Chapter 25
Here and Intact One Moment, Shattered and Gone the Next
Alobaz had detested every second Terencia’s eyes crawled over him.
Their lingering examination of his body had felt like insects he couldn’t brush off.
Now that her attention had turned to Velle, however, he was wrestling with the urge to jump in front of his temptress and draw Terencia’s gaze back to him instead.
It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to her ogling.
For decades now, practically since the child-bride had bloomed into womanhood, she’d been doing her damnedest to lure him into her bed.
All it would have taken was a threat to his friends’ well-being and he would have succumbed.
Until today, Baz had succeeded in keeping them out of it.
He should have never allowed Lev and Moncho to come to her in his place.
While he was at it, he should have never let Crute live at the castle.
He had recognized the boy’s hero worship for the farce it was.
He was nobody’s hero. Terencia might have been the one who had gone too far and drained him of all his blood, but the boy had been all but dead the moment he’d indulged his request to return home with them.
Crute was a corpse because of his weakness, his unforgivable sins.
At least Lev and Moncho would recover. Or their bodies would anyway. They weren’t human like the dead men were, as fragile as spun glass, here one moment, shattered and gone the next.
Terencia’s tongue darted out to lick her lips, no doubt tasting the blood, male-seed, and pudding she must have had someone rub all over her—so distasteful.
She reminded him of a serpunta, though far more dangerous than any of the changelings he’d ever met.
She alone pointed the head of the emperor whichever direction she chose, and Junot was too arrogant to note the degree of her influence.
“Who is she, Alobaz? You’ve made me wait long enough. I won’t wait any longer for you to offer up the information.”
Even her dulcet voice, objectively pleasant, grated on him.
Terencia stood abruptly, without swaying, and set down her half-drained goblet of blood—human, from the scent of it. It was as he’d suspected. Despite appearances, she’d never truly lost her faculties. The woman never relinquished control.
Wraiths, or perhaps trapped essences or some other terrifying things that Baz had never seen before, had been trying to break through the floor to reach her.
Now they lurched toward her, straining at the floor’s boundary, but she didn’t deign to glance down.
Instead, padding quietly on bare feet, she prowled slowly toward him and Velle.
He willed her to slip on the slick floor, but of course she didn’t. Every move she made was measured.
“Did you take her to your bed?” The question was pitched to be casual, but Baz knew better. Terencia had no claim over him beyond being his stepmother, yet she’d conjured a sense of possession over him.
Opalesians believed Junot was the most dangerous person in the world. They were very wrong. The empress was just as lethal and much less reasonable.
It was impossible to lie to Terencia, a highly inconvenient detail of her magic, the extent of which not even Baz was familiar with.
So Baz had to craft his replies with utmost care.
While he yearned to tell her that it was none of her damn business whether or not he’d taken Velle to his bed, he settled for being grateful that Velle had only been in his bed once, and he hadn’t been the one to put her there.
“No, Stepmother—”
“Mother.”
“No … Empress Mother, I did not take her to my bed.” She’d climbed into it of her own free will while he was unconscious.
No, Baz, nothing Velle does is of her own free will, remember? You have her collared and bound to you. She’s your prisoner. Isn’t that what you tell her?
Satisfaction rippled across Terencia’s face as she stalked closer. Baz’s muscles were actually twitching with the need to protect Velle from her. He hoped Terencia wouldn’t notice. If she knew he cared … well, it wouldn’t end well for any of them.
“It’s fortunate she’s scarred, or I’d have to mark her myself. No one in my empire is allowed to be prettier than I.”
When Baz said nothing, she barked, “Well?”
“Yes, Empress Mother.”
“Yes, Empress Mother,” she mimicked in a whine. “You can do better than that. I know you can. You’re quite interesting when you allow yourself to be.”
“Thank you, Empress Mother.”
Her eyes glinted maliciously—when shrill cries erupted from another part of the castle.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Screams.”
She half tsked, half growled, and Baz understood he couldn’t evade her again, or someone would pay the price—and it was never him, especially not when he wanted it to be himself.
Terencia glowered at him, in no way diminished by her nudity. Attached to a different personality, he would consider her body feminine and appealing. She loved to flaunt her nakedness around him. He worked not to look. Even so, he couldn’t help but note that her nipples were pink and pert.
He trained his eyes on hers. “I would guess the screams are coming from the sitting room. It’s where we last saw your nobles.”
Baz could do more than guess. If Aziza’s illusion that veiled Velle’s face had fallen, likely so had the illusion that led the aristos to believe they were enjoying some safe revelry.
Though Aziza was one of the strongest people he’d ever known, her hold over her power could falter if she forgot she was wielding it.
She would be as enraged as Baz was at Lev and Moncho’s ill treatment, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough to cause her to lose grip on her power.
It was seeing Crute discarded as if he were refuse that had distracted Zi from her illusory power.
A singular scream rose above the cacophony. For it to be this piercing rooms away, it had to be loud as a rapplecon’s call, and that would burst eardrums if the bird was too close. When the cry undulated in increased despair, frowning, Terencia shifted her weight into one leg.
“I will see to my drability.”
“Nobility” hadn’t been grand enough for the child-bride, not when drakes and drakesses made up much of her court. She’d coined the upgraded term herself, and then Baz had used it as inspiration to invent the moniker Drady Vee for Velle.
Terencia snapped her fingers. Her s?nglure-servants blurred as they hastened to zoom over.
“Ready me. I will sleep only after my drability has seen its empress.”
Her tone was lofty, that of the magnanimous ruless who put the needs of others first.
Baz held back a snort, and had no doubt others among the Bazrians did as well. The face of one of her servants went carefully blank—too carefully.
In a flash of light so quick he would have missed it had he blinked, the empress’ body was cleaned, her skin left gleaming.
