Chapter 3
The Crown of the Empire Rather Than Its Sword, and How Much Creepier Can One Castle Get?
At Junot’s direct address, Cosette gaped in surprise and brushed her blaring fuchsia hair from her face.
“I…”
Her wings buzzed. Her eyes darted to Baz.
As if she were an opponent at arms, he battled his overwhelming need to glare at her. He needed to impress upon her how severely displeased he would be if she were to reveal anything about his prisoner. He would threaten her, her family, her first-born, whatever it took.
But Terencia was watching him closely—of course she scorching was—as were her nobles.
Terencia would probably keep his secret if she were to notice his tension, how very obviously he didn’t want Cosette to speak.
He would pay for that kept secret, in ways he definitely wouldn’t want to, but to keep Junot from his prisoner, he would do it.
But the favored noblemen and -women who traveled with them? They would blab their suspicions in an instant. Their only loyalty was to courting the emperor’s favor, to their own ambitions.
All of them were fae, and many of them were s?nglures. They would be able to single out his heartbeat. Some would be able to scent his emotions.
Baz breathed deeply and slowly, when he wanted to snatch Cosette from the air, crush her stupid buzzing wings to dust in his fist, and hurl the tiny pest into a pocket of Mauldrene’s shadows.
When Zi, Ed, and Night stepped closer, he knew his subtlety wasn’t subtle enough.
His viper fucking undid him, dammit! Junot rebirthed him nearly four centuries ago.
Baz’s emotions had ridden him hard and without compassion for his first few decades as a s?nglure, when he’d had to adjust to his new, unnatural impulses.
But since he’d learned restraint, he’d worked to conceal his every weakness from his sire.
When it came to his prisoner in the dungeons, that hard-earned restraint fucked right off. What was it about her that bypassed all his defenses? Why did he even fucking care?
He’d been tormenting himself with these and similar questions since he fought to keep her alive immediately after she’d done her damnedest to kill him.
She was the enemy.
The enemy!
But she was … his enemy.
She was his.
Cosette’s indecision drew out much too long as she cleared her throat and scratched her upturned nose, looking back and forth from Baz to Junot. For an investigatory soldier, she had the finesse of a bludgeoning mace.
Baz snorted haughtily. Zi, Ed, and Night stepped back to join Moncho and Félix.
“That, Father,” Baz said, leaning into theatrics that felt as brittle as his composure, “is Cosette Darling. She’s an investigatory soldier of your Blue Band.”
Cosette’s tiny shoulders pulled back, and she hitched her chin upward.
“And if you invite her to tell you about her duties in service of the empire, she’ll gab your ear off.”
“That’s for sure,” Moncho muttered. “She won’t shut up.”
Baz added, “She’s quite proud to do her part in keeping the dominion for you.”
Junot regarded her. Her cheeks flushed. Her mouth opened.
“What is she doing here?” Junot asked.
At the indirect address, Cosette’s eager smile faltered.
The nobles had already lost interest, once more regarding the shadows with open suspicion, a pair of the women clasping their arms across their waists in an attempt to preserve warmth that would prove futile.
“She’s an informant, come to deliver information she believed I’d find useful.”
Junot’s stare was sharp upon him. Whatever the cause for his diminished physical stature, it wasn’t affecting his mind.
“And did it prove useful?”
“To a degree.”
Cosette snorted, probably thinking something along the lines of what Baz was: to an enormous, mind-blowing, life-altering degree.
Junot shot the parvnit a lowered brow look; his crown slid ever so slightly. “You have something you wish to say, soldier?”
Cosette didn’t bother flicking a glance Baz’s way this time, which meant she’d likely decided it was better to ingratiate herself with the crown of the empire rather than its sword.
“Yes, Your Dominance.” Her wings flitted a bit erratically. “I-it’s such an honor to meet you. I’ve hoped to meet Your Dominance since I first joined the Blue Band, but it seemed like such a dream. And now here I am.”
She beamed.
Junot’s features were loose with ennui, yet he extended his hand to her.
Cosette glanced at Baz, as if he would aid her, when she was about to betray him. Betray her.
“It’s considered a great honor to kiss the emperor’s signet,” Baz said blandly.
“Oh! Yes! Of course! Like you did. Duh.”
She zipped forward, clutched his finger with both arms in an embrace that pressed her chest flush to his finger, and smushed the entirety of her face to the ring with a squeaky mmmmmmmuah that drew out several seconds.
