Chapter 7
There Never Had Been Anyone More Dangerous to Him in All the Opalese, So Sweet She Dripped Poison
Baz rarely slept long or well. Whenever he did sleep, his slumber invited an endless stream of faces to haunt his dreams. It had been centuries since he’d slept and not seen those who’d died at his hands.
So when an open-mouthed snore rumbled in his throat, he startled awake, instantly reaching for his sword, only to find himself completely nude in the dark.
He felt around his prone body, his fingers hurriedly exploring a cushion or maybe a mattress, but found not even a dagger.
His heartbeat accelerated. He always kept a blade nearby, preferably directly on his person.
Whenever he attempted to sleep, he laid a shortsword beside him on the bed, another blade tucked beneath his pillow.
In his bedroom in the castle, he’d stashed a small arsenal.
Since Junot had made him the face of his war efforts, Baz hadn’t wanted for enemies.
Enemies…
His senses sprang to alertness. The most determined of his enemies was here at the castle. His prisoner, the princess of the D’Arcos … she’d already tried to kill him once.
His abrupt arrival in the dungeon via the trapdoor flashed through his memory, then scenes of all that had followed rushed in. By the Ethers, how they’d gone at each other! They’d fed, they’d fucked—they’d been absolutely ferocious.
Now it was cold, terribly cold. There was never a respite from Mauldrene’s frigidness, never a single fucking kindness.
His bare skin was pebbled, his balls taut.
It was always dim inside the castle, and the dungeon was darker still.
Even his sharp s?nglure vision revealed nothing from the pitch-blackness.
The usual strings plucked a morose, aching dirge, and a heart that wasn’t his drummed a slow, steady, menacing rhythm.
The beating heart was his prisoner—and she was much too near.
He felt her stare as it scraped along his body like the edge of a sharp blade, even though she shouldn’t be able to see him any easier than he could see her.
He swallowed and pushed onto his elbows, wiping the back of his hand along his mouth. It came back wet.
Blood, and not his—Velle’s. At once, it filled his nostrils, coated his tongue, made him swallow convulsively. His cock, which had been resting as deeply as he had, stirred awake.
The scent of blood—both hers and his—clung to the air like humidity. Mixed with it was the musk of their arousal, their joining, their ethercrests. It stank of sex. He’d never scorching loved a scent more.
Slowly, he slid along what he knew to be the sole mattress in her cell.
“Don’t bother pretending you’re still asleep,” she said. “I know you’re awake.”
“I wasn’t pretending to be anything. I only just woke up,” he said, then immediately wondered why he’d bothered to defend himself.
“I know. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up for ages. By scorches, you sleep like the dead.”
Thinking of how it would be more accurate to say he slept with the dead, he said nothing.
“Must be nice to be so at ease with your actions that you sleep like a gobloony.”
He scoffed. “A gobloony? That’s a baby goblin.”
“Exactly. Glad to know you’re so unbothered with murdering my brother that you’ll snore like a dragon.”
He scowled at the direction of her voice. “You have no idea whether or not a dragon snores.”
“Neither do you.”
“I told you I didn’t kill your brother.”
“And I told you that you’re a rotten, stinking liar.”
Had she? “Why do you think that?”
She harrumphed. “Is that a serious question?”
He felt her slide closer, rocking the mattress ever so slightly. She’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, as far from him as her chain would allow. If he were to move at all, he should have risen and put distance between them. Instead, he leaned toward her.
Seemed he couldn’t help himself with her—sorceress!—which meant there never had been anyone more dangerous to him in all the Opalese.
“Yeah, it’s a serious question. I’m not lying to you.”
Not about her brother, he wasn’t.
She barked a laugh as dark as the room. “Yeah, sure. Of course you’re being honest. Why would I expect anything different of the Opalese’s Razer? Or do you prefer Ghalubu?”
“I prefer neither,” he said tightly.
“Then, please, allow me to address you according to your preference, since you’re so deserving of my respect and adulation.”
“I never said anything about adulation.”
“But I’m supposed to respect you? To believe you?”