Another flash, and she was dressed in a gown worthy of her station.
Its skirt was belled out so as to make traversing doorways a challenge.
Its bodice was cinched so tightly that her breasts all but spilled from it.
The dress was the color of blood, with intricate black lace layered over it.
A third flash, and the empress’ hair was swept off her back and pinned up, a few chosen curls positioned to frame her thin face.
A fourth flash, and the room was cleaned, the spilled blood gone, the dead beneath the floor banished to whence they came.
The pool and immense size of her quarters remained.
The servant with the carefully composed expressions stepped forward to pin—with another flash of faithum—a diadem to her empress’ head. The dual dragons of the Domdurro crest were carved into an enormous central diamond.
“There,” Terencia announced, without a single glance back at the dead humans—still there, still dead—or at the many warriors in the enclosed space who wanted to murder her.
Even Lev and Moncho, still obviously spent with their curved spines and sagging shoulders, were casting furtive glances her way, and they weren’t the coy kind.
If Lev and Moncho hadn’t done … whatever it is they’d had to do for Baz, they probably would have killed the woman, no matter the consequences. It’s what Baz would have done.
For long centuries, he’d dreamt of killing Junot, and he’d never wanted to end him more than he wanted to end Terencia right then. Before he died, he would kill them both. He wouldn’t leave the Opalese to deal with them without him.
“Now that you’ve finished playing your sly little game with me, Alobaz,” Terencia said, “you’ll accompany me.” She held out her arm for him to take—as if they hadn’t caught her doing anything untoward, and depravity were simply her right.
Gritting his teeth into a tight smile, he made himself walk the last few steps to her side. He wove his arm through hers while considering how easy it would be to pull one of his swords from the harness at his back and separate her head from her shoulders. It would only take seconds.
Because of the Rillis rope, Velle would have to come with them. But his temptress was smart. She would recognize Terencia for the predator she was. Velle wouldn’t draw any unnecessary attention to herself.
Baz tugged his free hand, and thus the rope, to his side farthest from the empress. It wasn’t much in the way of hiding, but it was something. When Velle slid behind him, he relaxed by a fraction.
“Games, Empress Mother?” Baz said, pretending he wasn’t in that precise moment imagining her head rolling along the floor and into the pool. “I’m not playing any games.”
She laughed and sashayed toward the door in a swish of multi-layered skirts, leading him—and ergo Velle. “Well, no, not anymore you aren’t. But you were, you most certainly were. You were trying to hide your surprise from me.”
“Surprise, Empress Mother?”
Single file, she led them through the threshold. On its other side, the iron door was once more bloodless.
“I shall be the one to tell the crown prince the news.”
“What news?”
“Why, that his first act as the interim emperor will be to execute the Rubor’s greatest enemy, of course. Until my husband returns to us, I shall be our son’s regent. Though I do, of course, hope our emperor hastens to rejoin my side. I will miss him so very deeply.”
Velle snorted softly then pretended to cough. Terencia turned in a whirl of crinkling skirt. She smiled her I’m going to eat you smile at Velle.
“Now that I’ve had some time to think, thanks to my son’s thoughtful delays”—she batted auburn lashes at Baz—“I have deduced exactly who you are.”
She faced forward and resumed walking, which meant that so did Baz and Velle. Ed and Félix followed. The two servant women silently trailed the group.
“I know your father quite well,” Terencia said, allowing the statement, clearly intended to provoke her, to travel back to Velle. “Now that you’re returned from the dead, you should ask him about me. He knows quite a lot about me as well.”
Baz wanted to elbow Terencia in the jaw, whirl toward Velle, pin her against the wall, and keep her from whatever Terencia was in the midst of unleashing.
“I’m certain our dear Alonso will have much to tell you.”
Baz willed Velle to keep quiet, and for once, she did as he wished.
“What?” Terencia said on a chortle. “Dragon feasted on your tongue?”
Baz could practically feel Velle taking Terencia’s measure as an opponent.
“What do you mean, Empress?” she eventually said, Empress tight as a bowstring. “Who do you think I am?”
Terencia laughed, tossing a backward glance over a shoulder.
“You’re the princess everyone was all too eager to pronounce dead.
The princess no one missed. They were all too busy enjoying living, free of all the problems you created.
And now, no one will miss your brother either.
The newly dead prince. Except for you, of course.
You will miss him most dreadfully, I fear. ”
Terencia tsked and shook her head in feigned lament. “And just as you revive yourself from the dead to finally share time with him too. It’s a terrible coincidence, really.”
Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack rang her heels on the floor, while shadows whisked out of their way, clearing a path to the sitting room. Pam-pum-pom, went the cello. The violin and viola echoed the chords. More screams escaped the sitting room, still several rooms and turns away.
Tension clawed at Baz’s shoulders like a perched dragon. He wanted to drop Terencia’s arm like it was on fire, grab Velle, gather his friends, and put the damnable castle and the more damnable island and the even more damnable abyss at their backs—forever.
Terencia click-clacked down another hall, heedless of the shadows that snaked finger-like tendrils toward them from the walls and floor, and dropped them from the ceiling like vines.
“Alonso tells me that your bond as twins is unparalleled, that you can actually sense each other as if you were physically connected. You can touch each other without touching. Is that so?”
Velle, of course, didn’t answer.
“Tell me, what does it feel like to lose someone you love like that? Is it as heartbreaking as my worry for my Junot?”
A dagger Velle had somehow swiped without Baz’s knowledge—in what moment, and from where?
—arced in a blur toward the empress’ nape, bare thanks to her updo.
Before any of the s?nglures accompanying them could stop her, Velle rammed the blade into the back of the empress’ neck, straight into her spine.