His lips curled in a sneer, Junot flicked his hand with a snap that caught Cosette by surprise.
Arms swinging, in a blur of fuchsia she hurtled toward the wall, before her wings surged to halt her momentum.
By then, she was near enough to the shadows that a pair coalesced into gnarled hands and snatched her from the air.
She shrieked as they tossed her backward—into a darkness so complete that it swallowed her.
Terencia clutched Junot’s arm. The noblewomen gasped and huddled together. One of the men shrieked, then attempted to disguise it with a manly cough.
Baz suffered from the uncomfortable sensation that the shadows were …
chewing on the parvnit. He heard no mastication and had never seen any teeth, even though the cuts all over his body were proof that the shadows did bite.
It was a sense that a monster was eating, and that the creature shouldn’t be disturbed while it consumed its meal.
The point into which she’d vanished, as dark as the abyss itself, sucked inward as if on an inhale, then bubbled outward with a whoosh of frigid air that felt like a satisfied belch.
The ever-audible stringed trio trilled jauntily, which made its tune all the more haunting—especially when a minuscule wompa leather boot catapulted from the wall to skid onto the floor.
The shrieker cleared his throat and asked in a deep voice: “Is that … is her leg still inside the boot?”
Zi stalked toward the little boot. She squatted down over it but didn’t touch it. “Yes, it is.”
Shrieker brought a quavering hand to his chest. Even in the dim lighting, his nails glimmered from their recent manicure.
“That’s … monstrous,” exclaimed one of the women.
Terencia tsked and softened her hold on Junot’s arm. “It’s theatrical, is what it is. Haven’t you read the stories, Alicia? The castle enjoys intimidating its guests. Be prepared for an entertaining show.”
When Terencia faced Alicia, Zi gave Baz a tense look that said, The parvnit is either for real dead or at the very least down a leg.
Horror gawped openly on half the aristos’ painted faces. Baz sighed.
“If it will please you, Stepmother, I can see to quartering your lords and ladies elsewhere on the island.”
Shrieker’s knees wobbled before he locked them together and patted his hair, a sky-blue pompadour Baz assumed was a wig.
Terencia pinned Baz with one of her beatific smiles. “That won’t be necessary. Our nobles prefer to remain close should we need them.”
Growing pasty, Shrieker still said, “Of course you are right, Empress. It is our great privilege to serve you and the emperor.” His eyes roved, cataloging Mauldrene’s endless shadows.
Junot was cleaning his ring against his doublet. “I hope you’d already extracted all the information from my soldier that you needed, Alobaz.”
“I had, Father. Her death is of no concern.”
Junot ran his tongue along his teeth, flicking its tip against a fang. “Then you’ll be ready to update me as soon as I finish with the feeders.”
“Of course, Father.”
“The Wonderwater Isles have evaded me long enough.”
Baz couldn’t bring himself to say the rote, Yes, Father, that Junot expected.
Although it wasn’t really any better, Baz said, “As you wish.”
For three hundred and ninety-six years, Baz’s sole purpose had been to fulfill his sire’s desires. However depraved, however unnecessary—whatever their cost to Baz’s essence.
Junot frowned. “Good.”
“And how fares the crown prince?”
Terencia’s eyes softened. “Rishaq is growing heartily. He’ll soon be as tall as his father. He is a fine heir to the empire.”
After examining Cosette’s leg, Aziza had moved close to Baz. Now, he felt her stiffen in an affront Baz didn’t share.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said.
“I’ll let him know you inquired about his well-being.”
Terencia wouldn’t. She never did.
“Take me to my quarters,” Junot said. “I will feed now.”
Baz dipped his head. “Follow me, Father.”
When Baz turned to lead Junot in the opposite direction, his friends’ eyes were on him, several with subtly arched brows that said, Do you know where the fuck you’re going?
Baz ignored them, saying aloud, “Castle Hawxfure, please lead us to the emperor’s rooms.” Though he’d come up with the name Mauldrene in anger, it felt too personal to share with the man he wanted to know nothing about him, an impossibility when Junot was his sire.
Junot harrumphed. “No son of mine will defer to a thing.”
Baz willed Mauldrene to slice the man to bits on their way to his rooms.
“In all this vast world, only I and your brother stand above you, Alobaz,” Junot added, causing Terencia to flinch then glower at Alicia, who was closest and had noticed.
