to risk that pain again.