He could practically feel her arched brows climbing toward her hairline.
“You’re already my prisoner. You’re chained up and collared.”
“Thanks for that wonderful reminder.” Her words were so sweet they dripped poison.
“I mean, there’s no need for me to lie to you. If I had killed your brother—and I didn’t—then what would be the point of the deception? It’s not like you can try to kill me again. I have you secured.”
“You think you have me secured. I’ll get free eventually. And then you’ll be a dead man. A really dead man.”
He shuddered, possibly with excitement. How very … demented of him.
“You won’t be able to kill me.”
“Oh.” She chortled. “Is that a challenge?”
He wanted to see what he imagined was now a single brow arched in defiance. He conjured a lumoon to hover between them, and even though its light was purposefully low, he and Velle blinked owlishly at it. If her brow had been curved in defiance, he missed it.
“Not a challenge, just reality,” he mumbled, already distracted by the sight of her sitting—fucking beautifully naked—opposite him on the bed.
“It’s fortunate that you and I have such different ideas of reality, then.”
“Hm.”
“Hm?”
“You’re so … gorgeous.”
Where did that come from? Sure, he’d been thinking it. How could he not when she was the most striking woman he’d ever set eyes on in all his life? But to think it was far different from making the admission—to his enemy.
It seemed impossible that he’d keep forgetting that one all-important fact…
“So I’ve been told.”
“You don’t sound happy about it. You don’t like being beautiful?” Every woman he’d ever known, including his Arabella, had always fretted, even if in secret, about their looks.
“I don’t like being used.”
Being used? Had he used her? Fuck, of course he had! She was his prisoner, and he’d screwed her like it was his mission in life, like he’d never be able to stop. He’d starved her, just like the goblin accused him, and then he’d fucked her when she wasn’t herself.
Damn, Baz.
“I don’t like having my decisions taken away from me,” she continued. “Obviously.”
Dread settled heavily in his stomach.
“This.” She gestured across the bed between them. “This is all your fucking fault.”
He scrunched his forehead. “This?”
“Yeah, this. Don’t even act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.
” She frowned. “You think I traipse about letting myself get chained up, collared like I’m a fucking pet, and then, what, I just can’t resist your impressive charms”—she glanced at his dick—“and can’t help but screw your brains out? ”
“That is kind of what happened…”
She half shrieked, half growled—a fearsome sound that raised his hackles and, distressingly, caused his dick to begin to harden, yet again—and leaned toward him across the bed. She bared her fangs; they were tinged pink with his blood.
“You starved me till I succumbed to bloodlust.”
“I didn’t starve you. You starved yourself. I offered myself up for you to feed every day since you’ve been locked up here. As soon as I recovered from your stabbing me all but in the damn heart, I offered myself to you. Repeatedly. You refused me.”
Damn, if he didn’t sound like an angsty, jilted lover. What the fuck?
He cleared his throat. “The bloodlust is on you, not me.” Was that fair? He didn’t know, didn’t currently care. “You tried to assassinate me.”
“And you have me leashed like I’m your pretty pet.” If words could injure, these would have sliced him wide open. He couldn’t help but smile at pretty pet. She truly was so pretty, even when she was furious, especially when she was furious. “Plus, you practically sawed me in half. So we’re even.”
“We’re not even. We’re not remotely close to even. I defended myself. You attacked me, unprovoked.”
“Avenging my brother is not ‘unprovoked.’ I’ll follow you to the very Igneuslands to punish you for taking Teo from me. There’s no place where you can go that I won’t find you. I’ll hunt you down.”
“So you’re saying I should just kill you now and save myself the trouble?”
She breathed heavily through her nostrils in visible puffs in the cold air. “I’m saying you should free me and release my power, and then you should fight me like a man.”
“You want to fight me in even combat?”
“Scorch yes I do.”
“You think you could beat me?”
“I don’t think, I know I can.”
“With our powers?”
“With or without, doesn’t matter.”
“Do you know what my power is?”
She hesitated. “No. You know mine though, right?”