“You,” Junot barked at Moncho, though they’d met many times over the centuries and Moncho was a warrior well known in the Opalese. “Make sure my feeders are waiting for me.”
Moncho’s jaw clenched before he smiled more genially than Baz usually managed. “Right away, Your Dominance.”
Moncho left in the same direction Lev had, although there was no guarantee Mauldrene would lay out the same path.
Junot extended his arm. Baz offered his for Junot to take. When the men touched, an involuntary shudder ripped through Baz.
Junot’s lips turned upward, revealing fang tips.
“At least your s?nglure remembers to whom he owes complete allegiance.”
Baz forced his step to remain smooth. “I don’t know what you mean, Father. I’ve been your loyal servant since you rebirthed me.”
He grunted. “Then you and I have very different ideas of what loyalty means.”
With brusque movements that jostled his cape, he jerked his arm free of Baz’s. His eyes were so dark and hard that not even the lumoonlight softened them.
“You’ve been lying to me.”
He then stomped toward an archway, his cape jouncing in a shimmer of gold.
Unbidden, Baz’s thoughts plummeted down to the dungeon, to the woman who made no secret of her hatred for him. Scorch, she screamed it until her voice cracked. She was a constant suffocating pressure against his ribs—and also a comforting presence.
He wanted only to go to her right then. To coat his body in her arousal again, to smell her scent on himself. To have her rake her nails along his back in a pain so exquisite he both loathed and loved it.
Junot had passed through the archway. Whatever the emperor might have heard through his own spies, the parvnit and the goblin were the only ones who knew exactly whom Velle was. Trying to anticipate exactly which other lies Junot might have caught him in, Baz hurried to cross the archway himself.
The darkened hall beyond it felt cavernous.
Impenetrable shadows clung to the ceiling, to the walls, the floor.
No doors led off the hall—which surely should have had at least one, if not several.
No light from windows penetrated webs of threaded darkness.
Even before he lit a pair of lumoons to hover beside him, Baz immediately knew the hall was empty.
There was no Junot Ninian, with his mean, glittering eyes, twirling froufrou cape, and clattering, heeled boots.
Baz searched every corner and alcove of the large hall.
“Father?”
A cello thumped out a pom-pom-pommmm.
“Father!”
An eerie sshhhhhhh hissed, seemingly spilling from every surface, momentarily interrupting the usual haunting tune before it once more resumed.
Baz shivered. How much creepier could one castle get, for fuck’s sake?
The sssshhhhhh again oozed from the walls, the ceiling, the floor … caressing against Baz’s face and neck, rustling his still wet hair, flicking his several fine braids … perhaps playfully.
It made Baz want to burst free of his skin.
Yet again, another prolonged shhhhhhh, while Baz spun in place, searching for the source of the sound, for any sign of the emperor in a room that had no exit besides the archway through which they’d entered.
It sounded like a girl, perhaps a young boy.
“Crute?”
If Mauldrene had harmed the boy, he would set her shadows afire. He’d persist until she burned, until she felt his wrath, even if her stone bones were able to weather it.
A laugh this time. It was infantile, feminine, definitely playful … and hideously wicked. Each of its tinkling inflections made him want to scratch the nape of his neck.
Not Crute, thank the Fuerin.
Baz would likely never sleep again so long as he was stuck inside this castle.
A sudden loud creak made him spin. Precious moments passed while he worked to identify the source of the sound.
Were the shadows … moving?
No, not the shadows.
“By the Ethers and all the Fuerin,” Baz breathed.
Junot must have known exactly what the castle was like. This was the reason he’d posted Baz and his soldiers here. He must have known the castle was a cunt to end all cunts.
With peppered creaks, the walls, ceiling, and floor were inching toward each other. The utter darkness of their surfaces distorted distance, making the speed of their movement difficult to calculate.
Without another thought for the missing Junot, Baz clamped his sword to his thigh and ran for the archway.
The archway—of scorching course—slunk backward, keeping pace away from him. The wall at his back, along with the floor and ceiling, continued narrowing.
He ran as fast as he’d ever run.
The archway retreated farther and farther away. The creaking grew loud and insistent, overpowering the music. It sounded like Mauldrene’s skeleton was cracking apart, bone by bone.
When he had to crouch to keep from being squashed, a trapdoor materialized in the stone floor twenty feet in front of him. Without a single idea of where it might lead, he yanked it open so hard that he jarred his shoulder—and jumped through it, into an engulfing darkness.