Chapter 24 #2
The chamber was several times the size of Baz’s, though by Mauldrene’s doing or some other sort of faithum, I couldn’t tell, especially since there were plenty of signs of magical meddling.
Lightning crackled in reddish-violet webs that dashed and pulsed along the walls, ceiling, and floor.
Puffy flakes as of storm clouds drifted down slowly from a darkly glowing portal in the ceiling, fading before they touched anything material.
And what I guessed were wraith-like ghosts pushed up against the floor that surrounded Terencia’s chaise, their sharp, knobby outlines starkly resembling the gnarled trees outside.
The specters’ hands formed claws, their mouths cries, as if a gossamer veil of shadow was all that kept them from returning to the world of the living.
They thrashed against their shrouds in an eerie silence pronounced by the constant of Mauldrene’s background orchestra.
Though their heads, arms, and shoulders constantly battered the misty shadows that danced along the floor, they didn’t succeed in so much as caressing the empress’ foot.
Meanwhile, the empress gazed only at Baz, as if her surroundings were completely normal—and maybe for her they were.
Every fae possessed a power unique to them, even if it was theirs alone due to a slight variance.
Most fae guarded that secret, learning from the time they could first speak that it was dangerous to say too much.
Few shared my misfortune in having their power revealed in scorching history books.
The Bazrians didn’t. Junot and Terencia didn’t.
Including the dripping blood on the door, this all could be theatrics of her faithum, though it felt like an extension of the island, of Mauldrene.
Near a far wall stood a bed that was ample enough to accommodate a dozen Baz-sized men. A scarlet-hued gauze draped from its posts, currently tied open. Between it and the empress’ chaise lounge stretched a shallow pool. Steam rose in tendrils from its heated waters.
The lumoons that bobbed above our heads throughout the chamber didn’t fully illuminate the pool’s depths, but they did reveal that the water was cloudy with patches of red.
The bodies of two men, one much slighter than the other, floated facedown.
A naked and bloodied Lev was slumped against the pool’s steps.
His eyelids were fluttering in an attempt to remain open.
“Where’s Moncho?” Baz asked in that dead voice I’d believed was gone.
Terencia harrumphed, her head wobbling slightly. “That’s no way to greet your empress mother.”
“Where is Moncho?”
Terencia pushed herself fully to seated, at last pulling her legs closed, a process that required the aid of both her servants. They also fluffed her hair and handed her a goblet of blood before scuttling away.
“Where is Moncho, where is Moncho,” she said with a wave of her goblet-filled hand, the blood within sloshing.
“Hello, dearest Empress Mother,” she intoned in a deep contralto that was meant to imitate Baz’s sexy grumbles but failed immensely.
“Are you well? Have you recovered from your journey to this wretched place that is so dreadful that you have to make your own fun?”
Baz’s body tangibly vibrated. I wanted to touch him but didn’t.
“Hello, Empress Mother,” he said in that awful dead voice. “Are you well? Have you recovered from your journey?”
“Why, it’s so thoughtful of you to inquire, Alobaz.
I have, indeed, recovered. I have fed. I am almost, but not quite, satiated.
” Her eyes were a green so vivid they sparkled even in poor lighting.
Set in her pretty face, those emerald eyes zoomed in on Baz as if he were the only other person in the room.
She smiled coyly, uncrossing her legs—unnecessarily slowly—before crossing them again. “With you here now…”
Still vibrating, Baz stalked closer to her, which meant that so did I. Ed, Zi, Night, and Félix remained behind, a tense wall of muscle, ready to intervene should Baz require.
“Tell me where Moncho is,” Baz said.
Twin emeralds glinted as her sly smile dropped.
She shook her head but quickly stopped, as if the motion set her world to spinning.
But when she spoke, her words were suddenly crisp.
“When will you learn? You don’t command me.
You obey me. And when you don’t, I punish you.
I am the empress. You are the prince, and the spare prince at that.
” She allowed the reminder to linger. “Where is my husband?”
“What if I told you he’s on the other side of the door?”
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Why not?”
“Because, despite your current behavior, you are a decent son. You would never risk upsetting your sire by bringing him unannounced to my chambers when you know I’ve been attending to my needs. So where is he, truly?”
“I don’t know. The castle took him. I was unable to find him.”
Her eyes flashed for a second, too fast to reveal with what.
“You’re telling me that my husband, the emperor of the Domdurron Empire, is missing?” Her words were abruptly sharper. Could the empty olvidian vials be for show?
“That is exactly what I am telling you, Stepmother.”
Her lips were narrow. She pursed them into a pouty, doll-like kiss. “You know I don’t like it when you call me that.”
“It serves as a useful reminder that you aren’t actually my mother.”
She sucked in a hiss through her teeth, while her servant girls plastered themselves to the settee.
“I’ll ask again. Where is Moncho?”
“You believe this ‘Moncho’ is more important than your sire? Than Our Dominance?” The taunting was gone. What remained was as cutting as a blade.
“Of course I don’t. There is no one in the entire Opalese more important than my father.”
Good one, Baz.
Terencia scowled and thumped back onto the cushions, smearing the blood, male seed, and pudding mixture onto them anew. She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to still spinning. I couldn’t decide how much of her act was real.
Eventually, she sighed, as if Baz were the greatest of disappointments. But why? For not rushing to answer her summons, flinging off his clothes, and ramming his dick inside her without pause?
Deep within me, my monster snarled at the imagery I should never have conjured. Now both my monster and I wanted to murder the bitch until she stayed dead.
“Your precious soldier is bound to the underside of the bed.”
Without waiting for Baz’s command, Night and Ed jogged toward the bed, mindful to avoid dubious puddles along the way.
“He wouldn’t stop trying to tell me what to do, and only one man tells me what to do.
” The blaze of her eyes said: that man was Junot, and she hated him for the power he wielded over her.
“And before you give me a headache with all your asking, your other precious soldier is in the pool. At least Levin understands his duty to his empress.”
Splashing through what I hoped was water, Zi ran to Lev. She slid to her knees, patting his bare shoulder while running her other hand along his wet hair. Félix didn’t leave Baz’s opposite side from mine.
At Zi’s touch, Lev groaned. He sagged his head back onto her shoulder.
“Crute,” he said.
What did the furry creature have to do with anything?
“And…” But Lev couldn’t finish.
Aziza pulled him out of the pool and plopped him beside it, his body spent and limp.
Then she tromped into the thigh-high water, mindless of her boots and leathers but careful to keep her mordaris from getting wet.
She reached the larger of the facedown men first. She turned him over and dragged him poolside, where Félix waited to help him out.
“I don’t recognize him,” she told Baz.
When she waded back in to flip the second body, her words sliced like her mordaris.
“It’s Crute. He’s dead.”
Ah. The boy whom I’d first seen speaking with Baz outside the brothel, Slake.
With water sluicing down them, she dragged Crute’s body to rest beside the unidentified man, who also looked very dead. Ed and Night were pulling a barely conscious Moncho from underneath the bed. Baz was taking it all in.
The empress’ full attention, however, had shifted from Baz to me—just me.
“Who do we have here?”
The Bazrians, even Moncho and Lev, though weakly, turned toward me.
Terencia chuckled. “If you wanted to roleplay and bind me up, Alobaz, all you had to do was ask. Although I would never let you scar me up, not even for play. I’m too pretty for that.”
Zi gasped softly as the same realization was hitting me.
The veil meant to conceal my true face was gone.