“I do. It’s hard not to know when your family boasted about it for literal ages.”
She scowled. “Yeah, well…”
He didn’t intend to, but his gaze traveled down her neck, caked in blood, to her breasts, also smeared with dried blood.
When she lifted her arms, he assumed it was to cross them over her chest. Instead, she cupped her breasts and pushed them upward, jiggling them.
He sucked in a hard breath, his body finally warming.
With an irritated tsk, she dropped her spectacular tits. “You killed my brother. You made me fuck you. And you made me feed from you. I’ll never forgive you for any of it. I will hate you forever.”
“I didn’t make you fuck me, and pretending otherwise doesn’t suit you. We were both there for all the times. We both know.”
She frowned and glanced away for a second. Her hair was a tangled mess. He wanted to pull her into his lap and take his time brushing through it, a desire he’d never admit to a living essence.
“And, for the last time, for fuck’s sake, I did not kill your brother. The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can start figuring out who did kill him.”
She glared at Baz.
“You’re right only about the one thing. I did force the situation so you’d have to feed from me.”
She chuckled darkly. “I was there for that too.” Another glance to the room’s deep shadows. “Some, anyway,” she mumbled. “I don’t remember most of it.”
He rubbed a hand along the short beard on his jaw.
It was sticky with blood. “I…” He slid the hand along the back of his neck.
I’m sorry, almost spilled out, but he’d be damned if he’d apologize to the woman who materialized from the fog to murder him.
“I couldn’t let you feed off anyone else. ” He shrugged. “That leaves only me.”
She bit her lip, seemed only then to notice it was coated in blood, and sucked on her tongue. His body was growing warmer by the minute.
“There’s deer blood,” she said.
“Deer blood’s disgusting.”
“Fox blood, then.”
“Ugh. Too bitter.”
“You’re saying that so long as you keep me locked up here, you’re only going to let me feed from you?”
“That’s the whole point. I made that clear from the start.”
She sighed and leaned back against the wall.
Baz surged forward, yanking her by the arms. With a cry of outrage, she jerked her arms free.
“Don’t touch me.”
“I was trying to help you.”
“Oh yeah, right. You didn’t kill my brother, even though someone I trust saw you do it with their very own eyes, and you were just ‘trying to help me.’”
“I was. The castle, she eats people.”
She grunted. “If the castle eats people, she doesn’t eat me.” She pressed her back against the wall, extending her hands out to either side, laying her arms and palms flat to the stone and its usual impenetrable, murderous shadows.
Baz stiffened before lunging forward again, his hands dancing along her body without touching her.
“See?” she said. “Nothing but cold.”
A held breath stuttered up his chest. “She just ate the parvnit.”
Velle blinked. “She ate the parvnit? Cosette?”
“Yep. Her. Well, all but one of her legs.”
“Really?” Velle glanced back at the wall before patting it fondly. “How about that? Good castle.”
“The castle also seems to have taken the emperor.” Baz had no idea why he was confiding in her. She’s the enemy, dumbass. Enemy, remember what that means? “It’s a shitshow up there.”
Velle’s smile was brighter than the lumoon that danced between them, burnishing her eyes like the gilded leaves of autumn. She patted the wall at her back fondly some more. “Damn. I think you and I are gonna be great friends.”
Double dragonshit. If his prisoner hadn’t already been trouble before… If Mauldrene took a liking to her, there would be no door the castle couldn’t unlock, no escape she couldn’t facilitate. At least Mauldrene should have no effect over the dampening collar.
As soon as Cosette told Baz the identity of his prisoner, he’d gone to the nearest copy of The History and Conquest of the Domdurron Empire and riffled through it until he found the passage he’d remembered.
The author of the book had posited that Zaraga might have defeated the invading Domdurron armies if only its princess, Soravelle Davana, had still been alive.
Her power, the author claimed, would outmatch even the great Alobaz Hawxley’s military might.
Without thinking it through, Baz grabbed Velle by the wrist and pulled her to her feet.
“You’re coming with me,” he growled.