Chapter 14
It Is More than Something, It’s Huge, and Only a Little Bit Possibly a Lie
On my hands and knees, I scrabbled up a narrow, dark, bumpy tunnel similar to all the other narrow, dark, bumpy tunnels we’d already traversed.
Baz was on my heels, encroaching on my air.
I could practically feel his hands on me, when actually they gripped the smooth ridges that made for decent, if a bit slick, handholds.
He was too close, always too close, making it difficult to think.
The collar around my neck felt tighter than before, and certainly heavier.
The rope stretched taut between us and made climbing the slippery surfaces unreasonably challenging.
Alobaz, however, had very colorfully, and repeatedly, refused to release me from the spell that kept us tethered.
Granted, it was a wise decision on his part given that my desire to murder him had been infused with new fervor.
I needed to kill him as soon as possible so I wouldn’t desire my enemy with such desperation.
I should want to slice his stupidly plump lips from his equally stupid face, not want to smoosh mine against them until we went numb from the ferocity of our kisses.
I should dream of gouging out his eyeballs, not be haunted by the stormy, ocean-blue-green of them that saw too much every time they burrowed into mine, piercing me as if with a harpoon.
When Marina and I had called on the demigods, Love had been the one to answer. I had to love to hate Baz, no matter what. It was my only option. I’d vowed to hate him with every fiber of my being.
I hate Alobaz Hawxley. I hate him. I do, I really hate him. I absolutely do.
The dragon-scaled book dug uncomfortably into the back of my waistband.
Its placement wasn’t ideal, but my only other option was to accept Baz’s offer for him to carry it, and absolutely not.
Whatever mysteries the book held, it was the first potential advantage I’d gained since landing in this castle as a prisoner.
I hooked my fingers like claws around grooves in the tunnel’s floor and peered ahead.
Even with the aid of a lumoon—one ahead and the other always close by—and my sharp s?nglure sight, it was too dark to discern how much farther we had to go before reaching an exit.
The tunnels crisscrossed in a labyrinthine weave that reminded me of a rat’s nest—in which I was the helpless rat, nudged along by some eager master, large and imposing, who observed from far above.
The current tunnel narrowed so that I had to slide across it like a worm, and though I detested how the ridged, flesh-like floor glided beneath me—slick, soft, and moist—at least I drew pleasure in knowing the fit would be twice as tight for the empire’s favorite general.
When I emerged from the tunnel into a small cave, which also broke off into more tunnels, I sank to my butt and waited.
Thanks to the rope, Baz only had, at most, a body’s length to go, but it took him long minutes to squeeze through, which I gleefully counted in rhythm with his expletives.
When he finally popped out, he was panting.
In the glow of our joint lumoonlight, I grinned. “Having fun yet?”
He plopped onto the floor beside me and flung out his legs, leaning back into his hands. The rope had stretched out as we tested its limits, and now sagged to the damp surface between us.
“If dreaming of the many ways I can make you pay for sticking us down here counts as ‘having fun,’ then yes, I’m having a blast.”
I slid the book from my waistband and rested it on my outstretched thigh instead of the gooey floor. “I’m curious. How would you like to make me pay?”
He flopped his boots out to the sides, in, then out again. “Well, I can’t say I can choose one favorite. There are so many good ones.”
“Oh? Like what?”
He grunted. “I’m not going to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because what if I end up punishing you? Then you’ll know what I’m going to do before I do it, and I can’t have that.”
“Would it motivate you to know I dream of all the ways I want to kill you, every day and every night?”
His head swiveled toward me. “Still?” He huffed, facing forward again. “I see that you’ve decided not to believe me, then.”
“No, I believe you.”
When his eyes widened enough to be noticeable in the gloom, mine did too.
“You believe me? That I didn’t kill Mateo?”
“It would seem so…” Did I really?
“Hunh. Well, that’s something.”
If I really believed him, it was more than something. It was huge.
“Are you going to tell me now who told you that I killed him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Just because I apparently … believe you”—the admission felt strange, like a foreign tongue—“doesn’t mean I trust you.”
“Haven’t my actions so far shown you that I’m trustworthy?”
“No.”
He sighed.
“I have to think.”
