Splat #2
“What do you mean?” Bal took another step closer. This time, there was no more space for Esme to escape to. His warm, tan chest was just a breath from hers. “What’s wrong with Magic?”
Bal had a glazed, lovesick look to his eyes. His pupils were blown out, and he braced a hand on the wall beside her head like it was a battle just to hold himself up.
“Bal, you have to snap out of this,” Esme said, swallowing thickly when he dipped just an inch more.
Their noses touched. It was one thing to wrestle and flirt in the pits, where there was a crowd to keep them honest, but here there was nothing.
Esme couldn’t even hear the roar of the city over her hammering heart.
An itchy restlessness seized her fingers, and her chest refused to fill with air.
She was drowning against the tide of her own need.
“Snap out of what? I don’t feel bad.” Bal leaned his other hand on the wall, boxing her in. “You’re so beautiful. I’ve thought so since I first saw you. I like your hair and your eyes and your smile. I like the way you look when you’re angry. I like your voice.”
Bal’s tone wore his desperation. It was whiny and depraved, and if she wasn’t convinced of his utter need for her when she heard it, then the rutting of his hips against hers sold it.
He didn’t kiss her. She didn’t know if he was waiting for permission, or if the press of their lips might spell his ruin.
“Bal, listen to me,” she said urgently. “Where are we?” She tried to coach him out of it, but she was slipping away to the same reckless need. It was so difficult to remember what, exactly, was so important about that stupid old castle when Bal was a breath away.
She couldn’t deny wanting him. He was charming and handsome, and she’d be a dirty liar if she said she hadn’t thought about what it would feel like to be wrapped around him.
Not like in the pit, with watchers and clothes and rules.
To be clamped tight around him, going till first blood once again, and then long past that.
“Does it matter?” Bal turned into her shoulder and kissed her blood-soaked neck.
He must not have minded the gore, because he did it again.
“Tastes so good,” he moaned against her throat, kissing and licking and devouring her as he went.
It was depraved and disgusting and Esme’s feet slipped out from under her because it felt like he was stroking her nerve endings.
Bal worked his way to the other side of her neck and his arms slipped from the walls to hold Esme’s body. He didn’t care about how awkwardly her arms folded against her chest, or that her elbow poked into his rib. With her trapped inside of him, Bal sank his teeth into her throat.
Just like that, the Magic fizzled out of her mind completely.
Esme wasn’t in an alley, pressed against a wall, with Balthazar ravaging her neck with messy kisses.
She was in the royal suite. It had been so big and domineering and commanding, just like the man she shared it with.
She always felt tiny in the massive bed.
She felt especially tiny now, with Omniel above her.
His mouth was on her throat, and he was muttering about her taste and her chill and how good she felt on him and—
And then he bit her. He bit her so hard, tears sprouted at her eyes, and she yelped, but Omniel hadn’t even heard it.
When they were done, she slipped off to the bathing room and checked the mirror and, right at the juncture between her neck and her shoulder, was an imprint of his teeth smeared with her blood.
She still had a ghost of a scar in that spot.
And Bal had bitten right into it.
Esme slapped him.
She didn’t even think. Maybe it was just what she wished she’d done to Omniel—pushed him off and hit him.
Bal blinked, stunned, his head still wrenched to the left. And then he took a few heavy breaths and stumbled back until he fell against the opposite wall.
“Valos,” he whispered, shrinking against the brick. “Did I do that?” His eyes fell to her naked shoulder, where he’d ripped her shirt to the side. Esme didn’t need to look down to feel it.
He’d drawn blood. Just like Omniel.
“I didn’t mean to. I’m so sorry. You have to believe me, I—”
“I know.” Her voice was brittle. She shuddered, falling against the wall.
For a whole minute, they stewed in horror. Bal of himself. Esme of the man he’d soon replace.
“I wasn’t myself,” he rasped. “I never would have done that. I didn’t even know I could.” He touched his teeth like he expected fangs.
“I told you Magic was dangerous,” Esme said, pushing off the wall. She pulled on Bal’s oversized shirt and buttoned it all the way up.
“Magic?” he asked. Esme realized that he still thought she’d come from a snake’s gut and had no knowledge of Magic. He moved away from the wall but kept his distance, and Esme knew it wasn’t for his own sake. Ojalla on fire, she probably wore the terror in her eyes as plain as day.