It took a bit, but eventually he nodded. “I can understand that.”
“Why was my brother exiled to Orania, of all places?”
“I don’t know. The order didn’t come from me.”
“Then from whom? Your father?”
He nodded.
“Why? Does he usually get involved with these kinds of decisions?”
“Sure. Your brother is just the kind of high-level decision he likes to make.”
“Is an exile to Orania common?”
“Nope. I can’t think of anyone else who was exiled there.”
“Over nearly three-and-a-half centuries?”
He shrugged. “Just because I don’t know about it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened lots of times. Unless it relates to the military positioning of my father’s empire, I might be the last to find out.”
I didn’t say anything for a while, thinking how often Teo and I had also been the last to learn about some of Alonso and Rafaela’s important rulings.
I’m sorry it’s like that for you too, I wanted to say. But we would have to be friends to say things like that to each other, or at the very least, we couldn’t be sworn, mortal enemies.
“Have you been to Orania?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“Ah. When you conquered it.”
He leaned farther back into his hands, as if a heavy weight pressed down on him. “Yeah. When I conquered it.”
I waited for more. None came.
“So, what’s it like there? What would it be like for my brother to have been exiled there all these years?”
“It’s cold, brutally cold. Everything is snow and ice, so there’s little color.
But the starkness is beautiful in its own way.
Oddly peaceful. It took my breath away, and I don’t just mean from the cold, though it did that too.
I felt more peaceful there than I have most other places. I don’t ever feel true peace.”
I found myself staring at him. The only person who had ever confided in me like this was Teo. Not even Marina shared so freely. Goblins were reserved in general. Despite our long friendship, Marina could never fully forget the chasm that separated our social castes.
I wanted to say something, maybe to share some of myself with him too, or maybe to comfort him. Either option was terrifying.
“Would my brother be kept in a prison?”
Baz blinked repeatedly, as if I’d taken him from memories of that serene, winter landscape too abruptly.
“A prison? No, Orania has no prison.”
I arched a disbelieving brow. “Not on the entire continent?”
“No, there are none. They have no need for them.”
“Wow … how? How do they manage that kind of peace?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. They aren’t a peace-filled, so-happy-they-sing-while-they-work kind of folk, if that’s what you were imagining.”
She frowned. She had been, and what a truly beautiful place it had seemed to be for that brief time.
“They don’t have prisons in Orania because they immediately adjudicate anyone committing any crime and free them or punish them accordingly. Right then. Instantly.”
“Some kind of magic?”
“Exactly, faithum of some sort. Sorcerers and sorceresses, wizards and witches, from all across Orania, came together to develop their judicial system.”
“That’s impressive.” I hadn’t heard of that kind of unity across magic users.
“It is. They work together to benefit Orania in all sorts of ways. I admire them for that.”
“Interesting, but where is Teo, then?”
“I don’t know. I know nothing about what happened to him, just that I had nothing to do with any of it.”
“Is that new, the justice system in Orania? I don’t remember hearing about that B.A.”
“What’s that, B.A.?”
“Before abduction. Before I was taken, stuffed into my sarcophagus, and tossed to the bottom of the sea.” I paused; he anticipated.
“So much changed while I was gone. It’s been …
a lot.” A part of me wanted to admit to more turmoil, but the other part remembered: he was my enemy, and weakness was foolish and reckless.
I wasn’t going to say more. Indeed, I had resolved not to, when I added, “Isai came to our world after I was taken.”
“Oh. I hadn’t stopped to consider the timeline, but yeah, of course. Things would be really different for you.”
“It’s like an entirely new world. I’d never even seen a dragort before. Or one of your sh?dreads, either.”
“Sh?dreads are more understandable. Not many people ride them, and when they haven’t bonded with a rider, they stay far away from people.”
“I caught a glimpse of yours. They’re amazing creatures.”
“They most certainly are. I wouldn’t want to go to war without Drion.” He exhaled heavily. “I’d prefer not to go to war at all, with or without him.”
“The great and formidable General Alobaz Hawxley doesn’t like to fight?”
His features tightened. Beneath the glow of lumoonlight, he looked sad. “Just because I’m good at something doesn’t mean I would choose to do it.”