“When it’s not contained, Magic can move through places,” she said.
“It’s a contagion of chaos. All it wants is blood and anarchy.
It’ll push you to do things you’d never dream of, and you wouldn’t even sense it.
” She turned to leave the alley, expecting Bal to follow.
“But Magic is also what gives me and the other Wraiths our powers. As long as we control it, it’s nearly harmless. ”
Bal nodded, turning the information over in his head as he jogged to keep up with her. “Then how do I protect myself against Magic?”
“You don’t,” Esme said as they pushed through a crowd of people spectating a competitive orgy. “The only solution is to get Magic out of the city.” How, she had no idea. Between the thwarted assassinations, genocides, and eagle-killing, she hadn’t carved out time to fix that calamity yet.
“Valos, this place just wants me dead,” Bal muttered, falling in step with Esme. Something about having him so close made her anxious again. The back of her neck prickled, no matter how many times she told herself he wasn’t Omniel. “I can’t believe Isobel tried to kill me with a giant bird.”
“I can,” Esme said. “She needs Janos to win, or else that spell chokes her to death. Of course, you make it easy for her to kill you by letting strangers lure you out into the city alone at night.”
“I can handle myself,” Bal said.
She gave him a look.
“Usually.”
She pursed her lips, pressing forward through the crowd. “So, Isobel has magical animals. I doubt it’s just the one.”
“Why?”
“Because why waste your only resource on a back-alley assassination?” Esme asked. “Not to mention, if Magic is in one eagle, it’s in some other animal, too.”
“Then maybe she’s saving them for the Valosia,” Bal suggested. “It’d be a hell of a second trial. They’re almost unkillable to anyone who isn’t a Wraith.”
Dread pooled in Esme’s stomach. If Isobel had gotten her wish and Esme hadn’t been there tonight, Bal would currently be halfway through that eagle’s guts.
“Why orchestrate such a public death, though?” she asked.
Bal grunted. “Isobel doesn’t strike me as a stealthy person,” he said. “So, I guess I’m banned from leaving the castle now?”
“You’re under house arrest until your coronation,” Esme said.
Finally, they reached the base of the craggy path that led to the castle. The guards had been seduced from their stations, for which Esme thanked Magic. No one needed to see them return bloody and half naked together.
Esme began to trudge up the hill. “Ojalla on fire, I can’t believe there are monster eagles.”
“Oh, in your bastard city full of drugs and sex, monster eagles are the shock?” Bal asked, dropping his chin. A thread of disgust wove through his voice.
“We can’t all rule over a southern haven full of peace and equality,” Esme said.
When they finally reached the gate—also abandoned for the shrill call of the city—Esme climbed over it. She hit the ground with a heavy, uneven thud. “Why were you in a fighting pit anyway?”
“Needed a good brawl,” Bal replied. A muscle flared in his jaw and he yanked himself up on top of the gate.
“Quail said you wanted money. Are you lacking funds?” Esme asked as the general dropped to the ground, then flopped down, apparently too tired to walk back up to his room.
“Who isn’t?” he said, his voice pinched with exhaustion. “You lot up here hoard the stuff and waste it on watching men kill each other in holes.”
“Not the impression of you I had,” Esme said, sitting beside him. “Not looking at Prelyn, at least.”
Bal hummed. Just talking about Amaris seemed to piss him off, but it had almost killed him. Esme gave him a pass.
“What were you going to do with that money?” she asked.
Bal rested his chin on his arm. He thought for a few seconds before looking sidelong at her. “I was going to send it back to Prelyn. All those kids need to eat.” He was drip-feeding her information to watch her reaction, Esme realized, and she locked down her expression.
“And since you don’t have fighting pits, how’d you make money before this?” Esme asked. She didn’t think Bal would let that secret go, but she wanted to test how much he trusted her. He’d revealed that he disliked Amaris, that he resented its wealth.
But would he reveal he’d been pilfering some of it for himself?
“You’ve had a long night to be thinking so hard,” he said, standing.
The answer was no, then. That was okay. Esme wouldn’t let him in on the fact that she already knew. She needed him to trust her enough to fill in the gaps in his puzzle, even if that meant lying about what pieces she already had.
He clenched his fist, then pushed to his feet. “Thanks for saving me. I’ll see you at the Valosia next week.”
And then he was gone.