“You’re supposed to be the best commander who’s ever lived.”
He just glanced away.
I yearned to tell him that fighting was all I’d ever known too, and that sometimes I didn’t know if fighting was truly such a vital part of me or if I’d been made to feel that way.
“We should keep going,” he eventually said. “I have to get back Moncho and Lev before… Well, I fear it may already be too late.”
“What is it exactly that the empress might do to them?”
He pursed his lips, his features hardening more.
“What were you picturing?” I asked. At his upturned brow, I added, “When you were envisioning all the ways you wanted to punish me?”
“Ah.” He looked away again. “My favorite was whipping your bare ass.”
My breath caught. “Whipping me? You want to whip me? Of course you fucking would.”
“In my dreams, you want me to do it. You actually beg me to.”
“I wouldn’t beg you for anything.”
His dreams? He dreamt of me?
“I know. But hey, my dreams. I get to do what I want. Same as you do in yours.”
“I’ve never dreamt of myself pleading you to whip me.” I had, however, dreamt of him plowing into me and taking me in all sorts of positions—over and again, more times than I would ever admit to.
“I wouldn’t want to be whipped by anyone.”
“Well, same here, buddy.” It was only a little bit possibly a lie. It depended on what kind of whipping—and whether it would be painful, pleasurable, or both.
Reverently, I smoothed the backs of my hands along the dragon-hide cover and tail of the book, not wanting to sully them with whatever goop coated the cave walls.
“I don’t think we should keep exploring the caves. We’re not getting anywhere.”
“Doesn’t feel like we are. But we have to get out.”
“By the Ethers, do we ever.”
He laughed. “I’m actually missing the castle’s usual gloom at this point. Never thought I’d say that. I even miss the music.”
I chuckled in disbelief. “I didn’t even notice it wasn’t playing.”
“It was one of the first things I noticed. Right after realizing I was stuck inside Mauldrene’s guts.”
I glanced at him. “You think we’re in her guts?”
“Sure looks, feels, and smells like it, doesn’t it?”
I looked around.
“The smooth, long walls with little bumps and turns, all wet and—”
“Totally like intestines. Now I can’t stop seeing it.”
“I haven’t stopped thinking it since I followed you down here.”
“We don’t actually know if we’re ‘down.’ We could be practically anywhere inside the castle.”
“As long as we’re still inside it.”
A quick shudder rolled through my shoulders. “We might not be. Depends on what kind of magic we’re dealing with. Mauldrene can apparently create as many caves as she wants. If she can keep changing almost everything about herself, she could lead us on indefinitely.”
“Which translates to us being stuck inside Mauldrene’s guts forever.” Now he shuddered. “What should we do?”
I signaled to the book. “Maybe something with this? I mean, I have no idea what, but…”
Baz rubbed his thighs while we ruminated in silence.
“Maybe,” I said. “What if we try to talk to her? Have you ever tried to have a conversation with her?”
“I’ve cursed her out plenty of times. Does that count?”
“Ha. No, it doesn’t.”
“Then no, I haven’t. Where do we start?”
“How should I know?” I tipped my head back and called out loudly, “Mauldrene?”
“That’s a name I made up for her. She might not respond to it.”
“Okay.” I called again, “Uh, castle? Ah…” Shit. What did one say to a castle who did what she wanted, when she wanted? If I weren’t stuck inside her, I’d probably admire her for it.
Absurd as it might be, my diplomacy experience kicked in. “My name is Soravelle Davana. I’d love to make your acquaintance. I’m princess heir of the D’Arcos, and daughter of a Tulon. You may know her. My mother by rebirth is Rafaela Eudova.”
The cave trembled so hard that its many smooth surfaces squeaked as they twisted. Fine droplets of … ugh, who knew? … misted down on us. While the tunnel floor shook me, I hastily shoved the book back into my waistband.
The cave walls squeezed inward then outward, inward and out, their movements plainly visible even in the near-dark. Like a heart, the cave pulsed and pumped. My power, forced to slumber, woke and attempted to sense for blood. But there was no blood—because there was no power.
A moan whistled like the wind. Again came the moan, setting the fine hairs of my arms on end.
It wasn’t the moan of a castle, but of a person in horrible pain.